Wing Vasiksiri is the founder and General Partner at WV, a sector-agnostic seed fund investing across Southeast Asia. To date, he's partnered with over 40 founders in Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

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

The job of a venture capitalist falls into four buckets:

1) Sourcing the best startups

2) Picking the best startups

3) Winning allocation in the best startups

4) Supporting founders on their journey

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

There is no one right way to do this job. Every fund and every investor has their own strategy and process. What matters is executing your strategy in a repeatable way. That's what makes this job so interesting and exciting.

Success or failure in this job is also measured on very long time horizons and is on a portfolio rather than an individual basis.

This means that I'm not evaluated on any single outcome or even the average outcome — I'm evaluated on the portfolio's total performance over ten years. This is quite unique to the job of being a venture capitalist, and as a result, I won't know if I'm a good investor or not for a very long time.

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

Starting and raising my first fund in the middle of the pandemic and fundraising and investing entirely through Zoom. This was a unique experience and opportunity for me, and I wouldn't have been able to do it without the early support of others.

Raising the fund has given me the opportunity to partner with amazing founders, and I am very grateful to see how those relationships have evolved over time.

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

The climate tech space has very strong technology and regulatory tailwinds driven by the fact that Southeast Asia will be a net importer of energy by 2025 due to our depletion of fossil fuels.

Specific areas within climate tech that I'm focused on this year include renewable energy production, improving energy efficiency, and carbon credits. I've been learning and developing a thesis to become a more active investor in this space.

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

Have a bias to action (send cold emails, hustle at events, continue to meet new people) and follow through on what you say.

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

Freediving and martial arts

🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show?

Yellowstone and Succession

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

Vanilla (it's not boring!)