Pieter Kemps
- Seed/Surge
- +
- SEA
“Honesty is everything. Working with founders, I am an open book. We’ll discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly. When you do that with sincerity and respect, you’ll soon be the founder’s first port of call.”
Backstory
I was born in a small village in the Netherlands, one of Europe’s tiniest countries. From an early age, I wanted to see more, learn more. In college, I asked my professor, “Where can I experience the biggest culture shock possible?”
I had hitchhiked through France when I was 13, and played competitive table tennis throughout Europe when I was 16, but wanted more. When my prof answered “Japan”, I was in. I packed my bags a few months later and moved to Tokyo. The culture shock was real – and I loved it! Being surprised every day is insanely inspiring. Experiencing the unusual, the new, the outliers. I’ve continued to seek that out ever since.
That’s why I love what I do. Every day, I meet new founders. Learn about new problems. New technologies, products, business models. And having moved to Singapore in 2005, I get to learn about so many markets and cultures. It is wonderful to be working closely with founders of 10 nationalities across eight different countries!
Many of these are ‘emerging’ economies. With lots of change, ambiguity, chaos. But chaos breeds opportunity. And that’s where we play. Emerging trends. Emerging technologies. I enjoyed working on Day 1 of RFID, Day 1 of Voice over IP, and I joined Amazon Web Services on Day 1 in Asia, helping to drive the emerging Cloud trend across the region. And at Peak XV, I get to partner with many emerging companies from Day 1.
On the lookout for
Founders with big dreams. I believe many venture investors are optimists. But then reality kicks in. Numbers. Spreadsheets. A deep desire to minimize uncertainty and ambiguity. That desire is equally important as dangerous. Because early on, it is all about empathy. About vision. Can you see the founder’s dream?
Early in my VC career, I met Sequoia’s Sir Michael Moritz, who talked about this. He called it the “Dream Gene”. And he urged me to develop that gene. Since then, I have increasingly focused on early and seed investments. And have pushed myself to dream with founders about that new thesis, that new market or business model. Or that new technology, like our first partnerships in generative AI and quantum computing in Southeast Asia.
The opportunity to dream is especially large in emerging markets. There are many challenges at the macro level, the infrastructure level, that have not been solved yet. Can this small company one day have an outsized impact on an entire country? Or the region, the world? In the early days of Gojek – when we started to see millions of rides each day – we sometimes joked that we had inadvertently helped build the public transport system of Jakarta. That’s the type of impact we love!
Get in touch with PieterPersonal Side
Football / Travel / (Table) Tennis / Music / Skiing / Family
Press & Media
Current Companies
-
Eko.ai ensures all patients have access to early cardiac and pulmonary disease detection and high quality care that improves and extends their lives.Partnered In
2021
-
Funding Societies, otherwise known as Modalku in Indonesia, is a pioneering SME digital lending platform in Southeast Asia.Partnered In
2016
-
Horizon Quantum Computing is a Singapore-based company building software-development tools to enable the next revolution in computing.Partnered In
2020
-
Insider is a Growth Management Platform offering marketers an integrated suite of AI-powered capabilities to drive growth and improve marketing ROI.Partnered In
2017
-
Multiplier is a leading global employment platform that takes care of global teams’ payroll, taxes, social contributions & local insurance policies, making it easy for companies to employ teams internationally.Partnered In
2020
-
Qoala is an InsureTech company leveraging big data, machine learning, IoT, and blockchain to revolutionise Indonesia's insurance landscape.Partnered In
2019
-
Tokopedia is an online marketplace for individuals and small and midsize business owners in Indonesia.Partnered In
2014
-
Zenyum is a consumer-focused healthcare brand with a mission to help its customers smile more.Partnered In
2019