So, you you have seen a lot of entrepreneur and you have invested in some of them. (Right.) Can you tell me how do you pick your winner? How do you pick your investees? Well … well … it's varies… from case-by-case. Normally, the first thing I'll look into as when I do my pitching events as well, is we look at two very basic things. First at the very beginning is number one - the business operational model Whether this model actually operates. Is that model business-ready for us? So, whether you can actually find the right customers? Are you actually talking to the right customers? Are your customers paying you or are they not paying you but they will be paying you later on? These are things that we will be looking at. If no one is paying you, then something is wrong with the model. And what… either you change it or you do something totally different. (But the business model in your mind …) And, that’s number one. That’s always number one, but it's not the only thing that we look into (Sure.) The second thing that we look into are the management team, the CEOs. Now the CEOs these days are fairly young It's not like … (How young are you talking…? ...) Well, we've seen like 20 somethings CEOs … well Facebook CEO is very young. And there are a lot of new CEOs are people who are in university or just graduated from university. There they create their own companies. I’m not saying that it's not good. I'm just saying that what… they have a passion, they have the dream, they have the creativity as well. But they lack a little bit … certain people will lack experience. Now, I’m not saying that young not having experience is a sin. But I will be looking more into the mentality, the psychology of the CEO and the team itself. The flexibility of them being reactive or proactive towards the market changes. Because one of the biggest thing that we’re looking at these days is: can you … I use a very simple analogy … is …you are the captain of a ship. So, I’m not gonna takeover and then drive the ship off. So, I will be just a passenger and your investors will be just a passenger, your customers will be just a passenger. Now, if you are steering the ship in the right direction, then it’s all safe. But if you can't see there is an iceberg coming along next, for the next two months, and it will hit … because it is moving along in your path and will hit you after two months. If you can't see that, then there is a problem. So, and when we see that, we see that how professional the professionalism of the CEOs and the management team. How … how well-informed or knowledgeable they are in their own industry, knows the risks that will be coming or what the risk may change and the market’s changing so rapidly these days. But on that point, right, it’s hard to know the person that well because they are not yet in that situation, how do you kind of assess to see what this person is going to steer the ship in the right direction? Right, we test them up. We test them up with some very simple things. We use time. This is part of what we do in terms of due diligence. So, we use this methodology in terms of testing of the CEO. So, we go in, we actually talk to the CEO and tell them okay, what do you see the risk coming along, how do you see what your market is, what your industry is doing, what kind of competitors are you facing and what they are actually doing. So, if you know about what your competitors are doing and not just reading from the newspaper, then I can get a good sense in terms of, okay, you are actually doing some investigative work, you are actually much more aware and open-minded in terms of what's happening outside in the world what’s changing. And we will be asking about things that are totally different but related to their consumer audiences as well. (To test if they know …) To test how they understand the customers. Because the customers change every day and the customers today you will have may not be the ones you have tomorrow. Even though you have like a 20-year old customer today tomorrow they will become like 30-year olds and they will have a totally different mentality. So, we will be testing and say, okay, what’s gonna to happen if you go … keep on continuously doing this, do you actually talk to the customers. One of the simplest question I ask is when was the last time you actually talk to a customer. (That's a good question.) That’s a very good question (Do they often fail?) Most of them failed. Most of them always have. And it's not just start-up companies, even listed blue-chip companies, I ask the same questions. And then most of them fail. Because CEOs will, most of them, be the old style CEOs will think that "Oh, I don't need to talk to actual customers. I’m not the sales. Just have my own people to do my work.’" (And in a way, they become complacent.) Yes, they become very complacent and that's actually a very wrong mentality because sometimes if you just rely on people. I talk to a lot of CEOs and they say, okay, "my business is not working". I say, okay, "Are you actually talking to the business, the customers themselves". And they say "no". I say "go down and talk to them"’ and then suddenly they have their own business coming back. And they realise that, okay, if you rely on their own sales agents or their sales people, it doesn't get the same effect as a CEO going down and talking to the customers. Because Because the customers will be feeling the same way and say "okay, I'm a very good customer. Why am I not taken care of?" (Yes.) So, it's like, especially when we do luxury businesses as well. So, we work with a lot of luxury businesses and luxury brands and in some cases some of the start-up they work with high-net-worth individuals and they also have to talk to customers who are not paying like peanuts but they actually paying a lot of money. They want them to pay a lot of money, but they don't talk to the actual customers themselves. And so I tell them "okay, do you actually understand the customers?" So, that's one of the ways that we do diligence and testing out whether you actually really understand what’s the driving force, what’s the motivation behind someone purchasing, pulling out money from their own wallet, and giving you that money to solve a particular problem at a particular time. Because from that on, if that CEO or if that company can tell me in one line those answers (They are really getting it.) and then I know they’re really getting it So, which means that they know what is going to happen later on. If even if the market, we can't predict what’s the market happening, but we can have very good educated guesses. So, it's like what is happening in China in terms of political situation that affects a lot in terms of the retail, the consumer, luxury brand businesses that one very good example in terms of 20 years ago, 10 years ago, everyone is talking about luxury start-up company going in and say I want to do and build a luxury business. And then if they don't know what's happening, the government's suddenly anti-corruption, anti-graft policies coming along, catching all the people from overseas, catching it back coming back to China, putting them in prison. So, no one is gonna buy like luxury items any more. They have to switch to something elso So, of course, people do switch. But whether you're switching early on anticipating it and getting more time to prepare or hits you at the very end and you're not prepared. So, either you flop down on the floor or you keep on moving.
