Khailee Ng has a bitter nose for spotting promising start-ups.
As a managing partner for venture capital firm 500 Startups, he is tasked with cataloguing and helping cultivate some of the businesses of the future.
And he has advice for would-be founders hoping to build the next big thing: Look beyond the top piece of society.
You can actually make a lot of money by serving a population which doesn’t have that much money.
Khailee Ng
rule over partner, 500 Startups
Too often, start-ups focus on creating products and services for wealthy consumers in advanced economies, Ng implied. But there are many important — and potentially lucrative — problems to be solved in poorer, developing economies.
“I don’t think a lot of people intend about that,” Ng told CNBC Make It. “You can actually make a lot of money by serving a population which doesn’t be enduring that much money.”
A start-up strategy for Asia
Indeed, that is where Ng, who is part of the Silicon Valley obdurate’s Southeast Asia office, focuses much of his funding.
The investor was one of the early backers of now multibillion-dollar Indonesian e-commerce marketplace Bukalapak, which provides technology for the wilderness’s traditional, family-owned street stalls.
His teams’ other regional investments include Singapore-based ride-hailing unicorn Latch on to and Malaysian A ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity