When we look for a B2B company to back in Southeast Asia, we start with a simple question: what do the customers already resent? Not what could be better in theory, but what they complain about without being asked. In fragmented markets, the answer is very often not the product they buy. It is the work they have to do around buying it.
Where the discontent sits
Picture the person responsible for purchasing at a mid-sized company in Manila, Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok. They are not buying one big system once a year. They are buying many small things all the time: laptops for new hires, packaging, office supplies, spare parts, services. Each of those purchases follows the same tired routine.
A request goes out to several suppliers. Quotes come back days later, in different formats, at prices that seem to depend on who picked up the phone. Someone compares them in a spreadsheet, chases an approval, raises a purchase order, follows up on delivery, matches the invoice and arranges payment, often on terms that suit the supplier more than the buyer. Multiply that by every category the business buys and you have a job that eats whole weeks.
Ask that person what they resent and they will tell you quickly. They resent waiting for quotes. They resent not knowing whether the price is fair. They resent that the smallest accounts get the slowest service while paying the highest prices. That is what we mean by an opening: customers who can name, unprompted, what they are tired of paying for.
Why incumbents leave the gap open
None of this is new, which raises the obvious question of why it persists. The pattern we see is that traditional suppliers and distributors are built around large accounts. A big enterprise gets a relationship manager, negotiated pricing and dedicated logistics. A company with eighty staff gets a sales rep who is hard to reach and a price list that moves. Serving that smaller buyer well costs the incumbent more than it earns them, so they do not try very hard, and they price for the inconvenience.
In more consolidated markets, a handful of large platforms have absorbed much of this work. Southeast Asia is more fragmented: many suppliers, many small buyers, different rules in each country. The result is a large group of business customers who are underserved and overcharged at the same time. That combination is exactly what we look for.
Why the way in is evolutionary
The best companies in this category do not ask the buyer to change what they buy, who approves it or how their finance team works. They ask for one change: get your quotes here. The buyer keeps purchasing the same things for the same reasons, only faster and with a clearer price.
That matters because adoption friction in this region is real. There is a genuine training gap in many businesses, and a product that asks people to work differently faces a long sale and resistance at every desk it touches. A product that slots into how purchasing already works can be tried in a week and judged on the first order. Evolutionary at entry is what lets a company get in quickly.
What holds the position
Getting in is not the same as staying in. A catalogue is not a moat: anyone can list products, and buyers can always phone another supplier. What holds a company in place is the workflow underneath the purchase. Once the quote, the approval, the purchase order, the delivery, the invoice and the payment all run through one system, the buyer is no longer choosing a supplier each time. They are using a tool that does part of their job for them.
The layers that compound from there are the unglamorous ones. Clean records of what was bought, at what price, from whom. Reconciliation that the finance team no longer has to do by hand. Financing that fits the buyer's cash cycle rather than the supplier's. Each one moves a little more of a traditionally manual, outsourced activity into the buyer's own hands, and each one makes leaving more expensive.
Quotable AI, which we backed at seed in the Philippines, is built on this idea. It describes itself as the financial operating system for B2B trade, and its platform covers quotes, procurement, invoices, deliveries, financing and global payments. Its Shoppable business serves companies in the Philippines with the everyday categories they buy, and Shiply supplies packaging and shipping. The supply business is the way in. The workflow behind it is what we backed.
Why this travels across the region
The same discontent shows up in every market we invest in, even though the details differ. Tax and invoicing rules change at each border, and so do data rules and languages. That is a reason to plan for a second market early rather than late. Home markets in Southeast Asia are too small for most B2B companies to reach real scale alone, and waiting too long to go regional is one of the most common reasons good companies stall. A company that solves the purchasing workflow well in one country has a clear route into the next, because the resentment it answers is already there waiting.
How we underwrite it
When a founder brings us a B2B company in a fragmented market, we test it against four questions. Can the customers already tell you what they resent, in their own words? Does the product get in with an evolutionary ask, one change rather than a new way of working? Is there a workflow or quality layer underneath that compounds over time, rather than an asset anyone could buy or copy? And can the model cross a border without being rebuilt?
A company with strong answers to all four is rare. When we find one, we are willing to write a first check early, before the numbers make the case obvious, because by the time they do, the price will reflect it.
The challenge
If you are building in B2B, write down the three things your customers complain about before you mention your product. If you cannot, you may be selling a mechanism rather than answering a need. If you can, ask whether your product removes that work or only makes it look better. The companies that remove it are the ones customers will not want to give back.