Ignite Asia

We democratize angel investing by giving you access to deals, lower the barrier to enter, and build confidence through education & peers. Pitch your Start Up Our focus is early-stage startups in Asia Pacific across all verticals. We invest in pre-seed, seed, and Series A rounds. We are strong advocates of female leadership. Having at least one woman on your executive team is required. We invest up to 200K USD per company. We know building a company is not easy. We support startups teams with capital, knowledge, mentorship, a global network and we take board seats. Our angels are executors. We roll up our sleeves to support our investments with further growth and scaling. Above all, we invest in people. We invest in founders who refuse to die. Founders who choose agility over ego. FAQs Got a question? We've got answers. Do you only invest in women? We invest in startups and founders with potential, no matter whether it is a woman or a man. Although at least one of the executive team members should be a woman. We actively scout startups with female founders. At least 75% of our portfolio companies are women-led. What is the average investment amount? As a collective, we invest up to 150K USD per startup through syndication. This allows each investor to join with amounts as low as 5K USD. You decide per startup whether you want to invest or not. Is there a fee to join? Not yet. The first three months are free to join. We meet once a month where you discuss the deals on the table, and you will have full access to all deals. After three months, you decide whether you want to continue or not. The annual fee is SGD 750. I have no experience. Can I join? Absolutely! Every month, new angel investors join our network, both seasoned investors and newbies. You will see you have way more to contribute than you might think. We meet every month, and we have onboarding sessions to educate you on the basics. Check the 'Education' tab on this page to find more resources. I am a man. Can I join? Sorry guys, Epic Angels is for female investors only. We all read about the funding gap. Currently, only 2% of venture capital goes to women-led startups despite it being well-established that gender diversity leads to higher financial returns. Instead of trying to convince men to invest in these female founders, we believe the solution is to create more female investors.

We lead pre-seed and seed rounds. We commit meaningful amounts of capital to empower founders to build the future before it becomes obvious. Deep Partnership We are company builders. We have built products, teams and companies in Southeast Asia. We care about your vision and product in a deep way. We believe that hands-on support makes a difference. Unparalleled Network We provide access. We have spent our entire careers at the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship and venture. Our network is comprised of world class founders, investors and technologists.

We started Iterative to support founders like you. And the journey has just begun. We invest the full amount upon admission. We then work with the founders closely on their idea for 3 months during the cohort. After 3 months, they present to a select group of investors with the goal of raising a larger round of investment. Our vision Increase the GDP of Southeast Asia through entrepreneurship. Although not a perfect measurement, we believe people's lives improve when the GDP of their country or region increases. Academic research has shown the strongest stimulus for increasing GDP is entrepreneurship. We want to help. Our mission To build the most vibrant, supportive, and intellectually honest community of founders. The best way to help is leveraging our experience to support founders who in turn use their experience to help other founders. In the end, that looks like a community of founders helping other founders. Our story Brian Ma & Hsu Han Ooi at Brian's bachelor party working on the MVP for what would eventually become Weave (YC S14). The premise for the bachelor party was, we rent an Airbnb for the weekend and don't come home until we've launched a new product. Ian Ma & Hsu Ken Ooi in Hsu Han's basement on the first day of their first startup which would eventually become Decide and be acquired by eBay. They worked in that basement for 2 years. If you notice the jackets and sleeping bag in the lower right, it's because they didn't turn on the heat to save money. We’ve started from 0, multiple times. We’ve worked out of the proverbial and literal basement. We’ve been told by investors that our idea was too small, too big or just dumb. We’ve gone from thinking we would be the next Facebook to wondering what we were doing with our lives. We’ve been you.How we helpInvest USD $150K to $500K: This is the least important thing we do. We think of our investment as a show of commitment and to align incentives. There is no program fee. Note: We have made exceptions in the past but they are exceedingly rare. Work with you on your idea: As founders, we’ve started 3 companies (Decide, Weave, Divvy Homes), raised over $100M+ from the best investors (a16z, Index Ventures, etc) in Silicon Valley, sold 2 of them and the third is a unicorn and still going strong. Before each company, we’ve tried dozens of ideas that didn’t work. As a result, we learned a lot about what ideas are promising, how to validate them, and how to grow them. Typically, we can quickly tell you whether you’re trying to do too little or too much and where you should focus. If not, we can definitely tell you how to go about answering those questions. Help you with investors: We’ll introduce you to investors in Southeast Asia and Silicon Valley, but we’ll spend much more time on the following: Fundraising Guidance: Even with a strong pitch, you need to run a good process. We’ll teach you how to target the right investors and approach them in a way to maximize your chances of getting funded. Understanding & Negotiating Terms: If it’s your first time, understanding and negotiating the terms of an investment can be scary, especially in Southeast Asia, where the terms tend to have much more variability. We’ll help explain terms, call out abnormal ones, and give guidance on what’s typical right now. Developing Your Pitch: Most startup pitches are too long and emphasize the wrong points. We help you create a pitch that’s concise and highlights the things about your startup that are important to investors. We then help you workshop it by practicing with your batchmates then with investors who are friends of ours before finally pitching at Demo Day. How it worksWe run the program in batches: We believe this works better for everyone. It allows us to run the program more efficiently, and the startups probably learn just as much from each other as they do from us. However, we invest in companies on a rolling basis so we recommend you apply now. At the start of the batch: You will be assigned a lead partner responsible for your well being during the batch, based on your needs and their expertise. The first thing you and your lead partner will do is set goals for the end of the program. Where do you want to be at the end of the program? Typically this involves growing your primary metric 5% to 7% every week for the batch duration. Participate in events during the batch: Every week, you meet with your lead partner to give an update on your progress, discuss challenges, priorities, and next steps. Founders have told us they benefit from these sessions in 2 ways. First, they rarely have someone they can talk to openly, who has been where they are, and can empathize and give practical advice. Second, they come out of these meetings with clarity. When you’re the founder of an early-stage founder, you’re often so busy getting things done, and you rarely take a step back to think about whether you’re working on the right stuff. We find that the ability to prioritize and focus is the biggest difference between first and repeat founders. Demo day: After 12 weeks, we host a Demo Day where startups can present to a selected audience of investors to help kickstart their fundraising efforts. Demo Day marks the end of the batch. Stay for the community: Iterative doesn’t really end after 3 months. We continue to give advice and make introductions as long as our startups need - -and so does the informal network of Iterative companies. We think of our batch program as just orientation into the larger community.

We support entrepreneurs across Southeast Asia, and selectively India. What we believeTALENT: Successful entrepreneurs are rare and possess a unique combination… The vision, grit and passion of a true entrepreneur combined with the analytics and problem-solving skills, discipline, ethics and teamwork required of a professional in a top-tier institution creates the right capability to rapidly execute a long-term viable business model with strong economic performance. TECHNOLOGY: Technology, wisely used, is transformative… Technology is ubiquitous today, disruption is not. All businesses need to harness technology efficiently & effectively. The insight lies in the ability to visualize when, where, and how technology can engineer a distinctive and sustainable leader in a different future. TRACTION: Brilliant sparks need sustained oxygen to create a firestorm... Success of an early stage start-up is largely measured by achieving successful future financing. Traction and trajectory are critical; a well-defined yet flexible roadmap with milestones and measurement are often ignored by many start-ups … as is knowing when and how to pivot in a timely manner. Vison without action is hallucination… How we workTOGETHER: A true partnership creates real synergies… We strive to be true partners of aspirational founders with exceptional visions. A true partnership harnesses different skill sets and assets and works together for one goal. We believe we are in the journey together and thus support our founders in all facets of their business building program. TRUSTING: Mutual trust and respect is a cornerstone… We recognize that trust is not elusive soft fluff; it is created and earned and becomes a leverageable asset, especially when founders are in uncharted territories and in times of turbulence. We aim to create trust-based partnerships with our founders with open and truthful communication that can make a difference towards a business’s success. Start-ups may have to pivot their strategies or markets during the early stages. Discussions can be difficult and controversial, but trust makes them constructive and fruitful. TENACIOUS: Moving forward, constantly evolving, continuously improving, goes a long way…Resilience, the agility to pivot, the ability to survive a storm – all success stories go through challenges first. True grit and executing the conviction of a vision are often the key to holding it all together. We believe in our entrepreneurs, and we do what it takes to support them to constantly move forward.

Pioneer is a home for founders on day 0. We believe there are thousands (maybe millions!) of potentially great founders around the world who don't have the resources or opportunities to take the leap to start companies. We scour the Internet to find those people, bring them into our community of founders, help them incorporate, fund them, put them through a 2-month accelerator program, introduce them to experts in their field, and much more. In our 3 years since launching, we've funded 200+ founders from 50+ countries. Our Pioneers have gone on to raise from Sequoia, a16z, Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Village Global, and many more VCs & angels. We're a small team of 5 who are optimistic we can find brilliance in places the world has overlooked. OUR CHALLENGES Pioneer isn't just an accelerator - it's a generator. We want to motivate people to become the best versions of themselves, to take their crazy ideas more seriously, and to make betting on themselves less daunting. If we do what we've set out to, we'll not just fund successful startups that might not have otherwise worked out - we'll fund ones that wouldn't have existed at all. We're constantly asking ourselves: How do you reach ambitious outsiders who aren't in any mainstream communities? How do you motivate people to take the leap to work on their own projects, and keep making progress? How do you correctly identify impressive progress at scale? What can we do to make our Pioneers as successful as possible? If these problems sound interesting to you, reach out: jobs@pioneer.app. WORKING AT PIONEER We value autonomy over consensus, speed over correctness, and being different & experimental. If given the choice between a known good and a project that has a small chance of being wildly successful, we'll pick the latter. We're data-driven on our high-level numbers, but trust our instincts. We care more about output than setting rules.

Entrepreneurs are easily misunderstood. They have a vision of the world which is in conflict with the status quo. Change is hard – and many boulders must be pushed before that vision can be realised. We’ve been there too. Our founders, Eric Chan and Calvin Ng, founded Aura in 2009 in the depths of the Global Financial Crisis. They were 26 and 27. They started Aura at a hot desk in Bondi Junction, as a corporate advisory for young startups. With hustle, determination and elbow grease, Aura Ventures now has $160M in funds under management and a long track record of strong performance. None of this would have been possible were it not for the founders that we serve. While a lot has changed since then, our mission hasn’t. We exist to be the first believers in the companies of tomorrow. We know the road is bumpy, but we're partners for life Riad Chikhani founded Gamurs when he was just 19 years old. As soon as he walked into our office, we understood his vision to disrupt the media industry, and we wanted a front row seat. There were many bumps along the way, but no path to success is linear. That’s why we believe great partnerships are defined in the hard times, when cash is tight, sales are slow and the boulder is rolling against you. We’re here to push with you. Aura Ventures is always there to support our founders and we pride ourselves on being the first port of call during both good times and bad. This is the sign of true partnership. Our network is your network We are one of the most active Australian VCs in the South East Asia region. There are more than 400 million internet users and it is one of the fasting growing economic regions in the world. Through our network we have boots on the ground in Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand and we can help founders enter this frontier. Our network is our founder’s network. We have $100M FUM in TNB Aura, our South East Asia fund, and have worked with the region's best investors and founders. Whether it's market research for a new sector, helping make a key C-suite hire or facilitating an intro to an enterprise client - we’re willing to roll up our sleeves and get pushing.