Buyers and Builders
00:36:29 · Mikk, Eric Tan
[00:36:29] S0: good And how many how many how many languages you you you cover? [00:36:34] S1: Primary primarily three languages. So English would be one. Mandarin or or Chinese will be one and then Malay would be the national language. So three of them. And they are all spoken in one single country. So what that means is that the advertisers would want to advertise with us to target different demography within the same country. Whereas, I think maybe in Europe, my understanding is most country has, like, one predominant language, except most people speak different languages across all the countries. [00:37:06] S0: Yes and no. There are countries in DACH regions where there are also, like, four different languages in one country. So it's it's... It... That's why it's so hard to consolidate, and that's why when people say, like...
00:37:18 · Eric Tan
[00:37:18] S1: Yeah. Our our approach is that from an editorial standpoint or content standpoint, we we allow them to do what they have been doing best. So we don't really get involved in the day to day organic content. The editorial team would know what speaks to the language, so it speaks to the audience that they target. We really only come in from a commercial standpoint where we try to cross sell all these assets to our advertisers. So you can think of the editorial team as quite independent in general, except when there is a sponsored campaign coming in, and we try to work with the authority to make sure we weave all this campaign into the language of the brand, so they don't come across as like, kind of in your face sort of advertising, but, but you're right, right, like, it's not a very straightforward, process, or straightforward strategy to execute, it took us a, a long time to really, understand how to do that, but that's also because we do have quite an experienced management team that has been in the space for the last twenty years that has seen how media evolved over the last twenty five years. You move from print to to the Internet, to social media, to where it is today, where it's very super social driven. Yeah. So I think that's kinda generally our approach where we leave them to do their thing from a content creator standpoint.
00:38:36 · Mikk
[00:38:36] S0: You said in the beginning of the call that both you and Patrick, before it all got started, you were both studying and reading Constellation software. So having met you in person, I can say you guys are like learning machines because while I was having the organization with you, Patrick had his laptop open. I've never seen someone having so many opened apps at the same time. So I was just mentioning a firm or mentioning an individual and he was immediately Googling and then just opened a new tab, did it again and again. So whenever he has more time, he will go through that. So who are you learning from? Who what is your North Star? Because you are in this, as you said, in a pretty small market. Yep. But you can learn from folks you are willing to fly to Sweden to learn learn from folks there. You are probably looking at the companies in The US. So what is your North Star and and how how does your how does your learning process work?
00:39:36 · Eric Tan
[00:39:36] S1: Yeah. What I think I've learned from Patrick and over the years is that what we like is to get inspiration and learnings from the West and these days a lot from from China and India as well. But what I find quite difficult and what we have found quite difficult for most people is to localize the learning. It's quite easy to say, hey, it works in The US, it works in in Europe, let's just do it here, it's gonna work exactly the same. It won't, it never worked out the same, because the the dynamics is just very different. So to answer your question, like, we don't see any particular business model or companies as like, the goal to, kind of north star that, okay, we are trying to replicate that particular model. We we never say that. What we make it quite clear is that we break down different parts of the business that we're building today, and we try to look for companies that is particularly strong in in a particular area and try to apply. So, so as an example, we we this year, the last two years, we spent a lot of time thinking about what is the post acquisition engagement model, and everyone has different way of doing it, you have Roper way of just not doing anything at all, and it's purely financially driven, but you also have like super hands on kind of centralized approach by someone like an LVMH, and you have everything in between. So we try to look for the ones that has got a good system or approach as an example like Danaher has a quite interesting approach. Roper has quite an interesting approach and we try to learn from them and understand the the logic behind what they do and why they do certain things and see if it applies to us and then tweak it along the way in a way that it fits our reality and the type of entrepreneurs that we have in the group. So I I would I wouldn't say there's one company that we really religiously follow, but there is like at least 15 companies that I religiously follow to see what they're doing in different parts of the of the market and see what we can learn. And to your point, in some ways, we we really see the ability to learn and localize and iterate quickly as an advantage of what we have, and we are probably the only few people from from Southeast Asia that that turns out in Sweden to to learn.
00:41:56 · Eric Tan, Mikk
And and I think there's no better way to to learn than to get ourselves immersed in in groups of people that have been there than that. [00:42:05] S0: Now the expo business. I was I was reading your... From your homepage, there is a company named Tastefully. Did I say it correctly on your portfolio? And you attract one and a half million visitors every single year. So is it just one event or you have you have multiple events during the [00:42:22] S1: year? We We six events throughout the years.
00:42:22 · Eric Tan, Mikk
[00:42:22] S1: year? We We six events throughout the years. [00:42:25] S0: Okay. So while I was reading it, okay, guys, you are you are managing a company in in a event space. I immediately thought about the interview, which I was listening with Ari Emanuel, and he's the he's the American businessman and runs the... I think it's TKO TKO Holdings. And he said that he had a meeting with Elon Musk, and and he said during that dinner, they were talking about AI. And Elon said to Ari that live cannot be disrupted. So... And that made Ari like, okay. He's the the smartest entrepreneur we have, and this is what I'm going to double down. And and in your case as well, what have you seen when it comes to, okay, you have this digital media, people spending, like, all their time on their phones. That's one side. On the other side, you have this physical event. You said one was it, like, four days or something? Do you see this you you need, like, a larger expo area soon because more and more people would like to get this experience? And do you see the attendance numbers going up? What do you see? Because it's so interesting. You see both sides. You see the the data, how much people are spending on their phones, and then you see, like, you're simply selling more tickets because more people would like to get this in person experience. So maybe I'm wrong, but maybe you can give some data there.