Willson Cuaca is a founding partner of East Ventures, a Southeast Asia-focused early-stage investor with approximately USD 1.5bn in assets under management. PE and VC investment in Indonesia, East’s core market, collapsed 82% year-on-year to USD 687.3m in 2025, the lowest level since 2014, according to AVCJ Research. Meanwhile, a high-profile fraud at eFishery prompted questions about the quality of start-ups and due diligence efforts. Cuaca remains positive despite these issues, citing strong regional fundamentals and the cyclical nature of recent challenges.

Q: Why are you optimistic about Southeast Asia?

A: People look at Southeast Asia and say it’s very hard, and that adds up recently, especially last year, because of incidents of fraud and so on. Consistently, there has been bad news, particularly in Indonesia, the market we focus on. It doesn’t help in terms of impressions, but if we look at the fundamentals, Indonesia is driven by domestic consumption, and that’s really good so far. Some of our companies in retail and consumer are doing well. One by one, they’re becoming EBITDA positive, even net profit positive, and when you hit EBITDA positive, you can unlock different sources of funding. From when we started in 2009 to 2022, that was a bull run because interest rates were below 3%. Now, it’s very different. You have to make sure your company is profitable.

Q: Many investors believe it’s too risky despite the fundamentals…

A: LPs ask if Southeast Asia is right for them because the returns from other asset classes have been higher. So, they zoom into the performance of the fund, and this is where the ecosystem becomes important. You must be able to exit within the ecosystem. We don’t have very active public markets in Southeast Asia, especially for start-ups, so we must make sure the flywheel actually works. In the past, most IPOs lost money because stock prices went down post-listing. We managed to IPO one of our companies last year, and today, we’re still 3x of the IPO price. We are preparing more. We also managed to close a secondary transaction with a fund, kind of like a continuation vehicle. Those under-the-radar activities give us optimism.

Q: What’s your outlook for fundraising?

A: A lot of foreign investors think Southeast Asia is uninvestable, so it’s very important for us to change that narrative. That was our focus last year and this year. Fundraising is a byproduct of the outcome. Right now, what we need to show them is the outcome, not active fundraising. Right now, we’re focusing a lot on exiting our companies, preparing our companies for IPO, doing secondary transactions, and tightening some of our internal efficiencies. We’re not actively investing.

Q: Are you seeing movement in exit markets broadly?

A: IPOs are interesting, simply because during the last three months, Indonesia’s index hit an all-time high on about 40 occasions. In 2021, the number of retail investors in Indonesia was 3 million. By the end of 2025, it was 20 million. There is a delta of 17 million out of the blue in these few years, and it’s driven a lot of capital markets activity. In terms of M&A, there are two reasons for a big company to acquire a smaller company: they want a capability or they want a business model that has been proven. If you want a capability, you can acquire a tech company even without revenue. If you want a business model, you must have great fundamentals. That’s where we focus, and some of our companies have been talking to potential acquirers.

Q: The 17 million new retail investors – what’s their appetite for tech?

A: The problem is, there are not many listed innovative companies. After Gojek, Grab, and Bukalapak, none. It’s very quiet because everybody got hit by them. So, it’s our job as an ecosystem player to put more companies into the public market and prove that there are good companies – fundamentally, technologically – that can bring value to society. We should do this interview early next year. I will show you some results. We have a lot of companies that are under the radar, and it’s our job to give them exposure. We have to build that momentum.

Q: How does the macro climate impact Indonesian start-ups?

A: It’s very important that start-ups understand themselves, what they are good at and how they can execute frictionlessly in this kind of dynamic. If you’re relevant to domestic, just focus on domestic. If you’re relevant to regional, then you can expand to regional. But during this geopolitical situation, do you want to focus globally from Indonesia? Personally, I don’t think so. The most important thing is to survive. You can get hit during the war, but don’t die. Once the war ends, the friction is gone, you can build your muscle. Assume there’s no funding. When capital is cheap, you can look at the upside. But when the capital is expensive, mitigate the downside and look less at the upside. This is just a cycle.

Q: Is artificial intelligence (AI) having an impact?

A: The way I look at AI is exactly the way I look at mobile internet. There is a new tool coming. Can we build it domestically? I don’t think we have the talent. Can we use it? Yes. So, it’s important we adopt that technology and use it to bring prices down by 10x and make things faster by 10x, if possible. See how AI fits into your organisation and use it, even if it’s not mature. There will be some hallucinations. So be it. Just use it. That is one component for our existing portfolio – become an AI-enabled company. For our new portfolio, we want to look at AI-first companies.

Q: How do you assess AI-first companies?

A: I ask them how fast they can finish their task without a human. They may say, ‘I have a bunch of customers.’ Where is the automation? Where is the efficiency? Where is the value created? We have seen in other parts of the world that time has been compressed. When an AI-first company can solve certain problems, the timeline for them to hit USD 50m revenue or USD 100m revenue is really short. They can do it in a very automated way. It’s not just solving a problem. It’s not just efficiency. The innovation of business models is lightning speed.

Q: What’s your view on 2026?

A: Internally, 2026 is a year of action, different action. It’s about making sure we build a healthy and generational ecosystem. That means not just investing but also exiting, and most importantly, recycling capital. Once you have exits, investors are happy. They can park a portion of their proceeds back into the ecosystem and then let it run, spinning the flywheel. AI is just a trend. But without a proper ecosystem, whatever trend is coming, you will stop. Maybe next decade we’ll be talking about space, and the ecosystem will be there to absorb the trend.