VB Map Podcast - Venture Building and Corporate Innovation

Eric Saint Andre is a leading expert in design thinking, innovation, business model innovation, new business design and startup acceleration. He is the Founder and Managing Director of ASA Advisory Services, a leading Innovation Consultancy based in Singapore and also the founder of Augmented Tribe, a tech startup offering an Innovation Platform to support organisations with their innovation and digital transformation initiatives.

Arnaud Rubeck is an entrepreneur and management professional with over 10 years of experience. Currently, he is the founder & CEO of TripTax. Arnaud’s expertise spans a range of areas including strategic planning, operations consulting, and project management. He also has a strong interest in AI, fintech, blockchain, travel and food tech.

Ignacio Gabaldon is an engineer and entrepreneur. He is now leading Igeneris Ventures, the Venture Builder branch of Igeneris working with a team to create a curated pipeline of startups that serve both Europe and Latin America from their office in Madrid, Spain.

In part 2 of our VB Map Podcast with Apoorva Ruparel,, we dig into how philosophical questions and human history can inform the creation of startups in the Web2-Web3 world: 

• The role of standardization in scaling anything (religion, F&B, startups!) and the conditions needed for scaling,
• Categorizing human needs helps product strategists synthesize patterns and good practices in addressing problem statements,
• How the values system for the internet is broken and the opportunity for Web3 companies,
• What does a venture look like that builds for a world that transitions from Web2 to Web3?
• What verticals and problems are Web3 adoption ready? 
• The risks and dangers of having average consumers start with angel investment.

Apoorva Ruparel is a serial Entrepreneur with 3 successful exits, angel investor, 500 Global Mentor. 

Apoorva is a Partner at Venturerock, a digital venture capital platform and ecosystem of founders, backers & builders building the next generation of global tech companies. He has over 20 years of experience in Enterprise Sales, Angel Investing, Fund Raising, Go To Market Strategy and Growth Hacking.

In this episode Slash CEO Andries De Vos and Apoorva Ruparel discuss:

• Why startups fail and what the industry can do about it?
• The challenge of VCs: we don’t have a problem of choice, but a problem of quality.
• Real Venture Building has been around for a while, but is really only now arriving - but there is no perfect formula yet
• How to breakdown the VB process into 70+ milestones, the strategic importance of acquiring building blocks for each, and how to structure your VB team capabilities
• How much equity should a VB take and what is a fair equity stake for founders? We debated different models for financial inclusions between investors, founders and teams, and how those differ by region.
• VC-VB fund economics: how much money do you invest per startup, ownership targets, how much more risk can you take or should take

 In this week’s episode of the VB Map Podcast we’re going to dive into the eCommerce venture building landscape in South East Asia and India. 

Our guest is Archit Anand, the founder and CEO of Omnirio, a plug-and-play e-commerce platform serving hundreds of brands. 

Archit has been working in the eCommerce industry in SEA and India since 2015 and has seen first hand how the eCommerce revolution in Asia has transformed society.

This week on the VB Map podcast Slash CEO Andries de Vos sat down to talk with Rahul N. Bhardwaj. An entrepreneur and product engineer himself, Rahul is an investor and advisor to a number of companies. He is the co-founder and COO of Junglee Games, a company that created top-grossing games like Junglee Teenpatti and Junglee Rummy.

Check the key topics they discussed:

• Breakdown the psychology of human entertainment, what works and what doesn’t and how to anticipate if a game may work
• Designing risk-reward loops for different game genres
• The importance of having “depth” of game play and how to measure “fun”
• The challenge of policy makers or entrepreneurs to design games-for-good to nudge behaviours in certain directions
• How venture building principles and methodologies have been adopted by game studios for decades
• How he is gamifying his son’s education 
• What opportunities may lie ahead for game studios. 

Jori Clijmans is a partner of XLR8, a Belgium based accelerator of B2B technology and enterprise startups. He is the co-founder of the Belgium-based venture studio 0smosis, which created and spun off multiple venture-backed startups in collaboration with corporate partners.

Jori has a deep innovation and product consulting background and is uniquely positioned to speak to the challenges of corporate venture building and how to think about setting up innovation capabilities that deliver enterprise outcomes.

Key highlights of the episode: 

• What’s different between venture building in Asia and Europe
• Ways to eliminate corporate startup risk as early as possible in the process 
• The importance of bringing the CEO early on to de-risk the venture after concept validation
• Building a quality label, CEO pool and VC network, as a VB
• The challenges of an investment-first VB vs consulting-first studio model
• How classic consulting services and corporate VB may merge in the future 
• Building stakeholder alignment with consulting-for-equity models
• Tips for working with VCs as a VB
• The challenge of studio focus and separating internal resources for own ventures vs client ventures

Thomason Chan is a Lifetime Entrepreneur and the Founder & CEO of Singapore-based Great Full, a cloud kitchen platform. 

Podcast host, Slash CEO Andries De Vos and Thomason Chan cover a great deal of topics, such as:

• Measuring success and catching the industry wave to ensure success
• What a co-founder needs to have in them to succeed
• How venture building compares to parenthood
• What a good HR philosophy looks like

Usman Sheikh is the Managing Director of  High Output Ventures, a seed-stage fund and startup studio investing in exceptional domains experts who are building the remote  first companies of tomorrow. Usman is a  serial entrepreneur, having built, operated,  and sold companies over the last 15 years.

The conversation centers around:

• Adjusting your mindset and skillset as serial entrepreneur for investing and operating/building, and what this means for VC-VB models
• Defining your personal drive and measure of success as serial entrepreneur
• Finding the right CEOs
• Building a remote culture and remote practices
• Differences in talent in Europe and Asia, and what qualities to look for
• Creating a flywheel of concept validation for ventures, and the importance of discipline and quick iteration
• The qualities one needs to have to be a startup CEO

Mario Baumann is an entrepreneur,  marketer and investor. He has had a front row  seat on how the gaming industry has exploded in the last 15 years, working for the iconic  World of Tanks game as the first overseas employee. He has a deep expertise in licensing deals for the gaming industry, ecommerce, entertainment, FinTech and Adtech.

Over the last few years, Mario has focused on more venture building advisory, entrepreneurs, boutique M&A and investment deals, and helping startups expand from Europe to Latam and Asia.

In this episode Slash CEO Andries De Vos and Mario Baumann discuss:

• Mario’s experience as the 1st overseas hire of 'World of Tanks’, the company’s global success and how innovations happen in the gaming industry
• How play-to-earn might impact the gaming industry and the importance of engaging the community in gaming industry
• Growth-as-a-service for a VB studio
• Venture opportunities in the emerging Sustainability and eCommerce industry in Asia
• How M&A process for smaller deals in Asia could be fixed

VB Map Podcast is a weekly series where Slash CEO Andries De Vos speaks to brilliant minds in the venture building space to understand their challenges, insights and the impact of venture building on corporate innovation.

In this episode the guest of Andries is Nick Martin, the CEO of Mission.Plus, a digital innovation studio that combines engineering, design agility, expertise and commercialization to deliver market ready tech products.

Listen to the episode to deep dive into methodologies for prototyping and validating early stage ideas at a very low cost (Prototyping early-stage ideas, Low-cost idea validation, Business concept validation).

Andries and Nick discuss with us:

✔ The “Aha!” moment to start prototyping
✔ Trends in prototyping
✔ The rise of low-code tools

Matas Danielevicius is the co-founder of Whatnot Startup Studio, a venture studio focused on building scalable and investable corporate ventures that originate from Thailand.
Whatnot brings in experienced teams and founders to create and operate corporate ventures and provide support services like legal, HR, and Fundraising.

About this episode:
In this episode, we will discuss methodologies to de-risk the creation of a corporate venture, the role of entrepreneurs-in-residence, corporate sponsorship criteria (Entrepreneurs in residence, Corporate venture building, De-risking business building) and much more.

Björn Lindfors is a partner in Antler Singapore. Björn works with a global team dedicated to developing the next generation of world-changing companies and creating a global pipeline for top talents to pursue a career in entrepreneurship and innovation.

About this episode:
In this episode, we will discuss the best methods for attracting talent, the future of venture building, and the essential skills of founders (Attracting talent
Venture building, Venture Capital).

Valerian Fauvel is the co-founder of Jumanji Studio, a Singapore-based startup studio building solutions to accelerate the world’s transition towards a sustainable future.

About this episode:
In this episode, we will talk about the company’s philosophy, the challenges of the sustainability industry (Corporate startup, Company building, Business building), the best business models around sustainability and how to grow a startup studio.

We continue our insightful conversation with Hugh Mason, the co-founder and CEO of JFDI, a Singapore-based accelerator that has built over 70 startups since 2012.
 
About this episode:
In this episode we will cover the problems of the VC market, current trends, methodologies of running an accelerator (Corporate startup Business building) and much more. Stay tuned.

Hugh Mason is the co-founder and CEO of JFDI, a Singapore-based  accelerator that has built over 70 startups since 2012. Hugh has a colorful background as serial entrepreneur, in the broadcast industry, software and technology, as well as investor and university lecturer.

About this episode:
In this episode we will cover Hugh’s experience of running JFDI (Accelerator, Corporate startup, and Business building), one of the pioneers of the accelerator model in Asia, and what he would do differently today if he were to start over again.

Shaun Hon is the Director of Rainmaking corporate innovations venture studio. Rainmaking is a startup incubator that launches startups in partnership with large companies, builds them into a solid business and eventually exits them. It has 13 offices across 3 continents. Shaun has a diverse background both as a VC and as an engineer. Previously, he even designed electric vehicles.
 
About this episode:
In our discussion, we will cover how Rainmaking incubates new startups to corporate consortiums (Venture Capital, Incubator, Corporate startup).

Chia Jeng Yang is a Principal at Saison Capital. The latter is the arm of Credit Saison, one of Japan's largest consumer credit companies, investing in seed to series A companies across Southeast Asia and India.

About this episode:

The episode will cover the unbundling and rebundling of VCs (Venture Capital, Risk capital, Business building) and how the commoditization of capital is giving rise to venture builders.

Sebastian Mueller is the co-founder of MING Labs, a digital business builder with offices across three continents. They help companies with their digital transformation and occasionally build their own startups.

What are the benefits of venture builder teams? What does the growth and scale of such teams look like? How to balance client consulting with venture building (Corporate venture building, Venture building strategies)? Stay tuned to find the answers to these and many other questions in this episode.