Cracking the Asian Market: A Growth Centre for Web3 Users, Consumers & Developers

out there as a builder investor so my name is Jacob uh I'm a GP at superscript we're a early stage crypto fund based out of Singapore we were seated by Tomasek and we've been investing for two years now um across various projects in Asia as well as the US so over to you Sean hi everybody hi everybody can you hear me y um my name is Sean I'm with the general partner at Artichoke Capital uh we're early stage fund also based out of Singapore uh we launched the fund in 2022 um but it's sort of an institutionalization of what we've been doing since 2014 uh and so we we we're here always looking for uh interesting projects and teams uh they're building something interesting uh hello everyone Cecilia here actually I manage two fund so one is called formless Capital it's my own Boutique fund investing cross web stre and a web uh web two projects also managing I think if you guys know the Mas token so actually I'm managing the The Mask uh you know eego fund as well so we invest into early uh you know uh projects help the fer from to build from zero to one uh so we have uh various uh you know portfolios in Asia and in the US uh nearly cover all the aspect of the blockchain area so happy to talk to you and uh support you in the future um yeah my name is Nicole I come from lyo Innovation fund I'm the partner there uh we started in 20 22 as well uh we have about 28 portfolio companies we focus on early stage and then we Rea along the way until the project get listed uh we don't really have any preferred sector uh we are interested in anything that makes sense uh I guess our strong is SM like doing a lot of portfolio support we're very good in terms of marketing uh toomics design uh we have a lot of experience in terms of uh like W Street products and get listed on um Central X Exchange um hopefully can provide some insights for whoever wants to get some Asian perspective all right so we've traveled a long way to be here Asia is pretty much on the other side of the world uh 14 18 20 hours away um why like why would you even think about building there why is it important what what is it about the Asian market guys that is great like starting with me well anyone we'll we'll jump in um well for obvious reason Asia is gigantic China has about 1.3 billion population India is like huge as well now they suppose uh China's um population already and then I guess most important what I like about like Asian culture is that people has very um high risk tolerance and also we are quite technical in a way like we we were kind of forced to learn a lot of math and so crypto is something um quite ATT tuned uh like for example I used to work in um you know the largest Exchange in in for crypto uh when you calculate the Aro value um Asian market is really impressive there are like literally 100 acts of turkey of the like that's in Nigeria the reason being people uh trade a lot of contracts and they understand it um and they have their own Peg and they study the projects and so on so if you want to build a quality projects that has a lot of liquidity I think Asia is definitely the goto place um yeah and other than that I guess the other panelists can cover more maybe pass over to Sicilia oh yeah so I think uh if you think about Asia what do we have right we have people so we have a lot of people in across the various different country and uh just back to uh you know Nicole's point we like to B we like to invest and we have I think the highest amount of a saving account in uh and in our pockets so if you ask a lot of like like us people so what's your you know if anything urgent happen do you have enough saving you know to cover it so I think I think I read the data a lot of you know the the spending behavior is different so here spend in advance and you you spend for the future and then you pay credit cards right but in our Asian culture we uh accumulate we save so we have a lot of dry powder on the side to deploy and also I think a lot of you maybe is the infra application build right what Vol is Builder so what do you want what do you want to make to your nest you know to to get a VC for nest funding you need a momentums you need users right you need tractions so where to get those tractions you need to go to the place where they have users and also user with a spending behaviors and a user with a lower education cost so that's why I think Asia is the best place because we are so used to use alipay use WeChat we play with Tik Tok uh any in our life already digital so I think the education cost is actually very low and beyond that we are one of the core dep Center as well but I think I will leave the other panelist to cover the points yeah yeah I I think Nicole and cila cover most of it but I just just a like a quick stat right so um in terms of just sheer number of people obviously Asia is is large um you know over half of the world's population but uh in terms of like web three native people who own crypto already I think the stat is somewhere around 250 million people right that own crypto and that's like uh I think 6% penetration less penetrated than than the us as an example so you know the the the pool is already there but it's also growing very quickly so I think that that's very exciting if you're a builder yeah so my my perspective is the following right when you think about web 3 it's the Internet it's Global you could launch a protocol and if you do it right you have a good product and great Community you can go from zero users to millions in weeks and months and so on right and someone had mentioned it before Asia's got a lot of people uh it will have the best chance of helping your protocol or product go viral if you are able to tap into that market capture the Zeitgeist and Imagination of the people there um a couple of things I just want to flash up as well uh this has mostly been touched on but from a numbers perspective someone had mentioned there's billions of people in Asia like 4 billion half the world's population that's over half the world's GDP as well right and when you take that population number and you tap it into the savings comment that was made that's a quite a bit of a false multiplier you have uh High population with savings that are willing to enter into liquidity pools uh that are willing to play around with tokens and and enter communities and I think Sean you brought up this point about penetration I'm not sure if you want to say any more about that but self-explanatory yeah largest population largest number of crypto users but the penetration rate is still relatively low in Asia uh so the seiling is very high essentially um there was someone that mentioned something around developers because developers are at the core and the lifeblood of crypto uh what do you guys what have you guys seen in terms of the develop Talent within Asia um so I maybe go first to answer this question so I think uh uh ironically so several top tier you know CK were like infas so the main Dev team is actually is either in China or either like a build by Chinese developer so they are really the team behind the scene uh same for gaming area as well so a lot of like uh the very famous projects we know either they have purely built and uh in the launched by the Asian team such as axi such as some others uh pixel who just got uh you know listed on binance as well but also I saw a lot of like other like big triaa games actually their do shop uh their dep shop is in Vietnam so I think Asia is a really a very very high condensity of like tailand and comparatively the production cost is comparatively low as well so I think if your projects is looking for talents looking for ideas there's actually a very good base of dep base in Asia yeah you know I think if you look at the chart right so obviously compensation for engineers in Asia is is is lower uh doesn't mean the the quality is worse um actually there's a lot of talent very talented developers in in Asia um and you know I I think this is something that's that's pretty exciting about crypto as an industry in general I think this is the first uh industry that is actually truly Global where where there's no one single Hub of of talent I mean you just look around like there's people flying in from everywhere um and so I I think you know the best teams are able to sort of like compose their team with the right mix of talent around uh you know engineers and teams based in the US and Europe and and Asia and uh you know you're able to sort of get the best of all worlds and have a 247 team working on stuff all the time um yeah I guess I could just one more point to add like um so right now like crypto adoption is really at infancy if we talk about developers we're probably like less when 0.1% of the whole developer community in China is like really huge like this kind of tech companies Alibaba tensent um Tik Tok even um so these companies they actually hire glob like a Pan Asia and like for example Alibaba has a huge Army in Singapore covering the asan area so so they have the tradition to to train and groom high quality developers to build better products and these guys right they can be easily converted like a rust engineer uh like rejs whatever these guys if you ask them to co solid is a piece of cake so I'm saying if we're talking about like growth for the global um developer Community for web and crypto uh we should definitely focus on the Asia developer pool awesome so I know that we we've kind of generalized Asia right now right so you're hearing okay it's it's low cost of living uh there's a lot of great developers there's a lot of people but Asia is a huge place and there are a lot of different countries that a lot of different regions so if you're a builder if you're investor how would let's let's go through some of the different countries and their characteristics and like how we would break them down and maybe we can start with uh uh Korea if anyone wants to tackle that yeah Korea as an example is uh is is pretty interesting uh if you think about uh gaming as an example uh it the gaming industry is huge in Korea uh and actually there's there's several very large uh traditional gaming companies that are now uh investing very heavily in the in the crypto ecosystem just because they see the sort of the promise and potential that that uh this new technology can bring to the industry and so uh you know it's a very sort of uh um techsavvy and very very digitally native market so uh you know it's there there there's a lot of uh interesting things in Korea I encourage you if if you're interested to go ahead out and check out Korea blockchain week uh towards the end of the year I I will add a couple of things to that cuz uh I know a lot of Korean people uh my my wife being one of them um so there is a culture of risk-taking in Korea a little bit um you know so Society wise it takes a lot to succeed there and so there's a bit more of that entrepreneurial Edge when it comes to to crypto I think some of the largest protocols have been launched in in Korea some of them have not done so well either um but it's that culture of getting involved there's really high penetration rates in ker as well because they have some of the best and fastest Broadband so being digital is actually built into their culture um and so I think that's a really great geography in terms terms of finding people who are well vered in crypto Defi and as Sean mentioned uh sort of gaming as well as IP right given all of the content that comes out of uh Korea should we move on to another one or do you guys want to add uh I guess like a gaming is a very good example like uh there's a project called wex I think a while ago like uh uh FTX invest long time ago um even though that doesn't do well right I'm just talking about like the size of like Korea gaming industry so that project is probably not even like 0.001% of their revenue so the the company like this crypto project behind is actually gigantic gaming company called we made so what's interesting is that like they unlike other traditional um you know tech companies they really cherish their their feather um they they worry about their reputation um I think carea has higher tolerance even though for um like uh big names and Brands um so yeah like as a fact I actually know that uh weate has a huge arm of web team um so so yeah just like one small example to add over here yeah so uh I will just add several points on Korea then I will talk about maybe Hong Kong and uh part of Singapore I will leave Jacob to fully cover Singapore as well so I think Korea yeah indeed to back to uh nich Point nearly all the big company that I know we invest in Kon uh we are also know lion so the Korean lion the chat uh app the the Korean army is also building uh you know a lixen it's a game chin as well and also come to us which is a big cross ber both uh Korea and a US population firm so they are building there a game chain as well so I think if your team is building any gaming infrastructure looking either for funding or partnership I think uh all of them are quite open so you can easily approach them uh so I will talk about uh Hong Kong and the Singapore as well so we will leave China alone so because it's uh kind of gray in China but I think uh in China we cannot do crypto it's a still banded but just uh a a lot of team if they do want to do you know web series they need to came out of China to either build or set up a separate Foundation uh but I think alternatively Hong Kong really sees the you know this opportunity right because recent uh in the recent year Singapore took a lot of business from Hong Kong so on the traditional business side and also entertainment side so Hong Kong really want to sign Taylor Swift but can't course uh Singapore just signed the exclusive deal for the concert so a Taylor Swift concert right yeah yeah so I think Singapore government is really fast because they independent they can make the decision very fast so take away a lot of business from Hong Kong so that that's why Hong Kong saying we are the traditional we are the old Financial Center how we do about it what do we do about it so then they are very welcoming crypto people to be back so they recently just give several licenses to some of our partners right Hashi and some other you know OSL for the on the crypto exchange license and they are building a tax Center to welcome all the talents and the teams to build in Hong Kong actually if you want to find a venue if you find a you know development grants Hong Kong government is very welcoming to support you to build your Center there but on this other side I think Singapore changed the Mind from very open to crypto but a little bit conscious due to the FTX uh situation um but also if you think about the character right so uh Singapore just launched a new rules about crypto they don't allow you staking they don't allow you to borrow to invest as well because I think that's the just the character of govern Singapore government they are very efficiency but also a risk control driven so but I will leave Jacob to cover the all character of the Singapore side so so we've kind of gone from large countries like Korea to city states kind of like Hong Kong and Singapore when you think about City States they're more likely and quick to to to legislate uh put into rules and Frameworks because it's like an experiment right I think one of the great things about Hong Kong is that they are experimenting and they are opening up they've realized like many other regimes around the world that stable coins are the real crypto that's got product Market fit right because that's how you then onboard into other crypto and so they're building a framework around that the same thing in Singapore as well um government wise they are very efficient they are very well-versed on blockchain Technologies the monetary authority of Singapore is also putting some of these guidelines in um I think what both of these places are is that they are a hub for talent they have High Cost of Living so you typically won't see a lot of developers um there but you might see some project leads there or Business Development leads or marketing because everyone's kind of situated in these high density cities and locations um that said what I can see from slightly different approaches here is that Hong Kong has sort of opened up uh exchanges for Consumer retail whereas Singapore is a little bit more cautious on that right and that's as Cecilia mentioned is more a risk controls perspective but if you're a crypto project and you want to Bill and situate yourself in Singapore you have a lot of sort of government support it's very easy to set up companies um and there is very sort of clear rules and legislation for people to come in and set up there as well uh it does also doesn't stop you from using exchanges but of course it's buyer beware um and I think they're not going to necessarily promote it uh but they are supportive of the industry in general add anything okay um one more region that we didn't touch on was the so we showed a graph earlier where there was High Cost of Living and low cost of living but we've literally just talked about the High Cost of Living countries like Korea Japan uh Singapore and Hong Kong so what about the other countries because we now know that uh Devcon is going to be in Thailand this coming year which is very exciting so what about those countries and their crypto ecosystems yeah I guess you know when you talk about crypto there there's a few different sort of types of crypto right depends on what you're building um if you're building something that's like sort of financial crypto Financial intermediary stable coins exchanges then the places you want to be are places like Singapore and Hong Kong um but you know Singapore and Hong Kong are both like small population places right uh very very expensive ensive places to live and so on the the rest of Asia uh if you're looking for users uh say you're building a consumer app or a social app or a game um I mean there there's lots of examples of previously very very successful uh you know web 3 games that have gone viral and most of them sort of like seed it really in in Southeast Asia right places like uh Vietnam the Philippines uh Thailand and so uh these are all places where uh Asia really has like a you know to the points made earlier by by both Nicole and Cecilia there there's a population that's very interested to try new things uh and willing to experiment and you know there's they're already on boarded into the crypto ecosystem and sort of maybe have wallets or understand how you play some of these onchain things uh and and sort of the other the other very large uh sort of Market that I don't think we've spoken enough about so far is India right so it's going to be probably the biggest uh country uh with a biggest population in Asia soon uh and uh you know India and crypto exchanges have a sort of a sort of shaky relationship but the funny thing is uh every time the crypto exchanges sort of get banned in India the Grassroots adoption of crypto goes up uh and so again it's a very young population very digitally native a lot of developer talent and a lot of users um and so all super exciting sort of places and again depends on what type of product You're Building what you're looking for then I will maybe uh mention Vietnam in this sense I think Vietnam is a longlasting already dep Center for a lot of gaming company in China and Japan before but now I think they uh develop and find out a web St so actually there are lot of like uh uh gaming uh gaming studios in Vietnam and they have built or launched quite uh several very successful web web game as well and on the other side as danong is the we call like a Eastern Hawaii cheaper Hawaii so actually you have the best whale and the best de Community there actually we we know a lot of like retired we we're a lot of solo Trader with solo Deion we're liquidity provider Market pro market maker there so actually you can easily find either like a very young uh Tech driven building communities but also as well as a very surface cated uh de Trader were like a de uh you know uh users for your projects as well so I think and I really like that it's cheap and very comfortable so really I recommend to explore uh Vietnam we are sad to say because of the policy issue of China but basically they are saying huiming is the rising Shanghai sadly to say it but it's the rising New Shanghai in Asia actually a lot of Western people if they get out of they moved to Hanoi they mov to huiming so I think Vietnam definitely a very Dynamic country to look into yeah um I think my friends cover most of it this is really uh information informative um I guess one more thing I want to cover is actually people are liquid um even though the team is probably there a Indian native or there a Vietnamese Chinese native um they could be um Bas everywhere um I think these days I see a trend that a lot of uh Indian teams very high quality developers they actually moved to Dubai um I think one of the good example is actually polygon team they actually brought a lot of like uh um like kind of their their influence and network over there um so it's a very good area that you can actually uh find your fellow kind of uh developer soulmates co-founder however you call it and also a good place to find Capital um I think uh Dubai right now already have S some sort of like uh uh web kind of a um like Hub a go-to destination like if you guys interested should definitely check it out and then uh to Echo cilia um I think Vietnam has also very um kind of systematic way of funding early stage products uh they have many VCS over there um like they can help you to reintroduce local resources and they are all extremely helpful Okay so we've basically spoken to this wonderful audience for about 20 minutes about how amazing a is now what are some of the downsides right of the region like what are what are some of the things that people should be wary about uh in this space um well yeah I'll start then um I think I think uh some of the uh alements actually make it quite interesting um I'm going to pick Japan as an example so we have lot of portfolio companies actually have a big Japanese Community uh so if you guys want to explore a Japanese Community you can check out a few uh like a local organiz ation one is called Kuda uh one is like y Japan um they have like very good local uh media as well it's called coin post so all these guys will introduce you this kind of amazing Japanese users who are the best diamond hands in the world the reason being uh Japan has very crazy capital gain tax on crypto it's actually up to 55% uh that's why a lot of like uh Japanese uh investors or like this kind of uh influencers also relocate to this is Singapore or Dubai but that that being said like Japanese user themselves right they are more like a spot Traders and they purchase a lot of Ip because the culture right we all know Japanese is famous for all kinds of animations and and other entertainment stuff yeah so these this is definitely your go to market if you want to have a very successful nft launch or Game launch yeah so I think every you uh Echo that but also add um like a language barrier right for Japan if you want to do business uh you need someone local uh and also comparatively senior so if you just go if if your team member go to see a Japan counterparty basically they will talk to the person look the most senior on the team so I think it's just the in of their culture you really need to uh respect that and to do business in their way to open the door of different venue uh and also I think in both China and Korea because we have a long history of poundy poundy business you know very organized poundy group there so you really need to be careful uh so that's why we are here you know if you're are looking for helpful VES really we are very happy to take a reference we're giving advises who you should talk to and giving due diligence on some counterparties right some contacts you have uh you know knock your door to let's say as I can get you listed on Korea or China or whatever so a lot of like maybe scammer is people there so very happy to help I think my point is to respect the rules and find the best resources to do it in their own way yeah just on that point I think what Cecilia is referring to is that it's not necessarily uh specific to Asia I think it's specific to the world right and uh when you think about tokens jumping in value very quickly markets being manipulated you know um some of these practices are very prevalent everywhere but some of them have been perfected in Asia as well so you know I think it is important if you are a builder uh and a team that's building for the long term trying to build something of value that's not just about tokens being launched in the next 6 to 12 months like if you have a vision then you just need to make sure that you are connected with the right teams the right uh Capital providers uh the right Partners the right BD the right um support network in in the region yeah I I think again very practical sort of perspective around like if you're a builder founder you're trying to grow an Asian presence either for go to market or to build out an Asian team I think the big challenge is Asia is pretty fragmented uh right so as a whole it's a very large population but Singapore Hong Kong uh Korea Japan uh Vietnam you know Thailand all these countries all have their own sort of like local quirks and and sort of networks and you know trying to go to Asia as like a single region is is not easy um and managing a a developer team that is maybe not super fluent or super native in English uh can be a challenge and so how how do you sort of build that Global Workforce um with some sort of level of like efficient communication when you're sort of like 12 hours apart right so um you know I think there's a lot of interesting lessons to to be learned Le around uh how you build out your underground sort of presence local offices um and and who you who you try to hire to manage the teams on the ground so um again I guess that's that's where uh you know talk to anyone on the stage and and happy to help and one more challenge I need to throw in there is the time zone difference with the US is killer so you know it's always like late night calls but that is what it is so just to finish up um we've already touched on quite a few of these points right just being connected to the right people but let's talk a little bit quickly about what are the tips to build in Asia if if you if people in the audience want to build you know if they want to set up a presence there like how where do they stop uh you you talk to anyone on this stage uh right like I think anyone in this stage will be able to help you whichever Market you pick in Asia to get you in touch with the right like you know BD candidates lawyers incorporation legal advice regulatory advice whatever right like the the the the hard thing sometimes about building a crypto is that uh every every time you set up somewhere new you could got to sort of think about like regulatory stuff even if you're not really doing any like a financial product um and so uh you know talking to someone who's sort of on the ground and and present and understands the local issues and challenges uh is probably going to save you a lot of time heartache yeah I would add one thing is that web3 is is global right there are a lot of Builder communities everywhere you'll meet a lot of great teammates or or people some from Asia um some from different parts of Asia just connect it to them and they will literally connect you to their local communities um so for us at surip we run like an open office Friday every Friday where we invite our friends on stage as well as a whole bunch of Builders to come in and work from our Wei work office uh and there's there's tons of those communities in Singapore same for the rest of uh Hong Kong Vietnam Thailand China um so that's another way to to break in just start speaking to people that are already here they've literally come to you in Denver uh and you you'll be very easily and quickly plugged in um yeah like also uh if you guys are interested in reallocating your family to Asia as well um I think the governments like especially Hong Kong and Singapore they have like great programs I Singapore for example um they have this kind of like special uh venture capital or like a fund list that can help you sponsor EP ke easily which is employment PS and then you can actually get your whole family SLE in Singapore which is really friendly for family life and then for Hong Kong and there's a program called saport they actually uh provide free office spaces they give you grant I have a few a few portfolio who are in that program as well um what's really amazing is that the Hong Kong government really take you for different area for Road show uh they send you to Dubai Middle East area uh they send they take you to uh Africa and and most recently one of my portfolio company even got connected with doom which is like the largest it's like the AT&T of Japan um this is all like established by government relationships and this is extremely helpful yeah and I think they cover more and I also want to add Singapore and Hong Kong have no capital gain tax oh yeah that's the best thing I think that's the best I was based in San Francisco before that's I think one of the big reason I moved to there right and also I think uh I think we're run off of time uh but I think Asian VCS were like uh are very normally comparatively very handsome and U very involved in a lot of project involve uh development and also I think a lot of major players right a major venues are actually built by Asian founder so I think to bridge the information Gap Asian VC can be very helpful on your future you know either uh projects development or either your token launching token listing as well so do uh you know talk to Asian VES you know we will be more helpful to to take your hand to go further awesome guys thank you thank you wonderful audience for listening to us and yeah if you want to find out more about Asia come chat to [Applause] pi