If you follow Southeast Asia fundraising, you are probably familiar with iSeed SEA. Startups the fund has invested in since his 2020 launch include Dat Bike, Skuad and Upmesh. However, as you may not know, iSeed SEA is a single GP fund. At that solo GP, AngelList alumnus Wing Vasiksiri is back with a new fund called WV Fund II.
The second fund brings Wing Vasiksiri’s total assets under management to $14 million. A core theme of iSeed SEA and WV Fund II is bridging the gap between Southeast Asia and Silicon Valley. This is because most of Vasiksiri’s network and many of his LPs are in the US. This means investing in seed stage startups in a wide range of sectors. , to a US LP or operator, or to join as a co-investor.
Vasiksiri typically issues checks in the range of $100,000 to $500,000 depending on whether he is the lead investor and the company’s valuation stage.
The 30 start-ups in Vasiksiri’s portfolio collectively bring in more than $85 million in additional funding from high-profile investors including Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, AlphaJWC, AC Ventures, East Ventures, Jungle Ventures, Openspace Ventures and Monks Hill. Raised funds. Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, MDI Ventures. Examples of his investments include Humble, HD, Virtual Internships, Mio, Delos, Staffinc, Rukita and TCC.
Investors in Vasiksiri’s second fund include institutional LPs such as Republic Capital, EGR Partners (Elisabeth de Rothschild’s family office), Kamco Invest and Central Pattana. The individual LPs include Duo founder and CEO Dug Song, Albert Wenger, USV managing partner Susan Danziger, Doordash and Square exec Gokul Rajaram, former Airbnb China COO Kum Hong Siew, Dropbox , Discord, and Github operators.
While the solo GP model is new in Southeast Asia, it is gaining traction in Europe and the US, with investors such as Elad Gill, Lachy Groom and Josh Buckley doing their own money.
Vasiksiri told TechCrunch that the solo GP fund first started in the US, where angel investors were assigned good deals and proprietary networks and wanted to institutionalize their investments. So they raised money from other sources to invest on a larger scale.
Before launching his own fund, Vasiksiri ran AngelList and became close friends with AngelList India founder Utsav Somani. He is currently one of his advisors and the founder of microfund iSeed. The two considered launching his AngelList Southeast Asia, but then the pandemic got in the way of planning. But they kept talking to investors and founders and were excited about the trends they were seeing in the region. including an increase in the number of people who First-generation startups such as Grab and Bukalapak were going public, and funds like Tiger were solving the downstream capital problem.
Vasiksiri said advantages of a single GP fund include speed and transparency. This is because he is the sole decision maker and can commit to the round within days or hours.
“This model has both strengths and weaknesses, but the biggest strength is that the relationship you have with the founder is dramatically different than when it’s completely yours. I think there is no hierarchy in it,” he said. “If you think about traditional funds, what the founders do is talk to analysts and top associates, maybe partners, and then talk to IC and her GP. doing.”
However, in a single GP fund, the GP fulfills all these roles. “You can dig deeper. Spending more time with founders actually builds a real, authentic relationship with them. The principal/agent problem disappears completely. I think.”
Another benefit is that a single GP is tied to the founder’s experience. “I also consider myself a founder. Instead of starting a company, I started a fund. I think it’s about understanding how difficult it is to be a new entrant to the market.”
Being a solo GP also helps when working with other investors. Because Vasiksiri is not fighting for high allocations and has no ownership requirements. This allows him to work with other funds rather than compete with them. “Expanding the fund changes collaborators and competitors at every stage of the game,” he said. “By remaining disciplined and small, the size of this fund allows us to openly share trades, avoid adverse selection from other funds, and build other relationships in a win-win manner. You can
Vasiksiri focuses on Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia as core markets and is also looking for opportunities in the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. Vasiksiri is sector agnostic and instead focuses on the major contributors to a country’s GDP. For example, this includes Indonesian agriculture and aquaculture. That’s why Vasiksiri invests in companies like his Delos. Delos is a startup developing sensors and other technologies to help shrimp farmers increase yields.
Other areas of his interest include fintech, especially payments and infrastructure, and gaming. “I think Southeast Asia is uniquely positioned for the emergence of major game publishers and game developers,” he said. “There are a lot of users here, especially mobile games, a lot of players are in Thailand and the Philippines, and a lot of creative talent.” Southeast Asia will become a net importer of natural gas by 2025. Climate tech is another key sector as it is expected and needs to move to green energy.
There are only a handful of single GPs in Southeast Asia, but Vasiksiri expects more to emerge as the ecosystem matures, especially as founders of successful startups become angel investors. .
“From writing personal checks to fundraising, I think more institutionalized sources of solo GP could emerge,” he said. “This is the first generation of solo GPs here and I think we will see more as the ecosystem matures.”
