Name: VC Founder: AI Is Global — And It’s Not a Bubble
Uploaded: 2025-11-04T18:24:48.000Z
Duration: 39 min 47 s
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This episode of beyond the Valley is sponsored by the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology by Enterprise.

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Singapore investors are always on the hunt for the next big opportunity, especially when it comes to tech.

Over the past decade, an increasing amount of that attention has shifted toward Asia.

At the heart of this story is Singapore, a small city state that's become a major gateway for companies and investors looking to tap into Asia's booming tech market.

But how did Singapore build this reputation and what makes it such a critical player in the global tech landscape?

I'm Arjun Karpel and this is the third episode in a three part series exploring Singapore's rise as an Asian tech hub.

From serving as a home to major investors to becoming a key outpost for the world's biggest tech firms, I'll unpack how Singapore has carved out its role in in an ever changing industry.

My guest for this episode is a global tech investor based out of Singapore who's been in the city state for more than a decade, Magnus Grimlund, CEO of Antler.

Magnus, thanks so much for joining me today.

So Magnus, I just want to start with your experience in this region because you moved out here in around 2012 to and you co founded Zlora, this online fashion retailer.

When you made that move, what excited you about the region?

For a while I've been wanting to build something and we saw this huge opportunity here where the e commerce customer experience was really bad.

Like it was much worse than when I was in college a decade earlier.

And on top of that, you're in an environment with 600, 700 million people, the fastest digitization the world has ever seen, the fastest middle class growth, very stably growing economies.

So, so you knew this was a huge opportunity.

So we left to set it up here and obviously we faced some challenges you wouldn't have in some other markets.

You couldn't plug into an existing logistics network in the same way, payment systems and so on.

So there was a lot of infrastructure work on top of this billionaire e commerce business.

So from that experience, I mean, how has that shaped or helped you move into investing?

Well, so what was very exciting is that we sold the company back in 2015 to global fashion Group and as we went through that, a lot of the people we have worked with left to set up the next generation great businesses in the region.

So you have Nadeem and Kevin, you built Gojek $23 billion IPO out of Indonesia.

They used to work for us, we had shopping.

Chris Fangebilt, Shopee used to be part of Solora, Stashaway, Lockgard, Ora Shopback.

Like really great companies coming out of Zalora and on top of that across global Fashion Group.

We operated all over the world, in South America, in Europe, in the Middle east and other places.

And we saw the same thing there, like Tabby out of the Middle east which is one of the fast growing businesses there.

Hosamara we built that used to be part of our team and and Faraz who runs Noon.

So we had this tremendous access to amazing founders all over the world and saw two things really.

A, there's this high concentration of talent in informally successful businesses and you see that everywhere.

Or you go to Stockholm with Spotify or you go to London with Revolut, wherever it might be.

And the other thing you saw is that innovation is becoming more decentralized, right?

The concentration of innovation value creation in Silicon Valley has been reducing every year over the last decade.

And you know, when we started building Solora, I think there was 38 cities in the world that built a unicorn.

We have access to great talent and we're like, hey, we were on the back founders in building great companies all over the world.

And what was behind the decision to set up shop here for your investment firm Antler in Singapore?

Well, so first of all, Singapore is a great place to build out of, right?

Regulatory is great, easy to set up companies to access capital, great place to access talent, great global connectivity.

But we did evaluate or do we do this first in the U.S.

But the added advantage was that I built my last company out of here.

So we knew the ecosystem here really, really well.

We knew the VCs was a great way to get going, but

But if you look at the global team, they sit all over the world, some are in the us, some in Europe, some are here.

And we're now, you know, active in 27 locations globally.

How would you assess the current ecosystem in Asia?

Because it's such a diverse set of countries right around the region.

And you know, you look at China and that's got its own internal ecosystem companies, VCs.

And then you across kind of Southeast Asia.

So many different countries with different systems and so, so much fragmentation.

So, so what, what, what is it like building a company here and investing here?

Well, so first of all, your observation I think is, is great and there are, that gives so many opportunities, right?

In China you can really build anything like in, within certain technologies.

They're, they're leading in the world right now.

You go to India, you, you know there's close to like a million engineers being educated every year.

Like it's the biggest pipeline of engineers in the world.

Very fast growing, economy is stable, the public markets are becoming great.

I think you had that process there where the first wave of tech companies were building mostly for India and now they're building for the world.

You go to Japan where you have a very advanced economy where you can also build everything.

Very liquid markets like the, the, the public markets there behave a little bit similar to what you see in the US you go to Korea where you have, you know, world leading companies being built across very different industries from, you know, Blackpink and Netflix shows to, you know, very advanced technology, shipbuilding and so on.

And then in Southeast Asia you have very different places with very different type of talent, right?

Like in Vietnam you have a tremendous amount of tech talent.

In the Philippines you have a convent culture which is very close to the US In Malaysia you can attract incredible talent in the same way as you can here in Singapore.

Obviously it's one of the most favorable kind of business environments in the world, right?

So you have this plethora of opportunities.

So I think if you want to build here in the region, you got to kind of acknowledge that and take advantage of those different strengths, right?

So for example, we built Selora, we set up our tech team in Vietnam, we set up the headquarter here.

You had a big part of the team in Malaysia, a big part of the team in the Philippines.

And you use this differences as an advantage.

Now the tricky part is obviously the cultures are different all across, right?

So it's a little bit more difficult than just launching into big US market.

But those issues we have in Europe as well, right, like the culture in France, the way you buy things and the way you brand things and also regulation is different than in Germany and so on.

So when we built it was more fragmented, like we had to have a Quite tailored operation to each country.

Now you can, you can more and more kind of access all of Asia as one market when it comes to certain things because regulation is getting unified and there are, you know, a lot of cooperation between the governments.

So I think that we're entering into a really, really interesting time here in the region where, you know, within some technologies, for probably the first time in a long time, the leading companies are coming out of here on top of obviously accessing a market which is the fastest growing in the world with, you know, if you can include India and China, it's, you know, half of the world's population.

I'm going to exclude China for a moment out of my next question because, you know, I know that the founders there are instantly have a go global mindset and they want to be global companies.

But for other founders in the region, are they beginning companies with that mindset as well to go global, given, you know, already Asia is a big market if you put all the countries combined.

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VC Founder: AI Is Global — And It’s Not a Bubble

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