Leading VC Raised $2.5 Billion in 4 Months I Jenny Lee

You guys have done your homework. You definitely have. Like I was so excited to look at the bears who were like two meters in front of me. All I wanted to do was take pictures. So I ran towards the bear. My husband was like, 'Oh my god!' He was trying to pull me back. So this is Kamchatka, which is wild. And the bears are roaming wild. There's no fresh water, there's no camping. Essentially, you're just like sleeping in the wilderness' lodge. And so it's really back to nature. And so it's what I like to do, you know? Just go back and remind myself that beyond capital, beyond the world that we are, right, the cities. There's a real world out there.

Yeah.

So, I think at the base, what I like to do, you know, I like to tell my little kid that the world is dying, right? Okay. I'm very brutal, to tell her, please don't waste water. Don't waste paper, you know, like the world is dying. And we all need to do our part. And so I want to be able to see and enjoy Earth and therefore the places that I go typically in the early days, off grid. Because I want to see the snow cap, like the snow when it's still there. I want to go look at the animals when they're still there. I want to feel that, you know, like, the grass, right? When it's still there. The last trip I did, I actually hiked the East Africa mountains. Wow. In the midst of summer because I don't plan my vacation. I just had some time and I said, 'Okay, I have a week. Where should I go?' And so I look at the map and say I haven't been here. Let's go. And then I realized after I landed there that we were like the only... I went with my husband. That we were the only two hikers because it was just too hot to be out in the mountains, right? But I think as an investor you have to figure out your own risk profile. When I interview like newcomers in the industry, that's usually how I ask, you know? I'll ask people like, what's your risk profile? What do you do when you make investments? What do you do in your daily life. And I think from firsthand experience, when you're faced with danger, what do you do? So indeed I guess it's my calling. I prefer to spend more time with animals than... And I love computers and I love robots. So I guess that's my priorities.

Okay, we shouldn't define this as throwing money at risky things. I think risk is... It's about understanding risk, right? And so, I think as an investor, as a VC, it's important to do visioning. You know, since like since young, I'm like a sci-fi fan or fantasy reader, you know. Like, I like to see where the world is going to be 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 50 years from now, 100 years from now. I think that the ability to imagine, it's actually very important. And not just one outcome but various outcomes. Then what's important though as an investor is that we then have to bring that future back to the present and say, where is the technology? Where is the technology stack? Where is the technology in terms of the time to realize those called fundamental technology into a market-facing product. I used to upgrade fighter jets. So I used to design products. I have a very systematic view of the world. I have a like photographic memory. Like when I look at a design system program, I can just imagine how it's going to look like. And so I think in that sense it does help when I'm looking at leveraging technology to create the next generation products. It's not 10 generations out because to get to 10 you start with one. Right? You want to know a 10, but the path to 10 may take various things. But you have to start with one. And so it's really that balance of saying, you know, how the world can look like, but then be realistic enough to say, 'Okay, but I'm going from here to one.' And so then you have to find companies, find startups, find solutions, that can actually get you to one first. That's kind of how I think and so whether it's flying cars, whether it's like, you know, new products. Like those new solutions... Products allow me to then, you know, combine that imagining with what's possible today.

I'm like a gaming investor. Yes. I do all the cool stuff.

Yeah, I am the one that runs towards the bear.

Right right. While I may look like... I may not look like I'm a gamer, I'm not a gamer. But when you're doing, when you're upgrading fighter jets and you're doing simulation, the basis of technology behind simulation is gaming, right? And so 30 years ago, when I was designing like different flight scenarios and combat scenarios, that's gaming, right? And so I think number one, understanding the technology stack is important which I do, right? And so I can tell you 30 years ago, I was playing with head-up display, where you could control the flight of an aircraft with your eyeball. Incredible. That was 30 years ago, right? Today we're still talking about AR/VR and like these big, bulky glass. So I think number one, I do... I am quite fortunate I was exposed to many of this technology in a real world setting where I get to design products, I get to understand the technology. The second aspect about gaming is that it is ultimately about human psychology. It's about, what does it take to get Muhammed to pay for tokens for the game? What does it take to get you to keep going from level one to level two, level three, level four, right? And so that's the psychology of understanding, like the consumer, why they play games. And so the game design is closest... Games are the closest to understanding human psychology. And so for me, I do have the basic configuration, I understand. But when it comes to deal flow and when it comes to startup, you still... There's no shortcut. So I spent over three years, and you are familiar with Asia, I was in the southern part of China, Shenzhen, Guangdong, where there was a lot of gaming startups: Tencent is there, NetEase is there. And so what I did was I literally just spent like three years, you know, going from a startup... And my first question was, 'Who are the coolest developers right now? Who are the guys? Where are the guys? Where are the game developers? Like what are they doing?' So I wanted to know the people behind all the cool stuff. I spent time to understand what are they trying to develop. I look at the new games... So gaming by itself went from MMORPG which are the large, massive, you know, player games, to then browser games, mobile games, like casual games, mobile games, and then live streaming. So it's not unstructured, it's actually very structured. And so understanding how the games are, the people are and then at the end, I'm like... So I always feel young because the gaming developers are like, young. You have a 15-year-old like coding. So I think that just being there and talking and asking people who's the coolest guy in the room... Mmhmm. Not the coolest guy in our world, you know, like we have no cool guys in the financial world, we're just a very serious people. But in entrepreneurship, with startups, with founders, there's always some cool guy, you know? And so just going down and spending time understanding what drives them. And so at the end of the day, when YY came about, I mean just on this deal, all my partners thought I was nuts. They're like, 'Jen, are you nuts? We don't do gaming. With gaming you don't make money.' And the CEO of the company went to an investment committee dressed in like flip flops and shorts. He had no idea that when you go talk to investors like you got to at least put on you know, some shoes, right? I guess, at least shoes. So it's a very different generation. But I spent a whole week sitting next to him, watching him play. I don't have to play, I can watch him play.

That's right.

No, I did it myself. You have to be. Why? Because that's how I... Like as an investor, the analyst cannot articulate this, right? Like I... In new areas, new innovation, we have to feel it.

It's... I don't know how to describe gut feel. It's like you just feel like the stars are aligned. Like there is something out there.

All the time.

You want to be me, right? So, I love my job. I think that yes. We make the bigger return from our later stage funds because that's when you write larger checks. But I think the importance of having an early stage fund, the importance of always staying close to the new entrepreneurs that's coming on... It's very important. So I always appreciate the opportunity to speak to founders, first-time founders. I always spend time. It doesn't matter if I don't end up investing but if I can just help to you know, create that right sense of passion and vision and help to guide them, then I probably have done good.

Yeah, so this deal was led by my other partner. So at the firm where you know, along with how we made investment in YY, it is about what we call consumer internet. And so as part of consumer internet, we actually studied the behavior of consumers. Consumers at you know, from different age group, consumers from you know, different region, different background, different countries, and what kind of content are they like consuming. So in that sense, we had invested in blogging companies when blogging first came out. So it went from... We went from text sharing right, blogging, to then videos, online videos. We've invested in online videos and then to like short-form videos, right? And so when you follow the evolution of content consumed in different form, we always knew that there was room for different types of content of different lengths. And so Musical.ly was part of that, right? Was to say that they did from an initial product and feature set perspective was able to come up with a new way of interaction, with a new level of like, different types of content, which is short form, created by the consumers. And that's also thanks to the fact that, I don't know if you know, like, the world of sharing took off because the mobile phone, the mobile smartphone started to have front-facing cameras. We studied the phone and when you start to have front-facing cameras you realize that you create an entire different use case. It's not about taking pictures of your friends, it's now about myself. Yeah. Right and then the front-facing camera allows you to then do a lot more different use case. So at the firm that's what we do. We are very thematic based, and then we follow the evolution whether that end product is going to be for consumer or whether it's for enterprise. Yeah. And so what we were not sure obviously is how do you monetize, right? Monetization for new consumer technology model, it's always very nuanced. The West has been very good at monetizing on traffic, right? You have Google, you have Meta. It's directed to allowing a lot of users, users don't pay but advertisers pay. On the... Like in the East though, it's always consumer pay. The startups in the East are very focused on who's going to pay? How do I get the consumer to pay? And so, while they're all consumer technology company, the way the entrepreneurs, the products are designed, has a very different end point. But when you think about it is there room for both to learn? The answer is yes.

Right. So I think there's a pro and con, right? That's in everything there's always like a plus and a minus, right? I think the... We do have to acknowledge that in the new world that we are embarking on, that the days of kind of one company takes all, you know. One like, you know, company that's like 80% of market share. It's not going to... It will be harder. Not impossible but it will be harder. I think we have to recognize that. What that means though is that when you look at regional economies, that it's possible now today to have multiple players. And that multiple players for them to be successful while the model may be the same, right, like short-form video sharing, for example. It may have to have nuances, like maybe different languages, different use case, different payment system. And so I think the flip side of this is you will have more players per vertical. They may not be the crazy, super unicorn. Or trillion-corn whatever, that's out there. But I think you can still then have innovation on a different level.

I don't think it's wrong, you know. And I don't think it's bad. Perhaps you know, today we are all very angst and say, okay. That's it, You know, they're all going to be smaller outcomes. But I think it's also true then with the like the more customized regional player, you're going to now have more interesting use case, right? Like the example I gave about how East and West has different monetization means that when you have more startups, leading startups trying to address and build better products for all, you would actually have a better playbook.

This is like, I've been coming here for the last five years. So it's not my first time here. I think that for me the world is one map, right? And so I... But what I really like to do is be able to connect markets together, right? As an investor who grew up in my tiny, little island called Singapore, that has now 5 million population. We are... We call ourselves the little red dot, right. And so part of operating in the little red dot is that you have two choices, right? One, you're happy in your dot and you know, you could do a lot. It's not too small, it's still okay. The other way is you connect the world. You let.. You go out to the world. And so I always felt that other than the big markets out there, right? The East, US, China, big economies out there. Actually there are a lot of other economies, right? And Southeast Asia in particular has also very smaller economies. Can you stitch that together. Then the question now is that if we take away the large economies, is there a third region? Is there a fourth region? And can we then stitch that together. And so but part of that means that I better be there to learn. Just like I can spend three years hanging out with very cool entrepreneurs. It's actually very fun. Oh my god, I can see this application and all this new application. The same is happening here, right? So I am a novice when it comes to this region. A novice in many other regions. The only way to address this issue is to spend time, right? So that's why I come, not my little...not my colleagues. I actually come, I feel, I talk to people. I want to talk to entrepreneurs. I was visiting factories. People may be talking at, you know, investors... With fancy presentations, etc. But you went... I went to look at factories.

I would say very early impression, some surprises. I think number one, this region, Saudi in particular, has very... Has a lot of resources, right. But because of the richness of the resources there's also issues that needs to be resolved. For example, you don't have, to be fair, manufacturing-based workforce, right? And so what happens then with manufacturing industries here, you have to automate. Because where else are you going to get the workers, right? And so you have to automate. Now, then what... So the question I have then is where there are resources, that's going to create new issues and challenges. And is there then opportunities for solutions to be found. The solutions could be indigenous, meaning that it's developed here for the market, for the local market. It could also be in the spirit of connecting the dots, can we bring other technologies, other solutions, other startups who already has matured technology. Can we bring them here so that we can jump start, we can speed up that pace of growth. And then I realized like, given that we are here in Saudi, in Riyadh, that the country has a future factories strategy.

Well I would say there were a few, key decision points in my life. When I was 13 years old I had a chance to go to New Zealand. It was my first overseas trip from my little red dot. And then I realized they are a land where they're more sheeps than humans. Oh my god, there's a big world out there. It is beautiful I've been there as well. It is beautiful and so I realized that the world is bigger than my own little, you know, island. And so I always aspired to see more of the continents, literally. I have a map that... And tick off and say, 'Oh, I've been there, I've been there.' I've been to six continents. And so part of going to the US for education is part of that, right. To say that uh it'd be great... I was you know, in Singapore, you're educated under the UK system. And so I wanted to try a different education system. And so that's what brought me to the US. I was an engineer, I mean, trained as an engineer. And so I said, I just want to go to a place with lots of snow.

I was like, 'Okay, where are the places with snow?' You see how I make my decision. Of course, East Coast, of course, Cornell. Ithaca, I've been to Ithaca. That's snow central. My little essay and that's okay, great. I got it. I had so much fun I didn't come back for four years. So I was like enjoying all the winter. So I did... That's why I went to Kellogg, Northwestern. You see the trend? It's always snow and always cold. Why not, right? I mean, you got to experience all the different temperature-type country. So I think that was the second decision, which was to go out. To interact with people from a different part of the world, to have a different type of education system, to even write differently. When you're trained under the UK system there's a certain way you write your phrases. When you're trained in the US system there's a different way you write... There's the right way to write it. I had my first essay was all like, all marked up and red. And I'm like, I'm going to fail the class. I'm going to get kicked out of school. So like okay, but it was great. And then you know, I always wanted... I trained as an engineer and I, as I said, I upgraded, I was working on aircraft technology for the first five years. And so I was in the Valley, I was in the US, it was the internet bubble. And so that was the time where I felt like, where I get my calling is around technology, around entrepreneurship. It's about being able to bring technology and capital to help create something. I wanted to stay in the US, right? But it was then the internet bubble crash and then 9/11. And then I looked around and I said where else can I continue to do this. There was only one country at that time. China entered WTO in 2000, in 2001.

So you know that fundamentally the infrastructure is going to change. And they got listed in the US, a Chinese company listed. The second one was Sina. Sina, it's a news portal, much like Yahoo. China company listed in the US. So you knew that something was happening. So I'm like, 'Okay, let's just go to China.' So I went to China. I like I had no friend, no relative, like, and then you just learn again. So in a way, that was my third decision. You can tell I follow my gut.

Absolutely, and then you you do whatever it takes and then the last part I will talk about is... Whether it's with entrepreneurs or not, always maintain that immigrant mentality. When you know that you are the outlier, the underdog, in any markets, any industry, you will work harder. You will learn more, you will try harder. And those are ingredients that will never go away. It doesn't matter where the world is going to go. Those are traits that you have to have, right? Whether you're an entrepreneur or whether you're an investor. And that's what I tell myself every day.

Okay the one-minute pitch is a misnomer, right? The only thing you can get away from the one minute is whether the founder has passion, whether he or she is able to articulate that end vision. And I think that is there enough of that... Sometimes you know, right? When you meet people and you said, okay. You know whether that's whether it's chemistry, whether it's passion, whether it's like this person is special. And so I think that's usually then what I do is you know, we have a meeting. And you can sit down and you really give enough time and effort to understand what the dream and vision is, right? So the one minute allows you to say do I want to spend more time. Yeah, just a passion kind of, you know. Is it the right person to actually spend time with. No, if the guy or girl, you know, freeze up, not able to talk... Being a leader also takes... It's also a unique capability, right? As a leader are you able to articulate that vision because you're going to have to get people to follow you, right? And so in times of you know, anxiety, can you get it together. I've seen a 19-year-old come across, present, way better than serial entrepreneurs even, right. And so I think that part of that interaction that you have is about people, ultimately. While I said I love animals and robots, okay. It is about that interaction, it is about that reading the... That you know, that vision, that spark and then you... Then the rest is all hard work. It's about, you know, underwriting the risk, the due diligence, the pieces that need to come together before you put in the capital. Because we are ultimately steward of capital as well. And you want to make sure that when you do strike, when you write the check, that it is a very responsible and very educated decision.

I would say there would be many, there would be many. So as you probably know as well, I love drones, right? Because I used to build drones like 30 years ago. And so, one of the startups that came to me initially was trying to do just hobbyist drones, which if you think about the 0 to 10, this is like 0.1, right. Because it's easy, there are like a bunch of players that's there, the technology stack is not that bad and so it's great. But the thing that caught me when I went to do the due diligence was the fact that the founder had like a little lab at the back. And he had like a human-sized transporter drone. And he said, oh, you know, Jenny, this is my dream 10 years down the road. If this works, if I can do this, I you know, generate revenue, I'm going to pour my like savings or the earnings into this longer-term vision, which is flying cars, right? Flying planes, autonomous, electric. And that's, you know, sometimes when you see that vision and you say actually the technology is there. It is the policy... Getting it to market is about government regulation but being able to test, making sure that a new technology merged with existing regulation and stuff, right. And so actually he may think that I invested because it was the, you know, commercially makes sense. But it was actually about the flying... I invested because of the vision. Because I feel like someone has to do it. It's a small check, he has the right technology stack, he has the right vision. And so, that was quite fun.

No, it's a great question and as a venture investor you're going to miss some, right. And so a few things I think, yes. We did. My partners in the US actually had a chance to meet with Brian, went through the business model and I think at that time it was harder to imagine. Because mobile internet was just coming up. And consumers' impression of the phone is... What were you using your smartphone for? To play games, right. Like what was the first thing, it's games, right. Like you were playing games, you're doing your Candy Crush, you're doing all that stuff. So it's like, oh the smartphone is for gaming. And so when you're at the start of that technology disruption, hindsight is great, right. 20/20. You look and of course it's obvious. But when you are right in the beginning, it's not that obvious. Because the network, you know, the network of users were not quite there. The applications were not quite there, in this case, for mobile internet, mobile proliferation, the operating systems were also not standardized yet. Today we're just talking about, you know, iPhone, the iOS, talking about Android, which are the two big systems. But right in 2009 and 2010, there were many other operating system. So now while today we can structure the whole mobile internet boom and be very systematic, right. Like okay, now assuming that mobile device is going to be the key go-to device for everybody and it's going to be the internet, then obviously new models will have to be created. Because everybody now has a mobile computing device versus just tied to a desktop. But back then, you know, it wasn't obvious, right. Back then it requires a combination of the ability to understand where the technology evolution is going to go, requires a guess of the adoption rate, is this going to be 10%, 50%, or 100%. So typically for device adoption when it hits 40% it goes into a curve, right. And so to cross the chasm basically. So it takes a lot of... It's asking a lot of the investor...

So I think it's a question that we always think about and you know as you're aware, the industry, the VC industry is one where the more successful investors tend to then raise larger and larger funds. And then you do larger and larger checks, and you go later... More you know, founders want to go to you, it's a kind of a self-reinforcing circle. Now but what that does is that if you only go up the curve on the later stage but not maintain your vibe on the earlier stage, you're going to lose that sense. And so at Granite Asia what we have done over the years is that we have structured our funds into multi-stage different fund products. And while people may be saying why are you having such a small, early-stage fund, we actually kept it. We kept you know, we call it our discovery funds, you know. Discovery funds allow us to write seed checks, allows us to write, you know, the few hundred thousand, you know, checks to two, three, four million so that we are, you know, we continue to stay at the forefront of new technology. You want to be there where the founders feels like maybe, you know like, brand new idea, but I want to go to Granite. I want to go to talk to Jenny, I want to just get inputs. And the fact that we have a product that's tailored for them makes this a very, you know, good match. And so that's what we do.

Yeah, so there are a couple of... So where are the alpha bets, right? So recently we wrote a seed check into a company that's doing anti-aging, you and I, everybody else. So you know, obviously as you look at the the world population, many of the countries are, like Japan, US, Singapore, right, where I'm from, China. It's... The population is aging very quickly. People are living longer but it's also about like living well, right. And so one of the early check that we have invested is a company that's trying to... They are on a very good path, still very early, but they actually have very good results that shows that they have discovered an anti molecule that can stop growth. Wow. Imagine we all free time. We all look like this. Suspend disbelief. So the sooner you take it the better I guess. So this... The fountain. You found the fountain of youth, basically. Well I hope so but this is one of the... You get crazy idea but obviously a lot of people there's a lot of researchers coming in. Today what's interesting is with AI the time to discovery has shortened. With global, kind of, CROs, contract research outsourcing, for pharmaceutical drugs, the cost to get a drug through clinical trial is also shortened as well. And so there are various factors that you know, while I may say it's like a crazy idea, there are fundamental pillars to why it could be interesting, right. So that's one of the more recent crazy idea... I've been doing a lot more around health, around food. Because I think that we all understand this. There are conversations about AI obviously. AI is going to be the next internet or next technology and so we don't look at it as one vertical, we look at this as a horizontal enabler. Enabler. Just like we talk about mobile in the past, we would say mobile internet and internet. Today, all internet is like, what. There's no difference. The technology is really just the technology, yeah. So tech itself has to be the underlying enabler but where the disruption is going to happen is going to be in the verticles. And so I think in areas of health, longevity, fitness, wellness, I think it's one vertical that's really top of mind. The other is about food, right. Because with climate change, crops, duration, farming cycles, it's all changed, right. So it's... So new technology needs to be in place across the technology stack to allow for better food resiliency, supply options, right. And how you store, prepare, and basically create the right food structure is actually very important.

Yeah, so in the food area we have over the years made a a bunch of investments. We have invested in companies that does 3D printing of plant-based sticks so... Sounds amazing. Advertising. If you want your burgers not to be like beef patties but look like a stick. Well there are startups that's already leveraging 3D technology to print food. But it's plant-based. Yes. Right. And so like that's a very interesting. It's sci-fi coming to life basically. Actually it's already there, they're selling it already so I think in that... It's a whole range of very interesting technology from traditional food brands, from plan alternative, to like leveraging technologies like 3D printing for food. There's another company that uses, I mean since we're under 3D printing, using 3D printing to print different types of noodles. You know as kids we don't like our vegetables, you don't you just want your carbohydrates, right. But if you're able to print vegetable into carbohydrates for noodles... In the noodle. That's right. So your noodles are going to come out nice with like a little heart-shaped carrot and broccoli, you know, like colors. So for the kids it's going to be a great way, right, for more nutritional meal. So that's what I mean by cross conversions of leveraging different technology to create brand new solutions. And so this is one where you're merging food into, you know, like technology 3D.

Yeah, so I would say that the days of capital intensive startups probably limited today, right. So if the key success factors to getting a business off the ground is the ability to raise tons of capital, few hundred million, like you know, billion, I think it's going to be harder, right. So we are in a period maybe a few years or maybe, you know, next 5 to 10 years, we are actually going to go into a period where efficiency-based model is going to be important, right. So I think one is you got to fix the issue from the internal which is, can you do better with less. Can you create with less. You know, can you acquire users without paying for the marketing. That means it's going to ask entrepreneurs or require an entrepreneur to think deeper about the value. Is it real value that you're creating versus value that you can buy, right, with dollar marketing. So I think that's number one. Number two, the elephant in the room is geopolitics, right. You know has... It's unfortunate, you know, I'm a lover of technology. But to see sometimes, you know, technology being politicized means that the best founders may not be funded, cannot get funding because of this, right. Or the best technology have to be left on the shelf or in the library or whatever research because they cannot get the right level of financing. So I think this... So it's really, I think that today the global world needs to have more neutral platforms, neutral regions, neutral capital, that can really focus back on supporting these entrepreneurs. Supporting great ideas that can change the world, and essentially you know, protect the entrepreneurs from it, right. So the second thing is the structuring. VCs are not, you know, I always like to say that in the past I said, you know, VCs were not just investors we are also psychologists. We have to talk to the wife, the husband. We've got to be like legal, reading legal terms, and we got to be bankers, helping companies go like, you know, prepare for financing IPOs. Now today I will add you have to be like globally attuned because you are, you have to help the entrepreneurs to figure out where to go. Yeah. Like a diplomat. And like... So I said I was... Yeah, exactly. The word I was just talking to someone I said, I never knew that VC have to have like acquired that sense of all the skills of diplomacy. And today we have to help our entrepreneurs understand what that means so that they can better navigate. Yeah but is it possible, of course.

This was Covid-based fundraising and in that situation I think there were a few things, right. People could not travel obviously. Actually that means more efficiency, right, because you could have all that phone calls over a short period of time. Well it was like $10 million a call by the way. That's not a bad number. I was literally working like 20 hours. Wow. Literally because in the... I was in Asia at that time and so you could start your meeting early in the morning because that's when you can get time with investors in New York, right. And then by the time New York goes to sleep, Europe wakes up and then you have calls with Europe .And then you know, Europeans goes to sleep and then the West Coast comes. Like you know ,like the timing was great. So I would say that was an anomaly. We don't expect to get back to that period. But I think at the end of the day, fundraising has to be tied to our strategy, has to you know, has to be tied to what we're trying to do. Has to be tied to the fund, right, and the fund strategy. And so making sure that you have the right investor matched to the right strategy, and the product, and the region, becomes very important. So at the end of the day if there's one little advice that I can give for fundraising, it's not to wait for the next Covid, obviously, no. I need my anti-aging drug. Yes. You know. But it's really to listen. When we talk to investors it's about listening to the investors to our LPs and understanding whether there's a fit, right. If there's a fit between what they are trying to invest, what they interested in the region, what they're trying to achieve. And we have the right product, then I think the match will be great. And therefore that efficiency, that longevity of that relationship will be there. Because we are a very illiquid long-term asset class, right. And today that time frame has gone from 10 years to maybe 15 years, right, because IPO market is delayed. And so it's going to take longer. It's always taken about maybe 8 to 10 years to have a company go from like startup to IPO. In the 2021 time frame that kind of time to IPO went down to like four or five years. I had a company went public in three years. That's incredible. That's a bit of an anomaly as well, but today I think as we go forward, we have to be realistic that it's going to take longer. And therefore having the right fit with our investors means that you have the right trust and it's... They're not in just for one cycle. That they can be in for multiple cycles down the road. So never expect the past to come back. Always look forward but just figure out how to address the issues, right. Because every path forward has a different set of challenges.

Okay, so I'm not like a investment adviser. Understood. But I'll share my experience. I think that if you're coming into the investing world, the last thing you should do is, like take stock advice from folks like myself who is a private-market player long term. But what I did on my own many years back is that I have a genuine interest in business. I want to know what are the pieces of the you know, like that makes a business successful. And so when I had a bit of a cash myself during the internet bubble, the one thing I did was I actually read a lot of IPO prospectus. Because at that time, there was all the dot com companies, right. You have like ePets and all Webvan. Well, I actually did invest in WebVan. But what that does was like just educating myself, being able to expose broadly to the types of companies that were out there. I think number one is the first step, right? Learning how to read the information that's out there because companies, if they're public companies, if they are, you know, then make sure that you know what are the like key drivers. And what are the key issues that analysts are talking about. That's number one. Number two, as I said don't take stock, you have to love the sector the space itself. Yes, okay. So I was an early investor, very early in Tesla because I watched the IPO presentation and I said this guy is cool. He is trying to create you know, he's basically saying we are not an automotive company. We are a platform. We are internet company for automotive, right? And then of course I drove my first Tesla and I okay this is very great so some of it is the practical aspects, right, the quantitative aspect going through your numbers. Going through the prospectives, understanding the business. Asking yourself why now why this and like, why this team, right, for example. And then I think the other aspect to ensuring that you can be an investor in the long term, is to always do something that you like. If you love it you're going to ask more question than everybody else, right. Because you're like a mini expert and so the firm that we are in, like at Granite Asia, we organize our team by specialist sector. And I said that, don't worry about missing out on the other deal that you never see, a sector that you never track. But in the sector that you track, the sector that you love, you better make sure that you hit the top companies, right. It's okay to miss just don't miss the one that you're supposed to be, like focused on, right. And for the ones you're focused on, make sure they're investing in the top few companies. Because only the top companies will generate the alpha returns.

So I think that when we look at innovation it's also very important to define innovation, right. That... Well in my view I think there are two types of innovation. One is the hardcore innovation, right, which is going from zero to one. Coming out with algorithms, coming out with, you know, products, solutions, software that's never been there. Radical innovation you could call it, for instance. Super disruptive innovation. And then but that's the second part and I think the second definition of innovation is essentially business-model innovation, you know, operation-driven innovation, the applied type of innovation. Incremental. And to be fair, while, you know... When we look at the West and the East, the East is better in applied, right. The, you know, because of the market that they are in, because of where they are in their own phase of development, economic phase. It's the incremental innovation as we talked about that is changing the lives of many people. In the West, where mature economies are, then obviously you know, you need to leap frog because everybody is pretty good, right. And so it's about then going to space, right. It's going... It's that reimagining on a different scale. Actually the world needs both type of innovation, right. And so I think that when you look at Asia today you will continue to hear more about the applied innovation, simply because Asia is not one country. Asia is many countries. Asia has, you know, like we said, you know, an aging population, large population in north Asia. But you also have a young, emerging population in south Asia, right. Whether it's Indonesia, Malaysia, India. Young population, then when you look at GDP per capital, the ability to pay for innovation is very different, right. We can talk about Singapore, 80,000 GDP per capital is like the top five company, like countries worldwide. But it's an anomaly, right. You have the region, India is at what, less than like $2,000, $3,000 GDP per capital. China is closer to like the $20,000. So it's a huge range and because of that we cannot expect that you know, the only type of innovation that's going to work will be cutting edge. Now but are there areas, yes. Because like when we talk about AI, right, in the world of AI. It's also about access of proprietary data or unique data. And huge amount of data and so in those... Some of those respects, Asia has its uniqueness. We were just talking about longevity, right. Asia bio-genome is extremely different from the West. And therefore, if you think of this in technical terms, this is a pretty unique data set and therefore the innovation that's going to come from this particular area, will be kind of global leading in a way, right. So we really have to break down innovation into different pockets, different verticals, and said there are certain areas where actually the East and the West have to equally innovate and disrupt. But there are other areas where I think, you know, on the margin if you're talking about transportation change, you know, digitalization, gaming, actually Asia is pretty good in gaming, right. Because we have young population. So like in some of those areas then you're going to have one better than the other, right. And so I think our job is to not just be too fixated with the whole disruptive and hardcore. At the end what matters is it going to change lives, right. And localized it.

Phone.

Autonomous.

To be fair, we missed ByteDance, many times.

Right, coffee. That's a snack? I don't know if that counts as a snack. But we'll count it. I can do five cups in the day.

It would be SpaceX.

Nothing on the top of... I think right now there's no one book. You have to read widely. You have to read everything.

Go online, across the board. I wouldn't want to name media so... Yeah. But by region, if you can, buy different languages because it's very interesting how different languages and culture take the same article and translate it.

Robots.

Great, thank you. Very happy to be here. Thank you, yeah.