The Taste Gap: Tech Makes Creative Work Forgettable
Technology makes content creation effortless, but widens the taste gap between what we produce and what truly matters. Excellence requires craft.
Scarcity Is a Feature, Not a Flaw
Scarcity doesn’t hold Southeast Asian founders back—it sharpens their edge. In Manila’s pressure cooker, ambition thrives where patient capital is rare, challenging Silicon Valley’s playbook with hard-won resilience.
The Taste Gap: Tech Makes Creative Work Forgettable
Technology makes content creation effortless, but widens the taste gap between what we produce and what truly matters. Excellence requires craft.
When Legacy Buys Culture: What Publicis' Hepmil Acquisition Really Means for Asia's Media Future
When a Euronext-listed holding company writes an undisclosed check for a meme factory, it's not buying jokes—it's buying the blueprint for how marketing works when platforms automate agencies out of existence.
Southeast Asia’s Power Moves – October 2025
Southeast Asia’s digital economy is undergoing a strategic transformation, with capital and regulatory power moves laying the foundation for the next decade. This month’s digest reveals how disciplined investment, infrastructure buildout, and policy clarity are reshaping the region’s future.
Why Entrepreneurship Education Is Southeast Asia’s Most Strategic—And Most Overlooked—Ecosystem Lever
Southeast Asia's future will be scripted by young builders who learn to navigate uncertainty, build from scratch, and iterate through failure. The organizations teaching them how to do that, at scale, are the region's most undervalued backbone.
Who's Still Writing Checks?
Despite a 54% funding drop in 2024, a handful of investors are still deploying capital in Southeast Asia. See who’s shaping the next cycle of innovation.
Capital Darwinism Favors the Efficient and the PH was Built for It
Southeast Asia’s Series A squeeze stripped away the illusion of easy money. Singapore may command 88% of fintech capital, but Philippine operators thrive on discipline. The irony? The market that couldn’t attract capital may be the only one that learned to live without it.
Southeast Asia's Series A Squeeze: Restructuring Regional Venture DNA
Southeast Asia’s venture landscape is undergoing capital Darwinism. The so-called “Series A squeeze” is rewriting the rules of survival: only startups with discipline on unit economics and clear profitability paths are breaking through.
SEA's Funding Slow Burn—Is Early-Stage the Last Safe Haven?
SEA startups face crunch: Over 95% of deals are early-stage, but seed funding has halved and late-stage capital remains scarce. Singapore claims 92% of funding, while more founders now contend with shorter runways and tougher fundraising than before.
Oblique Digest: Southeast Asia’s Power Moves - September 2025
Southeast Asia’s startup map is shifting. The Philippines edges past Indonesia in funding, Sea proves profitability is possible, and AI still draws outsized bets. Here are the power moves and undercurrents shaping the region’s next growth cycle.
Data as Collateral: The Rise of Invisible, Perpetual Debt in the Platform Economy
How Southeast Asia's super apps turned financial data into the new collateral — and what it means for millions caught in an invisible web of digital dependency
Debt as a Lifestyle Choice: BNPL is Rewiring Money in the PH
No credit card? No problem. In the Philippines, millions buy phones, groceries—even tuition—through Buy Now, Pay Later apps. For some it’s financial inclusion, for others a debt trap. BNPL is reshaping how Filipinos borrow and spend.