Backing Operators Here, Now

I get asked, more politely in Singapore and less politely in San Francisco, why I'm putting capital to work from Kuala Lumpur.

The honest answer is that the most interesting operators I meet in Southeast Asia right now are not in Singapore. They are in Penang and Subang Jaya and Jakarta and Bandung. They are running businesses that already work. Manufacturing groups doing eight or nine figures in revenue. Logistics platforms that ship across three countries. Financial services teams in their second decade of compounding.

These operators are the most poorly served by the existing capital architecture. They are too big for an angel, too operational for a tech VC, and too modest in their valuation expectations to be interesting to a regional growth fund hunting unicorns. They also tend to be undervalued by their own families, who have spent decades inside the same business and have lost the ability to see what is interesting about it from the outside.

Three things I look for, plainly:

An operator who has already done the hard thing. Not "thinks they can." Has. Whether that's surviving a downturn, executing a multi-country expansion, integrating an acquisition, or rebuilding a team after a leadership exit. The operator who has done the hard thing has the scar tissue that lets them do the next hard thing with AI in the picture.

A business that is materially better with AI inside it. Not "could use AI for marketing." The whole operating model gets faster, leaner, or more accurate when AI is deployed inside the core workflow. If the AI angle is decorative, the deal is not for me.

A founder who treats capital as a tool, not a milestone. The best operators take money because it lets them do something specific they could not otherwise do. Not because raising is the next chest-thump on LinkedIn. The conversation about what the money is actually for, said precisely in two or three sentences, tells me almost everything.

What I am not looking for: companies that pitch themselves as "the Stripe for X" in markets where Stripe already operates. Companies whose moat is a TAM slide. Companies whose CEO cannot tell me, in plain language, what their best customer paid last quarter and why.

The Pertama Capital and Pertama Ventures portfolios are deliberately small. I would rather back five operators I genuinely understand than fifty I am hoping somebody else will manage on my behalf.

If you are an operator in Southeast Asia who has done the hard thing, is doing the second one now, and thinks the third one might benefit from a partner who has built both sides of the table, I am the easiest person in the region to email.