Wai Hong Fong learned the ropes in retail by helping his uncle in Melbourne, Australia sell giftware online. That later led him to spot an opportunity to supply small shops and cafés in Southeast Asia with point of sale tools to manage their inventory, orders and payments, and track performance. Previously with no easy access to technology, his customers were able to make the leap online. 

Wai Hong estimates there are 2 million such small businesses in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines alone, where his company StoreHub operates. “We want to kind of even out that technology inequality in the parts of the world where we felt that this is a major problem,” he says.

During the pandemic, he threw small restaurants a lifeline when StoreHub provided them with a consumer-facing food delivery app within 48 hours.  

He joins us on this episode of Rise of the Next to talk about his entrepreneurial journey from Melbourne to Shanghai to Petaling Jaya.

Subscribe here to episodes of Rise of the Next on major streaming platforms.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Shereen Abdulla  

Thank you so much, Wai Hong, for coming on Rise of the Next. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came up with the idea for StoreHub?

WAI HONG’S BACKGROUND

Wai Hong Fong

I’m Malaysian, but I’ve spent most of my life actually outside of Malaysia. I went to Singapore when I was 12, went to Melbourne when I was — for college, and I stayed on after. And so, a lot of my life has been spent traveling. I think a big part of my identity anchors itself within technology. In fact, I almost lost my scholarship in Singapore from hacking into computers, they caught me when we were trying to play Starcraft — I’m not sure if you know that game from back then. They were charging a stupid amount of money for using the computer, ao I basically hacked the system and taught all my friends how to do it. So, we were playing for hours and not paying for it; and, eventually, they caught us and they blamed it on me — it’s quite funny!

When I went to Melbourne, I did an arts degree, majored in comms, played too much computer games. I failed five subjects at university, but I think one thing I was really interested to do was explore where does — what I was studying [was] philosophy and media at a time — lead me in terms of all my interests, in gaming and technology. What I didn’t expect, though, was — I ended up after, graduating — my uncle said, “Hey, Wai Hong, instead of you taking a gap year,” which I wanted to do, “why don’t you come and help me out with my business? Be a good Asian nephew.”

Shereen Abdulla 

And what was his business?

WAI HONG’S INSPIRATION FOR STOREHUB

Wai Hong Fong 

So, he had a small gift store, out in the suburbs [of] Melbourne. Basically, they were selling all kinds of random gifts — these really cheap, $10 watches — and what he was trying to do is [sell] some of the things they don’t want to sell anymore in a store online. And so, I started putting a bunch of things online, and that’s how — it was actually how my first job came about. The first business I started was an e-commerce business, selling stuff on eBay; and then, eventually, building out websites. They grew to about a $5 million business annual revenue. So, that was my first job at e-commerce. 

So, after that, I left that business, I went to Shanghai to study Chinese because, even though I look Chinese (I’m natively Chinese), I don’t speak the language and I wanted to fix that. So, I went to Shanghai to do so, and that was when I went to a retail store, as well, in one of the southern cities in China. The business owner was, “Hey, Wai Hong, you’re really good at technology, you’re really good at this stuff, could you have a look at this new system that implements it?” And so, I did — had a look and I was like, “Oh my god.” This is a Windows 95-looking, really clunky piece of crap that was.

Shereen Abdulla 

Was this their POS at the cashier? Or did he ask you to have a look at his version of his e-commerce site?

Wai Hong Fong 

It was the physical, so it was a POS, it was the inventory management. It was, basically, their mini ERP for themselvs, they didn’t have an e-commerce site at the time. So, it was their core system for what they needed to manage the business. It was not the POS, but it was the back-end management as well. I was, “Oh, my God. Do you need to use this? It’s so expensive.” And so, I offered to give some suggestions to the developers that he bought it from, and those guys were the worst. They were — I was telling you — I was going to complain to them, and they were like, “Why don’t you train the staff to use it better as opposed to try to give us suggestions for how to improve it now?” I was like, “Woah, What? It’s crazy that you can tell me that.” So, I was really angry. I was actually quite furious. I was, “Oh, how can you respond that way?” And that got me really interested in trying to understand how in this world of brick-and-mortar, in physical retail, is this a case commonly? Is this what’s going on? 

And so, as I did a bit more research, and this was in 2012, there was a massive problem here where we saw — so most businesses, most physical retailers did not have a good system. They were all very similar to the one that I saw. At that time, there was this really interesting trend of iPad Point of Sales or iPad Systems that was getting popular in the US, and we saw how small businesses were adopting this technology because they could not afford the expensive, clunky machines that typically was prevalent at the time. 

And so, for me, I was, “Hey, this is an interesting trend.” When I started thinking about combining my experience in e-commerce and online retail, and where we thought the world was heading into, I always believed that it was going to be this amalgamation of physical and digital and, basically, as a business, you no longer could say, “I’m a physical retailer,” Neither will you be able to say, “I’m an online retailer.” I think there’ll be — you’ll be a commerce business that runs on multiple channels. So that was, basically, my idea for where, I guess, retail was heading into, and that’s where StoreHub came about as an idea. Basically, how do we become that bridge — how to become that platform?

WHERE STOREHUB OPERATES

Shereen Abdulla 

Now, you had this “aha” moment in China, but I know that StoreHub is based in Malaysia — talk us through how you evaluated where in Asia to headquarter StoreHub; and then, from there, what other countries do you operate in?

Wai Hong Fong  

So, I met my Co-founder in Shanghai. We, actually, started coding out my apartment in Shanghai and we tried — I mean, I was the guy that had to go sell it and she was the one that was primarily — she was the CTO. She was previously an engineer at Microsoft; and so, she was mostly coding, mostly having to do everything else.

And so, when I went out to sell, my six-month-old Chinese was not very good. So, I couldn’t really sell to a lot of people. I think, that was the rough start that we had, but we decided to make a trip down to Malaysia because I had a friend there who was one of the startup ecosystem leaders there, and he — this is home, this is where I’ve lived for a while. I thought I’d bring the team over, so my Co-founder and I went out to Malaysia. It was amazing because we found so much support there. 

WHY STOREHUB WAS SET UP IN MALAYSIA

Shereen Abdulla

What support? 

Wai Hong Fong 

So, the two types of support — one, people who are saying, “I will use your product if you make it — get into that standard, to this other standard. And two, it was not much but some government funding for this, and if you wanted to, you can. So, [it was] really cool to have that ecosystem support and [for] people [to] be able to say, “Hey, we love what you do. We love you and your energy. Why don’t you develop that stuff here?” And so, I think, with that, it got a little bit more exciting, and then that’s why we decided to base ourselves in Malaysia.

I think Malaysia is also unique in Southeast Asia in the sense that it’s a lot more similar to the rest of Southeast Asia, versus Singapore. Singapore is very different, it’s a lot more advanced. What you do in Singapore doesn’t quite replicate as easily across the rest of the region because of the massive differences in how developed and underdeveloped those countries are. And so, I think that’s why Malaysia was this really nice middle ground where we thought that whatever we could develop or build as a foundation in Malaysia could scale across other countries.

Shereen Abdulla 

Where else does the StoreHub currently operate?

Wai Hong Fong 

To clarify, China is — we don’t actually do any sales in China. The only presence we have in China is, primarily, our CTO leading our engineering team. Basically, that’s our engineering hub there. Apart from that, we have offices in [the] Philippines and Thailand, technically in Singapore as well. So, those are the countries that we primarily operate in. But our largest markets would be Malaysia, [the] Philippines, and Thailand.

Shereen Abdulla 

Given the idea for StoreHub was founded in Shanghai, why did you exclude China from your strategy?

Wai Hong Fong 

One of the patterns that we saw in China was that in order for you to succeed in the Chinese market — and of course, many non-Chinese companies have tried to engage the Chinese market — it’s actually really challenging if you’re not a local Chinese person. The name of the game, in general, was: whoever could raise the most money and spend it ludicrously to get crazy growth, and then raise more money, effectively won the market. It was not really a game of unit economics, per se, or trying to make a feasible business model work. And, I think, a part of me felt that I could not play that game, not being local.

And so, you saw how the local companies were competing on their front and, basically, who could raise the most money and outlast the competitors. And, for me, I didn’t feel there was a meaningful approach towards building a business. I came from a very bootstrapped start, from nothing out of my uncle’s garage, selling stuff, and building a business from that perspective. I always felt that building businesses was really fundamentally about creating meaningful value and that sustainability was a very important part of why we pour our heart and soul and life into these endeavors. If it was about turning [a] quick buck over, I don’t think it’s worth the effort and the pain that we go through. I really thought it was important for us to build this really good, foundationally-sustainable business. 

And so, I think when we looked at the Southeast Asia market, what I saw in the Southeast Asian market was this really messy — and at that time, no one really looked at Southeast Asia, it was very underrated. No one really cared too much about the various parts of Southeast Asia. So, I thought, “Hey, this is great. Here’s a place that allows me to create meaning.”  We have these small businesses who are struggling. One of the things we talk about here at StoreHub a lot is how the biggest problems in the world are often caused by these great inequalities that are inequalities of wealth distribution or inequalities of food distribution. I think we talked about how people go hungry every day not because there’s not enough food to feed everyone, [but] simply because it’s not distributed very well. 

So, I think, in the same way we think about technology, it’s the same problem. You think about why do some people have access to good technology and others don’t? And it’s simply because the people who choose the supply, often choose to supply to the guys who can pay the top dollar. And so, when we think about our mission — why we work so hard to dol not necessarily make the biggest bucks, but, at least, do decently well — is simply because we recognize that we want to even out that technology inequality in the parts of the world where we felt that this is a major problem. Not necessarily building that $10 billion business in two years, but definitely be able to engage very meaningfully real people, real businesses that really appreciate it.

STOREHUB’S MARKET OPPORTUNITY

Shereen Abdulla 

Wai Hong, if you could tell us a little bit about the market — who are your customers, and are they mostly small businesses, and restaurants, and retailers looking to digitize their operations?

Wai Hong Fong  

The nature of our customers has really changed quite a lot over the years. We started out with [these] small hipster cafes. And so, I think for us, we saw our early adopters in early days and they’re mostly small stores. And then, over time, as the brand grew, we started seeing more restaurants and chain stores adopting the product as the product matured into the features that we had. All that contributed to [being] able to engage in a larger and larger pool. Today, [if] you think about a StoreHub customer, it’s probably easier to think from a perspective of exclusion as opposed to inclusion. So, we think about not the tier one KFCs, McDonald’s, [or] Starbucks of the world, and not the super small mom-and-pop pushcarts — everything in between is a StoreHub customer. So, we have food trucks, we have Cafe owners, we have restaurants, we have fashion retailers, we have salons. So, it’s the whole middle ground that’s covered.

Shereen Abdulla 

And how big is this market? 

Wai Hong Fong 

When we did the math, it was over, I think, 20 million businesses of this nature that we serve here in Southeast Asia.

Shereen Abdulla

In the entire region, not Malaysia? 

Wai Hong Fong 

In the markets [where] we work. We’re working in Malaysia, [the] Philippines, [and] Thailand. I think that’s easily 2 million of these businesses. Now, we have this measly 15,000 stores and I think we’re getting started in the game that we’re playing.

Shereen Abdulla 

With 15,000 stores, how difficult is it to sell to such a fragmented market, because you said you serve practically all industries that are between tier one and the bottom tier?

Wai Hong Fong  

It is, definitely, very challenging. I think, in the earlier days, especially when your product is not as developed, there [are] always gaps everywhere and there’s always this contention between the sales guys and product. But, I think over time, we’ve really adopted a system-based approach towards sales. That means we’ve categorized these other customers that really worked well for us, and how, and why, and how do we engage them in a meaningful way. The ones that we don’t do really well for are the ones who often ask for a heavy amount of customization; they might want this or that. In general, we don’t do that work for specific businesses; and so, we will try to shy away from them. We also have non — certain [industries] that [don’t] really work for us. I know there [are] wholesalers and traders that tried to use StoreHub because they saw our inventory. We have to be very clear with ourselves and our teams what works, what doesn’t work, [and] why not, and help them to understand why we need to say no, sometimes.

HOW THE PANDEMIC IMPACTED STOREHUB

Shereen Abdulla 

I’m curious, how did the pandemic help? If you can, please, tell us what you and StoreHub did for those smaller merchants to help them stay afloat.

Wai Hong Fong 

Firstly, it did not help us, obviously, because one of the challenges of the pandemic was that we saw a lot of our customers close down. That’s the reality of having to deal with such a crazy time and not being able to have any dine-ins at all, for example. I think, the main thing that came out from that was that we were very quick to ask ourselves those questions. If enough of our customers don’t do well, we are not going to do well, either. And so, what is — how can we support? How can we go from simply being operationally or helping businesses be more operationally efficient? How can we go from doing that to really [help] them engage new revenue lines [and] re-engage their customers. And so, that’s when we launched a bunch of different products under the brand called Beep. 

You might have seen this in some of the research where StoreHub launched, within 48 hours, a food delivery module for businesses to be able to run their own delivery directly. StoreHub launched, basically, [a] big brand to consolidate all these different businesses into a certain umbrella so that we can — they can — support each other, from a marketing perspective. Different businesses can — in whatever the customer base is — expose, can share that marketing exposure with each other. So, all of that, we did really, really quickly. I think, for a good chunk of the pandemic, for a good chunk of the 2020/2021 years, we basically very much focused on supporting businesses through the various lockdowns. Especially when — in general, food delivery marketplaces were not very supportive in those times, they were still charging these exorbitant fees. And so, we wanted to help business owners say: okay, you can still use those platforms. But, for your own loyal customers, you don’t want them to be paying these ridiculous fees. Wouldn’t you prefer to be able to serve them directly? So that’s what we focus on doing. 

It was a really painful process, and a really difficult problem to solve, to be quite honest. I think, as a small-ish company, if you compared it to some of these food delivery giants, we don’t have the hundreds of millions of dollars, sometimes these billions of dollars that they’ve had over years to build the systems. We had to build it — whatever we could, where we could gather from — and [try] to make it work. That’s something that allowed us to help them so much. When we hear the stories of interviews [of] these businesses a year or two later, they will say things [like], “My accountant told me, if not for StoreHub, if not for Beep, you wouldn’t be alive right now.” And so, to hear these stories was really quite special for us.

Shereen Abdulla 

That’s very touching, yeah. Now, I’m curious, why’d you launch all these added benefits under a new brand, Beep, as opposed to under the existing brand, StoreHub, that you would have already had some brand affiliation with customers within — in the market, in general?

Wai Hong Fong 

At the time, the thinking was that StoreHub was a merchant-focused platform — merchant-focused company. But, what we did was that we consolidated all our merchants under a single umbrella and we basically called that Beep because we wanted to create a brand that consumers could relate [to] a little bit better. I think StoreHub is a bit of a mouthful for consumer brands and we thought that it didn’t really catch that connection with the consumer as well as a new brand could.

Shereen Abdulla 

You mentioned tight funding and availability of resources being a challenge StoreHub faced during the pandemic when you were trying to put together the Beep proposition — I’m curious, what have been some of the other challenges StoreHub has faced, or that you’ve faced building StoreHub, at any point in the company’s life to-date?

WAI HONG ON THE CHALLENGES OF SETTING COMPANY CULTURE

Wai Hong Fong 

I think the most difficult challenge that we had to go through, actually, was right in the middle of the pandemic, as well. It’s really funny because I believe that difficult times bring, tend to bring, these things up and that anything that you had not to deal with in the past because those times are good. In the difficult times, they often come surface; and so, for us in this case, it was really dualism in the culture of StoreHub where you have certain people who felt this was a family and then there’s a whole bunch of us that felt [we’re more] of a pro sports team. And so, when we modeled our values and our culture code, we really saw a lot of inspiration from the Netflix culture code and really how they separate these ideas of — if you wanted to build a really strong company, you have to see yourself more like a professional sports team than like a family. Because, in general, the purpose of a family is to stick together, is to love one another. If your brother did something wrong, you still love him to bits.

Shereen Abdulla 

Way to create distance!

Wai Hong Fong  

Absolutely, yeah. I think that’s great for families, and families are very important units in our community; but, at the same time, the difference here is that a professional sports team’s ultimate goal is to win and everything centers us around that. And, of course, it’s all the camaraderie that comes with being in a professional sports team, but at the end of the day, if I pass you the ball and you drop it, and you drop it continuously because you didn’t turn up for training — you were drunk last night, a whole bunch of other reasons — you eventually get dropped from the team. That difference in mindset actually surfaced, and we saw a bunch of people in the company who held a certain set of values and a bunch of people in the company who didn’t. When we had to confront that, and it was in the middle of a pandemic, we were — I remember having these town halls where we’ll talk about it and I’ll put a picture of an Asian family and I eliminated, the next slide would be this crossover there. We are not a family.

And so, there was this — it was really, of course, one thing I didn’t know or didn’t prep/ foresee, too, at the time was how sacred this idea of family was, especially in Southeast Asia and within the Asian context of how it was really difficult for people to work through, logically, such a challenging shift of ideas. For me, having to work through that was super important. It was super painful, as well. 

I remember, at that time, we were okay, having to deal with a whole bunch of people saying, “Oh, we are not happy with this, we want to —” and we had to figure out how do we rebuild a whole bunch of different teams. So, there[ are] all these challenges around embracing the identity that we want to pursue, and sometimes that means taking a step or two back. And so, that was probably one of the most painful times for me as a leader, working through, because some of these people that hold on to those values are not bad people at all. I mean, there are good people that have journeyed with us for a long time but at the end of the day, I think, for us, the clarity behind what company do we want to be, what company do we want to build, where do we see ourselves in the next couple of years — all these things were super important and we had to navigate through that.

HOW THE CURRENT ECONOMIC CONDITION IS IMPACTING STOREHUB

Shereen Abdulla

But what about the current downturn in the market? How is that affecting you as a founder and StoreHub as a business?

Wai Hong Fong 

It’s so funny because you mentioned it — this is the current downturn as though we had an upturn, and then the downturn. But, I think, for a lot of the small businesses — it also depended on which countries you are in. I think, in certain countries where the relaxation of lockdowns and restrictions were more, I guess, relaxed, and then in other countries — I mean, most parts of Southeast Asia, there were lockdowns all the way up to last year. And so, you think about this — maybe the challenges that businesses have to navigate in that time, I don’t think we saw much more than a couple of months of recovery-ish. The funny thing is that we thought, over two years, we’ve gone through all this stuff and now we don’t have to get out of it. Ot never really happened, at least in the markets that we’re operating in. 

One of the good things is that we, at least, saw the reopening of restaurants. So, we will be hyped up for that. And so, this current downturn, ironically, does not affect us as much as the last two years, in a sense, because the current downturn’s mostly about public markets clawing back capital — all the $5 trillion that [was printed in the] last two years, they have to be clawed back somehow. But, for the Average Joe business, it’s a steady climb forwards. Of course, there’s the cost of food [that] is increasing; so, most of the restaurants that we’re working with are increasing their prices, as well. But, in general, I think the market sentiment is not this upswing and downswing that we will see. It’s mostly down massively, in the last year, and a slow climb up right now. For us — in a good way, I think we’re a little bit shielded from some of the bigger things that are happening there; not necessarily completely insured — I think we’re still figuring that stuff out with our businesses, with the businesses that we serve — however, we are optimistic about a steady growth state for us, for the businesses that we work with.

STOREHUB’S RECENT PARTNERSHIP OPPORTUNITY

Shereen Abdulla 

You’ve struck a few partnerships recently, can you tell us about those and how they’re going to help you expand your reach?

Wai Hong Fong  

So, the partnerships that we have with suppliers and vendors who are able to navigate the hardware challenges of the businesses that we work with — those are helpful, I think, on an operational level. Some of the more exciting things that we’ve done, as well, [is] we’re part of a digital bank consortium that was recently announced. That’s a really exciting partnership, because that allows us to really tap into the foundation and the resources that this digital bank consortium will provide to us to be able to do really meaningful loans to our customers. So, how do we lend in a way that’s not traditional and not close-minded? I think, historically, a lot of banks have been — and, in fact, general lenders, even the more the newer FinTech guys, have — landed against very traditional credit scoring models, where it’s really about your cash flow, or your revenue, or your P&L statement.

Shereen Abdulla 

What other factors, then, will StoreHub help [with], when it comes to evaluating line of credit?

Wai Hong Fong 

I think one of the most interesting, quite powerful things that the star platform does for the business is that it’s literally the core system. And so, every single data point around what the business does is recorded in StoreHub. Everything from the transactions, dollar value of the products, the cost of the product, the nature of the products — whether there’s a big difference between selling beef and chicken, and selling clothes — and, basically, all these different data points combined with what we call behavioral data points. For example, we know that if a business is very good at capturing their customer data and engaging their customers — whether that’s through email, SMS, and so on, so forth — they generally have a much more profitable business model and a more sustainable business model. Because, at the end of the day, what is a business? It’s really having a good relationship with your customers and building that up. And so, I think the value that we are able to provide to these businesses is to be able to say, “Hey, we know you’re a new business that’s only been around for six months. Traditionally, you’re not going to get any offer for a loan from anyone; but, because we have all these data points about how the margins of your products — how quickly you’re growing — we will love to partner with you to support your growth.”

WAI HONG ON SUPERAPPS

Shereen Abdulla 

Do you see StoreHub, then, developing into a Superapp, like Grab, for example?

Wai Hong Fong 

I’m very cautious about the terminology “Superapp”, I think it was originally coined by, or at least it was a label given to the Chinese apps when we did almost everything. Prior to that, no one really talked about the Superapps. In these days, here in Southeast Asia — I don’t know how many people [I] have come across that told me they want to be a Superapp. I laugh because it’s a very lazy way of saying, “We don’t know what we really want to do.” 

Something for us, as a company, we’re very clear about what we want to do. [The] primary value that we’re trying to create is to enable merchants and businesses [to] build their businesses [to be] sustainable, successful. Even if it’s a one-stop cafe, how do we help them build the sustainability and success in their business? And everything else we do is secondary to that purpose.

WAI HONG ON COMPANY ROLE MODELS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Shereen Abdulla 

Are there any companies in the region that you look up to as role models?

Wai Hong Fong

I think Sea was — I’m a gamer through and through since I was a kid, so it’s really amazing to see a gaming company pivot and do things like e-commerce and actually beat the behemoths at their game in a very, very short period of time. There’s so much we can learn about the way that we execute today. Of course, there’s also a lot of backstory about how — I have a bunch of friends at Sea who are, oh, my god, they never see the light outside the office. 

Shereen Abdulla

Like true gamers.

Wai Hong Fong

Actually, now that you mentioned it, it’s a little bit like that!

WAI HONG ON EMPLOYEE TITLES

Shereen Abdulla 

One last question, you call yourself the Chieftain, what is the story behind the title?

Wai Hong Fong 

I mean, we didn’t want to build an average company; and, for me, I never — I’ve actually never gone for a job interview before in my life. I’ve never worked for someone else. 

Shereen Abdulla 

Entrepreneur from the get-go.

Wai Hong Fong 

Right, from the start! And so, I think these wild ideas. Say, okay, we’re gonna be a company, I was very much influenced by Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness and the story of Zappos in its early days, and how they really sought to build a very different company. And so, for me, one of the ideas that influence what we do here was — that one of my mentors always told me that, “Wai Hong, if you want to shape culture, change the language. Think about culture as studying the language, because so much of that is embedded in the words and why the words are the words they are.” And so, for us, when we started StoreHub, we didn’t have marketing executives, online marketing ninjas, we didn’t have customer service, success champions, and sales warriors. And so, we created this language that really embodied playfulness and the ideas of what we wanted to move towards. Chieftain came from one of the games I used to play, Warcraft — one of the heroes was a Tauren Chieftain. And so, he would run around his totem pole and I said, “Oh, that guy’s cool.” And there [were] a lot of really good ideas around tribal leadership — a book that was very popular back in the day — and I was drawn to some of these ideas. And so, I chose Chieftain because I thought it was a good talking point. Every time someone sees that title, even today, they always [say], “Oh, Chieftan. That’s really interesting. Tell me more.”

Shereen Abdulla

Yeah, I thought it was interesting enough to prompt you about it.

Wai Hong Fong 

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, that’s why we still keep some of these titles around and why I call myself Chieftan. I think it’s — yeah, those origin stories.

Shereen Abdulla

I love it. Wai Hong, thank you so much for your time. I had a wonderful chat.

Wai Hong Fong

Likewise, thank you for your time as well. 

Shereen Abdulla

Absolutely.

 

THIS PODCAST IS INTENDED SOLELY FOR GENERAL INFORMATIONAL OR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.  UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD ANY CONTENT PROVIDED AS PART OF ANY SUCH PROGRAMS, SERVICES OR EVENTS BE CONSTRUED AS INVESTMENT, LEGAL, TAX OR ACCOUNTING ADVICE BY 500 STARTUPS MANAGEMENT COMPANY, L.L.C. OR ANY OF ITS AFFILIATES (“500 GLOBAL”). 500 GLOBAL MAKES NO REPRESENTATION AS TO THE ACCURACY OR INFORMATION IN THIS PODCAST AND WHILE REASONABLE STEPS HAVE BEEN TAKEN TO ENSURE THAT THE INFORMATION HEREIN IS ACCURATE AND UP-TO-DATE, NO LIABILITY CAN BE ACCEPTED FOR ANY ERROR OR OMISSIONS AND 500 GLOBAL ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY LOSS WHICH MAY ARISE FROM RELIANCE ON THE INFORMATION IN THIS PODCAST. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD ANY INFORMATION OR CONTENT IN THIS PODCAST, BE CONSIDERED AS AN OFFER TO SELL OR SOLICITATION OF INTEREST TO PURCHASE ANY SECURITIES ADVISED BY 500 GLOBAL OR ANY OF ITS AFFILIATES OR REPRESENTATIVES. FURTHER, NO CONTENT OR INFORMATION IN THIS PODCAST IS INTENDED AS AN OFFER TO PROVIDE ANY INVESTMENT ADVISORY SERVICE WITH REGARD TO SECURITIES BY 500 GLOBAL. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD ANYTHING HEREIN BE CONSTRUED AS FUND MARKETING MATERIALS BY PROSPECTIVE INVESTORS CONSIDERING AN INVESTMENT INTO ANY 500 GLOBAL INVESTMENT FUND. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD ANY STATISTICS, QUOTATIONS OR OTHER CONTENT BE INTERPRETED AS TESTIMONIALS OR ENDORSEMENT OF THE INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE OF ANY 500 GLOBAL FUND BY A PROSPECTIVE INVESTOR CONSIDERING AN INVESTMENT INTO ANY 500 GLOBAL FUND. THIS PODCAST MAY CONTAIN FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS WHICH INVOLVE RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES, AND ACTUAL RESULTS MAY DIFFER MATERIALLY FROM ANY EXPECTATIONS, PROJECTIONS OR PREDICTIONS MADE OR IMPLICATED IN SUCH FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS. THE PODCAST INCLUDES CONTENT DELIVERED BY AN INDEPENDENT THIRD PARTY THAT IS NOT RELATED TO OR CONTROLLED BY 500 GLOBAL. ALL VIEWS AND OPINIONS PRESENTED IN THE PODCAST BY SUCH THIRD PARTY ARE THEIR OWN VIEWS AND OPINIONS AND DO NOT REPRESENT THOSE OF 500 GLOBAL. 500 GLOBAL MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS AS TO OR GUARANTEES OF SPECIFIC OUTCOMES FROM ATTENDING OR RELYING ON THE CONTENTS OF THE PODCAST.