Revolutionizing Homeownership in SEA: Phillip An, Co-founder of Homebase (YC W21)

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In this edition, we're thrilled to introduce Phillip A. , co-founder of Homebase (YC W21) , a leading proptech company in Southeast Asia. With an academic and professional background spanning McKinsey & Company, Goldman Sachs, and Harvard Business School, Phillip ventured into the startup world with a focus on revolutionizing homeownership in Vietnam. From a small team to now over 70 employees, Homebase showcases Phillip's ambition and dedication. Join us to uncover Phillip's journey, the growth of Homebase, and how it became the first Vietnamese startup funded by Y Combinator .

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

My name is Phillip, and I'm the co-founder of a company called Homebase.

We provide a comprehensive solution for home ownership across southeast Asia, with Vietnam being our main target market. We've been building this company for the past three or four years, primarily based in Vietnam.

Our team has expanded from just two or three people to now over 60-70 employees with multiple product lines around the theme of financial inclusion and homeownership here.

On a personal note, I'm originally from the U.S, and I've worked across a range of fields from banking, consulting, startups, to venture capital.

I moved to Southeast Asia about four years ago to start this company.

What's Homebase?

Homebase's mission is to elevate lives across Southeast Asia through a combination of finance and real estate.

The market in this region is different and it's tough for young individuals to afford homes, with interest rates reaching 13 or 14 percent annually and banks requiring as much as 40 or 50 percent down payment upfront.

This makes it hard for anyone without a stable income to qualify for a loan and achieve homeownership.

Furthermore, home prices are growing at an accelerated rate each year, which makes delaying homeownership even more costly. To solve this, Homebase offers an alternative method for individuals to access homeownership.

Customers come to us with the properties they are interested in, we purchase them and they pay us back over time, building up equity in the process.

How has being the first Vietnamese startup accepted into YC impacted the Vietnamese startup ecosystem and Homebase?

Fundamentally, Vietnam is a rapidly developing country with a young population and a strong pool of talent.

I see parallels between where Vietnam is now and where China was about 10-15 years ago, just before its startup ecosystem really exploded.

It's an honor that foreign investors and Y Combinator are starting to see Vietnam as an emerging market.

For us, being accepted into YC has always been a dream.

They have been really helpful partners, assisting us in fundraising, connecting us with other successful business owners in our field, and providing valuable advice.

What inspired the idea behind Homebase?

One of the pieces of advice from YC is to solve a problem that you face.

My co-founder, who had been living in Vietnam for quite some time; was ready to buy a home but faced difficulty securing financing, despite having a high and stable income.

When he actually explored the market, he realized that there were really no options for him; or even if there were options, they were very limited. He realized that he was someone with a stable, relatively high income; but if he faced this issue, maybe a lot of other people did as well.

What we did is we started with a problem that we knew and we kind of already felt the pain point of, and we took that and talked through it with hundreds of customers across the market.

Both young and old people, very experienced investors and also new home buyers gave us feedback, and it was pretty overwhelming that this was a major pain point and something needed to be done.

Over time, we decided that there was a major problem in the market, a major gap that we could solve.

We were fortunate enough that when we looked at our connections in more established markets, some companies were also tackling almost the same problem in the United States, the UK and other established markets.

After we found the problem and localized the solution, we talked to more users, iterated the product based on the local customs, and were able to come up with an idea over time.

Could you share key takeaways from your YC experience?

Of course, YC is definitely a great experience. I would say that there are two or three major takeaways for us.

Number one is to dream big.

It's really incredible to get to chat or talk with some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the history of the world.

For example, during our first week, our onboarding session was with the founders of Airbnb, which was really inspiring.

The second thing is the power of community. The cohort experience of YC is really incredible.

You're split into different groups, each with different companies from a variety of sectors and industries.

Every week you're working with your group partner, who are very experienced entrepreneurs, to track metrics and diagnose problems. But you also see other startups in your cohort making progress, and that really pushes & inspires you.

The last thing is that YC teaches a wide range of really amazing lessons.

One of the things that they taught us is to do things that don't scale.

For example, the Airbnb founders instead of hiring photographers to take photos and make the listings very nice, they went to New York themselves and started taking photos of the rooms on their platform and talking to customers.

That was inspiring because if successful companies like Airbnb or Stripe could do things that don't scale, then you as the founder should be dedicated enough to do this as well.

Any interesting stories about Homebase, especially from the early days of the startup?

When we initially started the company, it was me and my co-founder. We also brought someone else on board.

One of the very important things that YC and other venture capital funds tell you is to hire people you can work with and trust.

During our first round of funding, which was pre-seed funding, we were talking with a lot of venture capital funds across Southeast Asia. We managed to collect term sheets, and things were going very well.

Unfortunately, when we were vetting our team, we found out that the third guy on our team had been convicted of a financial crime and had been sent to jail for stealing money from a bank.

We were very shocked, and after confronting him and doing due diligence, we found out that the investor was correct. Because we were still in the early days and barely had any traction, the investors who had committed capital ended up pulling out.

We were left feeling really sad because we basically had nothing, and everyone had lost faith in our idea.

We really have to reach out to people that we knew, reach out to people on LinkedIn, and to raise our initial round was done that way.

By doing that and operating the business, getting on track, we ended up overcoming that hurdle, getting to YC, building the business as a whole and regaining that institutional trust.

I think that really taught us two lessons: one, finding really great people and finding people that you can trust, and two, the importance of perseverance.

For us, after that, Covid was a significant challenge, but having gone through those challenges in the very beginning stages made us really strong.

It allowed us to persevere through later challenges that we felt other companies would be more affected by. To this day, I think that was probably the hardest thing we've done.

Having enough belief and conviction, especially at that early stage, to still persevere and not give up was difficult.

What are you listening or watching to these days?

There are several podcasts I'm a big fan of. One of my favorites is a podcast by Naval Ravikant, the founder of AngelList. His podcast, "How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky" describes his philosophy on how to build wealth.

It's not only applicable to professional life and entrepreneurship, but also offers principles for living a good life.

In terms of online content, there's a famous podcast for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs called the "All-In Podcast" which I follow. Even being in Southeast Asia, it helps inform a lot of high-level things happening in other parts of the world, especially in the United States.

I've been reading a lot of books recently. Especially on Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, these value investing books. I really like the way they think about expected value and making life choices.

You notice that a lot of their business advice can actually translate into your personal life and teach you how to live a really good life as well.

What’s one habit that improves your productivity?

The most important thing for me is exercise. With my background in athletics, being active has always been part of my routine. Staying active, going to the gym, and maintaining physical fitness are crucial for me.

Recently, my routine has just been waking up pretty early in the morning, around 6 a.m. and dedicating one to two hours to gym and exercise.

It aligns with the philosophy of tackling the difficult tasks first, also known as 'boiling the frog'. By prioritizing challenging activities in the morning, the rest of the day seems relatively easier to handle.

How do you incorporate sustainability in your daily life?

Physical health is important because, beyond anything else, maintaining good physical health is crucial for stamina and endurance as an entrepreneur.

Sometimes you're working very long hours and sacrificing a lot outside of work. I think, on the sustainability front, it's also reflected in what you put into your body.

Not just exercising, but also what you eat.

Recently, I've been trying to be a bit more conscious about eating healthily. The theme of sustainability involves eating foods that are more plant-based, or consuming salads and those kinds of things.

The agricultural industry is one of the biggest contributors to pollution and waste. So, there's a really good effect, both on your personal health and globally as an ESG factor, if you are mindful of sustainability in that context.

Quote that you love?

I think one of the quotes that I really like is by Sam Altman, the former president of YC and now the head of OpenAI, "Extreme people get extreme results."

It refers to the idea that if you want to be successful, you can't take the average path or put in an average number of hours.

This perspective even influences our approach to building a company and hiring practices.

I think he was referencing this theme of; if you really want to be successful, as an entrepreneur, as an artist, as a creative, whatever is your career, you just can't take the average path to be able to achieve that result.

You can't put in the average number of hours to achieve that result, or you can't do the conventional things that everyone else does.

It inspires me to a very large extent because I believe Sam is the living epitome of the result of such thinking.

So, even for us, when we contemplate building a company, obviously there's a lot of sacrifice, a lot of commitment to make. Maybe we have to put in more hours, work on weekends. But that's what other entrepreneurs are doing too.

However if you genuinely want to achieve a result that is extreme, abnormal, or if you aspire to achieve significant success, you have to be incredibly creative in strategizing how to attain it.

Similarly, for myself and the company, we're ambitious with the vision we can bring, the milestones we can achieve, and the success we can offer the world.

Even in regards to how we think about building products or extending our company; we're quite ambitious, and we really hope that we can make a really big impact on society as well.