The Innovation Playbook of 3 Southeast Asian Founders - E724

Where does innovation in Southeast Asia actually start?

Not in a lab. In this compilation from the BRAVE archive: a lock that took eleven hours to install, a Peter Thiel put-down at Harvard, and customers using a real estate website to sell food.

Anthony Chow built Igloo's first smart lock from parts bought in China, watched the first shipments fail, then invented an offline PIN lock (Google Authenticator, but for doors) because vacation rentals have no Wi-Fi. That invention won the Airbnb partnership and now runs more than half of Australia's tennis courts, fully unmanned.

Kelvin Teo heard Peter Thiel tell a Harvard room that Asia doesn't need innovation, just execution ("annoying, but factually accurate") and turned it into the method behind Funding Societies, which underwrites SMEs by asking for more documents than the banks, because its real competitor is the money lender charging 48% a year.

Dennis Velasco burned $150K on a broken real estate market before his users showed him the pivot, launched Prosperna three months before the 2020 lockdown, and argues that none of it counts until small businesses trust you to stay.

Watch the full episodes:

E676 Anthony Chow, Co-Founder & CEO of Igloo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU1-wIvarVk

E678 Kelvin Teo, Co-Founder & Group CEO of Funding Societies | Modalku

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob9Wq9DMpko

E692 Dennis Velasco, Founder & CEO of Prosperna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVw0B8m3eN4