How I finally got some empathy for Marco Polo
I’m traveling to 14 countries in 4 months to find the best seed-stage startups in Asia.
Here’s my full itinerary:
Geneva, Switzerland (not Asia, but where HQ is)
Bangkok, Thailand
Jakarta, Indonesia
Bangalore, India
Taipei, Taiwan
Seoul, Korea
Hong Kong
Tokyo, Japan
Hanoi, Vietnam
Dhaka, Bangalore
Yangon, Myanmar
Manila, Philippines
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Singapore
I’m the Regional Manager of Asia for Seedstars World — an initiative to find, promote, and connect the top seed-stage (< 2 years old, <$500K raised) startups in emerging markets. We’re looking for startups that plan to scale outside of their local markets in the early stages, so there’ll likely be a heavy slant towards software — especially given the trends in smartphone adoption and rising income levels in the region. We deliberately curated a list of developed, developing, and frontier markets because of our mission to understand the different resource and capital needs of entrepreneurs in each market. There’s no one size fits all model here. If you know of any exciting startups or innovators in any of these cities, do email or tweet!
Less officially, I’m on a journey to better understand the human experience, and ultimately, how to design for it.
In a recent Medium post, Michael Simmons, co-founder of Empact, wrote:
“The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”
In preparing for this journey, I found myself researching the world explorers from middle school social studies class — Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, Vasco de Gama, Ferdinand Magellan. In school and still today, I struggle to identify with the imperialistic assumption that the ways of the West were superior.
Perhaps it’s because I was born between two cultures. As a kid I spent many difficult hours questioning which one was “right”, until I discovered the third-culture kid concept: rather than choosing one culture over the other, I could create a third, blended culture.
The journey to understanding this part of my human experience has inspired me as a designer, a community ambassador, and founder to live and build with empathy. This drives a deep curiosity to understand human behavior, and to make that understanding the foundation of my work.
Marco Polo wasn’t the first European to reach Asia, but he was the first to document and share it extensively, inspiring a whole generation of explorers like Christopher Columbus. He’s the 13th century version of a TED talk.
We’ll never know what exactly motivated him to extensively document his journey, but here’s where we may share a common human experience: standing on the precipice of an adventure into new territory and recognizing the privilege in the once in a lifetime opportunity.
So I’m documenting the next four months here. We’re best at writing what we’re naturally curious about — for me, that’s the intersection of design, community, and business. So I’ll cover:
(1) Design of digital and physical spaces;
(2) Human stories of the entrepreneurs / designers / creatives; and
(3) The pulse of the entrepreneurial and creative communities in each city.
All views are firmly my own. I am cognizant of my position as a foreigner in my travels and the inherent biases in my perspective. No matter where I go, self-awareness and humility are my fundamentals.
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