Buyers and Builders
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.
00:43:54 · Eric Tan
[00:43:54] S1: Sure. Sure. I think how we actually came into the tastefully business and a couple more subsequently was quite organic. So, how the relationship come about was they they came to us and say, hey, guys, like we attract, at the time was, I think, maybe seven fifty, zero people a year. We would like to incorporate some of the online packages, digital media packages of yours to and offer it to exhibitors. So, not only do they come to our exhibitions as an exhibitors and get access to the live audience, but we could also tell them there is continuity of your brand awareness online if you become part of our group, right? Part part of the exhibitions. So that's how the relationship came about. And as we study more and more into the space, we we noticed a few things. One, like you said, especially though in the world today, people or consumers are craving live experiences because the... There's just so much you can doom scroll on on social media, and there's, like, a trend of, you know, people kinda moving away from online to offline. And two is that we see that as quite a synergistic business to our media... Digital media business on on online, where the spending for advertisers always move towards where it attracts attention. So we want to, in many ways, diversify our business or hedge our business against one or the other. Right? So so today, our digital media business has kinda gone offline in in some ways. Right? It's kinda integrated in the in the offline ecosystem, and we like that because it it puts us into a less, I guess, volatile environment where... Because the good thing about online is it can scale really fast. Bad thing is that when things change, it also change very fast. So having experiences on on on ground or as you mentioned from Ari Emanuel, that life events cannot be disrupted. That's really the overarching thesis. Right? We don't expect all businesses to to perform the same or or or even better on on a year to year basis for the next thirty years. So, when we look far ahead enough, let me say, hey, if one day, the, the consumer behavior change, what would it look like, and how do we put ourselves in a position such that, we don't subject ourself to to unnecessary swing, and we are well diversified against the single sector risk. And that's how we think about about the event space.
00:46:14 · Eric Tan
One, consumer trends moves all the time online and offline. We wanna make sure that we capture both so that advertisers will move along with consumers. Two is that it's actually a complete opposite of what we do. And because what we're aiming for is steady 20, 25% growth across our businesses, we don't need to bet on one thing and make sure it works right. We rather bet on a few things that semi independent, semi unrelated, so that if something get hit, the other would be fine. And I guess it's a bit like managing a diversified portfolio of stocks where you don't want them to be so correlated. And ideally, in a bad market, there's something that works out and something that don't. And that's how we generally think about it.
00:46:58 · Mikk
[00:46:58] S0: Okay. Now maybe a few questions about your again, those conversations we had on on Stockholm. It was, like, eye opening what you guys are doing and Patrick himself as well. So for guys who don't know Patrick Grove, I think on this region in this beautiful world, He's a he's a pretty well known guy. So I was following him before this event, and I recognized he was there. So I just came and and say... Said hi, and he immediately introduced me to you and said, like, okay, Eric, come to the podcast. And so maybe you can can share a bit, like, how is it working with with Patrick? Because he's this charismatic, high energy guy. He immediately said to me, like, Mikk, you should come to you should come to Singapore in a in a first week of October. There's this f one event. Everyone's there. Let's just do a quick event. Let's talk about serial acquirers and bam, bam, bam. I was like, we just met, man. He was like, no. No. Let's let's let's do it. So what what have you learned? Because you you had this start up experience, which, again, didn't go that well. But now you you guys are doing so well. The the company is growing. So what have been some of the some of the lessons from from from his experience?