Malaysia Is Poorly Marketed To Entrepreneurs, Says 500 Durians' Khailee Ng

Malaysia is an easy place to get cheap, good, English-speaking talent, with overheads that are often far lower than in more advanced markets in Southeast Asia. But it continues to suffer the effects of brain drain. Simply put, Malaysia isn’t cool to be in for some of the nation’s brightest, and this has hurt its startup scene, according to Khailee Ng. Ng, who is from Malaysia, was recently hired by 500 Startups as venture partner for Southeast Asia. The Silicon Valley VC also set Ng up with a shiny new $10 million microfund for the region. (The SEC-filing was called 500 Durians.) He said Malaysia has all the makings of a ripe scene to be picked, but he has been watching in dismay as startups flocked to larger, far less Internet-penetrated countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines. And Malaysia often gets outshone by its smaller neighbor to the South, Singapore, where plenty of large corporations have set up shop, and seed funding is readily available, backed by government funding. Malaysia’s situation is the result of an under-marketed set of funding from the government, plus a syndrome where none of its successful entrepreneurs are keen to let others know about them, said Ng. He pointed to the government-backed Cradle Fund, now in its tenth year already. “Nobody knows about it, and there are misconceptions that it’s hard to get, or there are bureaucratic hoops to jump through,” he said. The Cradle fund offers up to $160,000 (RM500,000) in seed funding to projects that are younger than three-years-old. Other non-government-linked funds that have just been set up within this year include $10 million from 1337 Accelerator, $150 million from Catcha Group, and $5 million from the Asia Venture Group. Ng also said that people are often surprised to find that some of the largest tech companies to IPO in the region are from Malaysia. In descending order from the top five list of publicly-listed companies here, Jobstreet has a market cap of $268.2 million, iProperty Group has $178.2, My EG Services has $151.7 and iCar Asia has $56 million. The fifth in the list is the only one not from Malaysia, and is Singapore-based Asiatravel.com, at $40.4 million, he said. Ng was speaking to a roomful of Malaysian startups and the 500 Startups’ Geeks On A Plane delegation that is currently traveling through Southeast Asia. When I spoke to him on

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