The Ledger
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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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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. …”
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 …”
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.”
Schroeder: Half of engineering graduates in Iran are women
“I mean, and certainly half of the engineering graduates every year are women.”
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.”
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 …”
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 …”
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.”
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 …”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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,…”
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.”
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…”
Schroeder: Iran has over 31 government-backed incubators and accelerators
“There were over 31 government-backed incubators and accelerators with some pretty interesting technology”
Schroeder: Over six million illegal iPhones are in use in Iran
“IPhones are illegal, and there are over six million iPhones there.”
Schroeder: Singapore Has 100% Smartphone Penetration But Limited Domestic Scale
“There's a hundred percent smartphone penetration in Singapore, but if you are a Singapore startup alone, there's only so much you could do.”
Schroeder: India's 100 unicorns are spawning a new founder generation
“There've been a hundred unicorns in India. They're now kicking off a new generation.”
Schroeder: Pakistan's top e-commerce player has $200M-$300M in GMV
“The largest e-commerce player in a market of two hundred twenty million in Pakistan right now maybe has two, three hundred million GMV.”
Schroeder: Mom-and-pop shops make up 85% to 90% of emerging retail
“In retail in a many emerging markets to this day, 90%, 85% pick the market is mom and pop shops.”
Yahoo acquired Middle Eastern portal Maktoob for nearly $200 million
“I had a wonderful entrepreneur who built what was effectively the Yahoo of the Middle East called Mach two, which got bought by Yahoo for almost two hundred million dollars.”
Turkish food delivery startup Yemeksepeti was acquired for over $650 million
“The food service service there, the seamless of Turkey is a company called Yema Sepeki, which just got acquired for over six hundred and fifty million dollars, and there have been several multi-hundred million dollar exits there.”