Resilience & Reinvention | Jeep Kline | Tank Talks Asia

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In today's episode, we're lucky to have with us a pioneering investor and economist who has dedicated herself to improving Southeast Asia's lot. Jeep Kline is a leader, the first person of Thai origin to establish a VC fund in Silicon Valley, and she's a champion of Southeast Asian success, who stands for something much bigger than herself: impact.

Please welcome the founder and managing partner of Raisewell Ventures. Jeep. How are you?

Jeep: Great, and thank you for having me.

Manisha: It’'s really unusual to see you in Singapore because you're not based here at all. Right?

Jeep: No, and this year I traveled to Southeast Asia every two weeks from San Francisco.

Manisha: That's a lot of air miles and I'm happy for that airline, whichever one you're traveling with. But it's good to see you across the desk.

People might be wondering Jeep Kline, who is this? Who is this Jeep Kline? So, Thai, you grew up in Bangkok. Tell us a little bit about you growing up there.

Jeep: Yeah, so I was born and raised in Bangkok. I went to Thai school, regular school, and I went to Chulalongkorn University, which is, you know, a college in Thailand, in Bangkok. And I also study all, I didn't go to any international program. I went to all Thai program.

I am a regular kid. I was a regular kid. I think one thing though that I was very lucky is, my parents really invested in education. I went to a Catholic private, all girls school, is a convent school. And in my generation at the time it was one of the top schools that you get to, you know, expose a little bit of the international culture, but mainly it was still a Thai program.

And from then on, you know, I use it as sort of like a baseline to jumpstart myself and got into a college, which is Chulalongkorn University. It is regarded as one of the top academic institutions in the country. And yeah, study economics. And I fell in love with this just like you.

Manisha: I'm smiling 'cause I also studied economics once upon a time.

Jeep: Yes and I thought, what a wonderful subject. It just clicked with me and I wanted to learn more and more. And that kind of geared me towards the graduate program in the US and then later on I became an economist at the World Bank in Washington, DC

Manisha: Okay. We're gonna get to that. But first I wanna rewind a little bit because I've, anyone who will look up your name will come across so many YouTube videos, many articles. Your PR department is clearly working over time, but what I think is incredible is, I was reading all of this and watching this and I was thinking, wait, when did she learn how to speak English? So was that a bit of a journey as well, just a cultural journey, trying to pick up language? What was all of that like?

Jeep: It was very hard. When I went to graduate school, and it's language is one thing, which, you know, always very difficult when you had to switch and you had to retrain your brain.

In grad school I learned from doing it, obviously, writing the thesis paper, being in classes, with my classmates and so on. And I also watch TV. I watch CNN. And I was repeating after CNN, right? Like to try to get the intonation. I'm not joking. Yes, it was CNN. It was the only channel I had access to when I was in Bangkok, you know, preparing myself before coming to the US.

But there was no magic. It took a long time. It took a long time, even after grad school.

Manisha: And a lot of effort.

Jeep: And effort. And people viewed you as international student and didn't view you as local student that they wanna hang out with you. So it was, and, and when you have to insert yourself everywhere when you have to, you know, take risks and a lot of rejections, right?

Because friends, when you make friends when you are in early twenties and they are comfortable with people who are like themselves, not different from themselves. So there's a lot of like efforts and stress and homesick and Michigan is super cold compared to Thailand.

Manisha: Oh gosh, yeah.

Jeep: So it, all of those things, kind of come at you, you know, all at once. But, hey, I survived and I liked it.

Manisha: I think I've heard, and I've heard this in some of the previous podcasts and conversations you've had, something that inspired you to go and work for the World Bank was the Asian financial crisis.

Jeep: That's right.

Manisha: How old were you when it all hit?

Jeep: 18.

Manisha: Oh, okay. So that, I mean, that's a really, that's actually a really important time in your life.

What did it feel like to go through that?

Jeep: I felt it couldn't go worse. It impacted my family very severely. My father, he's a self-made man and he built everything for himself, building his real estate business and so on. And during the crisis, real estate sector got hit the first and the most, before spreading outside the country, throughout Southeast Asia and then East Asia regions.

The funny thing is, even though we got hit, I didn't feel hurt as much as my parents. And I thought part of it is because I failed before. So I was a competitive swimmer since I was seven and I never won.

Manisha: On top of everything else.

Jeep: On top of everything. And I never won. Right? Like I'm relatively petite and it's just like…

Manisha: It just wasn’t for you.

Jeep: Yeah. I mean, everything kind of like stack against you. You swam like three kilometers a day and you never won for 10 years. It was a lot. And then I quit and then I came back and so on.

So if you practice failing and sports is good practice. And that's why I think kids should play sports because they learn how to lose. Not learn just how to win.

Manisha: Yeah.

Jeep: And so when I had that kind of experience along the way, when the actual crisis hit my family, I was like, okay we can do it. We are gonna go back up from now on. But the turning point is I learned that I wanted to do economics.

Manisha: I might be pushing it a little bit, but I'm curious because you're talking about how you had failed before.

And what I'm hearing in there is perhaps your parents took it harder than you did.

Jeep: Yes.

Manisha: What was that dynamic like? Were you able to sort of help them in any way, reassure them in any way, because there's also a big culture gap between that generation and your generation, in terms of possibility and potential. And that sort of it’s ok, dust yourself off because the world is full of opportunities.

How did you mitigate that difference?

Jeep: Yeah, yeah. I remember when it happened, you know it, over a course of only one month I felt that my dad was 10 years older. It was like at that stress level of losing everything. And he came back and he told me that Jeep, you know, it would be very difficult if you have to go to international program in college. So in college you can go to Thai program or international program. And I had, you know, choices and we're saying, no, I'm gonna go to Thai program because it's lower cost okay.

So that's one which is a change. And two, what he was afraid of was the social dynamics. As I mentioned that he invested a lot in, you know, the schooling. And I went to a private school and all of the kids or the friends around me, they're pretty wealthy, relatively wealthy in the country. And so, and you used to hang out with them, you used to do a lot of activities with them, and one day you couldn't do any of that. So he was afraid that, you know, the friendship will change. You know what, this is the best test. I rather know now who's my real friend and who’s not, at that age.

And there's something deep inside me and I don't know why, I knew I would be successful, even if I didn't have resource or money. And it's just like the deep feeling that I had in myself. I didn't know anything about economics. My parents were not economists. In fact, they didn't even go to college. So when I talked to them about, oh I'm gonna learn economics, they had no idea what I'm gonna learn. The only thing that I heard of demand and supply. And it's like, well, it's actually much deeper than that.

Manisha: Yeah.

Jeep: Including when I was working at Intel, I still remember I told my father that, oh, you know, I'm working at Intel. I'm gonna launch the new Android tablet in the world. And he heard the name of the company. He said, oh, is it a telephone company 'cause it has tel in it. And I said, hmmm I wish it's a telephone company. I think we missed the smartphone era. Let me do tablet instead.

You know, it's just like that kind of thing that you kind of take upon yourself and you like, you see opportunities everywhere. And I think the difficulties that I've gone through in the past when I was young helped me see a lot of opportunities now, during the difficulties.

Manisha: Okay. You jumped way ahead 'cause you started talking about Intel. Before we get there 'cause I think it's an interesting jump, let's go to the World Bank.

So off you go, you become an economist and off you go. You go and you study in the United States. And which comes first? The World Bank or the study?

Jeep: Study first.

Manisha: Okay. And then as I understand it, you were speaking to a professor who was encouraging you to take this global mindset that you had. And take it somewhere like the World Bank.

The story goes that you cold called something like 49 people. The 50th one picks up the phone and says, yeah, Jeep, I'm gonna give you a shot. This economist takes you under their wing and a month later you get a proper job.

Jeep: So whoever responded to my email, whoever picked up my phone, I read their reports and that's a good thing. So you figure things out. Right? At the World Bank reports are published widely, so anyone can go and read it. And I would tell them, look, I'm gonna be in Washington DC from this date to this date.

And I flew myself in and if they said, yes, meet me for coffee, then I would go in and meet them for coffee. And every single chat I asked, okay, who's doing what, what help do they need? And so on, so I pitched myself in.

And it was tough because I got a lot of rejections, but it was also a lot of fun because I got to learn from what different people think about different subject areas within the World Bank. And I was also very lucky that, you know, one person said yes before, you know, my stipends ran out.

Manisha: Yes.

Jeep: And don't know what to do.

Manisha: Yeah. Because you, I mean of course you, your parents had to borrow money to send you to Ann Arbor. And then you were on a stipend 'cause you, I think you had to get a scholarship, right?

Jeep: That's correct.

Manisha: So I mean that's quite difficult to manage all of that. But as we know about you, you will not be won over by something like failure. It's all possible. And you made it possible.

And then again you tell an interesting story about experiences. So Tanzania is one experience that you mention, about the lights going out at five because there's no electricity and yet people are sending money on regular phones.

Jeep: That's right, with buttons.

Manisha: This is where you have a revelation that actually, technology, there's something here and we need to do something useful about it. We know the stories, people can hear them. They're all on YouTube. But my question is this.

Why do you think the World Bank didn't get it? Because if the World Bank had got it back then, the potential for payments in this way, we might be in a completely different place right now, potentially, for a lot of the communities that you would've been serving under the World Bank.

Jeep: Oh my God, what a great question. I don't think it's because the World Bank did not get it. I think the World Bank realized that financing people at the bottom, not just the government, is critical. And at the time we also talk a lot about microfinance, but if you look at the profile of people who got into the World Bank, they're not technologists by heart. Mostly they are economists. They are policy makers right. And they are very smart. They usually have PhDs, you know, from Ivy League School and so on. So the way that they work, they work in very particular subject area instead of looking broadly about investing in tech in a way that improves the livelihood of the people.

Now things started to change, but might not be the World Bank side, but more on the IFC side, International Finance corporation, that they started looking to invest, as you know, a venture capitalist and so on. And then we can debate about whether or not it's the right idea.

Manisha: I'm not gonna debate with you, you went to debating society, that's not happening. So there you are World Bank, but then you make this jump to Silicon Valley, you realize the value of technology. And I guess somewhere along the line, Jeep has this light bulb moment, which is, I'm in the wrong place.

Jeep: Yes.

Manisha: So how do you make the jump?

Jeep: Once I realized I'm the hustler.

Manisha: Certainly sounds that way.

Jeep: I thought, okay, I'm not gonna do a PhD in economics. I don’t want to do just research. So I applied to business schools, as a way to transition myself into tech and being an operator. And that's how I got to Berkeley. And I got my MBA from the high school of business.

Manisha: Yeah, which is where you teach now.

Jeep: Yes I came back.

Manisha: Which apparently is what the most popular class they say. That's what they say.

But then you get hired by Intel. And it was interesting 'cause in some of the interviews, you sort of almost say, I was really lucky, but no, you're not lucky. From everything I've heard about you, you know, you're smart, you're intelligent, you've got this incredible attitude, you're a hard worker, you are willing to be vulnerable, to put yourself out there and learn something new. Who wouldn't want that?

Jeep: Yep. I still think I'm lucky. I'm in the right place at the right time most of the time. And Intel was one of them.

Manisha: Okay. Well, I always say luck is where preparedness meets opportunity. So it's not just luck.

But at Intel, and you referred to it earlier, you worked on the first ever Android tablet, you launched it. So I'm sitting across the table from history. I think this is very exciting, let alone Raisewell ventures. What was it like to launch something brand new, and something that was in that technology space and something that you clearly knew could be, and would be, revolutionary for the community that you had come from.

Jeep: At the time before I launched that product, I have to say I didn't know it was gonna be tablet, but I always had the thesis in my mind because I grew up in Bangkok. I worked in many emerging markets when I was at the World Bank and I saw the rise of the technology. And when Steve Jobs launch iPhone and iPad, I thought, you know, people like my family might not be able to afford it, let alone a lot of other population, right.

It's the first version was always expensive. But yet it was so powerful that everybody should have access, maybe education content, maybe for entertainment and maybe other areas that they can use those things for access and, you know, help bridge the world.

So putting different things together based on my understanding of the world, it might be, you know, my naivete of understanding of the world, I think we should do it. So I pull together the data, why we should do that. So I mapped the industry with what Intel really, really need to get into, I call low power computing segment, 'cause you don't want to miss it and it's gonna go lower and lower and lower power, which is, you know, like watch and, you know, wearable devices and so on.

So, and that's kind of like the idea that I had. I just, I didn't know it was gonna be tablet, so when tablet arrive, then I said, okay, yes, it's gonna be this device. So at first, the price point might be a little high, than what you wanted to target. You have to have a plan on how you're gonna drive the cost down so that kids around the world can actually buy it. Schools can afford it, and so on and so forth.

And so I came to Southeast Asia. I went to Jakarta. Of course I went to Bangkok, and several different cities. And I launched the iPad there and I told Intel, we cannot miss Southeast Asia. It’s a big, big opportunity. At the time, it was like 600, 550 million population. It’s big enough so that they cannot, you know, turn their back away.

Manisha: Okay, so it's momentous. You launch this Android tablet and you're able to do it in your home. But this is not the end of the story. Your career is full of lots of twists and turns. You have ended up in Silicon Valley, which is why we're so grateful that you're sitting across the table from me in Singapore today.

So where did you go from Intel and what have you been doing since then?

Jeep: So from Intel, I actually joined an early-stage startup, for a short period of time, as a COO. And, I learn a lot. It was sort of like the short moment where I learned how venture capital invest and how the founder, founding team, is so important and critical for the company. Again, because I came from emerging markets.

Now I, you know, I already launched the Android tablet that I called an impact device, reducing the cost so that a lot of population can afford it. So I want to do things that is impactful. Plus, especially the World Bank, we talk about microfinance, that it's very hard to do from a huge organization.

So I thought there has to be the way that we can invest and make a lot of money because we are in a capitalist society and at the same time create huge impact in society.

Manisha: But not, not everyone was buying that.

Jeep: No, absolutely not. Because when I talk about is, it’s like, you know, almost 10 years ago now. When I talk about impact, I thought, oh, this is a nonprofit. You go to impact the CSR, corporate social responsibility thing. And especially I'm a woman, and when a woman talk about impact, they put you in a certain category.

Manisha: I'm so frustrated hearing that.

Jeep: Sorry.

Manisha: No, but I'm sure you must have felt it.

Jeep: Yes, absolutely.

Manisha: How did you deal with that?

Jeep: Well, you know, so, so let me tell you first about the typical stereotype, right? Women, impact, less money.

Manisha: Hmm.

Jeep: Oh. If you are a founder, a VC-backed company, you're a woman, we put you in fashion category. Or you know, vitamins or things that is not deep tech. And to me, there's something inside me that's like, just watch. I'm gonna do deep tech. I'm gonna do like deep core technology. I'm gonna solve difficult problems and technical problems.

So, when I launch my fund, my first fund, I said, no, I'm gonna demand both. I'm gonna demand really high financial returns. I wanna be top quartile funds, and I'm gonna demand impact returns.

Manisha: Raisewell Ventures, how did it come about then?

Jeep: Yeah, so, it's my fourth investment fund. But it's the fund that I've been wanting to do for the longest time, you know, since I was 18 I had my life goal. I wanted to contribute to my nation, Thailand. At the time I was 18. And now I felt that my experience, skills, and network would allow me to create much broader impact.

Manisha: Have the startups been forthcoming?

Jeep: You know, I just started doing due sourcing and due diligence. We've seen a lot of talented entrepreneurs.

Manisha: Where are they coming from?

Jeep: Well, we just, I just flew to Malaysia. I did, you know, due diligence in Malaysia. Of course, Singapore. I'm here in Singapore this week. Of course, Thailand.

These are the first three countries that I touch. Next year I would also like to explore Indonesia.

Manisha: I've also heard and read that there's something in particular that you look for when these founders come to you and one of them, one of the things you talked about was, come and tell me about your problems, come and tell me about your challenges. 'Cause I think sometimes, particularly in this part of the world, we sometimes have a culture where we are scared to get things wrong.

Jeep: That's right.

Manisha: And we don't wanna talk about our vulnerabilities and we wanna come to a VC and say, yeah, yeah, I've got it all sewn off.

I'm gonna make this work. So back me. But actually you are saying, well, I'm not sure that's the right approach.

Jeep: No, I always told the founders, especially right after I signed a check, or invested in them, that I wanna be the first to hear the bad news. Because if good news, I will hear it anyways. Okay, you are not gonna come to me when the money is running out next week because I can't help you. And that would be the worst kind of partnership we could have had. When you pitch, people are smart, people sense, they can detect whether or not you sugarcoat things or whether or not you are real. And say, hey, here's the good things and I have achieved so far. But at the same time, here are some of the challenges that I'm dealing with. And by the way, Jeep, I wanna work with you because I know you are good at this, who can give me guidance so that I can achieve even much bigger potential.

So these are the kind of conversations I wanna have, and I also tell people that I don't know everything. So to me it's the way on how they think about things, the way how they show up, how honest they are. And entrepreneurship is very, very hard. Every company has problems and if you are not upfront about it, it's gonna be very hard to work together.

Manisha: Yeah. And I reckon if you're not having problems, you're probably not doing anything useful.

Jeep: That's right.

Manisha: Right. If you think it's all smooth sailing, you're missing a trick. Okay, we're gonna do a quick fire round because you are an economist, and I know that you do respond sometimes to sort of breaking news.

So, Ray Dalio recently warned about soaring debt, something I've also been concerned about in my interviews with people. My question is this, where's the real money?

Jeep: I mean, if you look at the debt to GDP ratio in the US, it's really, really high. It's even higher than Thailand. It's more than a hundred percent.

And you know, it depends on who you ask. You ask some economists, they thought, well, you can keep borrowing. You ask some economists, they're gonna say, oh, it's not sustainable and the tax rate gonna have to change.

So it depends on who you ask, but it is something that we should look a little bit more closely. He's not wrong in this regard that, you know, 110, 120 is really, really high. And I just talked about this, in Thailand it was less than that. Way less than that. Less than a hundred percent, which is the opposite of my understanding. I thought, oh, if I look in, you know, emerging markets, it's gonna be higher. But they couldn't borrow that much.

Manisha: And yet we say that's where all the risk is, in emerging markets.

Okay. Why do you think Zohran Mamdani won? Do you think it's because people finally realize that the economists and economics is what it's all about?

Jeep: You know, I'm not a New Yorker, but I support him.

Manisha: But he went on and on about affordability, affordability. And it shows that people care about their livelihoods, they care about..

Jeep: Income and equality is a big issue.

Manisha: The K shaped economy.

Jeep: That's right. That's right. And what is so scary, now more than ever, is because of the income disparities. The rich got so much richer and the poor got so much poorer. And the reason of that, part of it is also because of technology. Right? Among people who have access to technology, they're well off. People who don't have access to technology, especially in the capital cities and along the coast in the US, they kind of get left behind.

And this is also the thesis or the gist of why I think Southeast Asia is very important and we have to be able to capitalize on the rise of the technology, especially during the AI age.

All of these things, it's beyond the politics, right? Like why I think he receive a lot of support.

Manisha: Okay. Leads me neatly into my last two questions. So one of them is about the tech that you invest in. So deep tech, climate tech, healthcare. On climate, we cannot deny climate change is happening. People talk a lot about tech and how tech can help us resolve some of the issues we have, but we haven't resolved the issue around AI chips, data centers, and carbon neutrality. How do we manage?

Jeep: You know, it's interesting. When I'm thinking about climate it's kind of sad as well to see that there are a lot of government funding got cut in a climate tech area.

When I launched Raisewell Ventures, when I formed a thesis two or three years ago, climate tech is, you know, I thought I'm gonna spend maybe 60 or 70% of my capital investing in this area. Now, a lot of VCs kind of back out from it. Simply because the grants from the government non-diluted funding has been reduced. So it disincentivize VC to come in.

And I told my investor, this is why it's important to invest with us, because we are still bullish about climate tech. And it was like, what? Why? You know, the government cut funding. So I told them, it's actually much better for me not doing anything on climate tech and let's wait 10 years from now. Okay. Let's imagine nobody invests in climate tech, it’s expensive. It involve hardware and hard tech. It takes a long time to do proof of concept and scale. And 10 years from now, the world gets worse. And it will, if we do nothing. It's actually better for me.

Manisha: From a profitability point of view?

Jeep: That's right. From venture capitalist perspective, because when the world get worse, I get to solve bigger problems and I'm gonna be so much better off financially if I do nothing right now and wait until 10 years from now.

Manisha: Yeah. But you have nowhere to live 'cause it'd be flooded or burnt.

Jeep: That's right. And, but we don't do that. So you better invest now.

Manisha: What is your call to action for all of these budding young people in this part of the world? You know, here you are someone who is heavily invested in the future. You're clearly a visionary. You've got an idea of where things are gonna go.

What would you say to many of the young people who are actually, and there are quite a few people I've spoken to recently, youngsters who've said they're feeling a little bit disenfranchised, they're feeling a little disillusioned about the future when they think about climate change, when they think about AI. Am I gonna get a job or not? There's a lot of fear out there. What would you say to them?

Jeep: Especially, Southeast Asia entrepreneurs I would like to say don't give up. I've heard a lot during my trips this year that the money is drying up and it's very hard to get funding from venture capitalists. And when you talk to VC firms, they have a hard time trying to raise money. So one, don't give up. I think it's very important to know that in VC world we have been around only for 10 years, all together collectively.

And number two, you need to know opportunities emerge everywhere, so you have to have global mindset. Meaning from day one, since you start your company, you can raise money from everywhere. It doesn't have to be Singapore only. It doesn't have to be Thai only. You have to have global perspective. You can raise money from Silicon Valley since day one. The world is very connected. And it's important that you realize that international investors, they always look at our region because we have 700 million population.

Manisha: So Jeep, we have a tradition on the show where we ask our guests for a memento to leave on our rather bare shelves in the studio. I know you've been really busy, so you weren't able to bring something in for us. But I have something for you. So I have a paper and a pen because as an economist, you can leave us your best supply and demand graph.

Jeep: Economics is all about demand and supply. I'm gonna write that down, as everybody told me.

Manisha: And this is from a former World Bank economist. The inventor, or the person who launched the Android tablet, sitting at our Tank Talks Asia desk, leaving us with this, possibly the best demand supply graph I've ever seen. As someone who studied economics at A-level in the British system and then went on to do it as part of my degree, this is gonna surpass anything I've ever seen. Oh wow, what an axis.

Jeep: Okay so you have P, price and Q, quantity. All right. This is fantastic. And it is demand and supply I call by Jeep Kline.

Manisha: That is a thing of beauty. Thank you so much.

Jeep: Go up. Go down. Forever.

Manisha: Forever and ever and ever.

Jeep: This is called E, which is equilibrium. That's my bonus.

Manisha: Jeep, it's been an absolute pleasure having you in the studio today. I hope you've enjoyed it.

Jeep: Thank you, absolutely.

Manisha: Brilliant, and come back, 'cause I know that you are rotating through this region quite regularly, so I hope that you'll be back maybe when you hit a hundred million for your fund.

Jeep: Even before that, I'm happy if you invite me for a coffee. I'll be back next month.

Manisha: You are on. You're on.

Jeep: Thank you for having me.

Manisha: That's it for this episode of Tank Talks Asia. Don't forget to like and subscribe. That way you can support our mission to bring the best of Asia to the rest of the world, but also so that you don't miss an episode. From me, Manisha Tank and the rest of my brilliant team, thanks and see you again next time.

Tank Talks Asia is an AsiaWorks production.