If you follow Southeast Asia finance, you are probably familiar with iSeed SEA. Some of the startups the fund has invested in since launching in 2020 include Dat Bike, Skuad and Upmesh. What you may not know is that iSeed SEA is a solo GP fund. Now that solo GP, AngelList alum 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. The core thesis of iSeed SEA and WV Fund II is to close the gap between Southeast Asia and Silicon Valley, as most of Vasiksiri’s network and many of his LPs are located in the US. This means investing in early stage startups from a wide range of industries, introducing them to US LPs or operators, or bringing them on board as co-investors.
Vasiksiri typically writes checks between $100,000 and $500,000, depending on whether he is the lead investor or not, and a company’s valuation stage.
The 30 startups in Vasiksiri’s portfolio have raised a total of more than $85 million in follow-on funding from a who’s who of investors, including Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, AlphaJWC, AC Ventures, East Ventures, Jungle Ventures, Openspace Ventures, Monks Hill Ventures , Golden Gate Ventures and MDI Ventures. Some examples of his investments are 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. Individual LPs include Duo founder and CEO Dug Song, Albert Wenger and USV managing partner Susan Danziger, Doordash and Square executive Gokul Rajaram, former Airbnb China COO Kum Hong Siew, and operators of Dropbox, Discord and Github.
The solo GP model is new in South East Asia but has gained popularity in Europe and the US where Elad Gill, Lachy Groom and Josh Buckley are examples of investors running their own funds.
Vasiksiri told businessroundups.org that solo GP funds first started in the US with angel investors getting allocations for good deals and networks of their own, seeking to institutionalize their investments. So they raised capital from other sources to invest on a larger scale.
Before launching his own funds, Vasiksiri worked in operations at AngelList where he became close to AngelList India founder Utsav Somani, who now serves as one of his advisors and is the founder of microfund iSeed. The two thought about launching AngelList Southeast Asia, but then the pandemic got in the way of their plans. However, they continued to talk to investors and founders and got excited about trends they saw in the region. These include a relatively high GDP per capita, a growing middle class and more people coming online. The first generation of start-ups went public, including Grab and Bukalapak, and the problem of downstream capital was solved by funds like Tiger.
Vasiksiri said the benefits of a solo GP fund are speed and transparency as he is the sole decision maker and can commit to a round in days or even hours.
“There are both pros and cons to this model, but I think the biggest pro is that the shape of your relationship with founders is drastically different when the relationship is completely with you. There is no hierarchy whatsoever,” he said. “You think of a traditional fund, what a founder does is talk to the analyst, the top executive, maybe talk to a partner and then they talk to ICUs or GPs. Often the founder tells the same story.”
In a solo GP fund, however, the GP fulfills all these roles. “You can dig deeper, you can really build a more authentic, genuine relationship with the founder by spending more time with him. I think it completely solves the principal/agent problem.”
Another advantage is that a solo GP can empathize with the experiences of founders. “I also consider myself a founder, but instead of starting a company, I started a fund. I think I have so much empathy for the entrepreneur’s journey, considering similar things and understanding how difficult it is to be a new entrant competing against incumbents in this space.
Being a solo GP is also helpful when working with other investors, as Vasiksiri doesn’t fight to get high allocations and he has no property requirements. This allows him to collaborate instead of competing with other funds. “As you scale your fund, your employees and competitors are changing at every stage of their game,” he said. “I think by staying disciplined and small, I can do things like share deals openly, avoid unfavorable selection from other funds, and build other relationships in a win-win way.”
Vasiksiri focuses on Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia as its core markets, and is also looking for opportunities in the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. Vasiksiri is sector agnostic and instead looks at major contributors to GDP in each country. This includes agriculture and aquaculture in Indonesia, for example, so Vasiksiri invests in companies like Delos, a startup developing sensors and other technology to help shrimp farmers increase their yields.
Other areas he is interested in include fintech, especially payments and infrastructure, and gaming. “I think Southeast Asia is in a unique position for the emergence of a major game publisher or a game developer,” he said. “There are many users here, especially with mobile games, and many players are in Thailand, the Philippines, and also a lot of creative talent.” Climate technology is also another important sector, since Southeast Asia is expected to become a net importer of natural gas by 2025and must switch to green energy.
While there are only a handful of solo GPs in Southeast Asia, Vasiksiri expects more to emerge as the ecosystem matures, especially as founders of successful startups become angel investors.
“I think a source of solo GPs could emerge, it becomes more institutionalized, from writing personal checks to raising funds,” he said. “This is the first generation of solo GPs here and I believe as the ecosystem matures we will see many more.”
