Helping you run a successful startup

In the world of startup fundraising, mistakes are costly. While a mistake can look different for different investors, there are common threads in the VC industry.

We asked Shiyan Koh, the Managing Partner of the Hustle Fund, and Hsu Ken Ooi, Managing Partner of Iterative, to give their take on how founders in Southeast Asia should tackle fundraising in this current climate.

Not all capital is equal. What are some of the things founders need to look out for when fundraising?

The key things founders should keep in mind (like the questions you should be asking, and what good investors look like) when raising capital.

What does the economic downturn mean for founders in Southeast Asia who are looking to fundraise? Shiyan Koh from the Hustle Fund and Hsu Ken Ooi from Iterative shares more in this podcast.

From raising money to getting investors to talk to them to making negotiations.

From services for the middle class to the search for acquisition channels, here are major trends ready for innovation in Southeast Asia

Copying ideas from other markets: the good, the bad and the how

In this episode of The Iterative Podcast, Hsu Ken and Brian talk about why hiring is important, why most founders get it wrong, what hiring is like as your startup grows, what to qualities and roles to hire for and more. This is Part 1 of 3 episodes on recruiting.

An obvious but overlooked difference between founders and investors is, founders are concerned with how to make their startup successful, and investors are concerned with how to tell if someone else’s startup will be successful. I find that thinking of each startup as a line, is a helpful mental model for assessing whether they will be successful.

Partner at AC Ventures, oversees the SE Asia Mobility Fund. Was the co-founder of Rukita, where he scaled the company to its first $3M revenue. He's also the Visiting Parter for Iterative's W23 batch.

Chinmay Chauhan is the co-founder of BukuWarung (YC S20). He raised $80M in funding and grew the organisation to 400 people. He's also a Visiting Partner for Iterative's W23 batch.

Tessa Wijaya is the Co-Founder and COO of Xendit, a leading payment gateway in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. Xendit became a unicorn in 2021, making Tessa the only female unicorn founder in Indonesia.

How do you get to 100 *paying* customers? We asked three of our Iterative founders, and here were their answers.

Sia is the co-founder of Tranglo in 2008, a payment processing company that powers the last-mile cross-border payout for various banks and fintechs globally. In 2021, Ripple purchased a 40% stake in Tranglo for an undisclosed amount.

Before Iterative, Sylvia was the co-founder of Omnilytics, a retail insights platform. At Omnilytics, Sylvia led Customer Success, growing NRR to >100% and serving global clients like Uniqlo, Lenzing, and Lidl.

We've asked some of our portfolio founders on their experiences doing office hours during their time in the batch - and what they've learned.

Kum Hong is a business leader, GM and angel investor. He spent 10 years at Airbnb, starting as the APAC General Counsel before transitioning to run business and operations as the APAC Regional Director in 2017. Three years later, he was appointed as COO for Airbnb China.

Iterative is excited to host online office hours for startup founders every Friday. Office hours are 20-minute sessions between you and one of our partners, where they help you with your startup as much as they can.

We’re inviting former founders to work with and advise Iterative companies during Summer 2022. Visiting partners will host their own office hours, work with companies in group office hours and help companies prepare for Demo Day.

We are increasing the size of our investments from US $150,000 for 10% to be between US $150,000 and US $500,000 for roughly 10%.

We’re excited to be accepting applications for Summer 2022. Summer 2022 will be our 5th batch and starts on 4 July

After 3 batches, Iterative companies have raised $130M after our program and are now collectively worth over $720M. Our latest batch (Iterative Winter 2022) has large shoes to fill but we think this might be the strongest batch yet.

As Bitcoin enters its tweens as a 12-year old technology, the industry has seen exciting development—from Bitcoin being adopted as legal tender in a country, to DAOs making a dent in investment and art spaces. While it is early days yet, here are some ideas we have for the technology that we would like to see more of

$10M from Village Global, Cendana, Andrew Chen and more, to invest exclusively in early-stage startups in Southeast Asia.

We are excited to kick off our first virtual Country Tour. We'll be hosting talks with Iterative founders and partners who've built successful companies in their country.

For a startup to be successful, it needs to be solving an important problem.

What do we look for when deciding to invest in startups?

The most important thing for a startup, and by extension the engineers at the startup, is iteration speed.

Here are the 3 questions I ask myself when trying to answer this question and what to do about it.

Fundraising is slow right now. My hunch is fundraising both will pick up in the second half of this year. Here's why.

Interestingly enough, 'product market fit' is a term often used by founders starting out but almost never by more experienced founders. Why?

A year ago, I wrote our first Request for Startups - and I'm revisiting the themes again to see what I got right or wrong.

A common question we get is: “Which is more important in fundraising: a strong story or strong traction?” But what is a strong story and strong traction — and why are they important?