Kaya Founders\u2019 team<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Campos compared the growth of the Philippines\u2019 startup ecosystem to India in the 2000s and Indonesia over the past decade. One of the main reasons is founders who have experience working at large tech companies like Grab, Lazada and Zalora, as well as Filipinos who were educated abroad returning to start companies in their home country. Campos told TechCrunch that Kaya has seen four founder archetypes emerge thanks to a confluence of the Philippines\u2019 economic, business and cultural development.<\/p>\n

The first is \u201csecond generation tech talent,\u201d or former employees of large tech companies that \u201chad their eyes opened to how quickly a unicorn can be born when you hit product-market fit,\u201d said Campos. The second is corporate executives who left their jobs to start companies and bring domain expertise to their new roles. Peddlr founder Nel Laygo is one example\u2014he worked at Unilever and Proctor and Gamble before launching the company to provide a POS system for sari-sari, or corner stores.<\/p>\n

The third segment are founders who have experience working abroad, including Filipino expats and members of the Filipino diaspora, and the fourth are non-Filipinos who decided to start companies in the Philippines, taking advantage of the fact that English is the main language of business (Kaya\u2019s portfolio includes founders from countries like Germany, the U.S., Singapore and India).<\/p>\n

An example of the third segment is Kindred founder Jessica de Mesa, who was chief commercial officer at Zalora and spent half a decade working at its parent company, Global Fashion Group, in Singapore and London. De Mesa returned to the Philippines to lead Zalora Philippines\u2019 commercial team, but wanted to return to healthcare (de Mesa is a registered nurse). Kaya had previously developed Kindred as a concept under its healthcare-focused joint venture, Pulse-63, and backed de Mesa as a \u201cinstitutional co-founder\u201d from its beginning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are really seeing an acceleration of the flywheel of startups seeing customer traction and adoption, attracting investors both locally and internationally, and those success stories and fundraising round announcements inspiring a new breed of founders to throw their hat in the ring as well,\u201d said Campos. \u201cWe see this as being very similar to what has emerged in Indonesia the past six to seven years, with the Philippines being at the cusp of the inflection point, just before the rocket takes off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some challenges the Philippines\u2019 startup ecosystem still have to deal with include a fairly nascent venture ecosystem, dominated by local CVCs, and problems sourcing tech talent and finding strategic partners with experience in go-to-market strategies, Campos said. Kaya was founded to help bridge the gap, giving founders access to people like former Lazada Philippines CEO Ray Alimurung, who was recently appointed as general partner of the Zero to One Fund, and Gokongwei-Cheng, for mentoring and strategizing.<\/p>\n

Other support founders can get from Kaya include recruitment, legal services, educational material, office space and product development support, and a network of downstream investors, strategic partners, beta testers and pilot customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel strongly that from now until the end of the decade, we will be living through the \u2018golden age\u2019 of startups in the Philippines,\u201d Campos said. \u201cThat opportunity is also not just for local homegrown ventures, but also regional SEA or global startups that target the Philippines as a growth market.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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