Oscar Ramos: SOSV China

In this episode, Oscar Ramos shares his journey to China and his diverse background leading to his role at SOSV. He discusses his early career in R&D, challenges in China, and the evolving startup community there. The conversation compares tech ecosystems in Europe and China, touching on entrepreneurship and risk perception. Oscar explores adapting to the Chinese market, regional tech ecosystems, and UI/UX differences. He offers insights into data-driven design and customer engagement. The episode concludes with SOSV's investment strategies and thoughts on emerging fund managers and future plans.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
And I thought, you know, it doesn't matter whathappens like a couple of years into the future.

(00:04):
If things don't work out, you can always cometo come back to Europe and you know, will be
here.
Then the crisis hit in 2020 and Europe was notreally there.
And then I discovered like the opportunityhere.
And it was amazing.
That was a early stages of the startupcommunity where it was so easy to get access to

(00:25):
people.
Was so easy to get connected with people.
Welcome to The Investor, a podcast where I,Joel Palofinkle, your host, dives deep into the
minds of the world's most influentialinstitutional investors.
In each episode, we sit down with an investorto hear about their journeys and how global

(00:45):
markets are driving capital allocation.
So join us on this journey as we explore theseinsights.
We'll go live.
We'll we'll it takes a second for it to push toYouTube, but once it does, then we should Yep.
Be
Be
Okay.
Good to go.
I think we are live actually because I see ithere.
So, it looks like we're live here.
So, you know, everybody, you know, there'sother people that are streaming on YouTube, but

(01:10):
it's 07:30AM in New York City.
It's it's, what time over there?
08:30?
It's 07:30PM in Shanghai.
So we're exactly twelve hours different.
It's just I'm drinking a coffee and you'redrinking what?
A beer?
I'm grabbing a beer.
Yeah. Have
Have craft beer in the office.
It's happy hour time.

(01:31):
Happy hour people move somewhere else.
Some they continue work working.
Some of them are going to have their lives.
Exercise, always very important, and I'm here,like, very, very happy to be able to connect
with all of you guys.
Yeah.
And the good thing is, you know, I'm a morningperson, so, you know, I think we're both both
energetic here.
But, you know, you're with SOSV.

(01:52):
We're actually, you know, you and I are lookingat a deal together that I'm excited about.
So before we get, you know, deeper into, youknow, the portfolio companies you guys are
looking at and your structure, you know, I'dlove to learn a little more about you, you
know, where you grew up, where you studied,and, how you ended up in, you know, SOSV.
Yeah.
I was I'm I'm Spanish.

(02:14):
I was born in Madrid, raised in Barcelona.
I spent a third of my life in Barcelona, then Imoved back to Madrid, we spent another third of
my life.
And then the last third I actually spent it inShanghai.
So it's been thirteen years for me already inShanghai.
There's also a couple of years that I live inother parts of the world.

(02:37):
But I spent most of my initial years of my lifein Spain, I went to school and then eventually,
once I stepped, I worked there, always in arelatively international environment in R and D
for multinationals.
And then in one of my roles where I was workingin like Telefonica in the R and D department, I

(03:03):
had like the opportunity to start working onsomething called business model innovation.
So we had a bunch of engineers working onsomething that was pretty cool, like new radio
frequency technologies that could potentiallyenable new products.
That itself was like, hey, it's not just aboutthe technology, it's actually about what you

(03:24):
build.
So that moved me closer to the user and made methink, well it doesn't matter if you can build
it if nobody wants it.
But what really popped my mind was when we hadto think about, yeah you know as an operator we
need to think about everything that willpotentially be profitable.
So that was in the early two thousand, 2001 Ithink or February.

(03:45):
And so we had this bunch of engineers thatalready had like oh fuck it's not about the
technology only, we need to think about thebusiness.
And I thought it was interesting enough, so Istarted to look into this idea of business
model and nobody was really working on that.
I didn't find anything that was interestinguntil I found like a PhD student that was

(04:07):
working on trying to identify the differentelements of a business model, and I found that
explanation super clear, super interesting.
That was Alex Osterwalder, that was, I think atthat time the business model canvas concept
didn't exist, so that was, that opened my mindand from there I jumped from multinationals to

(04:27):
startups and well the whole thing didn't, neverstopped, so you work in startups, then you want
to build your own startup, move to China tofind the opportunity and work in a market where
there were a lot of options.
Why'd you move to China out of all the othercountries?
What triggered your decision to move therespecifically?

(04:49):
So is kind of like very dangerous familydinners where you're talking about everything.
It was like a Christmas two thousand and sevenand so in my family I'm kind of a black sheep.
Everybody in my family studied like humanitiesor law, psychology, and they all, basically

(05:12):
almost all of them are public servants.
They believe a lot in public service, so it isgreat.
But I'm kind of like on the opposite side.
So I started engineering and I wanted always toplay more on the innovation side.
So I was having that dinner with my uncle andmy uncle is kind of like very, very important
person in terms of influencing me.

(05:33):
He's an engineer, and he's an entrepreneurhimself.
He was also a black sheep as well out of thefamily.
Well, his family, in his family is differentthing.
So he's, he's the my, my father's sisterhusband, so we're related but it's not like
blood
his family is more of an entrepreneurial familyversus your family that's a little more

(05:54):
conservative?
Yep, yeah and basically he said you know I wastalking about moving to The US and he said,
well, if I were your age, I'll move to China.
And he never came to China during his life.
He just thought, you know, that's interesting.
One week after that dinner, me and back in theday, my my girlfriend, we decided to make the

(06:16):
move.
And we, we took us like a month to basicallywrap up everything and move to China to build
something.
We don't know what we don't know.
We don't know anything about it but that waswhat propelled the change and well.
Where you moved were they you know the regionwhere you moved to in China did they speak
English or did you have to you know actuallylearn the language?

(06:40):
So I moved to Shanghai which probably is one ofthe cities where English is more accessible but
I can tell you that the level of English thatis spoken right now is not the same.
So I moved here before the Olympics which kindof like changed and improved the overall level
of English across the country.
And then the Expo in 2010 also changed inShanghai.

(07:04):
So basically, I had to learn a lot of Chineseto be able to get by.
Am actually more a lot my Chinese was learnedback in the day.
Also like to be able to be self sufficient anddo things on my own.
So a Chinese a difficult language to master,But it's actually not that difficult to be able
to get by.
Because grammar is very simple.

(07:24):
And there's a lot of words that are kind oflike, generic enough that you can use for a lot
of practice.
Is fluent Mandarin
pretty much?
Don't speak fluent Mandarin but I can basicallyget by and do whatever I want.
My first my first I love food so my firstmotivation to learn to read was to be able to
go to restaurants that So didn't have English Icould so I knew I knew the the character for

(07:47):
for a chicken, but then are you eating likechicken legs, chicken wings, chicken?
Like because China has a very rich cuisinewhere they eat everything.
So you might end up having like a very weirdtype of fish is chicken, but you don't want to
know what is a part.
Yeah, sure.
So, so that was kind of like what what mademade me doing that.

(08:08):
And now like for your life is way easier.
If you can use Chinese apps, your life is muchbetter.
So like, read you Mandarin as well?
Yeah, can read, I can type, I can participatein my kids.
So my kids go to local schools, I canparticipate in the meetings, which is what
probably my latest achievement and what I feelthe most proud of.
I can go to the parent teacher meetings and beable to participate and understand 80% of what

(08:33):
they talk about.
Yeah, no, that's amazing.
I mean, it's, you know, this is just a veryrich, you know, ecosystem there and, you can
just imagine all the tech companies that arebooming over there.
So I mean, there's a lot of opportunity.
I guess, why did your uncle recommend to go toChina?
Was there something specific or a specificreason or was it just that he just thought it

(08:53):
was exciting and he just saw a lot ofopportunity there?
Was he doing business there?
He was not really doing business here.
I mean, he was sourcing a little bit fromChina, but never came here, never had any kind
of business.
But the way he thought about it is, you know,The US is obviously, we were talking about
thirteen years ago.
And even today is a place where I've been Itraveled back to The US in the past, I had a

(09:17):
lot of connections, I had a lot of dealingswith with The US.
Yeah, but but very limited exposure to Asia.
So his point was like, you know, you go there,whatever you do, you're gonna get exposure to
an area of the world that is rising right nowis racing and it's going to be it's going to be
playing an important role in the future.
Or yes.
I don't think I mean, maybe was the visionary.

(09:39):
I wasn't.
I just came here because I thought it was aninteresting option.
And I thought, you know, it doesn't matter whathappens, like a couple of years into the
future, if things don't work out, you canalways come to go back to Europe, and you know,
you will be here, then the crisis kicked in02/2001.
Europe was really there.
And then I discovered like the opportunityhere.

(10:01):
And it was, it was amazing.
That was a early stages of the startupcommunity where it was so easy to get access to
people, it was so easy to get connected withpeople.
Community, the English speaking startupcommunity was relatively small.
And you could like, hang out with the Americanor overseas educated founders of some startups

(10:28):
that they wanted to play football.
They thought, hey, we've got the Spanishsuperstar to play in the league, when you have
like all top tech companies in Beijing thatwere playing football together.
So that was like a very interestingopportunity.
And then you were able to see the speed ofthings, how everything changed was changing so

(10:48):
so fast.
I I came here and remember, first time I triedto buy tickets online, it was impossible to pay
online.
So I had to book the tickets online, wait for aperson to come to my home with the tickets, and
then I had to pay that person cash.
That was the only way to pay online.
If you look at China today and digitalpayments, the way they leapfrog everything.

(11:11):
How are things mobile first?
Pretty much right?
Yeah, it's mobile for first is digital cashlesspayments, perfectly integrated into society.
But that I mean, for me that that change was ayear.
So the world is realizing about this right now.
But in a year, everything went from a fromYeah, you have to pay this person with, with

(11:33):
cash to you had digital payments enabled in aquite secure way, very flexible, that were
accessible in lots of different places.
And those were originally a bit more restrictedto the online world, but very fast they moved
to the offline world and that was a gamechanger.
Sure.
And then how is it in Europe?

(11:53):
You know, has Europe been, you know, kind ofovercoming the issues that they had couple
years ago?
Then just specifically in Spain, how is that?
Because I'm only asking because I think I spoketo you a couple weeks ago.
I actually traveled to Spain, had a really goodtime.
But didn't really hang out in the techecosystems, went through more of the touristy
areas.
So maybe you can talk a little bit about aboutSpain and, you know, that region as well and

(12:18):
just kind of how that's evolving and then justEurope in general.
Yeah, well, I mean, we as company, we have aglobal as a company, we have a global
investment approach.
So we are based in Asia, and we usually have alot of Asia exposure.
And we're in China.
So we have a lot of exposure to China.
But we look at everything globally.
So in the last year, I actually made quite afew investments in Europe, particularly made a

(12:44):
few investments in Spain.
So the tech ecosystem in Europe is obviouslynot as developed.
And there's certain reasons for that, that,like you talk about Europe, but Europe is a
group of countries.
And even if the European region is the largestmarket in the world, you don't have the same
level unification that you have in other partsof the world.

(13:09):
You have different languages, you havedifferent vendors, different providers, like
everything is quite fragmented from that pointof view.
The regulations help out a lot.
But for certain types of businesses, still doesnot have the way that the approach that you
have in a market like US or China, where youcan get like 300,000,000 users, a billion users

(13:30):
with the same language, the same paymentsystems, same logistics is very, very, very
fragmented.
And that creates a challenge for companies thatwant to scale and become relatively large.
I have a feeling sometimes in Europe that, soin Europe, we don't talk about venture capital,
we talk about risk capital.

(13:51):
So, whereas in certain markets, you think moreabout the potential return of taking that, like
embarking yourself in this journey.
In, in Europe, still the risk perception isrelatively high.
And that's something that is slowly changing.
It's changing for for the better.

(14:12):
Have a we have a list of Spanish company thatwas listed in NASDAQ, a couple of weeks ago, we
have another unicorn, our company became aunicorn also like in the last month.
So, to a certain degree, the fact that the thisthis current economic downturn happened made
the cost of opportunity for talent to startcompanies lower.

(14:36):
So there's more people building companies rightnow.
And there is a very strong competitiveadvantage because this talent that is very,
very cheap, like the access to talent in Spainis super affordable.
It happens in other parts of Europe too, but Ihave more exposure to Spain.
You have people that have experience managinginternational teams across multiple time zones,

(15:00):
different cultures, etc.
So that makes it a very, very interesting area.
I'm actually very positive about what couldcome from Europe in the years ahead.
I think one of the key things is decide thatthey need to look at the world in a bit more
global way.
And realize that that opportunities, sometimesyour next market might not be the one that is

(15:22):
next to you.
So thinking about that strategic move could bequite interesting.
Yeah, and I think a lot of the people that aremore risk friendly, most of them probably would
you say most of them are still leaving Spainbecause of the perception of risk capital.
Even your family, right?
You guys are a little more conservative.

(15:43):
Look, my family is the same, right?
My dad worked for the government for twentyfive years.
My mom was a nurse, so everything that I did,my parents thought was really risky.
And I pretty much did every I did the oppositeof everything that my parents advised me to do.
I'm happy that I did.
I mean, listened to them about a lot of things,but with my career, not to like put my parents

(16:05):
on blast publicly on the Internet.
I love my parents.
But but you know, look, I love my parents, youknow, and I and I'm grateful for my upbringing
and just an amazing childhood.
But a lot of times too, have to.
You gotta make your own destiny, right?
And I think it's interesting because I had anuncle that was like the poster child.

(16:25):
He was an engineer.
He got his master's and then he worked at avery stable company for like thirty years.
So the reason why I moved to New York, I thinkone time when I didn't even have a job was
because the potential opportunity that andyou're betting on yourself, right?

(16:46):
Even if I did you have a job lined up when youmoved to China or you just move there and try
to figure it out?
No, no, I mean I came here to build a company.
I didn't have a job.
So you
didn't have a job?
I didn't have a job.
I actually changed my destination two weeksbefore, like one week before landing in China,
I changed my destination.
So originally I was moving to Shenzhen, whichis relatively warm weather and arrived in

(17:10):
Shanghai and it was snowing.
So I didn't even have the right clothes to landin China.
So I mean the story of coming here was a bitlike, I mean I survived it none and whatever
does not destroy you makes you stronger.
That's what happened.
That created this feeling of resilience thatnow we need to make it happen.
It needs to be something that I want to do.

(17:30):
So from that point of view, that was a greatexperience.
And it allowed me to, to, to have like thiscertain freedom to once you are in an
uncomfortable situation, you know, okay, I justneed to find something and that, that helped me
to learn a lot by doing, exploring things andnot be really tied to anything specific, which

(17:54):
I think was great to be able to change theperceptions of what you wanted to do.
I did have like some projects, so I then cametotally empty handed.
When I was moving basically said okay I'm gonnalet everybody that I know know that I'm gonna
be here in case there's anything I can do tohelp out.
And that was how I had like my first projectsthat allow me to learn by doing explore

(18:16):
opportunities, and eventually connect with thewith the SSB community.
Was being part of that, being part of that, ofthat, that very dynamic ecosystem of people
trying to build things helped me connect withthe founder of China Accelerator ten years ago.
Yeah.
And then originally, I joined as a mentor ofthe program.

(18:40):
And I got involved into process.
I was building my own companies had somesuccess, I raised a small fund, started to make
some, some investments with that things wentrelatively okay.
But but I did realise that I was missing reallythe startup, the billing process and be able to

(19:00):
get more my hands dirty to the things.
I'd like rub my sleeves and get to billy simplethings.
And it's just when you're in that community,there's so many startups.
They're trying to do so many things.
They're always managing a never ending to dolist, right?
So if you can come in and help some of thosestartups, you can just learn by doing and then

(19:22):
eventually you can probably charge people forservices, right?
Once you become an expert at SEO because youdid it for free, now you have an SEO company,
right?
And same thing if you know how to do prototypesand I do this sometimes too, just as fun little
side gig.
I help people with their pitch decks and then Ijust learned over the years how to build a
prototype and that's a skill.

(19:43):
And I can imagine what are some of the skillsthat you picked up by doing maybe in your early
days when you just kind of immersed yourself inthe community?
Well, mean, brought already a few skills thatwere directly applicable.
So as an engineer, I was always really good atfast prototyping.
So building things really fast was somethingthat, like hack something together, something

(20:07):
that I was doing, even when I was back back inschool, was one of my hobbies.
Then, and then like, I also spent some timeworking in medical devices, which is, could say
that is on one stream is the fast prototypingwhere you want to test things really fast.
But at the end of the day, you cannot deliverany medical device that is not tested on every

(20:28):
single area that could fail.
And so, like also being very detail orientedand be able to find, like issues in products,
or, or be able to find, like, bags or thingsthat might break.
That was also something that was really good.
So come in and say, hey, I have those skills.

(20:49):
I also did some work on product as a medicaldevices or medical systems, they will require
multi stakeholder.
So you've got the doctor, you have the patient,you have the family, you have the nurses,
there's so many angles that you need toconsider that you can have a really good
functionally valuable product that nobody usesbecause it's scary or because it's not easy to

(21:12):
use or because it doesn't support whoever'sagenda.
So bringing that that was really good.
What I think was really great for me was toapply those skills in actual Chinese market.
And be able to get a very deep understanding,hands on understanding on how different things
were here.

(21:33):
And be able to fail and learn with directinteraction with the market.
That was really what was great.
So I get to travel to explore areas to work indifferent industries to test things in a real
environment.
And so that was really what more than pickingup new skills, it was more about localising

(21:59):
those skills, because that's what happens inChina.
Your existing skills are obviously acompetitive advantage, But believing that
everything that you know how it works, is goingto translate and transfer directly to this
market is what makes a lot of companies thatcome from outside to fail here.
Mean, you need to be a bit more humble andunderstand that when certain things are done

(22:23):
differently in China is not because there's noskill for it.
Because there's so many situations wherethere's actually a lot of skill, there's
probably a reason behind.
So when I came here, a lot of the websites weredesigned was actually from a Western design
perspective, they were really bad.
Everything was crammed.
And there was like a lot of flashy lightseverywhere.

(22:46):
But if you understand how was the internet backin the day, and you understand the density of
information that Chinese people is used to getwhen they read a book, you'll realise that it's
actually not that bad.
It's just that to be able to work on yourcustomer's shoes, the first thing that you need
to do is you need to take away yours, you takeout yours.

(23:09):
And that was a key thing.
You look into a book, the English version wouldbe like this, the Chinese version would be like
this.
And it's the same content.
It's just that the density of information thatthe Chinese language has is very high.
So a lot of Chinese people is used to handlethat density of information.
And that doesn't look bad from theirperception.

(23:32):
You know, I'd love to just unpack the regionsof China, you know, and just kind of understand
a little more about the ecosystem.
So you're in Shanghai, you know, just tell methe dynamics of the different regions.
I mean, I can imagine some of the there's justpolarizing differences between some of the
regions, right?
So can you just unpack the ecosystem likebiggest differences between Hong Kong and

(23:54):
Shanghai and other regions of that area,especially with the tech ecosystem and then
with the innovation ecosystem.
I have people in my program that are in HongKong, but you know people have just told me
that there's just so much opportunity inMainland China.
The challenge is you know with the platformthat I'm building right, people don't use

(24:16):
WhatsApp, people don't use Zoom, people don'tuse Facebook.
So, there you have, from my understanding, if Ireally want to build what I'm building and make
it hyper local to Mainland China, I really needto translate it into like all of the tools
platforms that they use there.
That's my initial perspective if I were to kindof build what I'm building there.

(24:38):
But I would love to learn your perspective onthat observation and then just in general how
the tech ecosystem is spread out all throughChina and then maybe even like some some other
parts of Asia.
Well, I mean, I could get really, reallygranular on that.
That's basically my my my day to day.
Nobody Yeah.
If you think about I think it's importantbecause I'm, you know, I'm all the way in New

(24:59):
York, a lot of other people in the audience.
There, you know, some of them are in The US,some of them are in Europe, so we don't.
You know, that's the thing, right?
We don't know the granular details of the hyperlocal environments, right?
We we read stuff in the news and we talk tofriends on on Slack, but you're there in the
weeds, you know, you know exactly what'shappening kind of like in that region.

(25:20):
So, know, I think that'd be really helpful ifyou have any insights on that.
Yeah, well, mean, there's definitely a very bigdifference between Mainland China and
everything else, like the fact that you havecertain limitations.
So you are in one side of the firewall and youare in the other side of the firewall.
Things could be very different.
So the payment systems are different, thesocial networks are different.

(25:44):
The common habits here are very different.
And firewall is a limitation.
No question asked about that.
But a lot of these solutions that are hyperlocal in China, they have something that makes
them very unique.
They're extremely localised, and they're largeenough.
The volume of business that some of thesecompanies have in China doesn't make them, they

(26:08):
don't have to expand anywhere else to be ableto reach the volume to be able to go public.
Yeah, there's just so many people.
Yeah, like, well, I was looking throughsomething like, I think right now, 50% of the
global e commerce is happening in MainlandChina.
So like, I mean, as an e commerce company, ifyou have a market where you have 50% of the

(26:28):
global e commerce market at your fingertips,and you know, there's certain barriers of
entry, because even if foreign companies canoperate in in the e commerce space here, then
it is just different that you'll have tointegrate.
It's not just the payments, it's also thelogistics systems will work work differently,
the user experience that you have to createwill be very different, the way you display

(26:51):
your products could be very different.
There's so many things that could be differentthat
sometimes One thing I'll say too, reminds me ofsomething before I forget.
So the UI.
So I spoke to a friend of mine that was fromMainland China.
And you know how when you look at Google andyou look at some of these websites, there's a
lot of white space.
Looks really clean, like flat design.

(27:14):
China, and correct me if I'm wrong, this is myfeedback that I got.
So in China, they wanna use up all of the realestate.
So like none of the space is wasted.
So for us, like you and I, especially you're atthe accelerator, right?
Like all the apps and websites need to bebeautiful, right?
It needs to be like minimal design.
But the feedback I got was in China, it's likethe websites are very, very busy because they

(27:37):
want to make use of like every single pixel ofreal estate.
Is that something you've noticed as far as kindof the design?
That's what used to happen.
That was what used to surprise.
So it's not so at the end of the day, whatpeople want is something that is valuable for
them.
Yeah.
So value is something that is very relative.
So design has an element of value as much as itis usable and practical.

(28:04):
So like UI and UX are they kind of go hand inhand, but you can have something that that is
from a UI perspective is beautiful, but from aUX perspective is horrible.
And it's difficult to use.
So at the end of the day, usability iscritical.
But I think that that that approach is I mean,websites in China actually not very relevant.

(28:24):
Most of the Internet in China is mobile.
China is a mobile first, and for a lot ofthings, a mobile only type of platform.
Even for me as a foreigner, I still remember Imean, most of my interaction with the Chinese
Internet, which I have every day, multipletimes happens through mobile.
So I don't remember last time.
So when I do grocery shopping, I'll do it on mymobile phone.

(28:45):
When I do when I buy anything online, I'm goingto be in my in my mobile phone.
If I like almost any transaction that I workon, I do it on my phone.
So if you look at that, from from thatperspective, yeah, I think that the UX and the
UI of Chinese apps is just far superior to theUX and the UI that you have in Western apps.

(29:06):
Sometimes I actually feel a bit frustrated whenI have to use some of the some of the Western
apps.
I feel frustrated because I find this there'ssometimes so many like, like, like, like, and
so many friction points that that in a veryChinese market is extremely competitive.
So anything that creates friction is very, verycompetitive.

(29:29):
Anything that creates friction will basicallybe a killer.
Yeah, you need to achieve whatever goal you'retrying to achieve, it needs to happen in maybe
one step versus now, you know, some of theseapps that you use in The US or other countries,
it's like just to change a setting or just tochange something you got to maybe tap four
times.
Right.
But you're saying in China because it's socompetitive, to literally just happen

(29:51):
immediately.
Right.
Yeah.
And Chinese app developers are masters of datadriven decisions.
Yeah.
So, I mean, there's a remember, like one of myfriends, he so he built a couple of companies
exited in China, Mainland China, he exited bothof them.
And then for his third company, he wanted tobuild a company in India.
India is another like pretty large data, likemobile first and mobile only market is large.

(30:20):
Southeast Asia is another relevant market, butSoutheast Asia has the same issue that Europe
has.
There's a lot of fragmentation.
And so this is even more difficult because it'sbasically a bunch of islands, so many islands
that even commune makes things a bit moredifficult.
But India is a relatively large market, it'searly and some of the way that the Indian
market is developing is way the internet marketand cyber market is developing is way closer to

(30:45):
the way the Chinese market developed back inback in the day.
He built a company in a in India.
And because China has so much talent and skillin terms of mobile app development and the UX
element of Ovid, they were running things inlanguages they didn't know.
Just based on data, you have enough users andyou start testing in a very systematic way, you

(31:11):
can get apps very, very, very solid thatactually work extremely well with concepts that
sometimes are relatively foreign.
So I remember him telling a story, know, had awith our program with the companies in batch,
he came to share a bit about data driven designand data driven product management.

(31:34):
And he was sharing a story about how India hasa lot of languages.
So even if India is a large market, there's alot of small languages internally.
And although English is spoken in the moreeducated group of people commonly spoken in
certain parts of the population English is notas common, but they had in this app, which was

(31:55):
targeting mass market, they had all the all thelike local languages, plus English.
So speaking English is a sign of status.
If you have your apps in English, it will makeyou oh, speak English, right, so you have like
better education etc.
So they run a test, they saw that a lot of thedata showed them that a lot of the users, they

(32:17):
change the usage pattern of the app once theychange to English.
So they have a usage level, they change toEnglish and the usage level goes down.
And they realized that the problem was thatthey were having the app in English to look
better.
But then they couldn't use it because theycouldn't understand actually.
So by removing English as an option, usage ofthe app basically like triple.

(32:42):
Yeah.
And that's something that they found, becausethey literally just use the data to try.
The data showed them something that took themto have some customer interviews, and see how
people use the product.
And that got those customer interviews, toldthem, okay, there's an issue here.
So let's try this.

(33:02):
They tried, it worked perfectly.
So like these type of things are so embedded inand some people will look at these and say
like, hey, why don't you have English?
That's that's a good that's bad product.
You're making the product worse.
Well, that's not true.
They're actually making the product morevaluable and better because since there's no
option for English, there's no pressure ofchanging the app into English and then you can

(33:27):
continue using the product.
Yeah, I think, look, you're an expert at this,but this is what I feel too, right?
I mean, goes back to Henry Ford, right?
If you keep asking the customer what they want,they're just going ask for faster horses,
right?
So how many times do you see these foundersjust not listen to their customers and just try
to make better judgment based on the data?

(33:49):
Mean, because a lot of times, to your point,you can't just ask your customers what they
want because half the time they don't even knowwhat they If you ask them to like, hey, just
give me faster horses.
They don't even know about an automobile.
So is that a common thing where they just focuson the data and really just use their instincts
to make the product decisions?

(34:10):
I mean, have to a lot of times, right?
No, we always tell them that your gut willstart and data will decide.
So it doesn't matter who I mean, if the datasays something is wrong, it's wrong.
But but but most of the most relevantbreakthroughs happen through conversations.
Okay, so we always say, hey, conversations arevery important.

(34:31):
And you hopefully you'll so mean, company wasdoing was identifying potential areas for
interviews, there is like $50,000,000 like, Imean, it was like a two time serial
entrepreneur.
One exit to Baidu, one exit to Alibaba.
Wow.
I mean, he got like $50,000,000 with a napkinfrom Tencent to launch a company.

(34:54):
So like, he didn't have any problem in terms ofscale or access to data.
And he still, he continued working on customerconversations to be able to get insights that
they never thought because data will tell you,data will not tell you why something's wrong.
They just will tell you something here is funnyor something here is not working well, but you

(35:19):
have to then go and find out.
And it's very difficult that customers willtell you the solution.
So you get you go to a problem assumption andproblem hypotheses.
And from there, you'll start having likesolution assumptions or solution hypotheses
that you want to prototype and test as simpleas possible.
So for mobile apps relatively simple, justbuild up like a AB test where you have a

(35:42):
control group and you liberate this newfunction to a set of users and then you track
behavior within the groups and also theprevious behavior that the users had.
So, and if it shows, the data shows that itworks, then it works.
This is a very, very common thing.
It actually applies to everything.

(36:03):
So like having this empathy of communicationworks with your customers, with your partners,
with your investors, like so many times withinvestors, like listening is a very, very, very
valuable skill and how to actually extractinformation without guiding people, because you
can very easily guide people, you need be veryopen for everyone to criticize your product.

(36:29):
So if you very upfront, people know what you'redoing, in, they might somehow change the way
they talk with you, because they might not bewilling to hurt your feelings.
So it's always better to be as agnostic aspossible.
Yeah, during these conversations.
Ideally, people don't know that you're talkingexactly about this thing.
That's a good point because the data is alsoqualitative.

(36:51):
The qualitative is really the conversations.
One thing I'll say too is you have to break itup into different personas.
One persona may be a married couple and thenanother persona may be a millennial and then a
Gen Z.
And each of them, like you said, right, havedifferent workflows.
And then I think that's a good point.
When you put together the survey, you need tomake sure that you're not leading them on.

(37:12):
And forcing them to kind of say the answer thatyou want them to say, right?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I'm not a big fan of surveys.
No, I think that that qualitative data isvaluable as part of an experiment.
Sure.
But I do believe in conversations,conversations that are open as much as

(37:33):
possible, particularly for early stage, theyare fundamental.
And you can find so many surprises that couldpotentially change everything.
Even as what you said, I mean, you definedifferent customer segments and you could
potentially, like, when you look at dataaggregated, averages in general are not very
relevant.
So when you're able to create like somesegmentation, you will potentially identify

(37:56):
that the specific type of customer thatconverts faster, that's more loyal, that is
less price sensitive, etc.
So if that customer today is working well, andthese are big enough segment, it could be
potentially good to spend a bit more energy ongrowing on that stage and then in parallel
trying to figure out okay what can you do withanother with a different segment.

(38:20):
Yeah and then walk me through you know how youformalized your role at SOSV.
So I think you immersed into the culture andthe ecosystem and it looks like you were
helping some of the startups and then and thenthey had an opportunity for you to help run the
accelerator.
Well, mean, it was I think that I mean, therewas a couple of times in the in the past before

(38:43):
I decided to join four years and a half ago,full time, there were a few few opportunities
for me to join.
But things didn't work out well.
Sure.
I was running my fund, and I was doing anotherstartup.
So it was not the right time.
And I was like, there was kind of like inbetween things.
I was helping one of my friends that was takinghis company public company was more in the, in

(39:05):
the traditional business space.
And I said, okay, I'll help you with thetransformation of the company.
And yeah, and with the pitch to the investmentbankers for the IPO.
But, but I really want to, like, do somethingthat is a bit more like, I really want to go
back to launch things.
I realized that that was the most interestingpart of my job.

(39:28):
So no problem talking with the bankers, but notthe thing that I like the most in comparison
with working with small ideas that could turninto something amazing.
We remember we launched a project that wentfrom 0 to a million dollars in revenue in seven
months.
And we were running that with like two peopleand like some of my time.

(39:51):
I thought this is what I like.
I mean, this is what really, like makes me jumpout of bed every single day.
The transformation is interesting.
But having to once a company reaches stage witha few 100 employees, there's so much culture
that is more like a standard culture.
That was not my

(40:13):
thing.
That's a good point.
I think the CEO of Digg was on This Week inStartups and I think he's running a fun now,
but he said the same thing.
He's like, Look, I love the beginning partswhen you're building the product, you're
prototyping and you're just kind of creatingsomething.
But then once you get to employees, you'rereally just focusing on culture.
You're hiring and firing employees.

(40:35):
There's more infrastructure, right?
So it's not as for some people it's not asexciting.
So I think you're the same way.
I think I'm the same way too.
I don't think I would be as excited on tryingto pick out which air conditioner unit we need
to put into the building or what color thefloor should be.
But I'd rather focus on the product and look atthe data, right?

(40:56):
Look and see how fast the app is growing andlook at the insights and focus on the customer
experience.
So I think I'm the same way.
And then, you know, so then let's talk a littlemore about SOSV.
So then you had a couple opportunities.
Before we talk about SOSV, I'm also interestedabout the fund that you started because I
actually started an emerging manageraccelerator, a fun first time fund manager

(41:19):
accelerator.
So always excited to hear about fund managers,how they got started, and then how they raised
capital.
And then how did you deploy the capital acrossthe portfolio?
Yeah, well, mean, two opportunities to join SSBeventually led for me to join to replicate.
Exactly.

(41:40):
Joining SSB where is an accelerator VC givesyou the advantage of being an early stage
investor and at the same time being very handson.
So that was one of the things that I missedwhen I was running my my fund.
So that originally started.
So when I was when I was building my initialcompanies here, I was, I was potentially

(42:00):
exploring, raising some capital for thesecompanies.
But I thought, okay, I mean, I will raise moneyonce I have something that is worth funding.
In that process, I connected with some peoplethat was in the space.
And eventually, we kind of reached theconclusion that there was actually a really big

(42:27):
opportunity investing in early stage Chinesestartups.
Back in the day, it was very, very, there was alot of investment.
The Chinese venture capital market startedinstead of starting from bottom on small
investments, it actually started the oppositeway.
So the initial understanding venture capital asa subset of the asset class of private equity,

(42:50):
The initial private equity investments in Chinawere literally very large companies that were
either state owned and then were goingprivatized, or relatively large companies that
were managed not very efficiently.
So you could actually have venture capitalreturns with private equity investments by

(43:10):
investing in those companies, working in all ofthem just to streamline the process, making
sure everything was clear, and then packagingthem properly and take them public.
Okay.
But so because he was starting that way, peoplewas going, basically downstream as they were
less pre IPO deals, they were working, okay,let's do bigger deals, bigger deals, because
there were enough companies looking for, forthat opportunity.

(43:32):
So I saw that app.
And so I partnered with, with a fan back inSpain, and they became my anchor.
Oh, nice.
Okay,
they were on the phone
and then they just kind of were an LP and your,your microphone, So I guess, how much were you
raising for the fun?
So we're raising 5 mil.
Okay.
And so and that was that was the initialanchor.

(43:55):
Then I got other people.
So I connected with people I connected withsome of the LPs in the fun that was said to bug
me individually, I connected with some high networth individuals in the fund.
And we're always trying to look for deals wherewe were to the deal.
So at the beginning, we're trying to be a bitmore aggressive in terms of leading But that,

(44:20):
we actually, it was not bad, we had a deal thatdid really, really well, we had an opportunity
to exit the company with 40x return two yearsinto the deal.
But the founders didn't want it to sell.
It was a long story that could lead for a wholepodcast, just talking about how this became

(44:40):
horrible.
But it was it was back in the day, the largestsocial network for football fans in China.
And, and we held them get partnerships withfootball teams, book clubs from from Europe.
So things went really well.
But there was some clash with a state ownedmedia etc.
Eventually everything we should have sold, butwe did not.
And it could have been like an amazing return,but that didn't happen.

(45:03):
So that's a case where we took a lead in thatcompany, but we could bring in something that
made a difference for the company.
So we're able to get them like swag from theteams, partnerships with the teams, and lots of
things that for them were very difficult toacquire, and for other people in the ecosystem
were also a barrier of entry.
Then we start to work with companies where wedeals where we were invited to the deal,

(45:27):
because we could bring in something on thetable.
Yeah.
So leverage a lot, I think very important foremerging markets to treat your emerging
managers to treat all your LPs as as angelinvestors.
Sure.
So what would your LPs to see, they are lookingfor potential return, but they're also having
some interest in what you're doing.

(45:47):
Communicating with with them, one of my LPsactually, he was an angel investor, relatively
famous angel investor in Europe, he won in02/2010, he won like Angel Investor of the Year
in Europe, and he developed a very interestingmethodology for exits.
And the same way that you work with a clientfor sales, thinking about planning for exits.

(46:10):
And then he was actually really like very solidcoaching us in terms of how to work with sales
for the portfolio companies once they reach astage where the founders were starting to
think, okay, maybe that's the way to go.
I'm actually taking this down as a note.

(46:30):
So that's good advice.
Treat all your LPs as angels and how could theydo that?
Just involve them closely on the deal and givethem all the diligence instead of just have
them invest in your fund, right?
Because with angels, you're giving them thememo and you're giving them all the details of
your thesis about the company.
Is that what you're saying?
Well, also have conversations for them tounderstand what can they bring on the table.

(46:54):
In some cases, they might not be interested ingetting directly on the deal, but get some
exposure to it, and learn about the industry,help you identify opportunities that maybe you
haven't thought about.
My thesis was trying to find businesses thatcould have a cross border opportunity.
Between Europe, where most of my most of my LPswere in Europe.

(47:15):
I have a couple of them in The US, I think acouple of them in Latin America, but most of
them were in Europe.
So the point was always like, what Chinesecompanies have a China Europe type of angle and
try to focus on that area.
So having a lot of these was coming mostly fromthe LPs.
So having that communication with them wasreally valuable.

(47:36):
And then having conversations with them, thatwas like critical in that case.
So having that communication is very important.
You also build trust, you learn, you got a lotof support from them.
And I also think a lesson that I learned istrack record is everything.
Because raising your first fund is, I'm notgonna say super easy, but I think it's than

(48:01):
racing, it's way easier than racing follow onfunds, because you're racing the first fund on
a promise.
But then you need to show track record for thesecond and the third fund.
And the second might be okay, if you have like,book value, if you're able to show that the
companies are actually raising funding, andthen you have like, but you need to realize the
returns.
So being able to have early exits where you canprove actually, liquidity and distribution to

(48:25):
the LPs, I think that's very, very important.
That's my experience, maybe other people hasdifferent, different experience when you say,
well, you know, I mean, I cash enough to beable to pay back to the LPs.
And I still maintain my position here tocontinue having a bit more growth.
So I had a couple of opportunities whencompanies raised valuations north of

(48:46):
100,000,000 $150,000,000 I had opportunities toexit and didn't, because there was obviously a
potential extra feature on those companies.
And then, well, one of them particularlycrashed dramatically.
And we could have done, we would have done inthat case 100x return in three years.

(49:08):
When you said that
you had an opportunity to exit at 100,000,000,they just did, you just advise the company not
to take the exit opportunity?
No,
no, I had it.
So one of the so the company closed a$50,000,000 round.
Sure.
And some of the investors offered to buy outsome of that because when I invested in the
company, they were not even online.

(49:29):
So I invested on not paper, but prototype.
Yeah, so it was a model that one of my LPs hada lot of experience.
He built one of the one of the largestcompanies in Europe, running that running that
model.
So I thought about it was not a full exit forthe company would have been an early exit.
Yeah.
So if at that time, I could have sold like halfof the shares that I had in the company, that

(49:55):
could have been a 50x return overall on thedeal, realized on three years after investment,
and still could have the potential of theupside for the remaining part.
So that was something that as an early manager,I think it's important to show that you have,
because this does the business of investing,but at the end of the day, every business is

(50:16):
about sales.
So you need to make sure that you consider theexit as an opportunity.
The stage that we were, I thought that wasquite important to do.
Sure.
No, so that's really helpful.
And, you know, emerging managers, it's just areally huge thing now in America.
Mean, there's thousands of emerging managers.
And what I learned is just a couple of yearsago, maybe twelve years ago, I was talking to a

(50:40):
manager now that is on Fund V.
So very, very more senior.
A lot of their capital is coming frominstitutions.
But this person was just saying twelve yearsago, you could count on your hand how many
other funds there were.
Now there's thousands.
And because there's so much of a lower barrierfor first time fund managers to get started and
and and start a fund.

(51:01):
They can they can build a track record withangels but like you said, even if you don't
know real LPs and even though you're sayingthat we should treat LPs like angels, you can
just get a syndicate of angels.
You can use angel list.
So, how is that ecosystem evolving in in EastAsia?
Are you seeing a lot more funds?
I've actually got two funds in my emergingmanager program that are that are in East Asia

(51:22):
as well.
But how are you seeing that ecosystem evolve onthe fund side?
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely more.
I mean, there's definitely more like micro VCsor new funds that are happening.
Think also so that process happened in Chinalike maybe five, seven, eight years ago when,

(51:43):
when suddenly, like the number of funds likeexploded by one order of magnitude, there was a
lot of government, government LP backing for alot of fun that had a massive disruption in the
ecosystem.
But there's definitely I will not I will notsay the growth is that big.
Yeah, but there's definitely more and moreearly stage funds that are happening.

(52:06):
Most of them they have some specific angle towhat they do.
So I also see more specialisation, there's afew emerging fund managers in like female
specific area, there's more on the impact sideof things.
We also look just because a lot of myinvestments are in the in the enterprise and
b2b software, we also see a few people thathave strong experience in that area.

(52:29):
And they understand that, that particularlyearly stages of enterprise tech, good guidance
makes a massive difference because sales cyclesare very long, and feedback loops are also
longer.
And the opportunity to get feedback andconversations from your, from your conversation
with your customers are also more difficultnavigating organizations is also more

(52:50):
complicated.
So these, these fund managers sometimes canmake a big difference into into companies.
When you're when you're like closing your firstlike five clients for enterprise, that way you
sell is very different than the way you whenyou're going to go from your first five to your
next like fifteen-twenty.
Because you're selling to a relatively closergroup, where you might have an internal

(53:13):
champion that you know directly, but as yougrow things need to need to evolve.
The way you do manage the whole customerjourney is very different.
There's also a shift from sales to retentionand make sure that you don't have churn and
there's great value into so there's a lot ofshifts and the organization needs to move on
account management besides like developing newaccounts.

(53:35):
So those are quite quite interesting.
We've seen also a few that are morespecialized.
So I personally like also to invest intraditional industries that are going through
digitalization and identification.
So we've also seen a few that focus onlogistics or manufacturing, construction, some

(53:55):
of these industries are doing pretty okay.
We have good experience with some of these fundmanagers, they come with a very strong support
element to their capital.
Think that's great.
Sure.
No, that's great.
And then, you know, real quick, and we got afew more minutes.
So SOSV, maybe you can walk us through thestructure, the criteria to get in and then you

(54:19):
know, the programme, right?
So it's like three, four months, I guess.
And then, and then there's a demo day.
So maybe just a quick, quick overview on SSBhow to get accepted.
Yeah, SSB is a global VC.
So we're actually a US VC, we have right nowalmost $900,000,000 under management.
We're very active investor, but all of ourinvestments are matched with an accelerator.

(54:43):
So we're a VC that provides support and for us,accelerators are the system that we can provide
consistent, scalable support to our portfoliocompanies.
And also, these accelerators become theonboarding to the platform where founders keep
to work with us, because we are not liketraditional accelerators that they work with
you for three, four, six months, we work withour companies forever, we have a more

(55:07):
structured way to work with the companiesduring the first few months of, of our
engagement through the cohorts that they worktogether.
But then we continue working with the companiesafterwards.
So in terms of investment, there's three mainareas of investment that we have.
So all of the of the SSB accelerators areindustry agnostic, and geography agnostic.

(55:29):
So it doesn't matter where we are, we areinvesting everywhere.
The location has a connection with historicalreasons or strategic reasons, but that doesn't
mean that because we're based in Shanghai, onlyinvest in Chinese companies or Asian companies.
We invest in companies everywhere.
And the same happens to our colleagues inShenzhen for hacks or hardware arm, or the New

(55:49):
York and San Francisco for biotech.
And these are actually the three areas ofspecialisation.
So we have biotech, hardware, and software.
So for me, I'm more involved in the softwarespace, where we have two main programmes.
One of them is for consumer internet, where wefocus mostly on mobile first, mobile only type

(56:09):
of markets.
So we do a lot of like Southeast Asia, India,Middle East, Latin America, etc.
And then the one that I run from Shanghai isenterprise and B2B software, which I mean
basically is based on the fact that China isvery, very competitive.
A lot of companies want to come to China to beable to sell or maintain their market share.

(56:31):
And if they are not productive here, they willlose market share.
So innovation for them is critical.
That's why a lot of companies run pilots inChina.
And we have so many companies that are able toget their first customers in China.
Getting into the programmes is actually closerto how most VCs work.

(56:51):
The best way is to get a referral.
We have thousands of applications every year.
As programs were more venture capital with aplatform than an accelerator.
So we look at companies that already haveinitial for the software side, we're with
companies that have product ready, have someinitial traction, and their help is mostly on

(57:15):
how can they scale.
So we work on scaling the companies, we have astrong focus on growth, helping the companies
on the B2C side acquire users without having topay for them.
In the B2B side, getting pilots and new clientsas fast as possible, and in terms that will
create a really good foundation.

(57:36):
Well,
see this also being valuable.
I think you hit on it a few seconds ago, justcorporates and other big startups that are just
trying to expand in China.
Do you guys have like a services arm or otherpeople that can help them if they really want
to?
Because a lot of people in New York and SanFrancisco, they just don't know the ecosystem.
So are there support systems for just generaltech companies or just other entities to kind

(57:59):
of try to immerse themselves in China?
Or are you guys only interested in startups inChina?
No, we invest in companies from all over theworld.
I mean, we've invested.
So recently, we invested in two companies thatare based out of San Francisco.
One company out of Montreal, and a fewcompanies from all parts of the world.

(58:20):
So we invest in companies everywhere.
They don't need to have a China angle.
Yeah, but but the fact is that once you startexploring China, you always will find out the
China.
Sure.
And because Chinese is such a big market thateven if you are a niche, even if the Chinese
market for you is a niche, that could bepotentially really, really large.
And it's surprising how this could happen.

(58:41):
So the companies don't need to be in China,they don't need to have a China angle, but we
need to be able to help because for us, thehelp that we provide the companies is our risk
reduction.
So we reduce our risk by bringing the companiesadditional support that will help them achieve
something faster.
And the whole whole service is actually end toend.

(59:02):
So even if it all eventually is to scalefaster, every single company that we invested
that raises CUSA, they did so with a businessmodel that was different than the one they had
when we originally invested.
So the first two weeks of the company, wereally turn everything upside down, and we look
for opportunities, bottlenecks, areas thatcould be changed.

(59:22):
And as we find those opportunities for change,we start experimenting, we start having
different conversations with customers, andcompanies start finding breakthroughs during
the first month, where suddenly they realize,oh, maybe I can try this differently.
And something suddenly works much better.
We work on focus, bringing best practices forscaling up, scaling up, like building the

(59:47):
foundation for scaling up, that's kind of likevery, very relevant for what we're doing.
And there's a lot of companies that they wantto come to China, and they come to a program
because of that.
But there are companies that will use China asa way to potentially explore other markets or
get kind of like a whole redesign of what theydo.

(01:00:11):
Yeah, that was amazing.
Hey, I know we're out of time and I know you'reyour well, you're kind of midway through your
happy hour and I'm honored to enjoy it withyou.
Next time we'll be both drinking beers in thesame hour.
Cheers with my coffee mug here.
But hope I either make it to New York.
Mean, hope I either make it over there or youmake it over here in New York and we could do a

(01:00:34):
beer in real time.
Definitely.
Looking forward to that.
Thanks for the invitation today.
Yeah.
Thanks for coming in.
I loved your story and I learned a lot.
I appreciate your time.
And Oscar, I might just give you a ring in afew minutes.
I have a couple questions for you after thiscall if that's alright.
Good.
Well, I'm gonna be studying I'm I'm actuallydoing a a keynote in like twenty minutes.

(01:00:57):
So, if you take two minutes, it will work.
Otherwise, might not might not work.
Okay.
Alright.
We'll catch up later, and, we'll, we'll hangyou know, we'll we'll keep you posted in the
ecosystem, and thanks for all your time.