The Startup Ecosystem of the Philippines: Current Trends and Opportunities

Speakers

Kendrick Geluz Kho

Co-Founder and General Partner, Fourth Realm VC & President, Science and Technology Advisory Council Silicon Valley (Philippines)

Kendrick Kho is Co-Founder and General Partner of Sierra Madre, a venture capital firm focused on early- and growth-stage start-ups improving business and industrial capabilities. He was most recently a partner at Global Founders Capital, a global venture firm with over $3B in AUM. He was also at Hone Capital where he built some of the venture industry’s first AI/ML models for investing. He holds three degrees from Stanford, including a MS in Management Science & Engineering. Kendrick is a first-generation immigrant from the Philippines and continues to support entrepreneurship globally, despite living in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Christina Laskowski

Principal, Alquemie Ventures LLC & Adjunct Professor, University of San Francisco

Christina Laskowski is the Founder of Alquemie Ventures, LLC, a consulting firm focused on Strategy, Transformation and Change.  She works with select clients on developing and implementing transformative strategic initiatives.  Her background includes a decade in Change Leadership with Fortune 500 companies including the last 4 years at VMware through its acquisition by Broadcom. Prior she was SVP, Investment Banking at FBR Capital Markets and Head of the Online Marketing & Commerce banking practice.

Christina also serves as Chair, STAC Silicon Valley, a non-profit organization focused on accelerating growth and economic development via innovation-based entrepreneurship in the Philippines.  She is responsible for catalyzing the development of the startup ecosystem in the Philippines by developing and implementing the strategic plan to monetize R&D investments in the country in 2010.  Strategic to its success, she forged the public private partnerships between STAC SV, Philippine agencies, Globe Telecom, Smart Communications, and Novare that led to the Philippine’s first corporate seed investors and drove global interest and velocity of Philippine startup investments beginning in 2012.

 

Paulo Campos

Founding Managing General Partner, Kaya Founders

Paulo Campos III is the Founding Managing General Partner of Kaya Founders, one of the leading early stage venture capital firms in the country that invests in the next generation of high impact entrepreneurs in the Philippines and across Southeast Asia. The fund has over a billion pesos in assets under management and has made over 45 investments to date in startups ranging from e-commerce, logistics, healthcare, fintech, B2B SaaS, and a number of other technology sectors.

Paulo is also the Co-Founder of ZALORA Philippines, the largest fashion e-commerce marketplace in the country, having founded the company in late-2011 after seeing the opportunity to take advantage of the emerging e-commerce industry in the country. He was the CEO of the business for over a decade until late-2021, including during the strategc investment by the Ayala group of companies (one of the largest conglomerates in the country) in 2016 and the IPO of the parent holding company on the Deutsche Borse in Frankfurt in July 2019. He continues to serve on ZALORA Philippines Board of Directors. He also serves on the Board of Shakey’s Pizza Asia Ventures Inc (the largest fast casual dining chain in the country that went public on the Philippine Stock Exchange in 2016 and on the Advisory Board of the social enterprise Generation HOPE. He plays an active role in a number of other advocacies and socio-civic organizations promoting the economic development of the Philippines, including the Makati Business Club and the Management Association of the Philippines.

Paulo holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a degree from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.