8 Myths About Startups And Venture Capital In Asia

Alexander Jarvis
Alexander is Operating Partner at Jungle Ventures. He build stuff, mentor promising entrepreneurs and advise institutional investors on internet companies in Asia Pacific. He used to be an M&A banker in London.

This is a quick presentation I churned out the night before the Premoney Asia conference we organised with 500Startups.

People seem to have a lot of preconceptions about the startup opportunity in Asia, in particular South East Asia. We wanted to touch on some of the obvious ones we hear.

There are a lot of challenges in Asia, don’t get me wrong, but the opportunity is commensurately larger.

Myth #1 – You need to be in valley to build a big consumer company.

Myth #2 –Definitely need to be in Valley for enterprise startups!

Myth #3 – Internet penetration in Asia is too low.

Myth #4 – Asians just copy they don’t innovate

Myth #5 – You can’t get a exit in Asia

Myth # 6 – Asians aren’t entrepreneurs

Myth #7 – There is too much seed funding in Asia

Myth #8 – There is no smart money in Asia.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.