State of Southeast Asia and Rocket Internet with Jon Russell

Jon Russell (aka @JonRussell) from TechCrunch joined us in this exciting episode to discuss the state of Southeast Asia from entrepreneurs, investors to infrastructure and the influence of Rocket Internet in this market. We mulled over whether Southeast Asia companies can truly go regional given that the fragmentation of the markets and users being more favorable to US Internet services and the ongoing valuation that is making the market exciting. Lastly, Jon has offered some advice on how startups can get his attention in media coverage.

Here are the interesting links on companies and articles which form the basis for our discussion:

• The story of Jon Russell from the Asian Correspondent, The Next Web to TechCrunch.
• The landscape of Southeast Asia entrepreneurial ecosystem: (a) the homegrown vs overseas entrepreneurs, (b) the local, regional (Gree & Rakuten Ventures) & global investors (Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital) and (c) the impact of Rocket Internet as an necessary evil to the ecosystem from funding, execution and culture to the Southeast Asia market after their IPO (with their recent first earnings call) & life of their alumni after Rocket Internet.
• Can companies in Southeast Asia truly go regional against their counterparts in China, India, Japan and Korea with a strong domestic market?
• A discussion on valuation in Southeast Asia on GrabTaxi (US$65M), Tokopedia (US$100M), PocketMath (US$10M) and Carousell (US$6M) as the funding but not valuation is known.

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The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bleongcw) and is sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter & Facebook).