Assertion Not checkable as stated
Schroeder: An uninformed crypto investor backed 14 Pakistani startups, inflating valuations
“I'm thinking about one person now who literally decided they were going to invest in 14 companies in Pakistan. They didn't really know Pakistan at all and never been there. They just assumed one of them would hit and that didn't help the ecosystem at all. I me…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Schroeder: Iranian youth widely use American social networks and edtech platforms
“When I was in Iran a month ago, all the young people wanted to show me on their smart devices, not only how they were all on our social networks, which allows them to see each other as well as to see other parts of the world, all of them had access to Coursera…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Schroeder: Iran and the Middle East have more female entrepreneurs than Silicon Valley
“It amazes me how across the region and in Iran, maybe even more so, I find more women entrepreneurs than I find in Silicon Valley.”
Insight
Schroeder: Emerging markets share more similarities with each other than Silicon Valley
“I think one of the big theses that I have learned in this traveling is that which is happening among emerging markets among themselves is more shared in many cases than their compatriots in Silicon Valley or even Beijing.”
Assertion Partly supported
Schroeder: Careem beat Uber in the Middle East by accepting cash payments
“One of the biggest and obvious ones was they began to offer cash payments in when you finish your ride in a Korean car, because they knew that most people in the Middle East were not comfortable yet in the safety and protection of doing a digital transaction. …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Schroeder: Day-one international expansion failed for most emerging market startups
“I saw companies from Africa, from the Middle East and Southeast Asia that started, you know, day one going to London and started going to Different parts of the world. And I was skeptical of it at the time. And in hindsight, I I'm proven right. Right. Because …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Schroeder: Emerging market startups adopt AI as fast as US startups
“All the stuff that we're hearing in American startups is happening in parallel at the exact same speed among the best entrepreneurs that I've been meeting in emerging markets.”
Assertion Contradicted
Schroeder: Half of engineering graduates in Iran are women
“I mean, and certainly half of the engineering graduates every year are women.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Schroeder: Last-mile logistics remains a critical bottleneck in emerging markets
“So last mile logistics is a tremendously difficult thing in most of the markets that we're talking about right now, as it has been in China as well.”
Insight
Schroeder: Emerging market founders must actively educate new consumers
“So many of the best entrepreneurs I meet are spending a fair amount of their time literally educating a consumer base that moves very quickly and rapidly, but it is still an element of something that happens there and doesn't happen with many of the companies …”
Insight
Schroeder: Engaging trusted community leaders is critical for go-to-market in emerging markets
“One of the things that you see in emerging markets, and I see this in Africa in particularly is trust is the most important thing to be able to light up people who are the trusted community leaders. Become something which is really quite unique to these areas …”
Insight
Schroeder: Regional Tech Platforms Scale as Aggregations of Local Businesses
“Even the big juggernauts in some of these regions have learned that they are as much an aggregation of local companies as they are just one stop shop in terms of what they offer.”
Assertion Supported
Schroeder: Emerging markets concentrate population in primary cities unlike China
“When you look at the population in a lot of even the larger countries, like places like Egypt and Indonesia and all, a large swath of the population is still in a Cairo or in a Jakarta. The second or third cities there are large, for sure, but not in the same …”
Insight
Schroeder: Super apps only need four right services, not twenty
“You don't necessarily have to offer 20 things, but if you can offer four of the right things, you got a hell of a business and maybe another day you can fight to do it.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Schroeder: MercadoLibre will stay focused on payments and credit
“But if I were a betting man, I bet you they'll be pretty focused for a while because it's really the essence of what the customer needs.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Schroeder: Emerging market VCs held multi-day offsites on GPT-3 ramifications
“Every venture capitalist I met has already had a multi-day offsite to stop and reflect about what its ramifications can mean in the medium term and what it may mean, not only for their portfolios, but their theses.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Schroeder: Over-regulation in emerging tech markets will trigger brain drain
“These ecosystems will thrive if the top-down institutions lean in and help them. And to the degree that they slow them down, the good news is that these are more mobile talent than ever before. They will go elsewhere. There will be brain drain.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Schroeder: Everyone he met in Iran had VPN access despite crackdowns
“Everyone I've met there of all ages have access to VPN. Every mobile phone I looked at had access to all the same things that we have access to.”
Insight
Schroeder: Global startup culture has become a permanent shared language
“People, they come at problems the same way, they're undaunted in the same way, they're constantly looking for the next new idea in the same way, ah, they support each other in the same way, they think about culture in very similar ways, ah, it really is a ling…”
Insight
Schroeder: Global social platforms dominate worldwide, but e-commerce requires local adaptations
“The LinkedIn of India is LinkedIn. The Facebook of India is fundamentally Facebook. The Twitter of India is fundamentally LinkedIn. This is not true in e-commerce.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Schroeder: Current tech talent is the most geographically mobile in history
“This is the most mobile generation in history. And when I say mobile in this case, I don't mean phones or smart devices. I mean, they will move to where talent is.”
Insight
Schroeder: Silicon Valley thrives primarily on talent network effects
“One of the things that we didn't quite touch on about Silicon Valley here, and it's odd to me that people often don't focus about it, which is just simply the network effect of talent that's there, that the more better, the more the excellent people are there,…”
Assertion Contradicted
Iran graduates up to 700,000 engineers across all disciplines annually
“You guys graduate something like six or 700,000 engineers across the spectrum of engineering every year.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Schroeder observed 31 government-backed technology accelerators during his Iran visits
“I was quite surprised to see 31, ah, government accelerators with some very good technology in it and I was very surprised to talk to ministers in the information communication technology area who talk about a hell of a vision to build infrastructure there, to…”
