Darryl Ratulangi is the Managing Director at OCBC Ventura, the corporate venture capital arm of Indonesia’s PT Bank OCBC NISP Tbk. 

The firm has invested in local startups like GajiGesa, Sirclo, EdenFarm, and more!

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👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

I'm paid to do what most Asian parents tell their kids not to do. So I'm investing in strangers, crazy ideas, taking a lot of risks, and hoping to make money. 

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🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

My upbringing as an aspiring athlete in competitive team sports instilled in me a passion for the investment industry. The humbling experience of being surrounded by highly talented and energetic individuals from both the investment and entrepreneurial worlds has further ignited my interest in this dynamic field.

Despite the industry's tendency to overlook traditional hierarchies, I've learned that true success is not measured by small milestones but rather by enduring relevance and the consistent delivery of exceptional results. Investment managers are ultimately judged by their ability to stay at the forefront of industry trends and produce consistently successful deals.

While my career journey has been relatively short, I am driven by an insatiable desire to leave a lasting mark in the investment industry. I yearn for the adrenaline rush that comes with achieving remarkable exits, not just for myself but also for the entrepreneurs I support.

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🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

I guess for me it's executing the idea. 

So at the time from that strategy PowerPoint deck of setting up a corporate venture capital in Indonesia, turning this into a reality, building up the team, investing into excellent founders, surviving COVID, and I guess the ongoing winter for now, I think that has definitely been a highlight for me. 

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🌲 What is at least one aspect of the job that is evergreen to you?

I think it's always that every single time we feel (for the lack of a better word_)dumb about it, right?  We’re always learning something new. What we know a year ago was correct, might not be correct this year, so I think that's the best part of the job, right? 

It maintains us to be honest, and I guess we have to stay hungry all the time. 

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🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

I guess I would say it's the revelation year whereby investors, entrepreneurs, tech enthusiasts like ourselves, I guess we finally realized that building a startup or any business is not supposed to be easy.

I mean at the end of the day, this is a risky industry whereby a lot of people will fail. And I mean, that's the normal thing. And yet again, this is a highly rewarding industry, right? 

I think back then, if you ask people in 2018 and 2021, everyone was so sure that they were going to build the next unicorn and it was supposed to be easy. 

Any venture capital firm did not see its portfolio dying. But I mean, today this is the reality. I think it's a year whereby people have to accept that this is their reality and I think this will be the new normal going forward. 

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🌊 What sets OCBC Venture apart from other venture capitalists and how do you expect to survive this very turbulent time?

For people like us, it's always the brand and the people, which are interconnected. Of course, people will always buy the brand but then the second layer is always the people. At the end of the day, I'm not suitable for everyone, but then I try to be as genuine as possible.

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🇮🇩 Indonesia is set to be one of the largest economies in the world in the next years. How will some VCs play a role in this, if at all?

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Okay, so I guess the most important part for Indonesia will always be infrastructure, which the government is doing a very good job on. I mean, we're building up our new capital city. That's always been an exciting project. But aside from that, I always tell people it's about human capital. 

So everything else can be improved. But unless our human capital improves, we're not going anywhere. Right. Because at the end of the day, we still need humans to do the work. 

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💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry? 

Do not spend all your time networking. I know that's the most exciting part of the job, and that's why most people enter venture capital in the first place. But don't forget to build up that technical skill of building financial models…that PowerPoint skill. And definitely these days it’s on making the prompt on your next AI engine. 

So I guess the last thing is always to stay hungry and take a lot of risks. When you're younger, you can afford to take a lot of risks. 

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🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours? 

I'm into sports. I'm into competitive sports, so I can talk for hours about anything competitive sports. My favorite sport is baseball. 

I like American sports, but we live in Asia, where the sport is not as popular. Especially the hours being flipped, like, 12 hours apart so that's a challenge. But aside from that, I think I always follow up with the news and what's going on around it, and I find a lot of similarities between competitive team sports and investing in general. 

In competitive team sports, people have to work under a certain budget, always trying to find the next best talent, the next best people under the radar. The most obvious answer is finding superstars that everyone will buy and pay up for. But then what ends up being a winning team sometimes is that hidden gem under the radar, which is good value for money. 

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show? 

My favorite TV show is Narcos. 

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🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Mine's boring, so most of the time I eat cookies and cream.

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FYI. We've edited this interview for clarity.