VENTURE CAPITALIST

Volume 1 | Issue 3 INVESTMENT

Anthony Siau
Founder
Kairos Capital Group

MAGAZINE
WWW.ASIACEO.CLUB
Publication Date
ASIA CEO COMMUNITY 21ST November, 2024
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ABOUT ANTHONY SIAU

l am a Malaysian educated in Singapore and the US, after I finished my post
graduate degree in 1999, I return to Malaysia due to my mother’s passing, even
though I had wanted to work in Wall Street. My first job was in fund management
and there is no turning back, I am blessed to be able to start my career in an
industry that I still enjoy till this day. Fast forward to early 2016, when I was the
CEO and Regional Head at RHB Group Asset Management based in Singapore, I
felt that it was an opportune time for me to venture out on my own, moving from
primarily public market investments to private market investments. As such, I
muscled up all my courage and made the pivotal decision to leave my high flying
job at RHB Banking Group to start Kairos Capital Group in Singapore (“Kairos” is a
Greek word that means “an opportune time”), the humble beginning of my
entrepreneurial journey, and I am still enjoying every minute of it, providing my
clients and investors with bespoke investment and capital market solutions
tailored specifically to their financial needs.
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ASIA CEO COMMUNITY

WHAT IS THE MISSION AND VISION OF

KAIROS CAPITAL GROUP, AND WHAT
DIFFERENTIATES IT FROM OTHER
INVESTMENT FIRMS IN ASIA?
Headquartered in Singapore, Kairos Capital Group (“Kairos or KCG”)
is a group of companies that provides bespoke multi-family office
investment solutions with a comprehensive suite of specially
curated products and services for high-net worth individuals,
families and institutions, across Asia and beyond, including
Southeast Asia, Greater China and Silicon Valley. Through our
experience in the capital markets, we provide exceptional advisory
ranging from M&A services, IPOs, investment structuring, corporate
restructuring to cater to our client's needs and our investors'
mandate. We craft specific investment solutions and/or products to
generate medium to superior returns for our investors and partners
and provide a platform in which investments can be managed to
preserve wealth.
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HOW DO YOU ASSESS THE CURRENT INVESTMENT LANDSCAPE

IN ASIA, AND WHAT OPPORTUNITIES DO YOU SEE FOR GROWTH
AND DEVELOPMENT?
The world today is very different from pre
Covid-19 days, with multiple uncertainties
hovering over us, including the various
wars, geopolitical tensions and what not,
investors are becoming more risk adverse
in terms of their investment decision, in
many instances we received investor
enquiries on stable and yield generating
investments. With that backdrop, coupled
with the current enduring landscape, we
have identified a few opportunities,
including collateralized private credit deals
and clean energy infrastructure projects,
both of which offer regular consistent cash
flow and income stream to investors, as
well as asset security.
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What are some of the key challenges

you have faced as a founder and CEO,
and how have you overcome them?
I must admit it was not that smooth sailing when I first
started my entrepreneurial journey, in fact very different
from what I had expected, I had to do many things on my
own without any personal assistants, I had to navigate the
complexity of running my own business without a banking
group behind me, I had to start worrying about the cashflow
of the company, and many more. It takes time, grit,
perseverance and determination to overcome all the
obstacles and my advice to all aspiring entrepreneurs is –
while successful entrepreneurs look admirable and
inspiring, they actually worked very hard behind the scene,
just like the Chinese saying 一分耕耘，一分收穫.
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Can you share some examples of successful

investments made by Kairos Capital Group
and the strategies behind them?
This is a challenging question as there were too many to count, but on a serious note let me
provide 2 very different examples of successful investments based on differing investment
objectives:

High Growth – in 2017, we invested in Spotify, back then a technology disruptor to traditional
music companies many viewed as a long shot, but it turned out to be one of our best
investments with a gross MOIC of 6-7x in less than 2 years after it went public end of 2018,
which was in itself another disruptor to the capital market, as Spotify pioneered the “Direct
Listing” approach.

High Yield – we worked with prominent families and/or listed companies to understand and
create credit opportunities for their short-term (less than 12 months) liquidity requirements,
the facilities given to them were collateralized against their hard assets including lands and
buildings.
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How do you approach risk

management and maintain a balanced
portfolio in a dynamic and ever
changing market?
At Kairos Capital Group, risk management is at the forefront of everything we do, we will
never associate ourselves with any investment that cannot pass our risk parameters, even if
the investment has the potential to generate huge returns, it is all about risk-reward balance.
However, it does not mean that we will not take risky bets, as long as the potential upsides
far outweigh the downsides, we will take decisive actions to make a convicted judgment
call to invest for the benefits of our investors. Nonetheless, as we are primarily investing in
the private market, the risk management strategy is quite different from having to manage
the risks of investing in the public market, we tend to be more far-sighted when we assess
an investment opportunity, without having to deal with the daily fluctuations of the public
market.
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What role does innovation play in

your investment strategy, and how
do you identify emerging trends
and disruptive technologies?
While most people try to quantify investment based on pure numbers and trends, I like to
look at investment as a form of art that is not quantifiable, I still belong to the diminishing old
school approach in assessing whether an investment is good or bad. While we cannot
discount the usefulness of data and numbers in assessing an investment, but the art of
qualifying will determine if the investment is “great” versus “good” versus “mediocre”, this
is where the world of unicorns was discovered, no amount of technology advancement can
replace a world of experience.
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AS A LEADER, WHAT As an investment professional, in line with

the overarching investment thesis of Kairos
QUALITIES DO YOU LOOK Capital Group, the first hurdle to cross is
the quality of the founder(s) and top
FOR IN POTENTIAL leadership team. Many a times, a company
INVESTMENT PARTNERS can have the best technology or strategy
or product, but it will not succeed if the
OR PORTFOLIO founder(s) / leader(s) have personality
flaws or behavioural deficiencies. Once the
COMPANIES? company passed this leadership criteria,
the typical due diligence assessment will
determine if the company is investible for
potential returns or worth our while to
collaborate with.
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HOW DO YOU FOSTER A CULTURE OF COLLABORATION

AND INNOVATION WITHIN YOUR ORGANIZATION?
To be an effective leader, I try very hard not to be a leader, as such I designed my corporate
structure to be as flat as possible so that red tapes can be mitigated naturally and
empowerment can be effectively distributed without creating major issues amongst
colleagues. Also, I believed in the power of multi-tasking versus specialization, which
fosters innovations as they are exposed to a multitude of responsibilities. Last but not least,
I like to create a shadow structure whereby there is always someone who will hold you
responsible for your actions, which to my surprise develops better collaboration within the
organisation.
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What strategies
do you employ to
attract and retain
top talent in a
competitive
market?

While money talks, research

has shown that money is not
always the main reason
people leave their job, more
often than not it is the
intangible factors such as
limited opportunity to learn /
grow and lack of proper
recognition. Besides the
obvious, one of my key
human resource retainment
strategy, besides
remuneration package, is to
ensure that they are placed in
the right job that will magnify
their strength, which in turn
will benefit the company. Last
but not least, personally I
prefer quality over quantity,
meaning I would rather
maintain a small high
performing core team than to
manage human resource
issues that follow a big pool
of employees.
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Environmental,
Social,
Governance
How important is environmental, social, and
governance (ESG) criteria in your investment
decision making process, and how do you
integrate it into your portfolio?

While it is not an explicit

criteria in our overall
investment thesis, Kairos
Capital Group
consciously and
implicitly recognise ESG
as an important element
in assessing a potential
investment in its effort to
“do the right thing”, but
we are also cognizant of
the fact that there are
many instances of green
washing by companies
as a gimmick to enhance
their image, as such we
have to strike a balance
between our fiduciary
responsibility to our
investors and the need
to integrate ESG into our
investment process, it is
not an easy balance but
we have to move with
the times.
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Can you share some insights into your approach to sustainable

investing and the impact it has had on your investment
performance?
Sustainable investing has long been a myth to the Invesment world with the perception
that it underperforms the market. However, sustainable investing can deliver similar, if
not more returns in some instances, as long as we balance the scale between
sustainability and profitability. Personally, if a sustainable business is not able to be self
sustainable as a going concern, then it should not be called sustainable even though it
belongs to the sustainable space. At Kairos Capital Group, while we support and
advocate sustainable investing, one key consideration is still the investment returns,
which has to be acceptable and reasonable to investors.

What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs and

founders who are looking to establish their own investment
firm?

“Be ready to pull up your sleeves and do the dirty job” is the most important advise I will
give to them. Having been in corporate job for 17 years, I was pampered by the
abundance of resources to help me with virtually anything, I learned the hard way when I
started my own business without changing my mindset and I suffered the
consequences. Another important realization is that you have that fiduciary responsibility
not just to your investors, but also your employees whom you rely upon to run your
business, and vice versa as they depend on you to make ends meet.

What are your future plans and goals for Kairos Capital Group?
Are there any new initiatives or projects in the pipeline?
True to its motto, Kairos Capital Group will continue to be the preferred bespoke
investment firm committed to delivering values for our investors and partners. As a
boutique investment firm, we have the flexibility and robustness to adapt to the overall
macro environment so that we are able to continue providing relevant products and
services to our investors. The current trend or buzz word is “yield” and we have
identified “private credit” as the catalyst to fuel this demand for yield, as such we will
continue to innovate and structure products in the private credit space, which has
doubled and quadrupled over the past 5 and 10 years respectively, and is forecasted to
continue its strong growth over the next decade. Over a longer horizon, cell cultured
food technology continues to remain one of our key focus and the world is grappling
with scarcity of resources and growing concerns on food security and availability
especially in third world countries.
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How do you stay informed about the

latest industry trends and
developments, and what sources of
information do you rely on to make
informed investment decisions?

Having been in the

industry for more than
25 years, I enjoy the
privilege of having
regular information feed
from multiple sources
including banks and fund
houses alike. On top of
that, over the years I
have developed the
habit of reading news
early in the morning to
keep myself abreast of
the latest happenings
and developments. I
would say “curiosity”
and “life-long learning”
are key attributes that
kept me going through
these years in terms of
acquiring knowledge
and elevating my
skillsets.
 ASIA CEO COMMUNITY
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Maggie Au Yeung
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