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Perspectives on B2B technology, venture capital, and the Southeast Asian startup ecosystem — from the Indelible Ventures team.
In venture the reported value of a fund only changes when somebody else agrees to reprice a company, so a portfolio of capital-efficient Southeast Asian B2B businesses will look quiet on paper long after the companies inside it have stopped being quiet.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
The most reliable opening for a seed-stage B2B company is not a clever product but a group of customers who are served badly and charged well for it, and we underwrite that discontent before we underwrite the mechanism.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
Over the next three years enterprise AI in Southeast Asia will spread through individual professionals in small and mid-sized firms rather than top-down transformation programmes, and the companies built for that buyer, and for the region's languages and borders, are the ones worth backing now.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
In a market with little early-stage capital, most of a seed investor return is fixed by entry price and ownership on the first day, and the value of that position shows up late by design, so the things worth judging a manager on are visible years before any mark moves.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
In Southeast Asia the incumbent that B2B software actually has to displace is usually an outsourced service or a person doing the work by hand, and over the next three years enterprise budget will move out of services faster than it moves between software vendors.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
Before a seed fund has distributions, the signals worth reading are entry discipline, ownership, access and operating progress inside the companies, not the paper marks that early reporting tends to lead with.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
In AI software the defensible layer is rarely the model or the volume of data behind it, it is the verification work that makes an output checkable and the workflow automation that moves a previously outsourced task in-house, and that is what we look for when we write a first check.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
The cost of entering a second market in Southeast Asia has fallen sharply while the cost of trust has not, so B2B founders should move their regional expansion date forward and spend the savings on the parts that never got cheaper.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
We want more shots on goal, not fewer. In Southeast Asia two things cap the number before the money runs out: how many founders a fund can be materially useful to, and how much it must hold back to bridge a capital stack that is not continuous.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
The most durable B2B companies in Southeast Asia are built on unglamorous workflows that cross several departments and belong to none of them, because those processes stay broken the longest, carry real money, and become very hard to remove once one system runs them end to end.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
For B2B founders in Southeast Asia, early financial discipline is not a brake on growth but the thing that buys the time to reach regional scale.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
Prospective LPs who judge an early-stage fund by its first years mis-read the asset class, because venture returns follow a J-curve that looks like loss before it looks like gain, and in Southeast Asia the shape bends earlier and more rationally because strong B2B outcomes tend to return through acq...
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
For B2B companies in Southeast Asia the more common and more damaging failure is waiting too long to enter a second market, because no single market here is large enough to carry a venture outcome and cross-border selling is a capability that takes years to build, so the regional move has to begin b...
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
For a seed fund backing B2B founders in Southeast Asia, the durable edge is not proprietary deal flow or a brand name but a concrete operating network that shortens the two hardest problems these companies face, and that edge is exactly what LPs should be underwriting.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
B2B founders in Southeast Asia mis-price by copying US SaaS benchmarks or adding margin to local cost. The real task is to price to the value a fragmented, multi-currency, mixed-maturity buyer base actually assigns.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
Most B2B founders can describe their product in their sleep. The features, the value proposition, the return on investment. They have rehearsed the demo a hundred times. And they still lose deals they should win. The reason is rarely the product. It is that the founder answered every question except...
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
Between 2010 and 2020, Malaysia’s startup scene was vibrant, driven by strong leadership and proactive government grants. Today, the "top of funnel" early-stage pipeline is quietly drying up. So how does Malaysia get its startup mojo back? Dr Sivapalan Vivekarajah, Co-Founder & Senior Partner at Sc...
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
The mistakes that burn first-time LP investors almost always happen before the commitment, not after, and most of them come from applying the wrong mental model to the asset class.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
Investing in a VC fund is not like investing in a startup or a stock, and the investors who get burned are usually the ones who never understood the difference before they signed.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
The Software as a Service was always lite on service and was really just Software as a Tool that you then have to go DIY for whatever you needed it for. That was an improvement at the time.But we are in the midst of a shift to Services as Software (SaS) where instead of a tool your selling the execu...
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
There's a familiar story in the startup world: a founder follows a "proven" playbook from Silicon Valley, only to see it fail in another market. But is the problem the market or "copy-pasting" the SV strategy itself?
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
VC is in a time of recalibration. But at Indelible Ventures , we didn’t wait for the tide to turn. We’ve always chosen a different path—one designed for resilience, not just hype.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
The foundations of every thriving startup ecosystem are laid at the earliest stages. It’s at the seed and pre-seed levels where ideas are tested, where future giants are born, and where the pipeline for tomorrow’s success stories begins.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
Fundraising is not a business model. The startups that endure—especially in B2B—build around one core principle: 💡 Positive unit economics
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
At Indelible Ventures , we believe writing a check is the easiest part of our job. Our real work—the part that matters most—starts after we invest.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
We see too many early-stage B2B startups fall into the same traps as they try to scale. The good news? These mistakes are avoidable with the right strategy, discipline, and focus.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
Raising capital as a B2B startup is challenging anywhere—but in Southeast Asia (SEA) , founders face a unique set of realities that make the process even more complex.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
The article discusses the critical role of managing relationships with limited partners (LPs) in venture capital.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
We prioritize CAC Payback Period over the LTV/CAC ratio when analyzing the unit economics of a startup.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
At Indelible Ventures, we see B2B as the big wave in SEA’s venture landscape. The market is maturing, and founders who solve real business problems will build enduring companies.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
From Trump 2.0’s potential boost for M&As and $40 billion in AI foundational model funding to the rise of secondary transactions providing liquidity and SoftBank’s $100 billion commitment to US companies, 2024 brought significant shifts in funding priorities, valuation corrections, and global politi...
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
The Malaysia startup ecosystem is filled with potential, but positive sentiment aside, the country has failed to live up to this potential and is falling behind peer markets in Southeast Asia.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
Pitching to VCs? Understand their math and incentives first. Venture capital is more than just funding—it’s a high-stakes game of expectations. In this episode of P&L, Kevin Brockland, Managing Partner of Indelible Ventures, and Yeoh Chen Chow, Founder of 1% Advisory & Coaching, break down VC math ...
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
Early-stage investing is inherently risky, with failure a natural part of the process, so was the public’s reaction to the Fashion Valet saga—a RM44 million loss for Khazanah and PNB — justified, or an overreaction? And what role should GLICs and other large institutions play in the venture capital ...
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
Are preference shares bad for founders? Are they misused in Malaysia’s startup ecosystem? Can “bad” terms prevent startups from raising future funds and ultimately lead to failure? Is there a need for more standardised terms for preference shares in Malaysia? In this episode of P&L, we explore how ...
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
The Malaysia startup ecosystem is filled with potential, but positive sentiment aside, the country has failed to live up to this potential and is falling behind peer markets in Southeast Asia.
Kevin Brockland
Managing Partner
Part 2 of an interview with Indelible Ventures founder and managing partner, Kevin Brockland.
Indelible Team
Team Member
Part 1 of an interview with Indelible Ventures founder and managing partner, Kevin Brockland.
Indelible Team
Team Member
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