What I learned from interning at a VC firm in Southeast Asia

I spent 2 months in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, to intern as an Investment Analyst last summer with Patamar Capital. Within those two months, I’ve learned invaluable lessons and the whole experience have exceeded my expectations. Since I don’t really hear many people (in my circle, at least) talking about what it’s like to intern at a VC, I want to share my experience here for you ever wonder about what a VC internship might entail.

For an intern, I truly felt like I was offered a diverse range of tasks and projects to learn from. My day-to-day responsibilities include some of the following:

1. Contributing in deal sourcing and pipeline building.

We were encouraged to go to events in the startup ecosystem and talk with people there to keep up to date with the community. As an intern, I was also given the chance to conduct preliminary assessments of some of the startups in the pipeline, and draft the pre-investment summary to the global team.

Lessons: I got to practice evaluating startups in a wide range of industries by briefly looking at its market size, its product-market fit, its competitive advantages, and its core team. I learned of the different components required to make a successful startup and train me to quickly identify strengths and weaknesses of an idea and an organization.

2. Doing a lot of due diligence research, both primary and secondary.

I got the chance to help the firm with their due diligence for a potential deal. We conducted desktop research on the industry landscape, competitors, and recent developments in the space. And while all of that was very useful in giving context, what I found most interesting was our field research.

We spent a few days on the field talking to the startups’ merchants, customers, and other stakeholders to see their performance in the real market. We also interviewed employees to really understand its company culture, its day-to-day challenges, and what motivates the employees to join the startup.

We also performed research on various industries in Indonesia to further the firm’s understanding on the world we were playing in. I chose to take a deep dive on the Financial Services industry. I spent days reading reports, articles, and the news to compile information. Then, the intern team and I further analyzed the data dump and transformed it into a more digestible format in the form of a report. We ended up presenting our key findings to the global team at the end of the internship.

Lessons: Through this process, I learned how to perform research more effectively. It’s always overwhelming to start on a research project, but my supervisor taught me that it’s always best to start with a set of questions, and then find answers to through the research.

In addition, I gained so many insights on the high-level trends in Southeast Asia. To name a few, I learned a lot about the emerging fintech players in the region and the challenges in the financial services industry.

I also realized the specific challenges faced by Indonesia as an archipelago and the importance of an infrastructure, or a method, that can reach the untapped markets. This does not only apply to financial services but a whole range of industries as well. Having said that, the abundance of problems are actually opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs. There is still a lot to figure out, a lot to solve, and a lot to innovate within Indonesia and beyond!

3. Meeting with founders and other interesting people in the space.

I was able to sit in the meetings with founders from different startups that came in our way. I saw pitching styles of different founders and different approaches that they took in communicating with investors. Through the events that we were encouraged to attend, I met people ranging from early-stage founders, serial entrepreneurs, to even the CEOs and key figures of some of the most notable startups in Indonesia.

Lessons: I realized that leadership does not come from only one type of personality. There were founders who were very confident and dominated the conversation in the room, but there were also founders who were more reserved. Both are capable and passionate. I also learned that networking is a huge part in the VC world - there were events everyday that were made for people to network and display thought leadership.

4. Providing extra support for portfolio companies.

This was one of my favorite parts of the experience. I spent a week in the portfolio company’s headquarters to help them brainstorm ideas and come up with a strategy to enter a new market segment.

We were given a lot of freedom in how we wanted to contribute. The intern team and I held meetings with the startup’s team, mapped out the challenges that they faced in their current attempt, and conducted extensive primary research (we interviewed current customers, the customers in the new market segment, and assessed current operations) to figure out a feasible strategy. At the end of the project, we were able to present our final recommendation to the founders and key employees.

Lessons: The most important takeaway was understanding the challenges faced by a rapidly growing startup. I came to realize that the problems of a startup differ greatly from that of an established firm. A startup is still greatly concerned with testing out their core business models and piloting different projects. They are faced with scaling challenges and pressures from investors to “grow at all costs”. In regions like Indonesia, startups must deal with a scarce talent pool which leads to hiring challenges.

?In addition, this was my first time conducting a consulting project at the company site, and learning how to handle this interaction was very valuable.

5. Providing an extra hand for the events hosted by the firm.

VC firms sometimes launch initiatives to foster the entrepreneurial ecosystem in their regions. In my first week of my internship, Patamar was actually wrapping up their accelerator program that was co-hosted with another VC firm, Kinara. The program was called the Impact Accelerator Program, which took 10 startups in the fashion industry and mentored them in growing their businesses.

The majority of my time was used to review their 2-minute pitch decks and help the startups finalize them for the final event, where they will pitch their businesses in front of investors. I was able to help the startups redefine their business plans in a simpler way so that it was understandable to an outsider like me.

Lessons: Having to go through and revamp so many pitch decks essentially made this program become a crash course on pitching for me. After the event ended, I understood how to pitch your company in an engaging way to an audience, as well as how to build an effective pitch deck.

I learned that a lot of the times, the main challenge for a founder is to find a way to simplify their business model into an understandable concept for the audience. Oftentimes the founder is so engrossed by the complexities of the day-to-day operations of their companies, that it translates into their pitch which then makes it very difficult to comprehend.

Overall: A change in my perspective

Prior to this internship, I knew exciting things were about to happen in Southeast Asia. However, I never knew the extent of how vibrant the startup community is in Indonesia (especially Jakarta), and the number of brilliant people who are on the ground trying to solve the most pressing problems faced by the region. There are people out there trying to solve unequal distribution issues, financial inclusion, last-mile logistic issues, and many other problems embedded in our markets.

I believe that some of the previously “impossible” problems, be it economic or social, will be tackled by these agile, endlessly innovative, and ambitious startups led by founders hungry to make a difference. It’s already happening, and I have no doubts that amazing breakthroughs are to come in the next coming years. Just take a look at Go-Jek, one of Indonesia’s unicorns, and how it has practically re-shaped how the entire city of Jakarta operates by aggregating a highly fragmented service (motorbike rides) into one platform.

Thank you so much to Patamar Capital for giving me this opportunity and for teaching me so much! I hope this article is useful to everyone who is considering interning at a VC, or considering on returning to Southeast Asia from their studies abroad. If you have any questions or just want to chat, feel free to contact me!