1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Francis Simisim of Original Pitch Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How does the Filipino ecosystem interface with the rest of the Southeast Asian ecosystem? Where are the partnerships that you’re seeing?

Francis Simisim: Philippines is an island on its own. It’s somewhat purgatory. We are raising smaller money than a regional VC’s ticket size. If they raise locally, it’s a big round and it’s too expensive. We are in a tough place. We are still establishing a lot of the regional partners.

We started an event called Techtonic Summit. It happens every year. Our goal is to bring in regional investors to come over and see where we are. Most of them are focused on Indonesia. Philippines is often overlooked. Very few investors have come onboard here. It’s really tough to raise capital.

Sramana Mitra: What is the awareness or perspective on bootstrapping in your ecosystem? For a nascent ecosystem, the best way to develop that ecosystem is through bootstrapped entrepreneurship.

Once entrepreneurs reach a certain level of validation using the bootstrapping principle, then raising money is going to be a lot easier. All that is more viable if there is some level of validation.

Francis Simisim: Bootstrapping is often misunderstood here. Most see it in the Silicon Valley way. They start looking for capital. If they don’t raise it, they have to shut down. Most successful entrepreneurs understand that they have to bootstrap their way in.

Most of them would go for profitability first before they would jump into growth later on. Right now, most have been a bit more conservative.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, the beauty of bootstrapped entrepreneurship is, you have to survive. The only way you have to survive is by being profitable and generating customer money and profits.

Otherwise, you’re going to go out of business. Bootstrapped businesses tend to and need to be profitable. Otherwise, they’re not going to survive. You die, you’ll never be successful.

Francis Simisim: We have to do whatever we could in order to survive. There’s just a few investors around. 

Sramana Mitra: Most of the ventures are not going to be fundable. That’s part of the problem with a lot of these companies who think that entrepreneurship equals financing. Most companies don’t have the TAM to be financed.

That’s an awareness that is missing from a lot of these ecosystems. It’s something that is missing in Silicon Valley as well. Anything else that you want to share about the Filipino ecosystem?

Francis Simisim: What we want to do is to push in more investors on-board. We see a lot of seed companies who have pushed hard and are approaching Series A.

It’s really tough because they have to fly to regional cities where we are unknown. Investors don’t know and don’t care about the market. Soon enough, once we get that support, we can build that ecosystem.

Sramana Mitra: We wish you all the best. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Francis Simisim of Original Pitch Ventures
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