Sia Houchangnia, partner at Seedcamp, on navigating the venture landscape in Asia
The mistake many Western tech giants have made is seeing China as just another country where they could easily get a few million users instead of focusing on localising their product offering. Carlos is joined in the studio this week by one of our very own partners, Sia Houchangnia, who has recently returned from a month-long deep dive of exploring the venture landscape in China and south-east Asia. In this episode, Sia unpacks the key differences in approach between VCs in the far East and those in the West - from investment strategy and portfolio construction all the way to the differing perceptions of what investor value-add looks like. He also provides unique insights into the challenges faced by European companies when entering the hyper-competitive Chinese market (and vice-versa), the rise of Chinese ‘super-apps’, how to address the gaps in engineering talent coming out of the region today as well as why the prospect of more EU-Chinese collaboration is one we should be excited about. Links: Sia Houchangnia - twitter.com/siahouchangnia Carlos Espinal - twitter.com/cee Seedcamp - seedcamp.com