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Four years ago today, we quietly launched forge.vc with a simple website and a big idea: that Southeast Asia deserved a new kind of seed investor. That was the beginning of Forge. A couple of believers trying to rethink what seed investing in Southeast Asia could look like if we started from scratch. We wouldn’t announce the…

I was reading The Information’s latest newsletter and caught this paragraph: For now, few investors seem worried about losing money. Just over the past few weeks, Anthropic closed a financing at over a $60 billion valuation and OpenAI has been in talks to raise at a $300 billion valuation including the investment.  While both are…

I recently came across political scientist Robert Axelrod’s work determining the best strategy for winning a repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma game. The surprising winner? A simple algorithm called Tit for Tat. It followed four straightforward rules: be nice, be forgiving, be retaliatory, and be clear. Four principles undergird the effectiveness of the Tit for Tat strategy:…

A recent insight is from Fred Wilson, on the topic of writing online. He said, which is an interesting way to think about it, that writing online is a conversation. One of the main obstacles to my writing more frequently is the mental block of writing ‘perfectly’ and the self-defeating thought of ‘how am I…

I received my copy of the Stripe Press version of Poor Charlie’s Almanack a couple of weeks ago after waiting for six months. I was thrilled to unwrap the book, and have been reading it during my free time this holiday season. Although I am still working through it, I have been thoroughly enjoying it.…

At the end of every year, most people have some sort of ritual to reflect on the past year and plan for the new one. I’ve tried various ways to set goals, like KPIs and OKRs, but I kept failing and trying different methods. In 2020, my perspective on goal setting changed fundamentally. I now…

One of the biggest gifts in 2023 to me would be the gift of health. We were lucky to be able to partner with Kenneth and his team on their mission to democratise access to preventive healthcare services, with the aim to enable folks like you and me to have a better understanding and control…

As a startup founder, you are constantly juggling multiple priorities and making decisions that impact the future of your business. However, it can be challenging to optimise along all three constraints: cost, speed, and being right. In many cases, you will only be able to focus on two of these factors. When you’re in the…

I’ve been trying to find a good home for my beloved MacBook Pro 13. I’ve had this machine since 2013 (!). This workhorse saw me through Evernote, SeedPlus / Jungle Ventures, and then some. It’s probably one of the best laptops I’ve ever had, and it still works pretty well after ten years. I am…

The lunar new year is one of my favourite festivities and it’s especially nice this year when it feels like we have moved past the pandemic. I love seeing friends and families being able to gather, happy and smiling faces all around. Even though it’s been raining in Singapore for most of the past week…