RISE Offstage with Casey Lau

On this episode of the RISE Offstage podcast, host Casey Lau welcomes Akshay Bhushan, a Partner at Lightspeed who is leading the firm’s Southeast Asia investments, focusing on consumer tech investing across both Southeast Asia and India and in companies like Sharechat, Chilibeli, Grab and more. Akshay talks about how the pandemic has helped them to deploy more capital, which are the big Asian markets Lightspeed is looking at and the next group of exciting verticals they are looking into like The Passion Economy and empowering SME’s in Asia to more efficiently run their businesses using technology. This is a fascinating chat discovering what Lightspeed is looking at in terms of startup investments across Asia and their big bets on India, Indonesia and Vietnam.To get a warm intro to Akshay please reach out to Casey on Twitter.SHOW NOTESAkshay Bhushan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshaybhushan/Lightspeed Venture Partners: https://lsvp.com/portfolio/Sharechat: https://sharechat.com/Chilibeli: https://www.chilibeli.com/Grab: https://www.grab.com/The Passion Economy: https://www.passioneconomy.xyz/SME Market in Southeast Asia via EY 2019: https://assets.ey.com/content/dam/ey-sites/ey-com/en_sg/topics/growth/ey-smes-in-southeast-asia-redesigning-for-the-digital-economy.pdf====WE ARE HIRING IN JAPAN: https://www.websummit.com/careersCollision https://www.collisionconf.com/RISE https://www.riseconf.comWeb Summit Tokyo https://www.websummit.com/tokyoCasey Lau on Twitter: https://twitter.com/casey_lauCasey Lau on Clubhouse: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/@casey_lau

On this episode of RISE offstage, I welcome the new regional director of 500 Startups APAC Ee Ling Lim to the podcast.Ee Ling’s main role is to work with governments and corporates to build innovation programs using the 500 Startups network and has run programs in the city of Kobe Japan and with corporates like Malaysia’s Petronas with their FutureTech accelerator. We talk about how engaging with corporates and governments can accelerate not only startups but the ecosystem itself and Ee Ling gives us lots of information on how these goals are measured and obtained in the ongoing battle in Asia, where each country is fighting to become the digital hub of the region and the benefits that brings to startups all over the world. SHOW NOTES

Ee Ling LimLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ee-ling-lim/Clubhouse: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/@linglim500 Startups Ecosystems https://500.co/ecosystems500 Startups Demo Day 2020: https://youtu.be/YOy4LsFJU4Q500 Kobe: http://500kobe.com/Petronas x 500 Futuretech Accelerator: https://www.petronas.com/media/press-release/petronas-teams-silicon-valleys-500-startups===NOW HIRING FOR JAPAN: https://www.websummit.com/careers===Collision https://www.collisionconf.com/RISE https://www.riseconf.comWeb Summit Tokyo https://www.websummit.com/tokyoCasey Lau on Twitter: https://twitter.com/casey_lauCasey Lau on Clubhouse: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/@casey_lau

On this episode of RISE Offstage, host Casey Lau speaks with Animoca Brands founder and chairman Yat Siu about the current NFT craze and how it goes beyond the art and collectibles world and into games and pop culture. Based in Hong Kong, Yat has invested in Opensea, Dapper Labs and more and helps decipher the world of NFTs and explore the market opportunities in Asia that are coming up over the next year on this episode.Show Notes:Animoca Brandshttps://www.animocabrands.com/===Yat Siu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ysiuYat Siu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yatsiu/===Opensea: https://opensea.io/The Sandbox: https://www.sandbox.game/en/F1 Delta Time: https://f1deltatime.com/Cryptokitties: https://www.cryptokitties.co/Dapper Labs: https://www.dapperlabs.com/NBA Top Shot: https://nbatopshot.com/Quidd: https://market.onquidd.com/Foundation: https://foundation.app/NiftyGateway: https://niftygateway.com/The Metaverse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaverseSnow Crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_CrashReady Player One: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One===Collision https://www.collisionconf.com/RISE https://www.riseconf.comWeb Summit Tokyo https://www.websummit.com/tokyoCasey Lau on Twitter: https://twitter.com/casey_lauCasey Lau on Clubhouse: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/@casey_lau

The RISE Offstage podcast with Casey Lau highlights chats with community leaders, startup founders and investors across Asia about their startup ecosystems and how they are facing new challenges and new opportunities.On this episode I welcome Koichi Saito and Kuan Hsu the co-founders and general partners of KK Fund. These two investors have worked in Japanese venture capital and now through their own fund are investing in startups in various verticals from e-Sports to AutoTech to InsurTech and more across South East Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong .This is a truly pan-asian conversation as we talk about the Japanese, South East Asian and Singaporean startup scenes and what KK Fund look to invest in, and what they see happening post-pandemic in this exciting market they have been helping to build.KK Fundhttp://kkfund.co/Koichi Saitohttps://www.linkedin.com/in/koichisaito/Kuan Hsuhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/alankhsu/RoomMehttps://roomme.id/Meet Your Matchhttps://medium.com/@kk_info/meet-your-match-sea-fd95926d9856Smart Nation Singaporehttps://www.smartnation.gov.sg/Razerhttps://www.razer.com/Secret Labhttps://secretlab.co/Family offices in Singapore, lured by the city-state's ample incentives and low taxeshttps://www.businessinsider.com/singapore-attracts-ray-dalio-sergey-brin-family-offices-2021-2===Collision 2021 https://www.collisionconf.comRISE 2022 https://www.riseconf.comWeb Summit Tokyo https://www.websummit.com/tokyoCasey Lau on Twitter: https://twitter.com/casey_lau

The South Korea startup ecosystem has been booming - some of the most exciting new companies are coming out of Seoul. On this episode of the RISE Offstage podcast I welcome Jimmy Kim and Bernard Moon the co-founders of SparkLabs one of South Korea’s most successful startup accelerators.===SHOW NOTES:Jimmy Kim LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmykim1/Bernard Moon LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernardmoon/SparkLabs Korea http://www.sparklabs.co.kr/lb/index.phpSparkLabs Group: http://www.sparklabsgroup.com/SparkLabs Demo Day http://www.sparklabsdemoday.com/en/index.phpSparkLabs Ventures http://www.sparklabsventures.com/v/index.phpSparkLabs Taipei: https://www.sparklabstaipei.com/Bespin Global: https://en.bespinglobal.com/===RISE https://www.riseconf.comWeb Summit Tokyo https://www.websummit.com/tokyoCollision https://collisionconf.com/Web Summit Lisbon https://websummit.com/Casey Lau on Twitter: https://twitter.com/casey_lauCasey Lau on Clubhouse: https://www.bit.ly/caseyonclubhouseStartup Yumcha on Clubhouse every Tuesday 10am Hong Kong time.