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#35 GKC | 2025 SEA Impact: My Bold Calls ๐
My Trend Predictions On 2025 SEA Impact Ecosystem
Nelson Ng
February 07, 2025 โข Est. Reading Time: 7 minutes
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Happy Friday! ๐
Over the CNY weekend, I had some time to reflect on my observations of trends in SEA impact thus far. So, here are some of my bold predictions about 2025.
P.S. ready for discussions & other opinions.
Key Takeaways:
๐ฐ Back To Business Fundamentals - Profitability & Cash Flows
๐ช Less Innovations, More Executions
๐ฉ Impact VCs Continue To Struggle
๐ฆ Alternative Funding Routes Will Flourish
โค๏ธ Family Offices Embrace Transition From Philanthropy To Impact Investing
๐ญ๐ญ GOOD Insights
๐ญ 1/ Back To Business Fundamentals - Profitability & Cash Flows
Early-stage startups struggled to fundraise from VCs in 2024, making them to rethink how can they not rely so much from VC money.
Early-stage startups will focus on achieving profitability, optimising on cost and revenue.
We will see startups โbraggingโ about hitting profitability, but be careful, many are orchestrated. Let time to discover the real profitable businesses.
๐ญ 2/ Less Innovations, More Executions
To achieve profitability, startups will focus on low-hanging fruits - more execution-based, less innovative solutions.
More founders will become SME business owners (not a bad thing at all!)
Good for private equity investors, bad for VC investors, best for LPs to differentiate top quartile VC investors.
๐ญ 3/ Alternative Funding Routes Will Flourish
Startups will look for alternative funding (other than VCs) to fund their growth.
Debt, including private credit and venture debt, will become more mainstream and favoured.
Private credit syndicates will grow as more angel investors tap into this space. (Good Karma Club runs an impact-first private credit syndicate, reach out for a chat)
๐ญ 4/ Impact VCs Continue To Struggle
Impact VCs struggle to find sufficient good deals in Southeast Asia.
Impact VCs with a strong niche might do better (i.e. elev8.vc who raised $30M to invest in deep tech startups)
Impact VCs will continue to look for LPs outside of SEA regions (i.e. Australia, Middle East, Europe)
๐ญ 5/ Family Offices Embrace Transition From Philanthropy To Impact Investing
More FOs will look into impact investing as a way to give back, hoping to achieve higher impact per dollar invested (or donated).
Blended financing model will be explored by FOs in Southeast Asia.
FOs will struggle to find fund managers who truly understand impact (some will likely join syndicates / angel invest.)
~~
As always, Iโm ready for discussions & other opinions :)
Hope this is helpful! ๐
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