Rakuten Capital’s Saemin Ahn is ‘pessimistic’ on Southeast Asian VC: Good startups are getting ‘a lot less oxygen’

Saemin Ahn made his name betting on Southeast Asia. Now, as the region starts to pull itself out of a years-long venture funding slump, he’s not sure the old model works for the region anymore. “I’m pretty pessimistic about the prospects of venture capital investment in Southeast Asia,” Ahn, who leads international investments for Rakuten Capital, the corporate venture arm of Japan’s Rakuten Group, tells Fortune . “The way firms scale and succeed in Southeast Asia has a very different velocity curve [than the U.S.], which isn’t very compatible with venture capital.” Just five years ago, Southeast Asian digital companies…

Source: Fortune Crypto