korean media, SEA, agtech, marketing tools, the founder journey
What I’m spending time thinking about and investment themes at Slope
I’m a naturally very curious person, which often manifests in meeting new people and going down rabbit holes learning new things. One of my favorite questions to ask someone new I’m meeting, both as an investor and founder, “What have you been spending time thinking about recently?”. I’ve found that it’s a great open-ended way to learn about someone’s interests and personality.
Whenever someone asks me what I like most about Slope, as a hybrid creative agency + VC fund, the answer is easy - I love meeting new companies, which luckily starts with being naturally curious and asking questions.
In that spirit, I felt compelled to share a couple places I’ve been personally spending time (in hopes to increase serendipity on the Internet!)
Korean Media
Korean media has seemingly overtaken the US overnight - from New Jeans, BTS, and the countless K-pop groups, to the numerous amount of Korean content on Netflix (Netflix plans to invest over $2.5 billion in K-content over the next 4 years!). Yes, I personally consume a lot of Korean content. This Korean Wave is called Hallyu, which refers to the phenomenal growth of Korean pop culture, entertainment, music, and more since the 1990s. Fun fact - the Korean government’s Ministry of Culture has a $5.5B budget(!!) with the sole goal to boost economic growth through cultural exports. And it’s working, in 2019, Hallyu had an estimated $12.3B boost on the Korean economy. Thanks to Drew Cho for the many conversations here.
One thing I’ve been fascinated by is how the large Korean entertainment groups have essentially manufactured a science behind the virality + fandom of K-pop groups. Everything from the music style, size of the group, global diversity and appeal of each idol, and more. I watched the evaluation process behind BABYMONSTER, a new K-pop group by YG Entertainment (the group behind Blackpink) - the Youtube content was just a masterclass. They amassed 3M subscribers pre-launch! Especially in comparison to the US, where stars feel more organically grown from social media platforms like Youtube or TikTok nowadays, K-pop groups make me wonder - Can you manufacture hits? Maybe there’s more of a science behind virality than we think.
I believe there will be massive businesses created here - new app experiences for webtoons/manga, supercharged fandom communities à la Character AI, and etc. I really love what Mindset is building here, a mental wellness audio platform combining Korean content and authentic storytelling, founded by artist Eric Nam and his brothers. Thanks to Andy from USV for sharing them with me!
Southeast Asia Startups
I recently became a Visiting Partner with Iterative VC, a YC-style accelerator in Southeast Asia, helping the S23 cohort of early stage startup founders. In emerging markets, there’s always an incredible amount of both optimism and skepticism from other investors. With ~700m people living across SEA (Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines) and the digital economy expected to surpass $330B by 2025, the growth opportunity for new startups is undeniable. In particular, the sectors most poised to benefit are in sectors I love spending time in - commerce, SaaS, and fintech. Through working with founders via the Iterative batch (shoutout to proptech co GORO and AI-music co WavTool) - I have been impressed by the tenacity and ambition of the founders. While exit outcomes may be less certain than in the US, I am excited to continue spending time meeting founders + investors in the region, and splitting my personal time between Singapore/Asia + LA. Thanks to Hsu Ken and Brian for all the help here.
Agricultural Tech (AgTech)
I’ve been catching up with all the innovations happening in climate tech and have been particularly interested in what’s happening in AgTech. Per the above Southeast startup thread, eFishery, an Indonesian aquaculture startup that builds smart feeding system for fisheries, recently raised at over a $1B valuation! Did you know that Indonesia has the second largest fishing + aquaculture industry in the world?
A couple other companies I’ve found interesting - Mootral, reducing methane emissions from cows via a ruminant feed additive, and of course, as a huge CPG + brand lover, the world of synthetic / lab-grown products made for consumers, like Tomorrow Farms (which I got to try at Expo West!), Minus Coffee, and so many more. I’m admittedly newer to this industry, so please reach out with any info that might be interesting to check out. Thanks to Shuo at Lowercarbon and Sarah from Triple Helix for helping me get up to speed!
Marketing + Design Tools
Given that Slope is a creative agency, I often get pitched new marketing and design products to try. Martech has a bad rep in Silicon Valley, but the wave of AI-driven tools ironically was adopted for marketing first - with Jasper hitting $42m in ARR in its first year, and many sales + marketing teams eagerly adopting technology to drive real personalization and efficiency in their workflows. I’m excited to see how AI is adopted into existing tools, and for this new wave of AI-assisted creative and workflow tools. Particularly as I’ve been building Assembly, a content marketing SaaS tool for marketers and agencies, I’ve loved trying new products like Knock and Loops. In a future where most of the content we consumer may be synthetically created, it’ll be interesting to see what comes from the trust & safety side of things as well.
The Founder Journey
I’ve been thinking a lot about what motivates someone to become a founder. Is it money? Is it ego? Is it mimetic desire? Is it their life work?
I find that it’s way over-glamorized to be a founder nowadays, especially in tech. The reality is, “starting something new” is hard. It takes resilience, grit, and if you’re really trying to build a giant business, the journey won’t just be up and to the right. I recently found this quote from Mike Maples, founder of VC firm Floodgate, which I loved. He encourages founders to “build a startup to be the expression of your life's gift to the world” so that you’re all in and will fight the fight when things get tough.
One of the best parts of investing at the early stage for me is learning what makes a founder tick and why founders work on what they do. The best founders I love working with have an incredible amount of self-awareness, and have done the inner work to understand what keeps them going too during tough situations. For me, the desire to create comes from growing up in Palo Alto around tech and my experiences as a professional badminton player (which I’ll share more in a separate post on soon!)
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Anyways, if you’re building in any of these areas, or resonated with any of the above, I’d love to chat and share more :) Please reach out!