Ninja Van is on a mission to dominate e-commerce logistics in Southeast Asia

Ninja Van

It’s my last week with Monk’s Hill Ventures before I head to Harvard Business School. I have a lot to be thankful for — a fantastically , a growing ecosystem that offers many learning opportunities, and two tremendous mentors who demand results but accord autonomy and responsibility in abundance. A big thanks to Peng, Kuo-Yi and the MHV family. diverse team Today I’d like to share some things I’ve learnt from them. Things they don’t teach in b-school. 1. GIVE EARNESTLY, BUT GIVE IN A SUSTAINABLE WAY. MHV started deploying capital about 2 years ago. Prior to this, Peng had founded a few category-defining companies in the US before he became a partner at GSR Ventures in China. Kuo-Yi had been busy with a few of his own startups before heading up the US$200M Infocomm Investments fund (they invested into Reebonz and Twilio). So they both came on the scene as accomplished entrepreneurs and investors, but were still the new kids on the block with no track record of scaling companies in Southeast Asia. To compete, they took a long-term view — the mantra of “give before you get”. Herein lies the genesis of MHV. Entrepreneurs backing Entrepreneurs. And till today, we’re still giving. Because giving is in our DNA. I can ramble on about our startup workshops and community-building initiatives in the Valley and SEA, but I’ll focus on two things — our program and our willingness to stick with the best entrepreneurs through tough times. CS Leaders CS Leaders, our scholarship program, funds eligible computer science students at UI (Universitas Indonesia) and ITB (Institut Teknologi Bandung). We have awarded 25 scholarships to date. The aim is to promote talented individuals and help the tech industry grow through top talent acquisition. We’re very excited to see how these fresh grads will change Indonesia for the better. As for sticking with entrepreneurs we believe in, is a case in point. Kuo-Yi met up regularly with Chang Wen during his days, offering help and advice before the idea of NinjaVan and tech-enabled logistics was even conceptualized. Lo and behold… smart, purpose-driven people will always find the right problems to solve. Stick with them. NinjaVan Marcella So while giving gets us on the radars of talents and founders, we also hope that our bias to give gets us access to top talents and to allocations in funding rounds. We want to help people, not give the whole enchilada for free. In his book , Adam Grant made a riveting point: if we look at givers and takers, it appears that givers are both the least and the most successful people we know — the difference being that unsuccessful givers burn out by giving totally selflessly while successful givers sustain giving by keeping their own interests in the rearview mirror. Give and Take What I found pleasantly surprising from my personal observation is that our (arguably) most outstanding founders, who can get away with asking us for tons of stuff, are the people who have been most grateful for our help and most active in helping MHV as we grow our business. 2. OBLIGATE TO DISSENT; AVOID GROUPTHINK. At MHV, we cultivate a culture of thinking against the grain. We largely ignore the ballyhoo of releases on mainstream tech media. We are not interested in party rounds. We work hard but don’t lose sleep trying to chase everything. There are many who don’t agree with us. They want to be in the hottest deals and don’t care what they pay. That sort of strategy might work but it depends on both luck and timing. At MHV, we focus on valuation and invest at prices that make sense to us. We model how the investment will be worth 10x our entry price in 6–8 years. is over-glorified by those moments of discovering the most sought-after deals and pushing through a tight turnaround to get into them. Typically, the founders have just convinced a high-profile investor to lead the round, and a queue forms. This “fear of missing out” prompts irrational decisions, which we’d like to avoid. We are not hostages to the dynamics of a funding round. VC Internally, we encourage individualism in our investment calls. When it comes to decision-making in VC, strength comes not in numbers, but in diversity of thought. Everyone is obligated to dissent and to justify. I have, on several occasions, made comments that were obliterated by other members of our team. I shrug it off, LEARN, and move on. The key is to foster an environment where no one is cowed into consensus and intellectual ego doesn’t get in the way of people dissenting. Pattern recognition is important, but we can’t be beholden to the patterns we’ve developed. 3. IF YOU’RE BELOW THE PARTNER LEVEL, FOCUS ON REDUCING TYPE I ERROR. One of the greatest values that anyone below the partner level can bring to their VC fund is proprietary deal flow. The key is deciding which deals to pitch to the partners. As a gatekeeper, you need to balance the moments with a keen dose of cynicism, i.e. you don’t want to waste the partners’ time on uninteresting deals. Let me explain. omg-I-think-I-found-something Assuming the table above shows a rough breakdown of my deal flow, I’m always trying to reduce Type I errors (“errors of omission”) and Type II errors (“errors of inclusion”). But what I’ve come to believe in is this: the big hits you don’t pitch to the partners can hurt the fund more than the s*** deals you pitch to them. Avoiding Type I errors is more crucial than avoiding Type II errors. Kuo-Yi once told me, “it’s easier to say no than it is to say yes”. I’ve found this to be true. At the associate/principal level, saying no to deals is far easier and less meaningful than being able to identify the deals that should be seen by the partners. Note to self: when unsure, get a second opinion — because a fund is defined by its hits, not its misses. 4. DRIVE OWNERSHIP, BUT LET THE FOUNDER BE THE FOUNDER. There are two schools of thought in the VC industry in SEA. On one hand, some VCs believe that the nascent ecosystem lends itself to ‘spraying’ and spreading bets — they think this is the best way to capture vertical leaders yet to emerge. At MHV, we’re on the flip side. We think the ‘spray’ approach is neither capital efficient for investors nor favorable to startups. Instead, we drive ownership. This means we don’t need a herculean outcome to have made a worthwhile investment. For our companies, it means we’ve pledged to being in the trenches with them and are not curbing the definition of success. From observing both Peng and Kuo-Yi, I’ve learnt that there are times when a VC should intervene, but mostly at inflection points focused on path correction instead of intellectualizing on trivial details. Let the founder be the founder, but be there when they need you. 5. DEAL ISN’T DONE UNTIL IT’S DONE (AND BE AT PEACE WITH LOSING). Probably the toughest pill I’ve had to swallow on this job. Even after supporting a founder and negotiating terms for weeks, you can never be sure of sealing the deal before the ink has dried. It’s harder to convince someone to take your money than it is to identify a good investment. The truth is we have lost several deals, particularly when we don’t see the need to be ruled by the competitive dynamics of a funding round (i.e. used as a bargaining chip). There is however, one occasion in which I feel we could’ve done better — we lost this deal to a company board vote, which went 3–2 in favor of the competing VC (who was offering a higher valuation). Peng told me, “venture investing is ”. This struck a chord with me. I should’ve done more. I should’ve known this was a competitive round. I should’ve reached out to key board members to clearly articulate the value we could bring to the company. I should’ve sold better. It’s OK though. You lose some. complex sales MHV has an anti-portfolio of sorts — the ‘could haves’, the ‘should haves’ and (thankfully) the bullets we dodged. We talk about them. We analyze. We learn. We move on. 6. PURSUE INTELLECTUAL SOLITUDE AROUND A FOCUS INDUSTRY. Intellectual solitude is what promotes and investment theses. My job is to have conviction in things that others have yet to visualize. To find conviction, one needs to pursue things that are personally interesting, not things that everyone thinks are interesting. non-consensus viewpoints Form not an opinion, but your own opinion. For me, the sector of interest is alternative credit scoring vis-à-vis unsecured online lending. My conviction is that P2P lenders will not succeed because the supply-demand imbalance would force the company to access capital markets to meet excess demand for loans, which would eat into the P2P cost advantage. So I’m looking for a ‘full-stack’ lender — one that credit scores (with proprietary and exclusive data), lends through a hybrid balance sheet model, and scales through existing banking distribution channels. Diving deep into a sector and forming your own thesis will help you establish your brand, interact with key operators in the sector, and guide you towards the path of investing into the leading startup in that space. 7. BACK THESIS DRIVEN FOUNDERS IN THE RIGHT MARKETS. When I first started, I fell in love with the wrong products too quickly. I was overly tied to assessing product visions, and analyzed startups based on road maps sketched out by founders. I learnt the following (in order of importance): Markets have an enduring impact on the opportunity set for startups Founders’ ability to execute was what determined success Product road maps will change as founders build experience Instead of obsessing on product, I learnt to spend more time unfolding founders and digging deep into their thesis on how our world is evolving. And I learnt to be intimately aware of my own biases. I learnt to love people and markets more than products. 8. ADMIT LACK OF KNOWLEDGE, THEN LEAN INTO THE EXPERTS. As a team, we see about 15–20 deals a week across 6–8 different markets. Figuring out many different technologies, understanding multiple business models and supporting portfolio companies keep us in a constant state of flux. We’re always discovering new blind spots and figuring out how to plug our knowledge gaps. We’re a team that’s obsessed with learning. We want to be continuously educated by the best entrepreneurs. When I first started, I used to worry that the rate at which I discover what I don’t know far surpasses the rate at which I learn. But I came to grips with the delta between those two boundaries. And I learnt to lean into the experts for advice — this really helped to thin down the delta from ∆b to ∆a. I can’t learn by sitting in the office, only meeting people I know and only reading what I read. I find opposing standpoints, find the antagonists, find new networks, find offbeat ideas. What I learnt from Kuo-Yi and Peng is to not discard what I don’t understand. The biggest ideas usually tap into emergent behaviors that people initially find confounding. Lean into them. Whenever I meet startups or industry experts with Kuo-Yi / Peng, I would watch them probe deeply to understand everything about the tech, the vision of the future and the approach to execution. Their relentless curiosity is a reminder of why I should pursue what I don’t intuitively understand. 9. VC IS LONG-TERM, UNGLAMOROUS SALES WORK. This is something I wish I understood earlier. I’ve come to realize that there is a lot more to being a stellar VC than just investing. And there are more contexts (and subtexts) that the public would never imagine. A VC is constantly selling. We’re always selling ourselves to founders. We’re selling our portfolio companies to partners, customers, potential hires and to later-stage VCs and PE firms. We’re also selling our fund as an investment opportunity to Limited Partners, such as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, foundations, university endowment funds, high net worth individuals… the list goes on. Selling is not always fun. Fundraising, for example, has so many disheartening moments when people don’t respond to emails, don’t turn up to meetings, and don’t want to invest but tell you they want to (so they get access to your data room). Sometimes it’ll feel like you’re the only person who takes it seriously. Most importantly, sitting on the sell-side of the table should humble you and make you mindful of how you interact with founders who reach out to you in their own pursuit of funds. Being a VC is not about first class flights or models & bottles. It sure is a hell lot about working in UBER taxis (while stuck in 3-hour traffic jams in Jakarta), replying to entrepreneurs, reading a ton of business plans, conducting due diligence and reference checks, sorting out admin and scheduling meetings, and getting to know a lot of people. I have spent many hours writing investment memos and meeting hundreds of companies that we didn’t eventually invest into. It requires consistency of effort (and a long time) to solidify relationships, to raise a fund, to build a strong deal flow, to help portfolio companies scale, to execute exit opportunities, and to make the hard work pay off. 10. FOUNDERS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN VCs. TREAT THEM WITH RESPECT. I’ve been appalled by some of the investor egos I’ve experienced firsthand or heard about from chatting with entrepreneurs. Stories range from inundating startups with irrelevant data requests, to imposing multiple liquidation preferences and full ratchet anti-dilution, to being very unresponsive, to attending BOD meetings without staying up-to-date on company developments. So VCs need to be transparent and to continuously improve their offering to better serve entrepreneurs. VC is a product for entrepreneurs. Here are some good habits I picked up at MHV. : At MHV, we really do our best to respond to founders within a week. It’s simply unfair to string them along as it could waste months of precious time. Writing honest and straightforward “pass notes” to founders was one of the first things I picked up from Kuo-Yi. I thank them, give 2–3 constructive reasons, and offer them to keep us updated with their progress. Say “no” quickly and constructively : Before the pitch, I read their deck, visit their website and browse through their credentials on LinkedIn. I frequently meet founders who are 5–10 years more experienced than me. Preparing enables me to ask relevant questions, which is the base level of respect I can accord to founders. Be prepared and on time : It’s critical to know when one can give advice and when one can’t. I temper my enthusiasm to help with practicality and relevance — it’s pointless (and potentially harmful) to make ineffectual introductions and offer advice not grounded on experience or expertise. It’s OK to concede a lack of ability to help with a market, technology or product that you haven’t properly understood. Partner, not preach THE LAST WORD. I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a handful of smart, driven and ambitious entrepreneurs. It’s a privilege to have a decently fun job that’s also intellectually challenging. I’ll be the first to acknowledge the many things I haven’t spent enough time learning: dealing with difficult LPs, being a TRULY GREAT board member, and managing struggling portfolio companies. There’s always more we can learn and understand. VC, and technology are moving targets — buckle up and enjoy the ride. Stay humble and hungry. Dimi out. entrepreneurship Check out the original post at: www.monkshill.com/views/10-things-i-learnt-as-a-vc

10 Things I Learnt as a VC

As you all know, HackerNoon’s are well underway. What are the Noonies? They’re awards created to celebrate the best in tech, gaming, the internet, and more. But the area we’re going to focus on today is gaming; there are over 20 awards in that category alone. So, let’s check out some of them. 2022 Noonie Awards This article was inspired by , an article written by our fearless leader and CEO of HackerNoon, . Check it out to learn more and see what other awards are up for grabs. Ten #Noonies2022 Awards Worth Voting On David Smooke Game of the Year 2022 was a great year for video games; that’s why one of the most coveted awards is . As of now, there are 11 games in contention. Some of them include Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, and Pokemon Legends: Arceus. See a game that you think should be included? Nominating is as easy as ever. Just go down the page, enter the nominee’s info, and that’s it! Game of the Year And if there’s a game that you really like but don’t think it’s game of the year quality, there are other categories that you could nominate it for including and . But there’s another big gaming award to consider. Single-Player Game of the Year Multiplayer Game of the Year Indie Game of the Year It’s nice to celebrate AAA games, multiplayer games, and games like that, but it’s necessary to celebrate indie games as well. Indie games have only gotten better and better throughout the years, and they deserve to be recognized. The category is here to do just that. Indie Game of the Year This year’s nominees include Tunic, OlliOlli World, Stray, and more. If you’re looking for a challenging game that doesn’t hold your hand, is the game for you. If you love skateboarding and platform games, consider . And if you just love cats (which who doesn’t?), check out . Tunic OlliOlli World Stray Gaming YouTuber of the Year and Gaming Twitch Streamer of the Year This might seem strange to those outside the gaming community, but people who love playing video games also like watching other people play video games. That’s why gaming YouTubers and Twitch streamers have millions of followers. And that’s also why we have the and the awards. Gaming Twitch Streamer of the Year Gaming YouTuber of the Year The streamer nominees include , , and . The YouTubers competing for YouTuber of the Year include , , and . While these are all great nominees, remember that you can nominate your own favorite streamer/YouTuber. Shroud Ninja Rubius NickMercs VanossGaming Mr. Beast Best Gaming Discord Community Okay, so it’s not enough for us to play video games and watch other people play them. We love to talk and meet people that love the same games we do. And Discord is a great place to meet those with similar interests. We want to showcase that with the award. Best Gaming Discord Community Whether it’s because they’re the most helpful, the funniest, or the kindest, these communities are some of the best that Discord has to offer. The nominees this year include , , and . RFOX The Sandbox Ethermore Gaming Guru of the Year Okay, we’ve talked about playing, watching, and discussing video games. But there’s one huge thing we haven’t talked about yet, and that’s writing about video games. Of course, we have plenty of awards celebrating the incredible writers who write on HackerNoon. Writers that cover , , , and even itself. Nintendo PC Gaming Game Development The Game Industry Another award is the , which is awarded to HackerNoon’s greatest gamer. Let’s look at some of the nominees. Gaming Guru of the Year Apart from video games, another love for is robotics. They’ve written articles such as [How to Build an Arduino Starship Game Controlled by Joystick and Computer](https://How to Build an Arduino Starship Game Controlled by Joystick and Computer) and . So, it’s no surprise that Nazar is also nominated for . Chingiz Nazar How I Developed the Classic Pong Game on an Arduino Board Creator of the Strangest Things has captivated the HackerNoon community with articles about Nintendo, indie games, and Monster Hunter. Want to know about the future of the ? Or want to which is the best? Lucy has you covered. Lacy Long Mario and Luigi series Monster Hunter game is as much a gaming guru as she is a tech guru. She’s written articles like and . She’s also a previous Noonie winner; in 2020, she won the HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Women in Tech award. Lina Survila Owning Digital Assets in Decentraland: Is Metaverse the Future? On the Future of Gaming: Winner Takes Us All And these are only three of the 19 nominees for Gaming Guru of the year. All 19 of them are worthy of the award, but only one will win. If you have a favorite gaming contributor, make sure to give them a vote. And if you think one is missing, don’t forget to nominate them. More in Gaming: Axie Infinity And The Future Of Blockchain Games Play-to-Warn in Web 3.0: What can Make a Game Successful Can P2E Games be Fun If They’re Equitable?

Celebrating Video Games and Video Game Writers With #Noonies2022

Celebrando videojuegos y escritores de videojuegos con #Noonies2022

Célébrer les jeux vidéo et les auteurs de jeux vidéo avec #Noonies2022

#Noonies2022 . के साथ वीडियो गेम और वीडियो गेम राइटर्स का जश्न मनाना

#Noonies2022 でビデオ ゲームとビデオ ゲーム ライターを称える

Celebrando videogames e escritores de videogames com #Noonies2022

Tôn vinh các trò chơi điện tử và nhà văn trò chơi điện tử với # Noonies2022

用#Noonies2022 庆祝视频游戏和视频游戏作家

Dedicated to Chapters/Indigo, the national Canadian megachain

183 Stories To Learn About Engineering

Music often plays a significant role in video games. It can create an immersive atmosphere, convey the game's tone, and even affect gameplay. With that in mind, it's no surprise that some of the best video game music that comes out each year can be found in both triple-A and indie titles. But what exactly makes for an excellent game soundtrack? Is it the catchiness of the melody? The way it compliments the game's visuals? Or simply the fact that it gets stuck in your head for days on end? There's no one answer, but we can narrow it down to a few key characteristics. The Best Video Game Music of 2022 First and foremost, excellent video game music is memorable. It's the kind of music you can't help but hum or sing along to, even when you're not playing the game. It also needs to be well-suited to the game it's accompanying. A great soundtrack enhances the experience of playing by setting the perfect mood and atmosphere. And finally, it should be something you want to listen to outside of the game. With all that in mind, here are some of the 2022 games with the best music. Horizon Forbidden West Stray OlliOlli World Teenage Mutant Ninja: Shredder's Revenge Elden Ring Halo Infinite Metal: Hellsinger Cult of the Lamb 1. Horizon Forbidden West : The Flight, Oleksa Lozowchuk, Joris de Man, Niels van der Leest Composers Horizon Forbidden West is a sequel to 2017's Horizon Zero Dawn. It is an open-world action RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by animalistic machines. The game picks up where the first one left off, with Aloy, a skilled Nora hunter, leading a group of companions on an expedition to the Forbidden West, searching for answers about a deadly plague. The game's score is just as sweeping and majestic as the first, with an added sense of urgency and excitement. It is also a perfect example of video game music that fills you with excitement and desire to play more and more. 2. Stray : Yann Van Der Cruyssen Composers Stray is a third-person stealth action game developed by BlueTwelve Studio and one of the best sci-fi games of 2022. Set in a future Tokyo, the game allows you to take control of a stray cat, who, after falling into a walled city full of robots, machines, and mutant bacteria, must return to the surface with the help of a drone companion. Stray is a unique and atmospheric game whose music flawlessly complements the ethereal atmosphere. Characterized by an ambient, dreamlike quality, the game's music is both beautiful and terrifying. 3. OlliOlli World : various artists Composers OlliOlli World is a charming and colorful skateboarding game with an equally vibrant soundtrack. The game's music is one of its standout features, and it's hard to imagine the game without it. With a mix of upbeat electronic tunes and more mellow, reflective tracks, the game's music perfectly sets the tone of the skateboarding adventure, and no doubt deserves a playlist of its own in your music library. 4. Teenage Mutant Ninja: Shredder's Revenge : Tee Lopes Composers If you're of a certain age, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were a big part of your childhood with its music. The 1990s film is still fondly remembered by many, and the recent resurgence in popularity of the franchise has been accompanied by a new game, Teenage Mutant Ninja: Shredder's Revenge. The side-scrolling beat ‘em up game is a love letter to the classic TMNT games of the '80s and '90s. And the game's score perfectly captures that feeling, with high-energy tracks that will get your blood pumping. There is no doubt that TMNT: Shredder's Revenge boasts some of the best video game music of the year. 5. Elden Ring : Yuka Kitamura, Tsukasa Saitoh, Shoi Miyazawa, Yoshimi Kudo, Tai Tomisawa Composers Many consider Elden Ring the best game of 2022, a dark and atmospheric action RPG set in a world of gods and mortals. The game follows the story of a character on a journey to repair the Elden Ring and become the new Elden Lord. The music of the game perfectly matches its dark and brooding atmosphere. The game’s score is beautiful and inspiring and features a mix of orchestral and choral tracks that will send chills down your spine on more than one occasion. 6. Halo Infinite : This Will Destroy You, Joel Corelitz, Gareth Coker, Curtis Schweitzer Composers Halo Infinite is the long-awaited return of one of gaming's most iconic franchises, and its music does not disappoint. The game's score is nostalgic and fresh, with new takes on classic Halo themes. And it's unlikely that you will find a better opening score than Zeta Halo. 7. Metal: Hellsinger : Two Feathers Composers No video game music roundup would be complete without mentioning Metal: Hellsinger, the heavy-metal-themed rhythm game. The music is, of course, metal as hell and perfectly complements the game's fast-paced gameplay. The game's loud and aggressive music will get your head banging for a long time after you put down the controller. 8. Cult of the Lamb : Narayana Johnson Composers Cult of the Lamb is a dark and atmospheric game about a religious cult. Despite the eerie topic, the game's music is not too spooky. It features many catchy and upbeat tracks and atmospheric scores that keep you focused on the task, making it great music for coding or similar activities. Final Words on the Best Video Game Music of the Year So there you have it, some of the best video game music of the year. The year is not over, so maybe we will see some more excellent game soundtracks before it's done. But for now, these are my favorites. What are yours? Let me know in the comments.

The Best Video Game Music of 2022

La mejor música de videojuegos de 2022

La meilleure musique de jeu vidéo de 2022

2022 का सर्वश्रेष्ठ वीडियो गेम संगीत

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