Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Still with us on the C2A business, the Indonesian Venture Capital and Startup Association or
00:06 ANVESIMDO is targeting 20 trillion rupiah or around 1.27 billion US dollars in venture
00:12 capital funding by 2020 for continuing the passive growth in disbursement through November 2023.
00:18 As of November 2023, the distribution of venture capital in Indonesia reached 17.39 trillion
00:27 rupiah. However, according to Bain & Company, venture capital investment in 2023 fell 70 to 80
00:33 percent annually due to the cautious sentiments stemming from factors such as high interest rate
00:40 climate. Nevertheless, ANVESIMDO is optimistic that the 20 trillion rupiah target of venture
00:45 capital funding this year can be met. Meanwhile, in January 2024, the Financial Services Authority
00:52 or OJK issued a roadmap for the development of venture capital firms in Indonesia for the period
00:57 of 2024 to 2028. The establishment of the roadmap is aimed at threatening the country's
01:04 venture capital company regime which has experienced rapid growth in recent years.
01:09 Now to delve more into the topic today, joining me is the Head of Investment at Beni Ventures,
01:22 Gita Sher. Welcome to the studio. Thank you so much for joining us. Hi. Hi. So
01:27 let's get straight to the question. You're like one of the entrepreneurs who turned into become a
01:33 venture capitalist. So as one of the first entrepreneurs to secure over a million US
01:38 dollars in venture capital funding in Southeast Asia, how does a startup typically go about
01:43 securing a funding? Okay, yeah. So I was one of the first female entrepreneurs in the ecosystem.
01:50 I've been in the ecosystem since 2010 and I was an entrepreneur for almost 13 years. And I would
01:56 say that to become an entrepreneur who can attract venture capital funding, I think the irony is you
02:03 have to not think about funding. So you go back to basics. So first principles thinking, going back
02:08 to fundamentals, which is are you creating a market solution for an actual market need, not a market
02:15 want, and will people pay money for that? And will people pay more money than what you spend over
02:21 time? All right. So the fundamentals. So just basics. Basic fundamentals. Now after running
02:26 your own startups for 13 years, you mentioned. So what motivates you to transition into venture
02:33 capital? Yeah. Great question. Simply because I made the transition because I have a background
02:41 before that in investing already. And I realized that I'm more passionate about investing than I am
02:47 with operating companies, which is one of those realizations that you should have learned earlier
02:53 on, but I guess it took me more than a decade and building several companies to learn that,
02:58 hey, maybe my strength is actually in mentoring other entrepreneurs and founders so that they
03:02 can avoid the stupid mistakes I made because I've made more than a decade of them, which means I'm
03:08 pretty rich with experience on that. And right now with my current position, what I really try to do
03:15 is learn from the entrepreneurs and hear what they're saying, what they're sharing and learning
03:21 from the market from them and sharing what my mistakes were. Because I think in the end, right,
03:28 when you're an entrepreneur, you have to be very comfortable with failure. That is really how you
03:32 iterate, how you create products, how you find product market fit and how you ensure that you
03:38 go back to the fundamentals, which is again and again and again, will people pay money for what
03:43 you make and they'll spend more on it than what you spend as a cost. Yeah. Right. So now Ojeka,
03:50 as mentioned earlier, they created a new roadmap to get to that 20 trillion. Now, does Indonesian
03:56 VC have an advantage over a foreign VC and when it comes to investing in Indonesian startups?
04:02 In the end, I kept saying fundamentals. And when I say fundamentals, the big fundamental is
04:07 product market fit. So the question is, does your product fit the market need? And it's very hard to
04:13 fit a market need if you don't know your market. And that is why I think Indonesian VCs definitely
04:19 have an advantage because no matter what, we're from this area, we know what's been going on.
04:24 We've seen the history. I mean, I've seen the venture capital market, you know, grow throughout
04:29 the years for again, more than a decade. And you need to know all of these things rather than just
04:34 transplant yourself and not even be in the market and know what gets the product market fit, which
04:39 is why I'm very bullish on Indonesian VCs over time and for a longer period of time be successful
04:46 in our own market, because in the end, you need to know a market to create product market fit.
04:50 Right. So can you give us an idea of how does the Indonesian digital ecosystem compare to other
04:56 Southeast Asian countries? Yeah. Well, the Indonesian ecosystem is definitely by far the
05:02 largest. So from a macro perspective, we all know the macros, right? We all know it's almost 300
05:07 million people. We know that the vast majority is still of a productive age. We know that the country
05:15 is increasing its GDP per capita very rapidly. We know that we might even get to develop country
05:21 status in several decades. So all of these things are very positive outlook. But the challenge is
05:27 always what kind of game are you playing? And when you're playing a long term game, which hopefully
05:33 you should, because venture capital is a long term stance. In general, you won't know if a company is
05:40 really going to do well from its inception all the way to its exit, probably for about seven to 10
05:45 years, plus one, plus one, plus one. So it's a long game. And so I think, you know, when you're
05:52 looking at Indonesia, always think about it from a long term perspective and just be in it for the
05:58 long run, because that's really when you can find your alpha, when you get your product market fit,
06:03 and you get it early enough. So I, yeah, of course, I'm very bullish on it. I wouldn't be here if I
06:09 didn't, you know, but it's also super important for us to see the potential of expanding our
06:14 products to the rest of the region, because I'm very bullish too on the idea of a lower tech
06:21 solution for large scale problems. And I'm saying this because the majority of the world is not like
06:27 the United States or other developed markets where they already have 5G everywhere. In the majority
06:33 of countries in the world, they probably don't have that. So they're looking for a solution that's
06:37 simple, but that can solve a very large scale problem. So I think let's not try to copy Silicon
06:44 Valley or Europe and just try to localize the game and make it ours and find a solution for
06:50 our market. Oh, that's interesting. Now, you once mentioned that iteration is crucial for
06:56 developing Indonesia's digital ecosystem. Can you elaborate on that? Sure. I think I said that once
07:01 during a BNI event. And really what I meant about that is getting very comfortable with the idea of
07:08 failure. So a really big part of iteration is you're coming up with a process or a sequence,
07:14 and then you create a sequence of outcomes, right? But in order to get to product market fit,
07:19 which by the way, can also change as your market changes, right? It always requires experimentation.
07:26 Now, here's the thing, experimentation requires costs. And when I say costs, people always think
07:31 money, only money, right? But actually the largest cost is time. Because time is the only thing that
07:36 you cannot buy, and it never comes back. So always question, is this the cost I am willing to bear
07:43 if this doesn't work out well? And this is also why it's so hard to cut loss, and it's so hard to
07:47 quit, and it's so hard to change, simply because we put in the cost. And so we become much more
07:52 averse to changing when we have to actually be more... We just need to be faster with our
08:00 decision making and know when to cut loss or when to quit when the time is right.
08:04 So you're in Benin Ventures, I bet you've seen a lot of startups, hundreds maybe. What will it take
08:10 to say a no to a startup company? Let's say there's a company that people have been talking about,
08:16 and it sounds great, what will it take for Gita Shariff to say, "No, this is not the one for us"?
08:22 So unfortunately, if other founders have watched me, I've said no too.
08:29 And for me, this is the importance of governance. So governance is so important. It is the way
08:35 that you create safeguards and parameters in your business so that you're not just
08:39 throwing money at every shiny thing that you see, which is actually very attractive for people to
08:45 do, right? If you have cash, if you have dry powder, why not just spread it to as many things
08:50 you find to be shiny and fun? And so it's important for us in BNI, for example, I know that we have a
08:56 very thorough due diligence structure, we have very good governance requirements, and we do all
09:03 of that to safeguard ourselves from ourselves. And it's something that I even recommend a lot
09:08 of entrepreneurs to do, no matter what stage you are. Always try to see what can you do to safeguard
09:15 yourself from yourself, so that you're always open and have a learning mindset that maybe your
09:20 opinion is simply just not the right one. And so also, you're faster in making your decisions,
09:26 including the decision, if you need to, to one day cut loss. Okay, now, you know, when we're
09:32 talking about VC, there's a lot of words, which is one of them is always saying exit strategy.
09:38 Is that a must for a VC to, like, if I'm a startup, I come to you like, okay, I need amount of money.
09:45 Sure. Will you, will there always be like, what is the exit strategy on this? Okay, I'm not really
09:50 sure how famous I'll be with this thing that I'm about to say. But I hate to say it to you.
09:58 For a lot of founders, I think it's very important to understand that founders and venture capital
10:03 naturally don't have the same goals. Okay, and before everyone goes, oh my gosh, burn her.
10:10 Look at it this way. So venture capital must have exit in the end, you're not putting other people's
10:17 money to work so that you can lose the money. Somehow, someway, you have to make the money back.
10:22 A lot of founders, though, they might have different goals. And probably one of their goals
10:27 may not always be to exit at a certain time. Maybe they want to exit much later, even if they IPO,
10:33 they might want to stay there, right? We don't know. That's why it's so important also to investors
10:37 and founders to communicate all the time so that you know what your goals are. But naturally,
10:44 you will have different exits in mind and also different ways of looking at the business,
10:49 right? And so I really want to empower founders here to just be very upfront and open with,
10:54 one, what do they want out of the business? Two, what is the timeline of what they want out of the
10:59 business? For example, how long do you want to stay in the business until you go, this isn't worth
11:04 my effort anymore, right? And then three is, how can you communicate that so that there's
11:10 internal recognition within your team, co-founders, and also with your investors? And not just keep
11:16 getting pushed around by different opinions coming in, someone on the board saying something.
11:21 And that is why I think it's so important to have those exits being talked about in the open
11:27 very early on. Yeah. So it sounds more like finding a marriage than an actual true love.
11:33 Yeah. So we know you're very active on social media. You talk about investment, women. So from
11:40 your perspective, what is the best investment in life? Oh, yourself. Okay. In money-wise or?
11:46 No, yourself in every way. So I always say, everyone always thinks of investment as
11:52 like costs, like money, but it's not. It's time, right? So what is the best use of your time? So
12:00 no matter what happens, no matter the results, because results oftentimes is also a question
12:05 of timing. It's often a question of luck. It's often a question of other macro stuff that may
12:10 not have anything to do with you. So the question is more, what are you doing now where you're going
12:15 to enjoy the process, no matter what the results are. That's so important to know because be careful
12:20 of running a rat race when you don't even know if you want to be part of that race. All right. Well,
12:26 thank you so much, Yutasha, from Beneventure Capital Investment. Thank you for being on the
12:31 show. With that, we are going for a break. When we return, our daily recap from the stock market.
12:35 You don't want to miss. Stay tuned.
12:37 [MUSIC]