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Willson Cuaca, a Singapore based entrepreneur and venture capitalist, believes that there are ample opportunities available over and above the innovation that has already taken place in South East Asia. His company, East Ventures, has become one of the top venture capital firms in South East Asia. The company focuses on consumer internet, SaaS, and mobile.
Mr. Cuaca, the Co-founder and Managing Partner of East Ventures, has become one of the most prolific investors in South East Asia. The company was established by Mr. Cuaca and Tokyo-based managing partners Taiga Matsuyama and Batara Eto in 2010. It was one of the first venture capital firms in Indonesia.
East Ventures has funded various early-stage companies in Indonesia and across South East Asia. Some of the notable investments include Tokopedia, Go-Tix (formerly known as Loket), Shopback, Traveloka, Grab (formerly known as Kudo), Xendit, Sociolla, Ruangguru, MokoPos, 99co, Cermati, Bridestory, Ralali, Warung Pintar, Member.ID, Fore Coffee, and Cohive.
East Ventures has recently launched a coffee company, Fore based on the online model in China, which has made its presence in all major shopping marts and is into a lot of delivery.
East Ventures has made 281 investments to date with the most recent one on Jan 16, 2020, when they pumped in an undisclosed sum into Moladin, an e-commerce platform for buying motorcycles in Indonesia. The company has had 21 successful exits. The most notable exits include Mercari, gumi, and Gunosy.
Mr. Willson Cuaca is also on the advisory board of Code4Nation.id, a mass developer movement to help the Indonesian government solve problems through various hackathons. His expertise in product/market fit and in ecosystem building has helped in accelerating value proposition and product delivery of the movement.
Mr. Cuaca has received a degree in Computer Science from the University Bina Nusantara.
In an exclusive interview with AsiaTechDaily, Mr. Willson Cuaca says:
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Read on to know more about Willson Cuaca and his groundbreaking projects.
Willson Cuaca: I’m a computer science trained professional. I started earning money by teaching computer and networking (Novell Netware, Windows NT, Linux, Internet) courses during my 1st year of university in 1997, skipped a lot of classes, and gained lots of exposure on how to engage with people. In 1999, I was the first Cisco Certified instructor in Indonesia to trained Cisco engineer and probably one amongst the very few CISSP (certified cybersecurity professionals) in early 2000. I was also running a sales and support organization in a Singapore security firm before I found an iPhone and Blackberry mobile startup in 2008. Sold one company, SCOOP – the largest Indonesia digital newsstand – that I founded and started East Ventures in 2009 with my highschool friend Batara Eto, co-founder of Mixi.jp.
Willson Cuaca: Early-stage could be as early as the idea stage. Most of the startup we invested were inbound.
Willson Cuaca: If we couldn’t figure out these 3 core traits. Product and market are secondary.
What would be the KPI that you usually check about the startups’ growth? It may diverse in each industries like LTV, CAC, MoM, etc. but would be helpful to understand more about your additional investment factors.
Willson Cuaca: Different stage company requires different KPI’s. For an early-stage company, we put a lot of attention to founder personality development and product-market-fit.
Willson Cuaca: We have invested in around 150 companies, over 4 early-stage funds in SEA, and 1 growth fund. We believe in single market domination, and you should be leading in your home country. So if Korea founder pitch to us, they must have a mission to win the Korean market.
Willson Cuaca: Most of the companies that we rejected we don’t look back or regret.
We are pretty binary in decision making; there is no 50:50. If the founder/company has no culture-fit with us, we wish them success with other investors.
We managed to write the 1st cheque for 2 unicorns, Tokopedia and Traveloka – both cheques after the 1st meeting. We unfortunately never really engaged with Gojek and Grab (mytaxi) when they started or raised money, so we did not technically miss them. We did write a couple of 1st cheques for what we think might be the next unicorns, finger crossed.
Willson Cuaca: Majority early state startups failed for 2 reasons.
What’s your advice to entrepreneurs who have a chance to meet investors like you? What are the top 3 questions that you always ask to founders?
Willson Cuaca: My advice: BE YOURSELF!
It’s okay if the investor rejects you and doesn’t like you. You will find another one that align with your vision and mission. However, it is pathetic if you have to change your personality/gesture/message to adapt to different investors.
3 questions:
Willson Cuaca: In the startup world, any geography context comes with 2 attributes. Knowledge and execution. So if you said “Global”, do you have knowledge or execution or both? If you have global knowledge (understanding what’s going on outside your own domestic market) but only local execution then do a local startup that addresses domestic market.
If you have global knowledge and global execution, then start locally first and expand to 1-2 countries that you think you can execute well. It is very hard to expand globally from day 1.
Willson Cuaca: Success is a journey not a destination. It is measured by the impact of your actions to your closest community. beSUCCESS = beIMPACTFUL.
Willson Cuaca: None. We are binary.
When you have a chance to come to Korea next time, what kind of Korean entrepreneurs and startups you want to meet?
Willson Cuaca: If I come to Korea next, I hope I don’t need to do work.
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