Venture Boldly: Recent Episodes
Alter Global
Welcome to Venture Boldly, an Alter Global podcast. Join us as we host inspiring conversations with game-changing entrepreneurs, investors, and operators building and scaling the tech ecosystems of South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.
Our guest today is Rooshan Aziz, Co-Founder of Maqsad, an education technology startup based in Pakistan. Born and raised in Karachi, Rooshan spent 9 years living and working in London before joining hands with his school and university friend Taha and returning to Pakistan to tackle the incredibly vast education and equality gap.
Today, we'll talk with Rooshan about:* Why Pakistan and its domestic education system are ripe for technological disruption * What the team is building * Their progress and challenges along the way
Separately, at the time of this recording in October of 2022, Pakistan is recovering from the worst flooding in its history, a devastating natural disaster. Much of the country remains underwater and thousands have lost their homes, loved ones, and livelihood. Maqsad is working closely with the Citizens Foundation, one of the largest charities in Pakistan to help those affected. We invite you to enter the link to donate if you can.
Find @rooshanaziz and @tahahmed_ on Twitter.
Kennedy is the CEO and co-founder of Kippa, an end-to-end financial management solution that provides merchants across Africa with digital tools to run their businesses. Born in Lagos, Kennedy studied in Calabar and joined Accenture Nigeria before pursuing a fully-funded Master's Degree in Economics in Beijing. After returning to Lagos, Kennedy dove head first into the rapidly growing Nigerian tech ecosystem, building his first company in the HR space and later pivoting to what is now Kippa.
For those that may not know, Nigeria is home to five of the seven Fintech unicorns on the African continent. Its strong and growing fintech ecosystem is largely driven by its increasing smartphone penetration and a massive unbanked population open to new tools and solutions, representing an incredibly fertile environment for innovation.
Today, Kennedy and Yana, Alter's Head of Platform, will dive into:
- How his early experiences shaped him
- The making of Kippa
- His reflections on and predictions for the African tech ecosystem
- How he invests in himself outside of work
Learn more about the Alter Fellowship program here
ALLVP is an early-stage venture capital firm based in Mexico City investing in Spanish-speaking Latin America. Similar to Alter’s mission of investing in emerging markets as a whole, ALLVP focuses on supporting founders passionate about solving Latin America’s greatest challenges through innovation and entrepreneurship. We have co-invested together in Yana, a health tech startup making mental health support accessible for Spanish speakers. Today, I’ll be speaking with Anne-Charlotte, one of ALLVP’s investors.
We're catching up to talk about: * What drew her into the world of VC * How she sees the LatAm ecosystem evolving * The verticals ALLVP focuses on * Her thoughts on bias
Vietnam has become one of the fastest-growing countries in Southeast Asia, with a booming digital economy. It is the birthplace of four unicorns, and also Valerie Van.
Valerie moved to the US for her university degree, becoming a first-generation college graduate, where she excelled in school and later excelled as a consultant at Deloitte.
Raised by an entrepreneurial family, Valerie was always fascinated by breakthrough technology and product innovation, getting involved in the tech community of both the US and Vietnam. In 2019, she made the bold choice to move back home to join the digital transformation happening in Southeast Asia as Vietnam Head of Investment for Venturra Capital, an early-stage fund in SEA with investments in companies like Grab, Fave and Luno.
She loves traveling, knows five languages, and every time we speak I’m blown away by her passion and spirit of adventure.
Valerie and I are catching up to talk about: * Her transition into VC * Why global investors should look to Vietnam * Her ideas on how to continue catalyzing the startup ecosystem there * What she looks for as an investor
In this episode, Allen Taylor, the Managing Director of Endeavor Catalyst and Founding Board Member of Alter Global, shares lessons from investing in more than 160 emerging market ventures over the past decade, including 25+ unicorns.
Gerry Giacomán Colyer grew up in Monterrey, Mexico, but traveled to the US to attend Yale University. A liberal arts grad who studied Ethics, Politics & Economics, and Latin American studies, Gerry considered going into public service before falling in love with the potential for technology-driven companies to make our lives better.
In this episode, Gerry walks us through:
- His entrepreneurial journey, which began 10 years ago
- The shifts he's witnessed in the LatAm startup ecosystem since then
- The Clara story and factors he attributes to its impressive growth across the region,
- His advice for future entrepreneurs.
Interested in applying for an Alter Fellowship? Visit alter.vc/careers/fellowship/ to learn about the Alter Global Fellowship program.
The Alter Global Fellowship is a highly selective program that gives engineers, data scientists, management consultants, product managers, and other young professionals in tech the opportunity to join one of our high-growth tech startups in an emerging market around the world for 6 months or more.
In this episode, current Alter Fellows Aileen Aebischer, Sangya Gyawali, Alberto Lambert and Chirag Das Manyapu share:
- Specifics on their roles and what they're doing at work
- Their interaction level with founders/C-suite
- Why and how they decided on their ventures
- And their advice to future applicants of the program
Interested in applying for an Alter Fellowship? Visit alter.vc/careers/fellowship/ to learn about the Alter Fellowship program.
In this episode, we hear from Tiger Fang, Co-Founder and CEO of Kargo Technologies, the digital logistics network of Indonesia.
Tiger joins us to share the story of Kargo's ongoing meteoric rise (culminating in $38.6M in investments to date), his vision for the future of Southeast Asia's digital economy (expected to triple to $309B in the next five years), and why Silicon Valley should turn its gaze to Indonesia and Southeast Asia (both positioned for massive blitz-scaling).
This is Venture Boldly, an Alter podcast.
Follow the game-changing entrepreneurs, investors, and operators building the tech ecosystems of South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.