Why Founder Experience Makes Better Investors with Wayne Soh

Not all investors read your business the same way. What changes when they’ve been founders too? In this episode, Wayne Soh, VP Investments APAC and Head of Singapore at Plug and Play, shares how years of founding and operating companies now shape the way he evaluates startups across Asia. You’ll hear: ✨ How his own trials building businesses, from a Groupon‑era marketplace to a hostel and a home‑cleaning platform, influence how he thinks about product‑market fit and the human side of operations. ✨ The specific ways founder experience shows up in venture work: how he evaluates startups, what he looks for beyond the numbers, and why “good at raising” is not the same as “good at running a P&L.” ✨ How he thinks about moats in software, hardware, and AI, and why customer closeness and early user feedback matter just as much as deep tech and patents. ✨ What changes when you’re backing companies across very different markets, and how growth expectations and metrics need to shift outside Silicon Valley. If you’re a founder or operator who wants to understand how investors with real builder experience read your business (not just your deck!) this conversation will give you a clearer view of the investor side of the table. It's also an honest look at what investors like Wayne wish more early‑stage teams would focus on inside the business itself. — “Why Founder Experience Makes Better Investors” is part of Beyond the Raise, a show about what it really takes to build enduring companies after the funding announcement is over. 🎧 Watch or listen on your favorite platform here: https://lnkd.in/d42Bv8Dd