Monica Millares: [00:00:00] Hello Kevin. I am really looking forward to this conversation. I've been following you on LinkedIn and I loved your post about product. So welcome to the show.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Very cool. Glad to be here. Excited to share and have a interesting discussion now. Yes,

Monica Millares: me too. So before we get into it so that everybody gets to know you a little bit, I'll ask you a few kind of like fast questions.

Okay. So let's start with, of course, you're based in Asia. What is your favorite travel destination in the region?

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Oh, that's a really difficult one cuz it really depends upon like what you're, what you're looking for. Like I, I do have to say Malaysia has some really nice beaches and they're not nearly as heavily trafficked as you would get in Thailand, but the positive of Thailand, it's heavily trafficked because like, It's just really, really nice.

That being said, you want like cultural stuff. You got Bo and Jo Jakarta, you've got Siem rape. There's just too many to get into [00:01:00] these days. I have little ones, so it's like beach trip is like the go-to. Okay. Yeah. Yes.

Monica Millares: We are spoiled with choice. That is the fact that why we we're still here and we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Next traveling,

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): next travel. Yeah. Yeah. How many beaches can you go to? How many islands can you go to? You

Monica Millares: can just continue. Yeah. Somehow. Cool. So what is your annoying financial habit that you're like, oh, I wish I

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): didn't do that. Annoying financial habit.

That's tough. I'm not sure, you know, being a finance professional, you know, it'd be really hard for me to identify one other than like perhaps overanalyzing and over calculating every spend and being the person that's in the store looking at the size of bottles and. And going down to the, okay, well if this is this many ounces and this is this many ounces, my per ounce calculation is this, so this one must be the better value.

That's probably my most annoying one for the people around me. That is,

Monica Millares: yeah. Yeah, [00:02:00] I, I think many of us may do that. I do that as well. What is your best productivity tip habit.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Obsession over the calendar, I think is probably Oh, cool. That, so like putting, putting, you know, color coded on the calendar, taking tasks that I need to do and putting them into the calendar and just really itemizing my agenda for the day and being very obsessive about sticking within timeframes.

Monica Millares: Awesome. And do you have a favorite FinTech?

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): A favorite FinTech, I mean, for me it's, it also always comes down to payments. So like the one that's the most universal that I end up most places is either through the banking app where I'm just scanning the QR code or I'm on, I'm ordering food and delivery and, and taxis and all of that on a constant basis.

I don't know if I would say it's my favorite, just because the user experience oftentimes is frustrating, but it's probably the most frequent. [00:03:00]

Monica Millares: Yes. Yeah, you know what? That is a very good point. Somebody asked me this the other day. What's your favorite FinTech? And of course I work in a FinTech, so I was like, I'll be objective.

And then basically my favorite FinTech is the one that I use every day. Right. Rather than my favorite. In my mind, it's like, which one is the one that's getting my actual transactions? That was my definition of favorite that day. Yeah.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): But it's not the one that I enjoy using. It's not, it's not like it's a pleasurable experience.

It's just there's, so there's like the network effect that has you stuck on it. So if you want the things that you have the high frequency of usage with, you're kind of stuck. Without another option because it's embedded within that company's

Monica Millares: app. Yes, it is very good insights even to start the conversation about product.

Of course, product geeks always going to. That type of chats. Yeah. So before I go [00:04:00] into product as such, you have very interesting frameworks on how you go about it, but before we go into that, what has been the role of purpose in your life and business?

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): You know, it's, it's, it's funny because over time I think my career has evolved.

When I started out, I was, you know, the, the, the formative years was in the post-financial crisis. I was doing distressed assets. It was a very busy, busy time, but it's oftentimes the downside because it's distressed. It's the downside of. The scenarios and I needed to make like a complete flip. And I went into impact investing and I was in impact investing for maybe 10 plus years.

Something along those sort of lines and a variety of companies and roles, et cetera. And so, I, I, I think that there's a, there's an aspect that's built inside of me of wanting to make sure that you can do, do well by doing good, you know to where, yes, there needs to be some sort of, obviously like I'm a capitalist.

I [00:05:00] need, I wanna see like, profit driven motives, but I don't think it's mutually exclusive, still being able to do well. So whether you're talking about financial inclusion or you're talking about, you know improving efficiency so that we're less depleted on resources and things like this, we can do well by doing good things.

Monica Millares: I totally agree with you, like a hundred percent. So right now you have, oh, you're the founder of Indel Developed Ventures. Mm-hmm. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do and how it's related to basically your

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): ethos? Yeah. Yeah. So we didn't explicitly say impact, and I, I'll tell you the reason why is because the mo, the majority of people that hear the word impact think that it's charity.

So there's, there's a, there's a branding problem around Impact where the universe of people that put money into funds that can then invest it onwards. They, there's, there's, there's a, there's still a [00:06:00] mindset that it's philanthropic and not necessarily commercially oriented, that you're jeopardizing returns for warm and fuzzies.

That's not really true. I've demonstrated that over my track record in impact investing. But the reality is the reality. That being said, you know, that belief is kind of ingrained inside of me. So anything that I do is gonna carry that sort of moral compass of what I want to be looking at. So there's a, there's a built-in screen inside of it.

But what indelible is, is, you know, I, I, I landed in Malaysia. I've been in Malaysia six or seven years at this point, and I saw that there was a big gap in the ecosystem. So I felt the need to do something good by trying to plug that in, because there's so many good entrepreneurs that were kind of hitting this gap this, this systemic gap in the eco, in the funding ecosystem.

So I guess you could call it a little bit of impact from, from that, but given the opportunity. But [00:07:00] we look at, we look at b B2B tech which generally falls into SaaS. I have a tendency of shying away from regulation just because Yes, it's a fragmented market, and if you needed to get regulatory approval in every market, it's, it's a, it's a, it's, it's, it's a lot of hurdles to jump in a row.

Monica Millares: Definitely. Yes. Well, like in financial services,

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): right? Yeah. Even some of the big boys the big players have been having some troubles and, and burning a bit of cash while they're trying to establish a presence while still waiting for that stamp of approval.

Monica Millares: Yes. And you know what, that's very particular of apac.

Mm. It is a huge region. Yeah. In terms of population, great opportunity, but at the same time, it's very. Fragmented and it's like every country, it's like different. Yeah. And regulation is different. And you have, it's not like Europe that. European Union here, it's like APAC amazing growth. But yeah, to get into it, you [00:08:00] have to go country by country and understand each of

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): them.

Yeah, I mean imagine going through like whether you're going through the Securities commission or Bank N Nevada, and then you gotta go to M MAs in Singapore, then you're bouncing over to O J K and Indonesia, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, throughout the region. It's, it's a lot. It's a lot of steps. I, I think it would be challenging, but imagine the unlock of potential that would come if the Ian countries did some sort of uni unification around regulation and policy.

Maybe not the currency, cuz I think that's a bit problematic. Mm-hmm. The way that it was structured in, in, in Europe, I don't think that would apply very well here, but the, the, the trade borderers, the, the regulation, that would be a massive. Unlock for the but central of the region. Oh,

Monica Millares: I, yeah. And you use the right word because it's unlock.

Cuz there's so much, there's talent, there's opportunity, there's like the region is booming. [00:09:00] It's just sometimes hard to navigate. So if we were to remove that friction, then it's like boom. It can just go like to the roof.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Yes. To the roof. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's, there's, there's so many things that could end up happening.

I think it's a bit of a challenge. You know, the, the same reason that a particular European country decided to exit Brexit. From, from that agreement you know, there's, there's, there's a lot of politics. There's a lot of. Things of that nature that make it much more complicated than it seems from the company son.

Yes. But it's, it's, it's still worth dreaming that it could happen. I

Monica Millares: think it could happen at certain levels. So for example, right now you mentioned earlier about the qr you can pay with the qr. Yeah. So the QR. Right now it's interoperable QR at nation level, but like starting like this week

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): June. [00:10:00] Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. That's gonna

Monica Millares: be awesome, right? It's you can go from a Asia to Singapore to Thailand, and likewise from Singapore to Thailand, like across Asan. Yeah. And use your local app to pay in another country. So start. It's cool.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to be honest with you, like I, I was just in Singapore and my, my normal, my frequent ride hailing, et cetera, up, I can't use the same wallet that I have been using.

Now I gotta link it up with a new payment system. Every time that I travel, I need to, I need to relink it and every time that I order, because it's not set as my default in it, I have to remember, and it's just like, It's, it's, it's not, it's not so easy. But yeah, that's, that's gonna make a big difference for interregional travel and a number of other sorts of aspects.

Yeah.

Monica Millares: Because as soon as you land in Thailand, Indonesia, wherever you can just like, yeah, no need to go to the atm, because at least in Thailand, all the small merchants have the QR [00:11:00] code, like Yeah, yeah. The street food. It's like QR code everywhere, so for sure, for sure.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): These will be, it'll be interesting to see what, what comes out of like the con the, ultimately it seems like there'll have to be some level of consolidation because the number of players that have been operating into these regions have been kind of in a garden walled garden.

And so now that things start opening up and the territory is easier to start going after and unlocking some of the players that have dominant positions in, in, in certain markets are gonna have more opportunity to start acquiring merchants or otherwise in new markets, they may end up doing the interoperability and, and doing like fee splits.

It'll be interesting to see how it actually ends up shaking out. Yeah,

Monica Millares: actually that's a very good point. There will be some sort of consolidation because there's always a big ice. Yeah. And you partner them up and that's it.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): They start eating up the others until they get full or until the regulator starts saying, whoa, whoa.

We need, we need, we need competition.

Monica Millares: [00:12:00] Competition. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Cool. Well, let's now go into our topic of today. Product process and people. So, That is key for your methodology as a VC as such. Yeah.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Yeah. Let's go into each of them. Okay. Okay. I mean, I, I usually, I usually use those three Ps as kind of explaining well how I decide who's investible.

And there's, there's a preliminary step, which is like getting the foot in the door, which is, can I, do, I recognize it as a large enough opportunity? But assu assuming that the size of opportunity is there and that it's attractive enough, that's when it comes into those three Ps. And it's, it's, it's in.

I rank it in the order of importance. As far as as, as far as that goes. So like the people, the process and the product, and the question that I always get asked is, why do I rank the product last?

Monica Millares: Yes. I [00:13:00] was like, that is so interesting. I started with products and you're like, no, no, no. Yeah,

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): yeah. I honestly read, read the Product last.

And it's, it's a, it's a factor of a couple things. One is I focus at the seed stage where the company is trying to find product market fit, but it may not be a hundred percent established. Mm-hmm. And so if you don't have product market fit entirely established, by definition, the product. Is not complete, the product is gonna change.

And honestly, even as you evolve as a company, over time, the product is going to evolve. Maybe not as drastically as it does in the early days, but there is an evolution of the product that is a continuous cycle over time. And so since it's more dramatic in the early days, I. You need to have processes in place.

And I use, I use the word processes even though I, I like, like feedback loops or some, some other sort of phrasing. But I need the three Ps. Yeah. I, [00:14:00] I need the alliteration of in order, in order to make it catchy. But it's, it's really that aspect of are you establishing the frameworks in place in order to collect feedback from.

Your users, your customers, your stakeholders, understanding how they're discovering, how they're onboarding, how they're activating, how they're engaging, all of those kind of like deeply important p product questions. There needs to be processes in place so that you can. Continue to iterate and optimize around it.

Yes. Now, going one level higher, really the only way that you're gonna be able to establish solid processes, and the only way that you're gonna be able to understand and interpret, react, and iterate repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. Is if you have incredible people. Yeah. So it's kind of like that. It all kind of [00:15:00] funnels upwards towards, towards the processes and the people.

And so there's a lot of effort that has to go into understanding whether or not the people have kind of that growth mindset. That curiosity being perpetual learners and that kind of level of attention and understanding because, you know, being a, being a startup and building a product, you're kind of like a scientist.

You're doing the scientific method, establishing hypotheses, going out and testing it, iterating, and ultimately trying to find some sort of like magic that can ultimately come out of it.

Monica Millares: Yeah, definitely. So yes, it all comes back to people like, yeah, you're right. Mm-hmm. Because people are the ones that do the product, but then you cannot do a product and that's it.

You have to iterate it, therefore you need process, and then you hire more people and then you need, so, Yeah. Common ways of

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): working. Yeah. I mean, and the, as the company gets bigger, it starts being assumed that, that [00:16:00] it's table stakes to have good people. Mm-hmm. It starts becoming table stakes, that there's more rigidity in the processes, and so, The product starts becoming more important and the financials are the key metrics that tell you whether no, about the, the, the veracity and the quality of the product.

You start digging into all of those traction. But if you're talking about analyzing something that's been around for six months, a year, 18 months at most, There's not a whole lot of track record in order to like get that conviction. So it starts flow, it starts flowing up to seeing whether or not they're building in those processes and whether or not it's the correct people.

Monica Millares: Yes, that's a very good point because many people at, at least from a pm I'm talking like worldwide, let's say some people complain, oh, processes. Especially in the start, it's so bureaucratic, it's going to slow us down. [00:17:00] What is your answer to that

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): pushback? Yeah, I agree that like you can't have too high of a level of rigidity.

The entire aspect is developing fluidity in the processes, and the aspect there is when you're talking about feed back loops, the thing that creates rigidity is when you're talking about timeframes. Long extended timeframes in order to go from feedback to reaction to new action is where the, a lot of the problem ends up lying.

So there's, there's a couple of key aspects that I look for is, which is kind of shortening down those loops. And it's not easy, but it's, it's about trying to build in the systems that allow you to react fast and agile as opposed to developing. I need to get approval from a committee who's then gonna put it up to another [00:18:00] committee.

And depending upon whether or not they get the CFO sign off, we get a budget allocation and that then goes. Back down to that committee who sends it down to another committee. And then we then we're back down three months later and we saying, oh, well, why have we stagnated this quarter?

Monica Millares: No, a startup should not have that.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): No, no. I mean, honestly, most companies that are not selling like utility services should should not have that. But it's the reality of large organizations. They, they end up getting built in that way as kind of a check and balance. That kind of spirals a bit outta control.

Monica Millares: Mm-hmm. Yes. That's a good point.

And then it's a, and like you say, it's spirals out of control, but at the end it also comes back to control. Mm. Some people, well, in a startup, you don't have control. Yeah. Right. You don't. And some people still, especially if you come from corporate and you're joining a startup, then it's a, Ooh, it's a change of [00:19:00] mindset change of.

Culture. Yeah. And people do want to have certain type of control, hence the old structures of, oh yeah, let's have the committees, let's have these, because we think we may be able to control the outcome, which we cannot can influence, but cannot control.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Cannot can influence. But I think there's a, there's an, there's an important aspect of understanding that there's always to, to, to steal a phrase from, from, from somebody who, I'm not necessarily a big fan of the person, but I'm a big fan of the, the phrase there's, there's unknown unknowns.

It's one thing like known knowns and known unknowns, but there's always unknown unknowns where like you don't know what's gonna happen. You can't exert a hundred percent control all the time. So you need to be able to act responsibly.

Monica Millares: Definitely. So coming back to people.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Hmm.

Monica Millares: The ceo. [00:20:00] And the founding team, especially the ceo, he's or she, they are one of the critical people in a startup.

What did you look in a c E O?

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): I wish I could say that I have it boiled down to a science. But unfortunately I just do not, there's, there's a, there's the inherent challenge of just trying to be able to gauge whether or not that is the individual. Now, Different investors have a little bit of a different, different approach because you do have a handful of early stage investors out there that their portfolio strategy is very widely diversified.

So they, you know, you see 50, a hundred companies in a single portfolio, and so you can move faster because you are, you're de-risking your founder selection by diversifying across a very large group that. Ends up coming at the [00:21:00] consequence of not being able to work very closely with that individual and be able to use a value add strategy to improve your odds of success.

Where I kind of fall out on it is obviously you need a diversification in the portfolio. When you're doing investments in the companies, you can't be overly concentrated, but it, in my opinion, it can't. Having an overly diversified ends up being a limiting factor. I operate in nascent markets. And so a lot of times you don't have second, third, fourth generation founders that have been there, done that seasoned veterans that could spin up a startup and just be put on cruise control.

I drop in a pile of money and then walk away and, and collect my exit in, in a few years. No, here you, we don't really have that. So by, by nature they need a little bit more. Advice, not, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go so far as saying handholding. It's just more of advice. They, they oftentimes need to be pulled from the weeds and brought back to the tree [00:22:00] level.

So if that's my intention on the relationship of working with a founder, I need to be able to gauge whether or not that's a founder that I can work with and engage with, who is responsive to the advice that I may be given. Now, I can be wrong. And I'm a, I am, I am wrong on, on occasion. I'd love to say that I'm right all the time.

But it's, it's, no, it's impossible to be right. And so I don't mind it if a founder comes, if I say something to a founder and say, Hey, have you thought about this, this, and this? And the person responds to me, well, actually we have, and you're wrong because. Cool. That's actually a fantastic thing because it's a demonstration of, you know, conviction conveying a logic that those are, those are aspects that that are winning ingredients.

There's also the aspect of, I move a little bit more slowly. I'm not like a, I meet you and I, and I write [00:23:00] a term sheet the next day. Like we've, we've seen from some other funds. Where I try and get to know somebody over a period of time, I see how they react in certain situations. Obviously, I can't know them forever.

I can't know them for two years because you know, time, time is needed. They will not be around in two years. Yeah. Or they're gonna be well past the stage that I'm capable of. So, I mean, generally I have maybe three to six months to get to know the person at Max. Mm-hmm. Bef before the opportunity is gone.

And so because because of that, there's, there's kind of those periodic interactions and just trying to leverage the insights from the. Those interactions in order to gauge kind of, is this a person with a growth mindset? Is this person that's reacting to situations is this somebody that I can work with?

Is this somebody that is coachable and learnable person that I think is gonna succeed? Similar to the way that if you hire, if you hire on somebody, you're gonna end up having some sort of probationary period where you're [00:24:00] trying to interact with them and see how they work. Yeah. It's not drastically different.

And the same way that you can make a bad hire is the same way that you can end up making a bad and investments since it's heavily based upon people.

Monica Millares: Definitely. And I like that analogy of the probation period. Mm-hmm. So your probation period is kind of before you make the investment, right. Those three to six months that you get to know the person.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Yeah. I mean there's there, it would be impossible for me to do the probation afterwards because I can't exactly. Take my money back.

Monica Millares: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, definitely. So. You've talked about fit feedback loops. Mm-hmm. Can you expand? What does that mean in practical terms?

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): So feedback loops, I would, I would put in, in, in terms of they can either be internal or external.

And so there's an aspect that when you're talking internal, that there's feedback loops between departments that they need to be [00:25:00] interacting with each other. And some of that is incorporating external data. And some of it is simply incorporating internal data. So if you're in product development and you haven't collected any external, You're gathering intelligence from other people within the organization so that you can move forward and, and, and, and that sort of thing.

When you do collect external, you're talking about The customer or user information. And that really comes down to from, from, from start to finish through the process. So whether, whether, whether you're a sales led organization, you're collecting, you're doing feedback loops based upon. The interactions as you're moving through the funnel from lead.

Did you, how did they develop the awareness? Where did that, where did that lead end up coming from? How are they end? How are you end up moving from awareness to intent? How are you moving from intent to conversion and really kind of understanding the fe, the, the [00:26:00] attributing factors? Mm-hmm.

Because it's all about how do you kind of start breaking down the individual components. Of all of this and then optimize. The ingredients that end up creating the sort of layer cake of, of that funnel. And the same thing applies when you're talking about a product-led growth or a marketing lead.

There's, there's individual touchpoints as you move from start to finish in the process. Now, just because you have a customer on board doesn't mean that it actually stops because there's a whole, there's a whole flywheel aspect of how you keep them engaged and all of that. And so now you start getting into your user behavior.

There's a number of tools that are out there for SaaS products so that you can kind of set event triggers and be able to understand all of those different components. Yeah, but the feedback loops are trying to. You can, you can end up getting far too many data points than you can [00:27:00] make sense of. So the earlier the stage you are, the more you need to figure out and prioritize which metric actually matters.

So, And that's not easy to do when you're a large organization. You have probably staff and more expensive tools that AI models and all of these things mm-hmm. That can crunch and analyze the numbers and automate some of the insights so that you can tweak and, and even some of the AB testing may end up being auto automated at that point.

Yeah. But yeah, it's, it's, it's bra. It's breaking down those layers. But at the early stage prioritization is, is is probably the more complicated yeah.

Monica Millares: Hmm. How do you see, like, you, you made a really good point. Like when you are a large organization, you have all these tools and money and people, and you're starting.

You don't, and sometimes you're like, well, I remember when we were at that stage in my both startups. Mm-hmm. [00:28:00] It was more like a, oh, I wish I was in the bank. You know, it's like I had all this, I had all that. Yeah. How do people Yeah. Become resourceful? Or what do they need to think about when they're in early stage so that they're like, okay, how do I do everything that Kevin just said without having the money?

Yeah. And team to do it. I'm a very small team.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's about, I mean, the, the positive of being in markets like Malaysia and some of the other ones that are not as, where capital is not as readily available is mm-hmm. People have been forced to be more resourceful with limited resources.

There's a pro and a con because we can't just like buy growth. When you, when you don't have an abundance of capital, you have to be a little bit more scrappy. Yeah. But when you're, when you're at the early days, the thing that I try and get people to do is [00:29:00] draw, draw it out, and kind of map it out the same way that you would end up like doing, doing like a product roadmap or things like that.

Map user journeys. Map the map, the, the conversion funnel. I mean, I know sometimes funnel is not the best way depending upon what your, what your acquisition strategy is. But whatever it is, map it out and then focus on an individual component of it. And I, I think, I think there's value of being able to say, for, for this next couple of weeks, our, our focus is gonna be on.

Optimizing towards the awareness component of our funnel. Okay, well, now that we do that, we need to figure out, all right, well, how are we initially developing awareness? What are the, what are the triggers and where are we seeing the, the emphasis? And one of the things that I constantly try and get my companies to, to [00:30:00] think about is you're establishing.

Kind of your ideal customer personas. Yes. And you're also trying to talk to those customers. You're trying to engage and get feedback. You're having conversations with them, and so you have a few touch points where you can start collecting information and you're also wanting to try and create hypotheses around what drives intent.

Is it circumstantial? Is it I wanna make a purchase in this particular store? Is it I wanna order a taxi? And because of that, I, I only have an option. There's what, what are the triggers that ends up getting some, somebody to have some, so the particular intent that's related to your value proposition of how you differentiate from what else is out there.

And it's really about trying to get into some of those. More granular details. Yeah, but bit by bit, you can't focus on the [00:31:00] full full scope of things all on the same. It's about kind of, you know, incrementally making dents and fi. And by going through that mapping exercise, what should come out of it is you identify and can kind of do like a bit of like triage.

Mm-hmm. And in doing that, you kind of separate out, you know, what's the low hanging fruit, what's the, what's the mid-level difficulty, what's the more difficult items? That's one sort of ranking. And then you look at it and say, is there any sort of sequential basis that if we do this, we can't do it without having done something else?

Prior. So we need to understand, is there a step one, step two, step three related to any of these things? Yeah, I can't focus on conversion if I haven't, if I haven't developed awareness intent where I've driven inbound leads, right. And then optimizing my, my, my website for conversion doesn't make any sense.

[00:32:00] As kind of a first step. Because there's just not enough data and traffic in order to, in order for me to be able to do that. And so there's, there's the sequential nature, there's the low hanging fruit, and then there's the aspect of gauging the level of impact. And so if I look at the low hanging fruit, there might be low hanging fruit that's high impact.

Yeah. There might be low hanging fruit that's low impact. Which am I gonna prioritize? Well, obviously the easiest with the highest impact. So you kind of can develop sort of like ratio to work impact versus level of work. Sort of vast bucks. And so it's, it's a bit. It sounds a bit rigid from like a process standpoint, but it's, it's, it's, it's a little bit analytical, I guess.

Yes. Maybe it's because I'm a numbers person. Some people have that intuition and they just know yeah, but it's fluid. Right, because probably you're describing how I think as well. And I like mapping stuff. Yeah. On visual.

[00:33:00] It's nice to have like a big whiteboard or something, or like tools tool.

There's a bunch of white boarding tools out there as well. Exactly, yeah.

Monica Millares: Now it's like my online board. It's for everything. I use it for everything. Yeah. But I think it's like basically what I'm taking out of this chat, it's like, I'll challenge my myself as well that I said, Hey, if I'm just starting out, compared to a big company that has all the tools, it seems like what you described applies whether you are a small company or a scaled up by now.

Mm. Because in the scale up, you may have access to all the tools and the money and the resources, but you don't, if you don't step back and do the exercise of thinking exactly like you say, being analytical. To me, the most critical skill that any p m should have is critical thinking. Mm-hmm. That it's basically what you just described.

Sit down, think, understand, go into the detail, [00:34:00] and then. It's not about the tool. You can have the tool and not use the tool that the big company will give you.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): I like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's those increments ma mapping it out and digging into the detail, cuz you, you, there, there's this common pitfall where, The many hat syndrome, I guess is, is, is another way to put it.

Because oftentimes as, as a, as a founder or as an operator within a startup, you buy necessity, have to be wearing many hats. And so as a default, you're trying to take on too many objectives all simultaneously. So there's an aspect of trying to, like, it's understandable that there's many parallel threads that may end up having to run at the same time.

But because of that, you also have limited time. So breaking it down in those details and trying to create levels of prioritization the same way that, like I, I said that my productivity tool is my calendar. Mm-hmm. [00:35:00] The reason is because I'm trying to prioritize and it forces me to think about what's worth my time.

I, I can, I can draw down a list, but until I start allocating time slots into a calendar associated with this, I'm gonna do, then this, I'm gonna do, then I have phone calls here and there. Until I start doing that, I, I may not be optimizing my time towards impact because there's a human tendency of wanting to do the easiest task and saving the hardest thing for later.

So then, Well, guess what? Tomorrow there's even more work. So there's gonna be easy stuff tomorrow and then the hard stuff is kind of left. Yeah, that's, that's there's, it's, it's a, it's a bit of a pitfall if we, if, if a person can't kind of break those things down.

Monica Millares: Yeah. Yeah. Totally agree. Because work just melt place.

So we need to just multiply. We need to look at the most important. Actions that will have impact. [00:36:00] Hmm, exactly. Moving into the third P product. Hmm. What makes a great product?

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Oh, so, so many things, but I th I think like the. There, there's, there's an ease of use aspect to where even complicated products need to feel like it's simple.

Mm. Like I'm sure there's a, there's a number of like software or other products that you may use, and for them to have created, it would be incredibly complicated. I'll, I'll use, I'll use an example just because it's like, it's, it's, it's, it's in the middle of the hype cycle right now, but if you take like chat G p t, yes.

I can type in a prompt and something easily comes out. So for your average person, they're like, wow, this is really easy. It's basically a Google search engine and, but it's spitting out different sort of thing. Wow. It looks so easy. But it's actually super complicated. It's not, in order for them to have built that and in order for it to be [00:37:00] able to respond as quickly because the latency is relatively low for it to provide a response, yes, all of that stuff is super complicated.

So I think that there, there's an essence of a product that can take the super complicated and boil it down to the super simple. You know, like Apple is, apple is probably one of like the, the, the big names in simple in, in design simply because there's an intuitiveness around product design that they've always been leaders in.

Now, mind you, I say that and I don't use an iPhone, but it's none nonetheless. There's a, there's a, there's a, there's an aspect of that. It's, it, it, it ru it runs across. I think one of the things that I find this, this is more specific to areas where rates of digitalization are low. One of the things that makes a successful product as well is looking at the onboarding process.

Once somebody understands the value [00:38:00] proposition, what is the difficulty for them to be onboarded and turned into a U activated user? And a lot of the things that are out there currently, I hear a lot of complaints about, ah, companies don't wanna buy. It's, it's the company's problem. Don't blame the customer.

This is a product problem. If you are, if people aren't buying, it's not a customer problem. No. It's a product problem. And that generally not, but a lot of times it comes down to the frictions in the onboarding process, there's a massive amount of companies, even large companies that. Are not super technically savvy, so unless you've made things abundantly easy for them to be onboarded, so.

They may never, they will not. And if you don't make it easy for them to activate and hit that aha moment of realizing value, the value, yes, they're not going to. And if you don't create in these, these sort [00:39:00] of like habitual formations in the product design that gets them coming back. And some have, have more frequent loops and, and, and shorter loops in regards to the way that they're designed to be used.

But you, you have to think about those sort of aspects from the view of who your user is and understanding what their capability, comp, competency, what their pain points, what the hurdles, what all of these sort of implementation and usage characteristics. And I find that too often companies put together a product and say, ah, isn't my child so beautiful?

When really it's just a crying baby.

Monica Millares: Yes. And

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): you raised maybe bad analogy.

Monica Millares: No, but it's, your product is not beautiful if the customer doesn't understand the

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): value. Yeah. It, it comes down to usage. Like a a, a product is just a product until it actually becomes a solution. Right? Like it's [00:40:00] not a solution until it's solving something.

And it only is solving something if it's being used. That's, that's, that's the key. Yes.

Monica Millares: And I love that. You're right. Onboarding is probably not looked after as much as it should. We focus on Oh, build the product and then the next product. Yeah, and then the next product. But I think one of the challenges is, like you said, like friction at onboarding, but even before that, it's the, does the customer understand the value proposition?

Do you have a value proposition that then it's a yes, I want to go through your very friction fold. Yeah. Onboarding flow, and then basically we have strong value proposition, remove friction, and then show value. Right away. Yeah. If we manage to make that connection in people's brains, then the engagement loop can start.

But if we fail [00:41:00] to show that value,

no. And it's not that easy

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): either. Yeah. It's, it's not that easy. And I'm sure at, at some point you've signed up for, for some sort of SaaS tool, and the moment that you log in for the first time pops up with this video that says, let me do a walkthrough, skip. And you skip it and you're like, I don't have time for this.

I just wanna start using it. Yes. And you never end up doing it. And so that, that's, that's oftentimes from like the product designer, they're, they're like, ah, we, we, we embedded a video that walks somebody through it. Our job is done. No need, no onboarding accomplished. Everybody's gonna do it.

Monica Millares: Yes. No. That's one of my biggest lessons in my first startup, because we were creating this guide, right?

Mm-hmm. To help customers on how to use the product. And one of the big bosses challenged to us and was like, Users do not need a guide. It needs to [00:42:00] be intuitive enough that we don't write any of those things. So yeah, back to the drawing board, it's like, yeah, that is a very good point. Yeah. Do not create tutorials.

Don't mean guide. It has to

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): be intuitive. Yeah. Yeah. And like the interesting thing is that I'm seeing more and more companies that are more, it's, this is more associated with newer companies, but maybe some, some legacy ones will start looking at this. But there's more and more tools that can enable us to personalize the onboarding process.

And so there's, there's this, there's a lot of chowder around, like when you, when you sign up, oftentimes there's like a couple of questions and this can actually end up helping narrow when you combine it with. What, what the inflow channel is. Combined with these couple of sets of questions, you can understand a little bit more on what that initial usage desire is and who knows May, maybe they came in for a free trial, [00:43:00] maybe they just converted from tree free trial, or maybe they just came in to pay out.

I don't know. But now based upon that, you can tailor an onboarding process by adjusting what your what the interface that they're gonna come across on that first usage is, and try and drive a shorter time to that aha moment of when they experience the value. By essentially customizing that, that that first or second experience or who, who knows.

I mean, you can even tailor through the life of a product based upon what a usage behavior is, and then use nudges to try and drive them towards other features. There's a lot more. Because there's better data tool collection tools. There's also better delivery tools in order to be able to drive some of those customizations without having ridiculous costs associated with it.

Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see whether or not that's just like current fat or if [00:44:00] that becomes like a sticky sort of characteristic of the SAS of tomorrow. I like that.

Monica Millares: Well, it's like we'll have to pay attention now as we approach towards the end of the episode. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation.

If you were to change one thing in the FinTech world that could have the most impact to customers, staff, and shareholders, What would that be?

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Oh, man. Like if, if I, if I was to say I have like bigger sort of aspects because like one of, one of my main pain points, and it comes from travel and it comes from. The, the transactional commerce side as well. But currency is the biggest pain because it is just far too expensive to do multicurrency work across because you always have these giant bid asks when you're dealing with, with some of the traditional channels, and then you're tacked on [00:45:00] additional fees to where next thing you know, you're paying 10% more than what, what it is.

And so what I would absolutely love is solutions that drive down the costs associated with inter international commerce and travel. So when we're talking about like, The QR code now being more universal. I don't want to get hit with massive fees because I bought a sandwich at the airport while I was traveling through Manila and used the QR code.

Right. I don't want all of a sudden that, that that five bucks sandwich to all of a sudden turned into seven 50. Yes,

Monica Millares: definitely. That is a very. A critical pain point for everyone, especially in Asan, well, everywhere, but Asan is very

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): interconnected. Yeah. So it's important. And on the, on the, on the, on the commerce side of it as well, because there's, there's a lot of international trade that goes amongst the, the block as well.

Mm-hmm. There's a [00:46:00] big pain point amongst companies trying to figure, trying to maneuver of who's the best. Pay, who's the best settlement provider for all of this? And it's, there's not a lot of brand loyalty. There's a trust factor that needs to be established, but there's not brand loyalty. Currently it seems it's very sort of if I trust and then lowest price.

And so that's a universal that I hope would end up getting commoditized so that headache disappears, and now we can focus on value add services as opposed to something that auto have been commoditized this entire time.

Monica Millares: Amazing. Kevin, it's been an absolute pleasure having you in the show. Where can we find more about you?

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): You can find me on LinkedIn, which is my most active social channel. You can always email me@kevinindelible.vc. And I'm always in and around [00:47:00] KL, running startup meetups and other sorts of events. So you can follow me the, you usually use the ticket service provider, PTex so you can find indelible on that and follow one of our latest events are, which I also announce on LinkedIn as well.

Yes. And

Monica Millares: you're very active on LinkedIn as well, and you have a podcast.

Kevin Brockland (Indelible Ventures): Yeah, I do have my own podcast, which I'm gonna have to pull you on there as a re, as a reciprocation. Good luck one of these days as well. So I can, I can plug Sea of Startups as well.

Monica Millares: Yeah, definitely. Cool. Thank you Kevin.

Thank you everyone, and see you next week. Thank, ciao.