Reflections from last week in Taiwan & Hong Kong

Last week was a special week for JLIN LLC .? Our JLIN team was in Taiwan and Hong Kong, celebrating our friendships with our partners & advisors and reflecting on our journey in purpose-driven investing.

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Our friend, Phil Chen , organized a gathering in Taiwan on Monday for Jeremy and our team to share about our journey in investing and current projects at JLIN Capital Studio, our new endeavor dedicated to purpose-driven investing.? One of the most joyful moments was to see our friends and partners who flew in from Singapore, Vietnam, and Korea to support us.? Special thanks to our advisor, Chin Yin Ong , and our close friend, Pei Lee , who flew in from Singapore to support us.? Also grateful for our friends at B Current Impact Investment, Ray Chen and Meryl Yang , who graciously reached out to their network to invite them to our gathering. Our team is also super grateful for our dear friend and our advisor, ILARIA CHAN , who is not only so generous with her influence and relationships but also with frank feedback that keeps us on the right path. Last but not least, I'm personally so grateful for our team and our agents for going way beyond what they normally do to make this event happen. There is so much that happens in the preparation process that this event really couldn't have been successful without Tiffany Chao Patricia Sun Lucy Yang Stephanie Hsu and our agent team at Athletics Marketing.

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On Tuesday and Thursday, our friend, Wen Li Lim , organized FDI gatherings in Hong Kong where more than 50 people got together to encourage one another in our faith journey as we look to deepen alignment of our values with investment thesis.? We are also grateful for Joseph Tang and James Tang for allowing all of us to use their church for the Tuesday night gathering.

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On Wednesday, our friend Katy Yung and her team at Sustainable Finance Initiative organized an impact investing gathering of family offices where JLIN had an opportunity to invite Jeong Tae Kim , the CEO of our portfolio company MYSC (impact investing accelerator/consultancy/investment), to facilitate roundtable discussions around social innovation and blended finance in SEA.

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What do all these friends have in common?? They were all generous with their time, relationships, and influence.? The generosity of our partners and collaborators inspire us, encouraging us to take incremental steps towards our bold vision of building up redemptive leaders in the venture ecosystem (redemptive leadership = “I sacrifice, we win”).? To be honest, we thought we needed to have more resources to actually do this work.? But opportunities to influence other families, founders, and GPs presented themselves as we found ourselves deeply in relationships with them.?

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Our Assets

As we look intently into what we have, we put less emphasis on what we don’t have and started doing what we can.? We realized we have enough, especially as our advisors and partners share great ideas and generously lend their resources and expertise. So, what do we have internally to do this work?

• Jeremy’s leadership journey as an athlete?
• JLIN’s people-focused culture-building work across various spheres
• 15 years of purpose-driven investing

We see a ton of parallel between the life of a professional athlete and the life of a founder.? They both love their craft so much that the work can become an idol, consuming all of who they are..even their identity.? Their failures are so visible to so many so there’s extra pressure to succeed.? They are both tempted to keep going without much rest.? Over the course of Jeremy’s basketball career, he has wrestled with many of these topics that founders also wrestle with.? We believe Jeremy’s experiences can be an encouragement to many founders, helping them to do the little things to grow more as redemptive leaders.? JLIN, our management company, has built a people-oriented culture over the course of 12 years across various spheres (content, endorsements, and philanthropy).? We know how much work it takes to maintain and grow our culture as we expand into various spheres.? We also have extensive experiences structuring and managing purpose-driven investments.? We can structure and incubate various types of investments aligned with our missional vision.? We can also share our lessons learned with other family offices leaning into purpose-driven investing.?

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Our Missional Thesis

As we look deeper into the identity of JLIN Capital Studio, we gain clarity that we are a people-focused investment group.? In fact, we are a leadership development company first, then an investment company.? Our work is to walk with our founders and investors to ponder more deeply about what it means to be redemptive - “I sacrifice, we win” mentality.? Our work is to work with these leaders to create a culture that aspires to bless others rather than exploit them.? Our thesis is that redemptive leaders and their commitment to creating such culture – whether at companies or in families - are key catalysts to creating deep and long-lasting impact.

Our Strategy

Our strategy (the “how”) is to build trust-based, deep relationships with a few people in each of the cities we invest in, co-build local communities with them, and invite our partners into this community to do life together -? to eat together, hang out at the airports together, go to each other’s events to support each other.? Out of this deep community of few like-minded individuals, we will identify the issues that capture our hearts and ideas to address such issues.? Our team will finance some of these ideas and incubate projects.? Our communities then can experience the outcome together - failures, disappointments, successes.? In this process, we will get to know a few more people who amplify our communities.? Our strategy is to build this flywheel:? community -> ideas -> incubate -> outcome.? That is our strategy.? It is slow..but deeply meaningful because of the people we do this work with.? This is how we are going to build a redemptive investment group.? This is how we want to “redefine love” in the world of investing.

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This journey is hard because it’s so relational.? And, relationship problems are never clean.? It takes lots of discerning.? And we may not see the outcome right away.? But, that’s ok.? We do this work not because we expect immediate success.? We do this work because we are called to this work.? We are going to take incremental steps toward our bold vision of developing redemptive leaders in Asia and the U.S.??

How we define our success

In this season, we want to see more redemptive leaders in Asia who will redefine the culture of venture in this region.? Redemptive love is not “because of how awesome you are, we love you.” It’s “despite the shortcomings, we want to walk with you and support you”.? Our team may only make a real difference in the life of one founder throughout our entire journey.? Wow, what a success that would be!? Can you imagine the difference that one person will make on another founder down the road?? And, over a few generations, our work can lead to formation of a small group of people who embody the “I sacrifice, we win” mentality.? This is our scale strategy.? As an investor, we believe in the power of compounding.? Compounding is powerful because over “time”, the outcome can become really meaningful.? Because “time” is the factor that actually makes the difference, much of our work is building the right solution which hopefully will compound toward our aim over time.? Our solution, inspired by our friend Andy Crouch at Praxis , is actually our friends.? It’s friendships.? It’s not the internal capabilities that sit within the walls of JLIN (highlighted above under “Our Assets”), but a community that we are a part of and contribute to.

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Our ultimate aspiration is this - care about the soul of leaders we invest with and into.? And, we want to do this with our friends.

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This week was a reminder that confirmed the direction of our work.? Glimpse of what our final work can look like.? We were just really encouraged by the power of relationships, great ideas that came out of close friendships, and willingness as a community to prune those ideas as we all went back home.

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Thank you to all of our partners and advisors for taking time out of your busy schedule to come into our lives!??