The Rich Robinson Show - Season 1 - At the Speed of China

Peng Ong, on the ‘In-It-To-Win-It’ mindset: how decisions and faith help

• Rich Robinson

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Serial entrepreneur, Peng Ong, is Co-Founder and Managing Partners of Monk's Hill Ventures. He was previously a Venture Partner at GSR Ventures in China with wins like Didi Chuxing, Eleme, and Qunar. As an entrepreneur, he co-founded a series of successful companies including Match.com, Interwoven and Encentuate. 

He also happens to be one of the most generous and curious people I've ever met contributing to the startup community across Asia. 

In this episode, Peng outlines the several businesses he has founded and subsequently sold, including Electric Classifieds, Match.com, and Interwoven; and shares some insightful advice that all start-ups can take to heart.


Key Takeaways:
•Electric Classifieds was built for classified properties.
•IBM Singapore Software Labs was started by Peng Ong’s team.
•Chinese don’t have “work, life, balance” but just “make it happen.”
•Geographic Innovation, is where another country copied another countries innovation by modifying and localizing it.
•Technification of Services is where tech is using information to do good things productively.
• China's service industry is the most productive in the globe.

Best Moments:
•  Rich talks about why you should think twice before going to Bali.
oYes it's really hard hit, but I have to say it's pretty, pretty wonderful. I've said it on the pod before, like, if you're thinking of coming to Bali, think twice because it's not that great. Well, except for the nature, the culture, the weather, the people, the food, the price, but other than that, it's not so great [00:01:02.4-00:01:20.6]

•Peng explains that only engineers would consider constructing a dating website.
o I guess only engineers would think of this stuff, right? Yeah. How inefficient dating is, right?It's really inefficient if you think about it. Right? You go in a big room and you see like hundreds of people, and how do you know you are perfect man? [00:03:57.4-00:04:10.7]

•  Rich shares that most people spend 10 to 15% of their time thinking.
oBut probably most people, it's 10 to 15% of the time that they're thinking. Just look at the US right now.Everybody's like, "I'm red, I'm blue." And they just feel, and they don't even, they don't even thinking about stuff, right? " I'm not getting a vaccination because I'm red."And it's like,"What are you even talking about?"Right? Yeah. But that's human beings, right? [00:14:43.2-00:15:00.0]

•  Rich explains why he has such a soft spot for the Chinese people.
oLove it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have no genetic ties to China except through my two sons who are half Chinese. Because I figure, I gotta put some chlorine in my Irish gene pool. But I have such, warm feelings for Chinese people, right? I mean, that's why the whole kind of purpose of this book is that, I really think things are a lot more nuanced and I just love China and Chinese people. [00:17:44.3-00:18:04.7]

• Rich was enlightened by what Peng said about the "Technification of Services."
oOh no. You did. I love it. Yes. Yes, please. Oh, no, I, you got me all inspired. I didn't know it was called that though. That's, That's why I moved to Indonesia because the way you framed that was so beautiful. Please, please, share. Yes, yes, yes. [00:29:10.1-00:29:22.0]

Post-production, transcript, and show notes by XCD Virtual Assistants

Rich Robinson:

Peng Ong, ladies and gentlemen, as I was saying right before we hit record, the "Buddha of Startups of Southeast Asia," the man, the myth, the most generous soul in the startup ecosystem in Asia. He's gonna deny it, but I could tell you, it's unequivocally true. Welcome. Thank you for being on the pod.

Peng Ong:

Thank you. I cut my hair to match the name. Kidding.

Rich Robinson:

But you really leaned up and you got like fighting fit ever since I met you. So you don't really have that Buddha belly at all. You're a lean mean.

Peng Ong:

Coming back. Yeah.

Rich Robinson:

Everybody's putting on that COVID weight. Wow. It's so wonderful. The last time we saw each other I was in Jakarta. And visiting you and you were sort of renovating your apartment there. And we got to know each other through your time in China. And now since COVID, I've become a pandemic refugee in your adopted country of Indonesia, in Bali. And it's, it's really wonderful to be here.

Peng Ong:

Yeah, I'm glad you're enjoying Bali, when the tourists are not there.

Rich Robinson:

Yes it's really hard hit, but I have to say it's pretty, pretty wonderful. I've said it on the pod before, like, if you're thinking of coming to Bali, think twice because it's not that great. Well, except for the nature, the culture, the weather, the people, the food, the price, but other than that, it's not so great. So. Wow. So thank you so much for taking the time. I'd love to dig into your sort of origin story. You're the founding partner of "Monk's Hill." And I love the story how your secondary school is named,"Monk's Hill" and like go back to your sort of like Singapore public education roots. But you have this monk-like quality in the very best way. Not that you are sort of, you're far from being a somebody who's completely in solitude and removed from people. You're probably one of the most open helping people. But I'd love to hear about your upbringing in the Lion City and your path to UT Austin and your incredible entrepreneurial journey please.

Peng Ong:

I'll try and compress this as much as I can because I'm not a young guy and we could spend a whole hour doing it. So I grew up in Singapore, did the army thing here as all guys have to do, and then went off to Texas. Oh, my first exposure to computers was in high school. So that's when I knew I was gonna do computing. I was gonna be a doctor before then, but yeah, that's too long ago. And then Texas, and then graduated there. Went to Illinois, got my master's in Computer Science there.

Rich Robinson:

And that was the home university of"Netscape" eventually, right? Andreessen. Yeah.

Peng Ong:

Marc Andreessen was there building Netscape, or it wasn't called Netscape.

Rich Robinson:

Mosaic.

Peng Ong:

Mosaic. Went out there. Yeah, we would hear about this group in NCS. I forgot the name of the center, but they were all trying to build this thing that would run on the worldwide weapon. But we went off and did our own things. And after that I joined startups, you was startups after startups. And finally founded my own startup in '90 something, and that was match, it was called "Electric Classifieds."

Rich Robinson:

Electric Classifieds. Wow. I mean, just a storied, like so many great companies that came out of the "dot-com boom," but you were there even pre-dot-com boom, and that company exists 'til today. Like, there's very few companies like that, right? Spent 27 years.

Peng Ong:

Yeah. Even my second company got acquired and got sucked into some corporate view, all that. So yeah, it's a matches still around. That's pretty interesting.

Rich Robinson:

Like, tell us about that origin story. Like, sort of, first of all, like "Electric Classifieds," is like such an old school. It's Electrolux or something like that, right? And but then, like, just nailing it. Like, using the internet for "dating" that was like absolutely... There's so many crazy ideas that just went into, but that was great.

Peng Ong:

I guess only engineers would think of this stuff, right? Yeah. How inefficient dating is, right? It's really inefficient if you think about it. You go in a big room and you see like hundreds of people, and how do you know you are perfect man?

Rich Robinson:

All random.

Peng Ong:

Yeah. right?

Rich Robinson:

And then you have to have the bravery to go up and say, "Oh, excuse me." And then like...

Peng Ong:

Yeah, so the computer just takes care of that for you. So your date is gonna be a good match, right? At least psychographically, right? You gotta go figure out the chemistry.

Rich Robinson:

Like, somebody was going to figure that out eventually. You just happened to be there early, but like talk about a legacy. Like, I know, I'm thinking in my top of my head right now, three people that pop up. Who are all married with kids that are all met on "Match.com," right? Like, somebody said, like 6% of the Chinese people have Genghis Khan's DNA. Like, you've been more prolific in making people around the world than Genghis Khan through "Match.com," right? I mean, in an indirect way using code.

Peng Ong:

Yeah. The first few years was interesting because you go,"Oh, I met my fiance or my wife through "Match.com." Then you go,"Wow, really?" And then now it's like, "Chic everywhere you go, you see?"

Rich Robinson:

Yes. Now it's kind of weird to say you met somebody in a bar. It's almost kind of weird.

Peng Ong:

What were you doing there? Yeah. No. But yeah, we've basically changed human mating habits around the world.

Rich Robinson:

Right. Like, the number one drive, like you've literally careen that off in a different direction.

Peng Ong:

I think that's a PhD to be done there. How did that happen? Some anthropologists did some work there.

Rich Robinson:

Fascinating. Fascinating. Indeed. Wow. Can you share an anecdote from those very early days? Like, it was mid-nineties. Like, it was probably'95, '96 that things started to get traction. But you started at 94, right?

Peng Ong:

Yeah. But it was '95, '96 where we got, you know.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah. Like, something from those days, like, people that are doing stuff now, like, they wouldn't even have to think about now. But back then it was like a non-trivial problem.

Peng Ong:

And Gary, and we are talking about what kind of marketing programs to run, and I still remember, we were all talking about different ideas. And then someone said,"Look, guys, the internet is like 90% men. So you just have to get the women there and the men in shop it." It's a different internet now, but you know, you go onto the dating site and you find people that will match with you. Well, it wasn't that clear, early on. And how you start a city going was another thing that we learned. You needed to aggregate enough people in the digital community before it could get off on its own.

Rich Robinson:

Right.

Peng Ong:

Flywheel could keep going. For example, you know, and it's very practical. If you get on the internet and you try to find a date in your city, and you can't find one, drop off, right? And then, some people come on, they drop off, come on, drop off. And so nothing happens. So how do you get enough people into that group and before it starts to get going? And this is a standard...

Rich Robinson:

Marketplace conundrum, I guess, kind of.

Peng Ong:

Now it's like people have studied it that we were probably one of the first groups to see that, remember like 10 years before Facebook, and then five years before Facebook.

Rich Robinson:

Yes. A decade before Facebook. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, it's almost 30-year old company. Like, think about that when you started in '94, that would be like a company that started in '64, right? So, it's like, "Wow." That's some staying power. Amazing. And then from there, I know you're a very modest guy, but I'm gonna advocate for you. You get up to bat. Like, on your own with"Interwoven," and you create a unicorn before there's unicorns, right? And it was an incredible success. Like, tell people out in podcast land about the origin story, and like the problem that you were solving and what you saw.

Peng Ong:

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The next company I started as a company called "Interwoven." Some of you who are old enough, may have heard of it. It's an enterprise company. So, when I say "Match.com" everyone goes, "Yeah." When I say Interwoven, people go, "Hmm." Unless you are in the business of building websites and all that stuff that

Rich Robinson:

wow. Yes,

Peng Ong:

say, "Oh, what happened to it?" So the problem we're solving is pretty simple. How do you get like hundreds, sometimes thousands of people working together on one delivery platform that delivers something, right? Which is the website. And we figured out the workflow management, that's needed, and the quality testing, and the checks, and et cetera, that's needed to do this. And we did it in a way that was very natural to work patterns. So every other year we would have a bunch of people that came to attack the problem in different ways, and then two years later we see different guys because what I think we figured out right was how to address the issue the product market shift, right? And we grew from there. The dot-com bus hit us because our customers were building websites, right? So that was hard, but we survived that. And in the end, about 10 years after being a public company, we sold. Ultimately, ended up in HP and then I'm not sure where the parts are today. It's corporate land. So, that was an incredible experience. I think it was incredible because I was fortunate enough to find lots of really good people to work with. And I was so fortunate that I didn't realize how lucky I was until after the fact, right? When you start doing more and more things after Interwoven, and you start to realize, "Oh, you know what? You've gotta be careful with people sometimes." So that gang of folks, I still stay in touch with until today. So many of them, and some of them have done, built larger companies, et cetera.

Rich Robinson:

But I think that's important you say that is because you, like, there's a lot of people that are great engineers. But I think that your EQ and IQ are equal, right? So you have turbo engine under the hood, but you have this likeability and socialness. And it's like a lot of people who are really good at the engineering side can really make people want to follow them or work with them, right? And it makes a big difference, right? It really does.

Peng Ong:

Actually, I disagree with you a little bit because one thing I'm very conscious of is my intuitive EQ is very low. I grew up without my mom, right? My mom passed away when I was a little kid, so I never knew my mom. And comparing myself with actually I have a good friend who grew up without his dad, right? And we're nine at eight. Our ability to understand if people were happy, sad, you know, coming up to you. So the interesting thing I always tell my engineers is that,"The good news for you is if you have a reasonable IQ, you can use that to work on your EQ."

Rich Robinson:

But if it's the other way around, you're screwed.

Peng Ong:

But that's what I did. After a while you go,"Oh, you need to pat the guy on the back to say, good job." And then, the guy would go, "Whoa." You know, he'll be happy, right? And then, so I'll do that, right? And I'll figure out something else. And then, over time your brain starts telling you, and it becomes a matter of habit. Say,"Good job," right? Say, "Good job," because job right. You're not lying.

Rich Robinson:

Or maybe I just got to know you, 10, 12 years ago. When you'd already built that up, right? And since then, yeah. I mean, it's a real thing. Like, you're either shining light or your kind of shiny darkness. Like, they're kind of our people, or jobs, or just vibes that you can give out there. And in your ability to sort of like shine light on the startup community. Like, I make it my business to know a lot of people and to try to shine light myself. And you're just extraordinary at that, right? And I'm not, kissing your ass. I'm just telling you. It's like something where I was like, if I hear another story of like somebody who has kind of no business, getting Peng's time."Oh, Peng helped me out a lot. And it was great. He really sat down and he made me feel like I was the only person in the world." And I was like, That's who he is. That's what he does." So that's pretty terrific. And a lot of people, especially at your stage and age, are like,"I'm done." I'm like,"I don't even want to... I got enough friends. I don't wanna put my time into that," right?

Peng Ong:

No. But, it comes down to your definition of"Why you are even alive?" Right?"What you're doing here?" Right? And my definition is, I'm supposed to be helping people build value for society, right?

Rich Robinson:

That's great. I love it. Yeah. And I think, I have a similar view that, like, my wife's like,"What's your purpose?" And she made me go through and exercise, like,"My purpose is to be a connector of people and ideas, and opportunities. And to try to do it in a you know, positive way," right?

Peng Ong:

Can I take this a little bit segueways? I want to talk a little bit about... So the purpose thing turns out to be a really interesting and important question. Every time I talk to entrepreneurs, the ones that succeed have some level of clarity on why they are doing what they're doing, right? And what I discovered is, if you don't decide, right?"Consciously decide." This is my purpose, you have no purpose. So that's number one. It might sound technical, it might sound like a trick, a click bait or something like that. But if you think about it,"What is your purpose?" Your purpose is what you decide to do with your time, right? So if you don't decide to do something with it, you have no purpose, right? Even if the purpose is to experience life. At least you don't have a conscious purpose. Number two, which I learned over time is that if you decide on a purpose, the other thing you need in order to be successful is"Faith." I'm not gonna start preaching, but the faith you need, is the faith that your decision is the right one for yourself, for the world, because nothing tells you that. And if you don't have that, at some point you'll be going,"Why am I doing this?" And you give up.

Rich Robinson:

Indeed.

Peng Ong:

So faith is good. So decision and faith. This is odd because I'm a very engineering logic guy and when you reason down life to that level, you start to see it's not about logic, it's about decisions, faith on based on what you feel, right? What that you want to do, and then faith, right? Which is not logic again.

Rich Robinson:

But I think you've probably filtered so many people through your gills in so many situations, that you see engineering wise, the pattern of like, "Wow," if somebody really is aligned with their purpose and someone really believes then they can. Yes. So Justin Kan, the, founder of Twitch, I was listening to his podcast and he started "Atrium," and burned through 140 million bucks. And he's like,"I'm trying to solve this problem." He's like,"But I didn't care about the problem. I just did it because it was transactional." And he's like,"There's product market fit, but there really needs to be product market founder fit. Because even if there's a product market fit, who cares if you don't, if you don't really care about us." Right? Especially when shit like disintegrates, which it probably will then you're Yeah. So that's great. Excellent. That's really terrific formulation. And the fact is we're not really thinking machines, even the best engineer, we're feeling machines to think, and the best engineers, maybe quarter of the time, they're really thinking and there's just some sort of underlying emotion that maybe they can't even... But probably most people, it's 10 to 15% of the time that they're thinking. Just look at the US right now. Everybody's like,"I'm red, I'm blue." And they just feel, and they don't even, they don't even thinking about stuff, right?" I'm not getting a vaccination because I'm red." And it's like,"What are you even talking about?" Right? But that's human beings, right?

Peng Ong:

I've been very surprised that some of the conversations I've had with some good friends after two years.

Rich Robinson:

Right. Wow. And then from there you had another startup that ended up getting acquired by a small company called IBM. Another HP and IBM. You can't really do better than that. But tell us a little bit about that journey.

Peng Ong:

That was a little bit different after Interwoven, I wanted to come back to spend time with family here. And then, got really bored and started another company, which I should have thought two, three times about, because I ended up spending about six years on it, right? And we built it up, and we met some very good friends, and folks. Very good people that had, one of them is my partner at Monk's Hill Ventures.

Rich Robinson:

Kuo-Yi Lim, right? Yeah.

Peng Ong:

And another just used to work for Sum Pigeon. He just left. So a lot of really good people came out of even that last group, last company. Singapore Software Labs was started because of my team, right? So IBM Singapore Software Labs. So that's all historical. That's like 20, 15 years ago.

Rich Robinson:

Great legacy. And then from there, is that when you started to get a little bit more involved with your Chinese roots in the Middle Kingdom?

Peng Ong:

Yeah. That's just before I met you, when I told the company. And then, my dad had unfortunately passed around that time, at the end of the whole process. And I realized I didn't know our roots in China. I had been born in Beijing, and never went back after that. He left in the 1920s, right? So he lives in Singapore went through and through. And then one of my cousins, actually, my uncle got in touch with the whole bunch of the aunts. They were the "wonks" in Mandarin, in near Xiamen in a big city. Hsiang-chou is what we say in Hawkin.

Rich Robinson:

That hockey in like diaspora is like every where in the world.

Peng Ong:

Yeah, everywhere in Southeast Asia, alright. 80%, 70, 80% of the Chinese here, Hawkins or "Mei nan," as they would say in men in China. So I went and visit and I went to my home village, and met with 41 male Pengs. Might generation if you can't fix, but out here it's just me and my sister. So, it's not so, uncommon common. But in that village, where I'm from, all my dad's cousin's kids are Pengs, right? And the women actually left, so I didn't knew they got married and moved to other villages. It's that old school. Yeah. And so that was a big realization. Part of this, genetic journey that was sort of pushed off to the site to Singapore, right? And then the main pool just kept going in China.

Rich Robinson:

Fascinating. Wow.

Peng Ong:

And man, lots of people.

Rich Robinson:

Love it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have no genetic ties to China, except through my two sons who are half Chinese. Because I figure, I gotta put some chlorine in my Irish gene pool. But I have such, warm feelings for Chinese people, right? I mean, that's why the whole kind of purpose of this book is that, I really think things are a lot more nuanced and I just love China and Chinese people. And then from there, you got involved in the investment scene. Still pretty early on. It was still not that robust. And GSR was where you landed from the get-go, right? You had some sort of Singaporean connection there or something?

Peng Ong:

Richard Lim and one of the founders, is a good friend of mine. In fact, he introduced me to Kuo-Yi Lim. So my partner was introduced to me, through Richard.

Rich Robinson:

Amazing. Yeah.

Peng Ong:

But before we built... I was at GSR Ventures. I spent about five years there in Beijing. We had a house. We lived in Beijing. You knew us then.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah, you were already super generous and involved with the startup ecosystem there. I know you guys invested in Didi early on.

Peng Ong:

Yeah, that was an interesting...

Rich Robinson:

Do you have any stories around that?

Peng Ong:

I think, yeah, I'm just trying to figure out if they're public. But it's long ago enough. It's probably okay. So we actually... Richard has this uncanny ability to spot interesting things to do, right? So we saw Uber going in the US. In fact, the back office is in Palo Alto, of GSR Venture. So we saw Uber going in the US, and we thought,"Okay, it's gonna happen here. Let's go hunt for a company." So all of us went looking. And the first company we found that was reasonable was a company called"Yi Tao Yang Tsu." And we almost invested. We had term sheets with conversation, but the founder kept going back and forth with one of the partners so much that we went,"You know what? Probably the wrong fit here." And we backed off. And the next guy that walked in the room was Tsian. And they had been asking for way too high evaluation from too many people that by the time they came into us, whatever we offered them. I won't say the number, but, they said,"Okay." And we did the series A and that returned us something big.

Rich Robinson:

Nice move. Yeah, that's not just a fun making investment. That's a multiple VC firm making investment. Yeah. And like, not obvious, right? Because there was a few dozen competitors and he was a young guy, not necessarily that experienced, he wasn't a first time entrepreneur, right? But you guys smelled something like, what was it that you sort of like?

Peng Ong:

No, that's the other thing we do reasonably well. We still feel a bit and I still feel a bit using the same kind of thinking. We invest in people, we don't invest in ideas as much, right? And if you find the right people, they'll have the right ideas anyway, right? So we got the gut sense that he was gonna build a big company.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah. And you were absolutely right. As I understand it, he had a great relationship with the taxi drivers, which was a little bit unusual. And then there was one really bad night of snowstorms in Beijing and he was able to like call all these taxi drivers or text them. And then they came out of their night off. And then, everybody's like,"Wow, DiDi's amazing." So there were people that had to walk home. It took them like two or three hours. But there's that kind of like pivotal moment, right? So it's really fun to watch who knows who's gonna be winner, but you guys picked well.

Peng Ong:

There are few. The other more gang in Hsiang Chou, when they were still in their dorm rooms we invested. That was...

Rich Robinson:

Yeah.

Peng Ong:

Four guys in the dorm room.

Rich Robinson:

Now, their delivery service, the amount of volume that they do, it's just become part of the fabric of society.

Peng Ong:

Yeah. And that's just in 10 years, right? Thereabouts, 11. So it's amazing how fast tech can take over, how we do things just change the way we think about what's possible, what's doable.

Rich Robinson:

Fabric of society. Yeah. So I guess maybe you are seeing, because you already knew Silicon Valley well, and you knew Southeast Asia well, so you go to China in '09, it was still kind of fits and starts, like it was early days in a way, but you saw that rapidly change and you actually participated in it, you actually, you made it happen with some of the investments. Like do you have an anecdote or something that you kind of felt like,"Oh wow, like all of a sudden the treadmill got a lot faster here in China," or there's something?

Peng Ong:

It is not I can't give you one. I know you asked me to think about, I can't give you one where it was kind of,"ah." It's just a realization that people were working at a different rate than Silicon Valley, right? The weekends, there's no weekends. People just kept working, right? And when they were burnt out, they'll just take some time off and they'll come back and kept working. The intensity, you know. We've got companies that were made interviews at 9:00 PM to basically make sure you know what you are getting into. Just to be clear, I'm talking about startups here, right? Not everything, but just startup. So they'll have interviews at 9:00 PM at night. So when you come in and you look around, the whole office is there, right? So, if you're gonna take this job, you're signing up for that, right? There's no such thing as"work, life, balance." It's just,"make it happen." And this is a bad thing, kind of point of view. I think this is a choice thing, kind of point of view, right? You can choose to do that or you can choose to have a balanced life, whatever that, right? And some people think and I do too. If you think about excellence in the world, relative to everybody in the world. There is no balance. The world's best tennis player wakes up playing tennis, wakes up, gets ready. What he or she eats is about tennis, right? The diet. Everything's about tennis. Watching tennis.

Rich Robinson:

Schedule, recovery, schedule, everything. Yeah.

Peng Ong:

Yeah. I know a Olympic swimmer well, and it's family and there's no balance, right?

Rich Robinson:

But nobody's forced them to do it, right? You're right. Like, you probably chose that earlier in your career. You were doing that. And in my twenties and early thirties, I was constantly sleep deprived for better or worse. But I want it. Like, I was in it to win. Like, I really wanted it. These days I have a much more balanced lifestyle, but I'm still in the game because I have a skills, experience, network, and I can do things that I couldn't do when I was younger. But yeah, you're right. There actually is a choice.

Peng Ong:

Yeah. And I remember when Kevin Hartz, he was the CEO of Eventbrite, when he visited China and we're talking about it. His comment is kind of clear,"We in Silicon Valley need to be well woken up a little bit. We should be afraid." The intensity in which the Chinese company prosecutes the market is just, unheard of, right?

Rich Robinson:

Well, I mean your Olympics, example is clear, right? You can see all of the medals that China had this year versus Brazil versus the one in Beijing, right? And like, they're competing on a global basis. And that's part of the book is that like,"Maybe you don't want to be in China or maybe you don't even think that you're going to be necessarily competing against Chinese companies, but you probably will be competing at Chinese companies and there's a lot to be learned," right? The JoJo Leo, 996 or Joe tsiang tee, whatever it is, right? 9, 12, 7 days a week. That's one component. It's multi-variate, but there's all kinds of other things that can be learned. And my purpose of the book is like, people should be kind of like a Sputnik moment, like a wake up, like,"Hey, you know what? This is coming and there's a lot to be learned from it and you don't have to embrace this super intense work schedule, but there's other components that you should."

Peng Ong:

And it's kind of interesting that the core of, I guess, the US was about competition, making the country better in business, et cetera. And I think we shouldn't look at it any differently now that China is able to compete at that level. So, I think the effects of the sort of falling out between China and the US in the long run might be good for the world. And in terms of creating two innovation tracks. That's happening.

Rich Robinson:

That's a excellent point of view. That's a very ultimately, optimistic and positive, why not?

Peng Ong:

Well, what we're sitting in Southeast Asia and we're looking at both of them, right?

Rich Robinson:

Well, talk about that because Monk's Hill now, you guys are doing terrific investments in a lot of companies, Series A, early stage. Like,"What's happening in Southeast Asia?" I know that lot of people are looking at Silicon Valley, but other companies you look at, how many are really looking at Silicon Valley versus looking at China for inspiration.

Peng Ong:

As I said, we're looking at both, because there are companies, especially sitting out of Singapore, they're going after the global markets. Just like companies sitting in Israel, right? If you're sitting in Israel, you're not trying to sell to Saudi Arabia, and you're going after the global markets, right? So there's a whole bunch of, I would say a third to half the companies in Singapore are not as concerned with the regional markets. The token or grassroots markets, as they say in China, right? In China is just, mostly grassroots, big cities, that's all we go after in China. But in Southeast Asia, there's a group of us that are going after the US markets, the European markets, the Australian markets, first world, or should I say, "Developed Economies." So that's one group of folks. So generally we look at Europe and US as examples, models for us to maybe imitate or at least get inspiration from. And then, there is China, and how the local companies, the regional companies think very, very helpful. For example, just something that's actually quite close to me. When Nadiem started Gojek in Jakarta, I think one of our GSR partners was linked to his investor, and he was invited to invest. So, he did, and at some point he brought a small group of Gojek folks including Nadiem to China to look at. And one of the things they showed them was our company "Elimong," right? And guess where Go Food came from?

Rich Robinson:

Direct inspiration. Excellent. Highest form of flattery. Yeah.

Peng Ong:

Well, yeah. But this is innovation, I call it "Geographic Innovation." This happened throughout the history of the US copied from England. England copied from, I don't know where else, and then the Koreans and the...

Rich Robinson:

England copy from China, right? The porcelain and tea curing, right? Those are two technologies. And that was like, all it comes around.

Peng Ong:

The Koreans and the Japanese, and now the Chinese. And now you know the Southeast Asia. Why create new ideas when you can just transplant them?

Rich Robinson:

Sure. Right. Yeah. And then Africa will copy Indonesia and India, right?

Peng Ong:

Yeah. But it's not just copying. It is always in copy, and modified, and localize, and that's where success and failure comes in, right? If you don't localize well enough, you don't succeed. So, a lot of these companies doing regional businesses get inspired by the Chinese businesses, like, for example, previously the P2P, and they got into the same problems as the Chinese P2P. It's almost endless. The way I talk about this is I hate to use this term, but it properly describes what's happening is the"Technification of services." I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this to you. It's services at about 4,000 GDP per capita gets to about high.

Rich Robinson:

Oh no. You did. I love it. Yes. Yes, please. Oh, no, I, you got me all inspired. I didn't know it was called that though. That's why I moved to Indonesia because the way you framed that was so beautiful. Please, please, share. Yes, yes, yes.

Peng Ong:

So, half the GDP services at about 4,000 GDP per capita, that's China about 10, 15 years ago. All of that is totally inefficient because you're just using human beings running around trying to figure that out. And if you take a look at what tech is good for, tech is good for using information to do things productively. And in fact, just using information you can double, triple, quadruple the productivity of the services sector, which is what happened to China in the last 10, 15 years. I would argue that China has the most efficient services sector in the world because, it's all new and it's all computerized, right? And the profit margins of this whole 6 trillion in GDP of activities go to tech companies, mostly.

Rich Robinson:

Wow.

Peng Ong:

That didn't exist.

Rich Robinson:

Beautiful nuggets.

Peng Ong:

So, I realized this, about 10 years ago, and when, "Okay, maybe it's time to come down here." Because our GDP here, you know, about five years ago was about four times.

Rich Robinson:

It lagged. It wasn't ready in ready in '09 but now it is ready.

Peng Ong:

So we started Monk's Hill about 2014, cut off check 2015. And the rest is history. And that thesis is happening, right? If you look at retail, right? The biggest companies and retail tech companies now, and not quite the biggest because the brick and mortar guys are still quite big, right? But pretty soon you can see the right thing in the wall. Just like the biggest retail company in the US is not Walmart, right? It's Amazon. This has happened throughout the world. So we see that in retail and that's just the higher end of services, logistics, transportation, everything, the recruitment property sales, the whole SIC courts of services is gonna convert over the next 10 years in Southeast Asia, just like in China.

Rich Robinson:

Wow, I think that can be a whole chapter. The technification of services, and I give multiple shout outs to you. I don't know how many times I've repeated that to frame that in my mind that it's 11,000 US GDP per capita in China. But of course, you know.

Peng Ong:

There's four here, right?

Rich Robinson:

Yeah. But if for here, right? But then, the genie coefficient just so China, it's actually probably much higher than the big cities probably. But here, there really is this inflection point, as informed by GDP and like,"Okay, we're ready now." Like, the oven is like, ding, now it's ready to go baking, right? Otherwise, it just wouldn't work, right? So, that's one of the reasons why I started really looking in Indonesia when I had a chance to be here. So thank you for that. I just forgot you called that"Technification of Services." That's beautiful. Like, there's some like wisdom of you to like pulling together these decades and like shifting between hemispheres, and countries, and regions, and then being able to see.

Peng Ong:

I just happened be there, and I happened from here. So it's not that hard. You see it. And you see the value creation, both for the founders, investors as well as for society, right? Think about how convenient it is to live in Beijing now versus when you first were first there? Here, it's a new day.

Rich Robinson:

But also Beijing has the most billionaires in the world. It's not Singapore or London, or New York. Most of their children are like, going to school with my children. So it was like,"Okay, maybe I don't need to spend 150,000 US dollars a year after tax for like, middle school, high school and preschool." Right? And then, I can move somewhere else, right? It's been wonderful to chat with you. I really love your sweeping views and your amazing entrepreneur journey and what you're doing in the start of community. I look forward to giving you a big hug. Next time I see you in person in the Lion City or Jakarta.

Peng Ong:

Yeah, when we can actually hug.

Rich Robinson:

Yes. No kidding, right? I just gotta hug myself in the morning to get going. But hey, thanks so much. Terima kasih banyak. And to be continued.

Peng Ong:

Yep.

Rich Robinson:

Thanks a lot.

Peng Ong:

Bye-bye. Thanks.