David: Hello there. Welcome to another edition of Bangkok Thought Leaders. Today I’m with a very special Bangkok Thought Leader, Poe Aye, who is the founder of FACE. She’s an organization connecting founders and partners with investors. Good afternoon.

Poe Aye: Hi, hi David. How are you doing?

David: Fantastic. Thank you for being here today.

Poe Aye: Thank you for inviting me here. It’s a really fancy place.

David: Okay, so before we get started, tell me about yourself because I think what you do is very fascinating. What is your background? What is your story? How did you get to this point?

Poe Aye: My background is that I really want to do business. I really want to be a successful entrepreneur. But if you don’t have the network, if you don’t have the capital, you cannot be. Even if you work really hard, you cannot go really fast. And I feel like I’m really connected to a lot of expatriate communities here because any person with ambition, inspiration to do new things, you come in here, you don’t know anyone, you don’t have money. There is a chance for you to be successful. It’s very slim. So this is where I want to start FACE because I want to connect with people like me and we can connect each other, we help out each other. That’s why I want to start with FACE.

David: Wonderful. So you say you’re a connector.

Poe Aye: Yes.

David: But a lot of people use that word, right? On your LinkedIn, they say, “I’m the connector.” So I don’t want to call myself a connector because it’s overly used, overly subscribed.

Poe Aye: I’ll call you then. You are the number one connector in Bangkok.

David: I’m your number one friend. That’s really more authentic.

Poe Aye: Yeah.

David: Fantastic. So obviously you’re very embedded in the startup community. Tell me about the Bangkok startup community because I don’t actually know much about it.

Poe Aye: For me, I really don’t know exactly about the startup community. I don’t have the right word to say. But I’m just connected to startups because this is my type of people who like to do things right now rather than thinking too much about it. So let’s start doing things right now. So it’s not really essentially startup. It’s any business, any person who wants to do business right now is my type of people. So I would not really associate myself with startup. There is a lot of startup because those are my type of people. They’re small and medium-sized business owners or business owners like you as well.

David: So you cannot call yourself, right?

Poe Aye: Yeah, still small. Very humble.

David: So I’ll jump ahead a little bit here, but I went to your last event. First of all, what does FACE stand for? Is that an acronym?

Poe Aye: Yes, it’s Founders and Creative Entrepreneurs. So you have the founder and also creative people, so you can do business in different things. It could be something that you got an idea, you’re a creative person, you can do business. So that’s what it stands for.

David: Okay, well your event was fantastic. It was so impressive. It was standing room only. It was a sellout in the ballroom. And everyone was very engaged with the pitching sessions and stuff like that. How did you bring together, how did you get to know those investors, and how did you bring it all together? What was the story of founding FACE and how did it come together?

Poe Aye: For me, I really knock on people’s doors a lot. I’m pretty shameless. You have to be consistent about it. Even if people say no, you’re just sending a message on LinkedIn again and again, right? And that’s how I do it. It’s been two years I’ve been doing this. And when you keep showing up consistently, people will give you a shot one time. And that’s really what happened with people coming together because she keeps doing this for two years even if I say no. And that’s how it happened. The first six months was horrible. You know yourself, this thing was really down below because people just say no. But you just have to keep on doing it, and you change the way you approach people, and it teaches you a lot of lessons. That’s how I keep showing up all the time even when people say no.

David: Well, it’s very impressive. It’s very impressive. And what are some of the success stories from FACE that you’ve seen?

Poe Aye: I would be very honest here. For some of the people, I right now don’t track people exactly how many deals they have got. I need to get this commission or anything. I’m not on that stage yet because to be on that stage you need to have a particular system to do due diligence, check their cap table and everything. I don’t have that system yet. I’m at the top of the funnel where I meet people together. They do business collaboration first. That’s my aim first. And the second thing is they will do investment opportunities. So I’m doing as much as possible to connect everybody together, the right people together. First business opportunity, and then investment. I’m going to also start building a platform right now. Because I’m bootstrapping, my platform is taking a little bit longer than it is. But I think I should get there by the end of the year. And by the next three months, I’m trying to find investment opportunities for founders.

David: Good for you. Very humble, because I know from speaking to people at the event that a lot of them came together through your event. A lot of business people came together, investors came together with startups through you directly through your events. So you’re very humble in saying that you don’t count it. But I can say for sure that there’s millions and millions of investment happening directly through you. So congratulations on that.

Poe Aye: Thank you.

David: And what do you have lined up for the rest of the year? Is there a monthly event? Is it a quarterly event? What kind of activities do you have coming up?

Poe Aye: So I just hired somebody. That’s very hard for me to have overhead in your business because it’s kind of a risky thing. So my lineup right now is we will have an investor roundtable as a monthly one, so everybody can come together with small events. And then quarterly, we will have FACE bigger events like pitching events. So founders meet with investors like a quarterly one. So this is for Bangkok. In the next three months, I’m going to have a blueprint where I will do exactly the same in Bali. And next year, I was thinking about Vietnam and Hong Kong. So I have a lot of business partners that I have in Hong Kong. They came to FACE events last time and they want exactly the same. But I need to have the Bangkok events to get it right and then go to the next one. I did it in Bali before, and I’m trying to do Bali again this year too.

David: Okay. And to stay on the startup question for a moment, I know you said your audience is much bigger than that, but if someone is looking to get investment, what are some of the tips you can give them to present themselves properly to investors?

Poe Aye: So the first thing, I think people can tell me if I’m wrong, don’t ask for the money right away. So it would just be the same message. If you go for dating for the first date, just don’t ask, “Do you want to get married?” This is too much.

David: That’s my mistake. That’s where I’m going wrong. Okay, thank you for the advice.

Poe Aye: You have to get to know the person and build trust. You know what they do in their time. Just build trust first, and then try to sell yourself first, and then ask for the money. That’s what I think it is, but I could be wrong.

David: Yeah, okay. But I’m sure putting together an impressive deck helps a lot. The numbers have to be right.

Poe Aye: What I think is right, it’s all about the person. The product could be easy, but the founder is pretty much not there yet. The way they speak and everything, there is the intuition about it. Especially not Series A or anything, it’s like pre-seed, you just have the idea. It’s just you. You will have to be a salesman. It doesn’t matter about your product. You have a template for a pitch deck. Everybody has their template. You can put the pitch deck anytime. But it’s about you, how you sell your product. So I think every founder should learn how to be a good salesman. Then you can sell any product you want for the pre-seed round. That’s what it is.

David: You say storytelling is an important part of that.

Poe Aye: Yeah, that’s what you do, right?

David: You’ll probably have raised a lot of money.

Poe Aye: I wish.

David: Okay, we’ll come back to the storytelling question in a minute. But the final serious question I will have for you. Obviously, at the moment, the whole world is being affected by AI, robotics, all this kind of stuff. What are some of the trends that you’re seeing emerge in the startup world that you think we’ll see really come into effect over the next 12 to 18 months?

Poe Aye: Wow, that’s a very serious question. Yes, I think AI is the most important thing. It’s either you celebrate AI or you’re going to be a dinosaur and you’re going to die down. So that’s what I think. Deep tech AI, I think those are the trends that people are talking about. People will talk about Web3 before, NFT before, but I think Web3 will come in 10 years and AI will be here no matter what you like it or not. And deep tech is where a lot of people want to invest money in this.

David: Yeah, okay.

Poe Aye: Sorry, not detox, not the phone company.

David: Oh my God, you’re clogging on my accent.

Poe Aye: So yeah, I think this is where investments, one of the guys from Japan really wants to invest in this. But I cannot find any person doing this kind of business out there in Asia because it’s a specific skill you need. And it’s a long investment because you need to have interest, not like the trend. But there’s always a trend coming around, like NFT, crypto. There is a trend, people follow the trend. It’s always there. But what you actually want is to develop the skill set and it will come. That’s what I think.

David: Absolutely. So for all the founders out there, keep an eye on AI. If you can start integrating that into business models, that’s definitely going to be the big thing.

Poe Aye: Yeah, I think so. It’s also not even about AI creation. How do you integrate those AI into your business process and your business can go as lean as possible and just cut lots of cost. It’s either you celebrate AI or you don’t celebrate it and you’re just going to be a dinosaur.

David: Exactly. So hopefully businesses that will survive will be businesses in the real world that do video production and things like this in real life studios. Those kinds of things, people won’t replace their personality, right?

Poe Aye: That’s true.

David: You got a great personality.

Poe Aye: Yeah.

David: All right, so we talked about storytelling earlier. Who are some of your favorite storytellers?

Poe Aye: I think religion is a little bit storytelling too. It’s kind of like a very successful story if you tell it like this. It’s the best story ever told, most successful story ever told. You have the story, amazing story. You can pass it from generation to generation. It’s very good marketing content writing in terms of religion.

David: Yeah.

Poe Aye: If you’re a salesperson, you storytell yourself every single time when you meet different people. If it’s an investor, you talk about the investor background, the similarity. So your storytelling is different depending on who you’re talking to. If you’re talking to a woman, then you’re trying to relate to that person in your story. Every salesperson that I encounter with, they’re a good storyteller. Even religion is good storytelling.

David: The best ROI of any business, 2,000 years old, still crushing it.

Poe Aye: It’s true.

David: Are there any particular religious stories that you like?

Poe Aye: I like interesting stories that involve drinking.

David: Turning water into wine.

Poe Aye: Yes, because it will save a lot of money. This is where I spend lots of money, so I can relate to that story.

David: Fantastic. In terms of business, are there any storytellers you like?

Poe Aye: I think Gary Vee is a very popular person.

David: Are you a fan of his?

Poe Aye: No, I don’t even know him.

David: Gary Vaynerchuk.

Poe Aye: I shouldn’t say too much about it because I’m not actually a fan, but he does a very good job on social media of motivating people to embrace technologies and personal branding.

David: Favorite movie?

Poe Aye: I haven’t watched movies these days, but if I have one, The Godfather. And another one is The Fighter. I watch aggressive movies.

David: What can The Godfather teach business?

Poe Aye: You need to have backbone and confidence in yourself. Doing business is self-reflection all the time. You go through tough times and you doubt yourself, but you need confidence no matter what.

David: Lessons?

Poe Aye: Be confident. Keep being a badass.

David: Good succession planning.

Poe Aye: And then you kill the competitors.

David: Good lessons. All right, Poe, thank you very much. On that note, let’s wrap it up. Thank you for your time today.

Poe Aye: Thank you so much for your time and everybody’s time here.

David: So follow Poe on LinkedIn. Also follow FACE on Facebook and LinkedIn too. There are regular events, so even if you’re not looking for investment, there are fascinating events to attend, to see the pitches of new businesses, to hear from the experts. Definitely worth your time. And there’s also alcohol.

David: So everyone’s a winner. Thank you so much.

Poe Aye: Thank you so much.