This week’s show guest is Henek Lo, founder and CEO of HYPE. HYPE is a group of venture builders who helps startups directly in their expansion into Asia. The company leverages its local market expertise, operations networks, and experience to assist growth-stage companies with their global expansion. Henek used to be the GM of WeWork and Airbnb out here in Asia. And after struggling to find the right strategy and partners to aid in the respective companies’ expansions, he realized the potential he had to start has own company called HYPE.

Jay: Hey, Henek. How you doing, man? Thanks for coming on the show.

Henek: I’m good. Thanks for having me.

Jay: So I’m pretty excited to have you on and to talk about your latest venture and your exciting new company. After we met not too long ago and caught up and chatted about what you were doing, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to get you on, and I think it’s quite a unique business that you’re running. I’m excited to dive in and let our audience here what you’re up to. But before we do that, why don’t you just give us a little bit of background on yourself — where you’re from and maybe some industry background or work experience and that sort of stuff.

Henek: Sure. Sounds good, man. My name is Henek. I’m the cofounder and CEO of HYPE, the first venture builder of its kind in the region. I was originally born and raised in Hong Kong, and, like most people that inserted in the industry 10+ years ago, I started my career in finance in a company, actually, called Bear Stearns. A fun fact to Jay Kim’s audience — Jay and I used to work on the same trading floor for a while.

Jay: That’s right.

Henek: The only difference is I think Jay caught the couple of good years. And the year I went in was when Bear went down. So from that experience, jokes aside, it definitely set a little bit of how I looked at my own career, how I wanted to develop professionally. Hong Kong is a very expensive city, so even just thinking about startups back in 2008, ’09, around ’10, that area, it was quite difficult. There were not too many opportunities.

So in 2011, actually, two of my good friends were telling me about Airbnb. Brian Chesky came to Hong Kong in 2011 for a startup weekend. They were close to the unicorn status but by all means, they were already a very large startup from the US but no presence, not much brand awareness in Asia. And I think through that event, they mentioned to me that, hey, they’re looking to come to Asia. I was kind of stalking and following the company for a while and finally when I saw an opportunity, an opening, I put my hand up. 18 rounds later, I became the first employee they had in Asia as their head of sales, actually. So this was 2012.

Four years later, I did many roles in the company. In particular, we opened the Asia hub for them in Singapore. I lived there for a year and a half. We went on to open a Korea and Japan office, and finally, in late 2013, the company was thinking about entering China. So finally, I moved myself to Beijing, and we launched the landing operations in China for Airbnb. And finally in 2015, after two years of hustling and just really trying to get the product off the ground, I think we did pretty well. We raised Series E at the time in 2015, mid-2015, from Asia investors and China investors at 25 and a half billion.

Actually, shortly after that, a mixture of personal reasons, and I wanted to come back to Hong Kong as well, there was another company, a high-growth company, called WeWork that was expanding to Asia at the time. So I joined, again, as their landing team, kind of doing it one more time. Launched three countries for them as their Asia GM, excluding China. And we opened up Hong Kong, Seoul, as well as Sydney. That really was the last six years of my life, going through different ventures and helping them expand in Asia.

And finally, in early 2017, actually just around when the Jay Kim Show was starting, I remember when I was just starting, that was one of the first podcast I went online. And I remember thinking that was pretty cool that there’s a show like that coming out of Hong Kong. Later I realized that you’re—

Jay: I was trying to get you on when you were still at WeWork.

Henek: I think I was just leaving at the time as well. So the timing didn’t work out so well. But thanks for having me back on again. With all that said, I am now where I am with HYPE.

Jay: Yeah. So we’re going to get into HYPE. Just dialing back a little bit… Thanks for sharing the background. I have fond memories of sitting on that trading desk with you. I think you were just a few seats down. But I just want to touch on something that you said.

I think that that time after Bear went down and the financial crisis came and hit, it was very difficult for a lot of people that were… Like you said, Hong Kong is a very expensive city. And at the time, Wall Street was the Mecca of earning money and, particularly in Asia, there was not really a lot of early-stage companies or startups that were planted here yet. So I think that a lot of people that were sort of in finance, they didn’t really think outside the box. After Bear went down, it was kind of like, okay, now which other company am I going to join that is going to pay me a big salary to sit at a desk and virtually do nothing all day? So I think that’s why a lot of people were kind of stuck in this mindset.

And so later when I heard that you had joined Airbnb, I was pretty intrigued, and I was also impressed because it takes a lot of walk away from that steady paycheck, high paycheck and really break away from the norm because I think Hong Kong, being a financial hub, it’s very, very sort of Wall Street, finance-centric. And so you don’t really hear about a lot of people doing…especially back then. I think it’s a lot better now. But back then, people just branching out and taking a leap of faith and maybe joining a startup… Although, obviously Airbnb was pretty much a household name by then.

I think it was a pretty good move for you, and I that having been able to see both sides and also join a couple of quite large later-stage startups, I’m sure, has helped you progress and kind of form the type of company that you want to start for yourself.

Henek: Definitely. One note on the Airbnb topic that you mentioned just now though, I think that’s also an interesting dimension. A lot of people, they were just getting unicorn status and being a really great startup, but I just want to say, when I went to Airbnb, I was taking a pretty large pay cut anyway. Obviously trading pays well. But at the same time, it wasn’t the company and the valuation that really got me. It was, even though there were a lot of interviews that I had to do, the people really did inspire me a lot in the process.

These are very passionate people out there to solve a pretty tough problem — how to actually get people to open their doors and welcomes guests. So that, out of everything, really kind of showed me a little bit about what it can be like outside of finance, per se, and surrounding you with people that are passionate, very energetic, and really want to start something.

And I think that just really was very infectious, in a way, and it really got me to ignore the fact that I took a very large pay cut and work toward something as a common goal. That was very satisfying.

Jay: That’s a great point, actually, because after the financial crisis, I continued on working. I did a startup brokerage, and then I worked at a longer broker after that. I’m still doing the same thing. But I definitely noticed exactly what we were talking about. That was sort of when I started getting interested in early-stage investing personally, and I started just using my own money and dabbling and trying to learn and going to conferences in Silicon Valley and TechCrunch and this sort of thing. One thing that always stood out for me is exactly what you said — the mindset of people that were working in the startup early-stage investing or startup ecosystem was completely different than what I had experienced at Wall Street. Wall Street was basically driven by just money and how to make more of it or how to make your company more profitable so, in turn, you could earn a bigger bonus at the end of the year. Versus the very different working together, having that inspiration to build something great, which is what attracted me, initially, to Silicon Valley and that sort of thing.

So you said you had a lot of interviews there. It sounds like Goldman Sachs’ interview process.

Henek: Actually, it was more than any interviews I did in finance. Just to go off a little bit of what you said, as well, I was definitely the first banker they had hired at the time, I guess. So they really, really had to make sure I was the right guy. And actually, the last interview, they even flew me out to San Francisco for less than 12 hours, just to meet the founder at the time. These were very early days, so Airbnb was only 200+ people at the time. Now it’s a 3,000, close to 4,000-people company. But that was probably the reason they interviewed me so much.

Jay: Right. Well, that’s pretty cool. I think that’s something you get to own on your resume or list of experiences, to be the first pioneer employee out here. So that’s awesome.

Henek: It’s very lucky. Yeah.

Jay: You’ve drawn off of your experiences at some of these late-stage, obviously huge companies now, but I think that… Why don’t you talk us through. Just give us a brief introduction of what HYPE is and then maybe you can give us some color based on your experiences of these companies trying to expand into Asia, how that helped you really form the business model that you’re running now.

Henek: Sure. When I say that we’re the first venture builder of its kind in the region, we specifically help startups build and expand in Asia, operationally. And so just a little bit about the cofounders… All three of us are actually Airbnb alumni. My two cofounders, Patrick and Rob, Patrick was the GM for Korea launching Korea together with us back when we first started. Rob was the head of ops for Beijing, the China office of Airbnb. So we all worked very closely together between 2012 all the way to ’16 when Airbnb was doing an expansion at the time. So we had extensive experience operating with each other, strategizing with each other.

And actually, previous to Airbnb, Patrick also launched Google in Korea. As I mentioned just now, after Airbnb, I went to WeWork. So one of the commonalities from all three of these companies — be it their hypergrowth, very fast growing companies, very well-funded — is that all three of them for us in Asia was starting from scratch. We were the first people on the team. We were basically formulating a strategy, all the way building from two-man teams, then later, all the way down to 30. And now the Asia hub at Airbnb, for example, is like 400.

What we realized is that, from the 8-plus years of experience of expanding, we saw, obviously, the great growth of these companies but, more importantly, the challenges that came with it.

So we took at know-how, and then we wanted to make it our mission to help startups execute well. Because we think that there’s actually a lot of brilliant ideas. You alluded to it a little bit. Back then, it was not so much talked about for the startup world. But now the ecosystem is quite mature. There’s more funding around. There’s more venture capital. There’s more accelerator programs. The government is really getting on it, on trying to support the environment as well — various governments in Asia.

But a lot of them don’t get out of pre-A or Series A. Let’s just say with Series B, there’s a big gap. A lot of people don’t expand out of their home country.

When we saw that, we saw, obviously, a business opportunity to be able to help these companies push past that benchmark because once you’re through that and you become a regional company, I think the investor attention then becomes more regional and even global. And later, that actually really helps you become a mature company because now, with technology and the penetration of tech in most platforms, you already can’t develop a product only for, let’s say, Hong Kong. You can’t develop a product only for Singapore. Even wider Southeast Asia — and dare I say even China and India, these large powerhouses of domestic startups need to be a little bit more internationally mindset already.

So the three of us were very lucky to get my cofounders to start this together with me. And we closed our own one-million-seed round in Q4 last year. People are interested in the idea and what kind of companies we can build. In six months since then, we have worked with more than seven startups by now in different capacities. A few of them to mention… We helped Carousel land in Hong Kong. We built out a team here, operated a team, and finally hired a GM for them. Snapask, which is an on-demand tutoring company, is going from Hong Kong to Korea. And lastly, one pretty interesting one recently, which is a California startup called Bee Token. That is one of the companies that raised a successful ICO that’s exploring Asia.

So being in HYPE gives us the freedom to work with all these different companies and also allows us to use our know-how and experience from before to really operate and help create growth and help them expand.

So that’s, in general, in a nutshell, what HYPE is.

I think your question is how we came up with the idea. Is that right?

Jay: Yeah.

Henek: I think the idea really stemmed from one main thing, which is Asia is just very complex. If you look at the three main regions — US, Europe, and Asia — really, in the US, if you’re a Californian startup, you can expand to middle America. You can expand to the East Coast, and you have a large population you can tap on with a single language, more or less the same culture, the digital channels and growth and acquisition channels are more or less the same. The platforms are Facebook and Google, so and so forth.

In Europe, a little bit more fragmented, but most of it will work. And again, the digital platforms remain the same. But you move to Asia as a region, China — is goes without saying, everything is a parallel universe there. Google and Facebook no longer penetrate. The way you do business development no longer penetrates.

Culturally speaking, Southeast Asia, you have 10-plus different markets, different language, different ways of doing business. And then India, which I don’t have as much experience in, but it is similar in the sense that it’s a large domestic market, so also very hard to tap into because of the way that business is done there.

All these things put together, we notice a couple of gaps, I think. The first gap is that in the ecosystem in Asia, it’s matured a lot. Investors have matured a lot. There’s a lot more great startups coming in and not to even mention just now, ICOs coming to kind of fuel the ecosystem a whole different way.

So funding is not really the main issue anymore. It’s really the know-how of expanding and how to get the company from the A to the B and all the way to Series E or F and finally to an exit. That is important. Because different stages of companies requires different ways of working with it. You can’t apply the way you do corporate into a startup because that would basically just suffocate the startup and the other way around. So you have to always adapt and always change.

I think the second thing is also there’s not too many success cases of somebody completely beginning to expand in all of Asia.

Jay: Except that we’re heard the failures. That’s for sure.

Henek: Correct, man. Recently there has been some news. But more importantly is it almost seems like post-corporate, like the large investment banks and consultants of the world, which is pretty much plastered all over Asia. And compared to their startups, they’re having a difficult time. So one interesting fact is actually a lot of the people from HYPE — and we’ll talk a little bit more about our team’s background later as well — is we actually have been on the corporate side as well. So we see what it takes to kind of move the companies and the startups that we work with to a more mature or…even not today but planning for that down the future.

I think that’s very important.

And the last thing is startups expanding in Asia — US to Asia, Europe to Asia, or even the other way around — all have one common problem. Actually, you can be the best startup that you can be in the US, but you come to Asia, nobody has heard of you. So they have a difficult time in recruiting. So one thing that we saw is during the first year of landing, most of these amazing startups actually have a difficult time. What we saw as our opportunity is that we can be the proven operators for the startup as their partners, helping them build a new market and kind of — the way I always say — is tune the car up and then hand it back to them with a race-ready car. And that way, we can really help them land and operate successfully.

What we do today is we do what we call Build, Operate, and Transfer — or short for BOT — where we build companies. We build the strategy, operate the team, and finally, we hire a local market lead and transfer it back to the company. That, in general, is why we started the company.

Jay: This is pretty fascinating because I think ever since Asia was on my radar, which was, I first moved to… Back in the day when I was still at an investment bank, I worked in Japan for a year back in 2002, 2003. It was just over here on an assignment. It was kind of when I first got interested in Asia. But the one thing that I noticed is that the entire spectrum — I’m not even talking startups. I’m talking large corporates, multinationals — they all have the same sort of challenges. And for most of them — and you know this because you used to work in the business — Asia is a cost center. They don’t actually turn a profit. A lot of time, it’s just sort of a global footprint-type branding exercise. So even more challenging, I would think, is a startup or a private company trying to do the same thing.

You mentioned that very nuanced silos within Asia — even within China itself — every region, I feel, is different. And every city — first tier, second tier — they all have their own very nuanced ways of doing business. So I think it’s extremely difficult for a startup — or any company, for that matter — to expand.

So obviously, there’s a huge pain point that you’re helping through HYPE, which is awesome. And I think that given your experience directly doing that, you have the knowledge to be able to guide the startups.

Let’s just walk through an example, for instance. Let’s say I’m a startup thinking about global expansion. Now is there a minimum valuation or metric that, if a startup came to you, and they were like “We want to use your service” you would look for these metrics before you would suggest I think the time is right to expand into Asia?

Henek: Yeah. We thought about this problem a lot when we first started. And one thing we wanted to be sure of is to be nimble and adaptive enough to be able to work with different stages. But you point out one really good point just now, which is, we had a lot of experience working with later-stage companies that would be able to raise massive amount rounds to be able to come to Asia. But more importantly, when we first started HYPE, we actually consciously wanted to work with earlier startups. Carousel, by no means, is a small startup, but it was still earlier in their Series B. Snapask is in its pre-A, I believe. And this is why we chose to build more experience working with these companies. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is we formulate three services that we have for different startups. One is called DIP, short for dipstick. A very American term. But basically, you use the dipstick to check if the engine is still good in your car.

Jay: A car analogy. I like it.

Henek: I was in engineering school, so can tell. The second way is what I mentioned just now called BOT — build, operate, transfer. And to mention, with DIP, we only take a fee, and with BOTs we take fees and equity. So what’s the difference between the two?

I would say that DIPs are really made for more further-away startups — US, Europe — where they really have no idea about Asia. It just seems to be one massive region for them, and they don’t know what it means for their company just yet, and they haven’t planned it in the roadmap. Or they’ve tapped out of their market share and whatever region they’re in, and they’re looking for growth in Asia, and they wanted to see how to land.

One thing that a lot of these companies do, as they should, they will look at Asia and be like “Let’s go to Hong Kong and Singapore because they speak English. It’s very international.”

But the way that we thought about it is, look, that’s great. But at the same time, they may not be the best place for you to grow your company. There might be a place in Southeast Asia that would be way more fitting or even — dare I say? — China or India, for example. But I don’t necessarily recommend into those places first, but I think it’s a good way to be educated about it. And we hand you over a paper report. We have many different interviews as well as meetings with them to kind of educate them on the topic.

Secondly — build, operate, transfer. This is where it becomes very hands-on. So as the name suggests, we go in and build the strategy. We communicate with the HQ team of whatever startup we’re working with and be like “Hey, these are the plans that we need to go and execute this expansion. This is the number of headcounts we need to hire. This is how much budget we need. This is how much time.” And most importantly is we will agree on some form or metric. One thing I always say is we can come in and do this business, but we want to have skin in the game, meaning, the better we do, the better compensated we are. But if we don’t do as well, obviously, we don’t get compensated as well.

So we go in and actually map these different metrics to our progress and what we committed to do, and we review it on a quarterly basis. This can take anywhere between three to six months. The longest we have done is nine months, for now, which is Carousel, actually. And DIP, just to supplement, is more like from anywhere from two to four weeks engagement.

I would say that we spent a lot of effort validating HYPE 1.0, if you will, the business model. And what we’re working towards right now is HYPE 2.0, which we recently realized that we’re having a lot of conversations with US and Europe startups where they have not necessarily thought about Asia, but once we talked about it or actually told them certain ways they could do it, they may need to raise a new round to do that because their funding is either locked in, or they have communicated what their plans were for the current round.

So HYPE, ourselves, we actually want to, first, prove HYPE 1.0 works and then raise an investment fund to actually be able to fund and facilitate for some of these expansions to happen.  

After doing our business right now and validating the core business, we’re actively looking to raise an investment fund to be done by 2018 so that in 2019, we can bring more amazing startups to Asia.

Jay: That’s awesome. So that’s the full spectrum there.

Henek: Yeah. That’s right. We’re looking to be end-to-end. One thing I will say is our time is the most valuable, so we also have to really pick the right ones in order for this to work well.

Jay: That’s right, and I think that, especially when you start getting into… Is it the BOT stage where you start taking equity in some of these companies as well as a fee?

Henek: Correct.

Jay: Yeah. So that’s directly… With that skin in the game, you need to make sure that you, literally, are partners with these companies that you’re helping to build out and not just taking them for the commission dollars, if you will.

Henek: And one thing that’s important is I think we have made ourselves accountable. So we don’t just say we add value. We’ve made their success our success. I think that’s very important because we really want to be seen as part of a team.

But I think most importantly is that once we go in and work with a startup, we actually learn so much more about them — any more than a deck or a dataset can ever do — to other investors. So what we want to be able to provide is, from our knowledge of working with that company and working cross-functionally, how do we tell our LPs “This is a sure win, and you need to get in on this company” because of X, Y, Z reasons. And I think that’s what we really are looking for, because, again, we’re core operators and “fund managers” just yet. But at the same time, I think that’s important for the next couple of years to build great businesses as there’s more and more venture capital pouring into the market. That will really be important to distinguish them.

Jay: Right. So are there specific markets within Asia that you have expertise in? I know you mentioned… I mean, you’re obviously based here, and you have some experience in China, and you mentioned one of your partners was focused in Korea. Are there certain ones that you guys are better at, as far as penetration?

Henek: Yeah. The three founders, again, I think greater China, which is China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. We have a lot of experience because of our previous work. North Asia, which is Seoul and Japan. And just most recently, we just opened our office in Singapore. So we have an office in Seoul, in Singapore, and Hong Kong. Another Airbnb alumni just joined us as well in Singapore. So we are looking… To be very fair, Southeast Asia is a huge region, so it’s more of the developed markets, I would say, that we’re good at — Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. And in the future, I think the two other places that we really want to be in as well is to have an office in China as well as potentially in Japan. And I think that will really help us enable and cover Asia for now.

Jay: It’s pretty interesting. You call yourself a venture builder. I think that… I personally am not that familiar with that term. It’s kind of intuitive what you guys do. Are there other competitors, direct competitors, to the services that you guys provide?

Henek: We do consider ourselves first in the space in the region. But I think most importantly, it was the way that we started it, which is we first proved that we can provide value and work with different startups and actually help them expand and then went back to kind of raising a fund to use that to support our main business. So I would say that venture builders around the world… Right now, if you even just google “venture builders,” you will find some of them. But I will say that many very different ways of operating.

I think one of the most famous venture builder in the world, which a lot of people should know on your show, is Rocket Internet. But their model is they find models that inspired them to kind of build their own, and then they kind of expand into markets they’re not in and at a very high speed. And then they either do mergers and acquisitions that way or compete with other foreign startups directly.

We would like to say we’re just trying to achieve the opposite of that, which is, when we see companies are coming from US or Europe, instead of building anything to compete with them, we will just work with them directly and invest them in them in the future. So that’s how we see our venture builder is unique.

Jay: From what it sounds like, I haven’t really worked at a startup or anything like that, but from what I gather, the way you guys are presenting HYPE, it’s much more amicable, so to speak, let’s say, than getting VC funding where they’ve taken a board seat or they basically have a large ownership, percentage, of your company. And then, I think as a startup founder, you would kind of fear losing control, despite the fact that they may be a huge household VC name that could provide you with a lot of non-financial resources or operational resources on the ground wherever you’re trying to expand. There’s always that fear. It’s always that unspoken battle between founder and funder, if you will. So I think the way that you guys are rolling it out, it seems much more amicable.

If I were a startup founder, I would definitely consider doing something like this. You can start with the DIP analysis and do a light version of your service, and then if things progress, then you can go on to the next step and commit a little bit more.

Henek: One thing to respond to your comment… It think funder and startups and VCs — these terms will always go hand in hand. There’s no way that it wouldn’t in the foreseeable future, I would say. However, we care a lot about culture, which is how we work with them, as well, matters. Through a couple of meetings or investment calls, it’s often quite hard to develop that relationship with a startup. So we see ourselves as we want to be long-term in providing value. For some of the startups that we’ve worked with, we will grow one market and then the conversation will pivot to “We’ve done it. Now we know how to do it. Can we help you go to other markets that you’ve not thought about before to add more value?” That’s one of the things that we’re looking to do.

But for the VC flow itself, I actually see ourselves also very complementary to that. If they ever have a portfolio company that they need to have good operational excellence behind, we will absolutely try to work with them as well to bring that to life.

Jay: That sounds like a perfect marriage, as a company is expanding and growing.

Let’s look five, ten years — I’m just interested to hear, as someone that has been in the space and in the region for quite some time, what sort of trends to you foresee in the startup trends or even funding trends as companies expand into Asia. Obviously, Asia, China, and Southeast Asia is on everyone’s radar — whether you’re an investor or a startup founder or looking for global growth. How do you see the trends changing or forming in the next five years, say?

Henek: I think definitely changing. I was just back in Beijing last week, just meeting some folks, talking with different startups. I think one of the things that really surprised me the most is that China startups have now started to expand out of China. Previously, where the domestic market was enough, I feel like China startups now have a more regional mindset and I think, in the future, more international even. You see that with the recent wave of bike sharing companies coming out of China. That’s one.

But another thing that I think really, really surprised me in particular are companies like Musical.ly, Live.me, which are extremely popular with American teens, are actually a completely China-dev product. So this really, if you asked the average user that was using both of these company right now, I don’t think anyone could tell. They wouldn’t know.

Jay: No way.

Henek: But the interesting thing is, if you bring a made-in-China product, they have a different way of viewing it as well. So I think that’s something that really kind of showed me that the expansion now has become actually more inter-Asia as well where, previously, only other large or foreign, Western, startups were thinking about coming to Asia. So I think that is changing.

Lastly — we talked about this a few times — but VC funding is becoming very abundant. So I think the need for startups to expand earlier is actually very important now. Another thing, which is the product that they build, from the get-go, needs to be able to adapt to many different regions and cultures. With the engineers and product guys, it’s hard for you to build a product for one market, and all of a sudden switch everything, because that’s just not how the framework works. So you need to plan ahead, really even when starting a company.

And I think the last one is… I think this is just everybody’s mind in 2018. If there’s one word, it be blockchain. For better or worse, I think ICOs — there’s a lot of things happening there. There’s a lot of good and a lot of bad. From outside, mostly bad at the moment. The way I see it, when there’s a lot of bad things happening, but there’s a lot of activity, there’s a lot of room for opportunity. Meaning, that will normalize as it gets regulated. That will also change a lot of dynamics between how startups get funding. So of these “seeds” from white papers are swimming in the range of five to ten million. These are way larger than any seed rounds have been done before. So I’m quite interested to see how that space unfolds as well.

Jay: Yeah. I’m actually super interested in that as well. I personally know a handful of startups that have basically put their “regular” fund raising on hold and are considering an ICO just because it’s, apparently, much easier to do it that way. But how that actually ends up playing in their favor or maybe to their detriment in the long run, only time will tell, I suppose.

HYPE, specifically this year, 2018, you mentioned you’re working with or have worked with…was it nine companies now?

Henek: Around seven startups.

Jay: Seven companies. So what are your immediate goals that you’re looking out for for 2018 for your company? What are you particularly excited about?

Henek: I think the first thing is just keep things simple in terms of our goals and really focus. So for us, really to seal in the value proposition that we have for the startups. Just like Carousel coming to Hong Kong, it is now their fastest market within the company. Very happy about that.

Snapask, they were able to land in Korea because of us working with them, together, hand-in-hand. So we’re doing another two more, and we can announce it in due time. One is a US company that is an events platform that’s coming to Hong Kong to set up their Hong Kong Asia hub. Another is actually a Korean startup that we’re bringing to Hong Kong as well. I would say that both of these conversations we got in at the right time. And at the same time, we helped facilitate them coming to Hong Kong.

The second thing is I’m excited to be able to bring more startups. Being here, I always shamelessly rep Hong Kong a little bit.

More importantly, lastly, as I mentioned just now, we really to become end-to-end and full suite. So we’re looking to get that investment fund raised so that we can help more startups come to Asia, really to demystify this part of the world, and make HYPE 2.0 come true.

Jay: That’s awesome. HYPE 2.0. I can’t wait to see how that plays out. It’s super exciting. It just makes perfect sense.

Henek, thanks so much for your time, man. It’s been really good hearing about what you’re working on. I just have two final questions, and I like to ask this of all entrepreneurs and startup founders. The second-to-last one is what advice would you give, other than to call HYPE right now and hire you? What advice would you give to, say, a startup founder or a startup company that’s, say, looking to expand into Asia? They have it on their radar. They probably are far enough along in their funding that they can look at landing somewhere internationally. What’s something off the cuff that you could tell them to do as a piece of advice?

Henek: You know, just in terms of insight, kind of going off my point just now, as companies in Asia are expanding faster into region, I would say that for US and Europe startups, they should definitely look to make a first-mover advantage to Asia as soon as possible. I think these companies very soon will be expanding the other way around. So, again, it needs to be innately regional, and then gradually, it needs to be global. I think that’s the first thing.

The second thing, which is, I guess for your audience maybe in Asia, the best time to start your company is now. Funding is available. Venture capitals are out there. They’re looking for deals. Accelerators, government grants — all these things that, when I joined Airbnb in 2012, people just kind of looked at me with a blank face, not really knowing what I was doing. It’s completely changed now in 2018. Obviously, everyone has got to do them. So find what works for you and jump and go start a company.

The last thing I always like to say as well… Startups aren’t really made so that you can raise your next round well. You should be focusing on your user’s user’s users, no matter what — the experience that they get. You pretty much, with today’s world and how many downloads and ads pushes through, you’ve got to make sure you seal in that user experience. And once you have that, I think the product with adapt itself to other markets and be able to have legs. But first, make sure the users are happy in the home market and then push from there.

Jay: That’s a great piece of advice, especially piggybacking off that funding comment that you said earlier. A lot of time people lose focus and then the quality slips of their product or their service, and then that’s not a good situation to be in where you’re taking in more funds, but then you don’t have the quality to support it.

The final question is just simply where can people find you, follow you, connect with you? I don’t know if you’re on social or your website, we’ll get that linked up. But where is the best place people can find you?

Henek: I’m quite active on LinkedIn. That’s where all my business information is. I’m very responsive, actually. And even on our website HYPEAsia.co, come check us out. Drop us an email. And everything about Asia, I definitely hope I’m in that conversation somehow.

Jay: Awesome. Absolutely. Henek, thanks so much again. Always bringing the value, over delivering. We really appreciate your time, and we’re looking forward to seeing how HYPE grows because I think that you guys are onto something pretty big here. So best of luck. We’ll definitely be following your progress.

Henek: Thank you, Jay.

Jay: Thanks a lot. Take care.

Henek: Take care.