Investing in the Future Saison Capital’s Qin En Looi Talks Web3, Blockchain, and Fintech Innovation

Episode Overview

Qin En Looi is a seasoned venture capitalist and Partner at Saison Capital, a fund focused on early-stage investments in emerging markets. Before joining Saison Capital, Qin En co-founded Glints, now one of Southeast Asia’s leading recruitment platforms, where he played a pivotal role as COO. This hands-on entrepreneurial experience taught him the realities of startup challenges, from scaling and market adaptation to investor relations. His journey with Glints, especially in navigating complex recruitment needs across Southeast Asia, gave him insights into the region’s business dynamics and the resilience required for startup success.

Following his tenure at Glints, Qin En transitioned to Boston Consulting Group’s Digital Ventures, where he guided Fortune 500 companies through digital transformation and venture-building processes. This role honed his ability to merge corporate strategies with startup innovation, preparing him for his current role at Saison Capital. Now, he leverages his experience to invest in Web3, fintech, and blockchain, believing these technologies will profoundly impact finance, especially in underbanked regions. At Saison Capital, he has spearheaded more than 50 investments in Web3 startups, positioning him as a leader in bridging traditional finance and blockchain.

Qin En’s background in both startup environments and corporate strategy enables him to bring a unique approach to venture capital. He places strong emphasis on supporting founders, particularly in the early stages, with practical guidance on navigating market complexities and building resilient teams. His belief in the transformative power of blockchain and Web3 reflects his broader vision of creating financial inclusivity through technology, making him a sought-after advisor in the evolving fintech landscape​

Episode Transcript

Kevin Rosenquist : Hey, welcome to Pay Pod, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenqist, and thanks for listening. Today I’m chatting with Qin En , a partner at Saison Capital. Chin invests in early stage companies and works with founders to go from 0 to 1. He’s very bullish on Web3 and blockchain technology and his investments are focused in that realm. He’s incredibly knowledgeable on these topics and is convinced that Web3 will revolutionize the financial industry. We chat about things like tokenization, how he comes to decide on who to invest with, and how he finished a four year degree from Stanford in two years. Honestly, I’m still not really sure how he did that. But anyway, please welcome Chin on. When deciding whether to invest in early stage companies, how much of that decision is made from the data and facts, and how much of it is just sort of a gut feeling? That’s great.

Qin En Looi: Question. I would say 50 over 50, right. And I’ll start off with the really sort of gut feeling. Right. Because I think data is sort of almost like the rational part in all of us that we all feel like we should. But I feel like in early stage investing, it always starts with the gut instinct. And then you use data facts to verify it. So in my perspective, it really starts with a gut sense of do we think this could be something that becomes big, becomes massive? And often the answer is unclear because if the answer is clear, then the alpha is gone. So I think really it’s sort of drawing on that instinct, drawing on that. And I believe that comes from spending time in the relevant markets.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah. I mean, so how is do you is it an emotional decision to some degree?

Qin En Looi: I think it’s an emotional decision, but at the same time it’s also a bit about experience. You know, the best kind of movie scene I have in mind is, um, Gladiator, which is the movie that from a really long time ago, every time before Russell Crowe, you know, starts a fight, he will pick up sand on the ground. He will feel it in his hands, he will smell it. I think that’s kind of what I feel like for whether it’s gut instinct, it’s like you need to be on the arena, you need to touch the sand, you need to feel the sand. And then somehow there’s maybe something in you that might be something here.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah. Okay. That’s interesting. That’s interesting. I mean, it’s a big decision. You know, you’re talking about giving a lot. You know, you’re putting a large amount of money into, into to backing somebody in their vision. And it’s a leap of faith, I suppose. And to some degree it absolutely is.

Qin En Looi: But, you know, one thing I always have to remind myself and my team, and also even my peers in this industry, is you got to focus on what could possibly go right, because sometimes the way we do diligence is like, oh, this could go wrong, that could go wrong. And look. If you give me any company, especially any early stage company, I can immediately give you a 101 reasons why it’s a horrible idea to invest, right? And if we do that, then there will be no more early stage investors and no more early stage founders, right? But you’ve really got to look for that 1 or 2 spikes, right? The 1 or 2 fantastic things that if you know, if it works, it blows it out of the park.

Kevin Rosenquist : Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. So you’ve been a founder yourself. Yes. How much coaching do you do when you meet founders that you potentially want to work with or do end up working with.

Qin En Looi: As much or as little as they want. Right. And I say this with a bit of a jest because, you know, I, I’ve met some investors, not too many of them who just go on about, oh, I want to coach founders, how to coach founders. And it’s like, look, calm down. Right. I think first and foremost, we should take advice that we give founders, which is you solve problems that are there, right? So if a founder is, you know, someone who is very experienced in his third or fourth rodeo, like, honestly, who am I, right? Who am I to give any advice? Sure. That’s a good point, I think. Yeah, it’s really about being contextual. Whereas let’s say it’s a first time founder and solving a problem that I myself have faced before. For example, how do you build a sales team? Happy to kind of provide that support. So very kind of contextual. And I think at the end of the day, I try to focus on things that are a bit more, I would say relevant in the sense of like things like hiring things like sales, selling things a bit more horizontal. My take is if I know more about industry than the founder, something is very wrong, right? I have chosen the wrong founders because they are spending 15-18 hours every day to work on the business. They should be the experts, not me.

Kevin Rosenquist : Good point. What’s the biggest difference? Or what are the biggest differences between a brand new founder looking for funding and one of those more experienced ones looking for funding? Yeah.

Qin En Looi: Well, I think this is cliche, but it’s so true. First time founders obsess about product second or third, or the multiple times founders focus on Distribution. And look, I think that that’s so true because when I, when I myself first started the company, you know, there was a certain ego, right. And that ambition, reading all those stories of like slack, Canva notion, we had to build a product. We want to build it to go viral. We want people to love it, you know. And so all of that was sort of the obsession, right? And we felt like selling. I felt like selling was beneath me. Right. It was like, come on, guys, I didn’t drop out of Stanford to build a venture fund thing too, to kind of pick up the phone and do cold calls. Um, but yeah, kind of learned the hard way that if you can’t sell your shit, you don’t expect your team members, your employees to do it. Right. So really sort of like for us, for, for for me, the, the biggest learning I had from being a founder and now seeing it between first time and, you know, repeat the founders is really that focus on distribution. I feel like the experienced founders know, like you just build a product, get it out there to whatever kind of state it needs to be, and then go out, sell it, distribute it.

Kevin Rosenquist : That’s interesting. So a lot of the newer founders, or at least some of the newer founders just sort of like if you build it, they will come with a sort of mentality.

Qin En Looi: Exactly. And I think that’s a bit of a survivorship bias in terms of the stories they read. Right. Often when I speak to them, they will draw reference from some of those products that I mentioned. Right. But I think what they don’t see is that these are like 1 in 1,000,000, 1 in 1,000,000,000 outcomes, which once again, survivorship bias. Right. But then for them made so many products, so many businesses out there that don’t have the same, let’s say, product like growth, don’t have the same virality, but are still doing quite well just because they sell well. Right. And I think it really depends on what kind of products you’re building, especially in a B2B world. Look, you don’t need a magical product, right? When I’m building something like an accounting or a text product, you just need something that works, right? And to be able to sort of get a foot in the door.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah. It’s interesting because I’ve talked to people who want a podcast before, and I’ve heard people say, you know, oh, you know, if you have a good product, you know, if you have a good if you have a good content, you’ll you’ll go viral or you can do that or you’ll you don’t necessarily need to worry about the sound quality or, you know, the the editing and stuff like that. And I’m always kind of like, man, the Joe Rogan’s of the world are not the norm. You know, those people, those people who are making all the money are a very small percent of the population of podcasters.

Qin En Looi: Absolutely, absolutely. And it takes a lot of effort. Right? It’s not just about hopping on and just randomly asking a bunch of questions. There’s so much prep before and after. Right?

Kevin Rosenquist : Exactly. Yeah, yeah. No doubt. So you mentioned Stanford,  you got your bachelor’s of science from Stanford, and you completed a four year program in two years, and they weren’t even concurrent. You took a three year break when you,  between the years of school to build glints, a talent platform. How on earth did you do that? Yeah.

Qin En Looi: I always joke that it’s the Asian mindset at the buffet, right? You pay one price, you take as much as you can.  You know, like, I mean, I wish I could say that, you know, the moment I was born, you know, I knew I wanted to be a founder, but the truth couldn’t be further from that, right? I was born in a family where both parents were in academia. Mom is a middle school Mandarin teacher. Dad’s a professor. So sort of grades were very much be all and end all right. The opportunity to build a company was really sort of a series of accidents. Um, we really wanted to do a project before starting college, a project that a couple of angel investors saw the potential and asked us, at 20 years old, I learned that if someone offers you money, you don’t ask questions, you just take it.  which turned out to be one of the best decisions ever. So, you know, kind of spent,  spent a couple of years building up glints. After that, went back to Stanford and, you know, of course, wanted to. And I think at that point I was at Stanford really to to not not really for the content. Right. Not really for academics because I felt like, you know, whatever I learned, it doesn’t really beat what’s out there. So really the, the, the goal was single mindedly getting that paper as fast as possible while spending as much time, you know, exploring the Bay area, meeting cool folks, right? I think that to me was so much more enjoyable than spending time in a classroom.

Kevin Rosenquist : Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. Wow. That’s still impressive. I mean, that’s really, really impressive. You wrote a really interesting article back in March for E27 titled Is Web3 Just another hype or will it unlock a multi-trillion dollar opportunity in fintech? Well, that’s a pretty big question. There’s a lot of smart people who think it’s hype. There’s a lot of smart people who think it will unlock huge opportunities. From the article I gathered that you are obviously on the side of that. It’s going to make some big opportunities. Am I correct?

Qin En Looi: Yeah, absolutely. Look, I think the biggest thing I think it’s people conflate the markets for the technology. People assume crypto is the blockchain and blockchain is crypto, which. Right. I mean, to some extent the way everything started is true, but I think both are starting to diverge, right? Of course, we know the crypto markets, the craziness of it, the scams, the pumps, the dumps, the volatility. Bitcoin price is going down. But I think what’s more important to understand is the technology on which it’s being built on and how the technology is being used in the financial services industry. And people are not talking about it. Right. Because once again, institutions tend to be pretty quiet about these things. So I think that’s sort of the biggest shift that I’ve been seeing over the past. I would say 2 to 3 years is that almost every financial institution is experimenting something on the blockchain itself. Now, whether it involves crypto as we know it, probably not. It probably looks quite different. But I think the technology itself is truly game changing, which is why every institution is figuring out like, shit. I need to understand this in order for me to sort of respond to it, in order for me to not become a dinosaur.

Kevin Rosenquist : Well, and that’s a great point, because I think that most people don’t understand it. You know, I mean, I when I kind of forced myself to learn about it a few years ago because I just wanted what I was like, I got to know what this is. So I learned about it. I got a wallet, I invested a little bit. I got a couple of NFTs just because I wanted to see what it was all about. But it wasn’t the easiest process in the world either, you know? I mean, that is definitely something that I think could be, well, I think we all know could be a lot better. The user experience.

Qin En Looi: Yes. Yes, absolutely. And I think a lot of that is because we started very much with the infrastructure layer. Before we talk about the UI, UX, right. If you think about it today, when we use some of the most popular consumer apps in the world, we don’t go around and asking, hey, is this on Google Cloud? On Amazon Web Services as a user, right? You just use it. It just works. Right. And yet now a lot of organizations in Web3 are still oh, what blockchain are you on? Right. What stack are you on? I’m like, look guys, for the most part, most of the users don’t care, right? They just want the benefits. They just want something that ‘s as easy as possible. So I think we’re getting there for sure. I think people a lot of founders, a lot of builders recognize this, but it’s going to take time.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah, it kind of feels kind of like a lot of a lot of different technologies and systems. You know, people don’t really need to know what’s going on behind the scenes, don’t really want to know, don’t really care, don’t really get it. They just want their stuff to work. So is that possible with the blockchain? Is it possible to make that front end user experience, you know, creating a wallet and all that stuff? I mean, when I created my wallet, I felt like I was doing something wrong, almost, you know, I’ve got this crazy password and all this stuff and I’m like, oh my God, am I going to am I going to be, is my identity getting hacked? Like, what’s happening here? It’s just a weird process, you know? Is there anything in your, in your view that, that they can do for the user experience to, to make it better, for more adaptable for people or adaptable? I should say.

Qin En Looi: Absolutely. And you know, while some people might disagree, I believe it’s going to be driven very much by the current financial institutions that we already trust. Right? Okay. Yeah, yeah. But we talk about, like, decentralized. We talk about ownership. You know, I realized for the most part, for the vast majority of the population, it stresses them out to actually own your own assets. Sort of like, like in your MetaMask. Right? Because like I said, you always want to own your stuff until you lose it. And then that’s when you wish that you have a police force judicial system too. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist : You had the regulation and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Qin En Looi: Yeah, exactly. And most people don’t want to go through that stress, right. My dad, my mom, my brother, they all don’t want to go through that stress. It’s only a very small group of people who truly believe, you know, and, you know, like, I want to truly own my assets. So what I’m trying to say is that what we need is for some of these institutions that we already trust today to offer us the ability to access crypto, to access Web3. Right. And I think when that happens, that will be the true unlock, right where we talk about mass adoption. This is when, let’s say, the bank that my parents have been using for like decades essentially offers them an additional new investment product called the Bitcoin ETF. I think that starts to become a lot more interesting than it starts to become a lot more safe and trusted. Right. And I think that’s sort of what is needed. Essentially we need the big guys, the governments, the banks, the what have you, the people who already carry so much trust in our system to come in and offer easy access paths.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the biggest concerns with people about crypto, at least people that have a basic understanding of it, is the volatility in crypto markets. You know, and you can real world asset monetization truly sort of become a thing if so many people are worried about that volatility.

Qin En Looi: Yeah. Look, I mean I think people always say it’s volatile. But honestly if you look at penny stocks it’s the same, right. All the big or even some of the big tech stocks or S&P and all that like yeah that’s about volatility. Look I think at the end of the day it’s sort of the point of bringing some of these financial assets on chain. It’s really to unlock newer benefits. Right. I would say it’s not just to change. I don’t think it fundamentally changes the volatility of the asset class because the underlying asset is what it is. But I think really you’re talking about increasing access, right. Let’s say today, you know, I want to go to an emerging market and get some exposure to real estate. Like today it’s such an onerous process. Right. There’s so much uncertainty. There’s so much, you know, things that I need to figure out. And the ticket sizes are huge, right? You typically, typically need at least a couple of million bucks to do anything meaningful. But I think what tokenization does is it unlocks a whole new world of sort of products and access and a lot, kind of a lot more bite sized level, sort of once again, what, you know, kind of what Robinhood and all of those guys have done right to, to kind of make penny stocks or kind of like even for a dollar, you can buy a fraction of an Apple, a Google, a Tesla share.

Qin En Looi: I think sort of that’s what I see the potential for tokenization to happen, but even more at a global level. Right. And I think that that to me is truly exciting. And secondly, also just in terms of reducing costs, right? I think for people like you and me, we recite in, I would say, relatively mature developed markets where the cost is already pretty low. But once you go out of these developed markets to some of the developing some of the emerging markets, the cost of participation is extremely high, right? In some places, to buy a stock, it’s like 5 to 10% fees. All in all, you are paying. And so that’s pretty insane right. So the question is can we use blockchain to essentially bring some of those costs down.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah you mentioned tokenization. And that’s obviously something that you’re super excited about. And a key component to the Web3  potential revolution. Talk a little bit about a little more about you kind of touched on it, but how tokenization works and how it will help bring Web3 to new places in fintech.

Qin En Looi: Yeah, absolutely. I’ll start by telling a very simple story. Right. Um, there was a very interesting study that was done on how long it take to move different currencies through the current Swift system, right? And for USD on average it takes about 18 hours, which is insane if you think about it. Wow. Like for every 1 USD to move across borders. And that’s because in between you have anywhere from 3 to 7 intermediaries. You have 3 to 7 middlemen who are just, you know, sending messages between one another and 18 hours just seems pretty ridiculous. And of course, these middlemen want to get paid. So I think what the blockchain does essentially, is to really remove the need for all this middleman and to do so in sort of a secure and trustless way. Right. I think that’s really sort of one of the biggest benefits of bringing these assets on chain is the immediate transparency and the removal of these middlemen or these counterparties. That is, to me, what is so exciting. 18 hours to move a US dollar is insane, because that’s pretty much the time of the longest flight in the world, which is from Singapore to New York. Right. So you might as well just be better off putting a bag of money on a seat on a flight and flying it over. People say you’re crazy, right? Who the hell does that? But. But that’s the truth. That’s still how long it takes to move money, right? And this is USD for Japanese yen. It’s 44 hours, which is enough time to fly around the world, right? So I think really, when you really look at how broken some of the existing financials are, how many middlemen are there, and then you think about how the blockchain solves that, not just by removing the middleman, but doing it in a way that increases transparency and security. I think that becomes pretty exciting. Mhm.

Kevin Rosenquist : Definitely. Yeah. And you also mentioned real estate investments specifically in your article. How do you see tokenization being a part of the real estate industry?

Qin En Looi: Yeah. Look I think the real estate industry is also one that’s really interesting right. Some people argue hey don’t we already have rights for that that I can already access on the stock markets. Look that that’s pretty much true. But Reed’s work once again when infrastructure is robust right. I have been involved in and also we invest in a company that’s building it. It’s the Indonesia real estate market. I mean, people broadly know Indonesia, right? Fourth largest world population. Rapidly growing. They want to get a piece of the pie. But the issue is for people like you and me who are not Indonesians, to even have access to even understand the Indonesian real estate market. It scares us, right? And we don’t want to get scammed, right? We don’t even know what the process is like, where the text is just so many issues that just says, okay, you know what, I’m not going to bother about Indonesian real estate. I’ll just focus on stuff that I already know. So really sort of what I see, some of the solutions are putting some of these real estate players to be able to tokenize their assets on the chain itself and offer it to an international audience. Right. And for example, some of the players that are doing this is the largest mortgage issuing bank in Indonesia. So there’s some level of credibility, right? It’s not some mom and pop real estate developer from here. They’ll still be around. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist : Get some dude in his basement. Like.

Qin En Looi: Exactly right. So you’re talking about helping a largest, one of the largest sort of mortgage,  issuing banks in Indonesia to to tokenize some of their higher quality, um, real estate. So you’re combining sort of the trust from the institutional brand to allow access for people like you and me. Right. And so I think that really absolves away a lot of the complexity. Should we want to, let’s say take an exposure, take a bet on, let’s say, the Indonesian real estate market. Do you see?

Kevin Rosenquist : That the tokenization and the and the and Web3 and blockchain going into like, you know, private real estate, like single family homes and stuff like that? I mean, I’ve heard, you know, they have obviously smart contracts and things like that can play into it. But do you think there’s a big use case in there too, for blockchain technology?

Qin En Looi: I think not in the short term, perhaps over the mid to long term. Right. If fundamentally tech deals with stuff off chain. Right. So today if I issue you, Kevin, a sort of a token for a vacation home in Bali, what makes you sure that that has actually a home, right. What makes you sure that I didn’t just cook it up? Right. So I think I think that’s actually why institutions play such a critical role in this whole tokenization piece. If today hypothetically, a JPMorgan, a Bank of America equivalent, says that I am taking custody of this and I’m issuing you the token, you trust it right away, right? You don’t doubt it. And I think that’s really sort of that trust that needs to be fostered for tokenization to take off as compared to, let’s say, me, an individual who says, look, here’s a here’s a token that represents a real estate, right? Like I could just totally be be be pulling things up from thin air.

Kevin Rosenquist : So is there is there is there any way for it to be more secure on the blockchain itself when you’re doing, if you’re doing, you know, if you’re not going through a major institution or is it still is there an aspect of like, I don’t know, fraud that that could still end up in that situation where the house in, in Bali doesn’t really exist?

Qin En Looi: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s still a real risk because at the end of the day, you know, whatever that is on the blockchain is of course immutable, secure, right. But all token assets, the, the, the name in itself fundamentally deals with stuff off the blockchain, and there’s that gap that needs to be, be, be, be filled. Right. So look, I think that needs to sort of be trusted institutions, trusted parties that are independent parties that will do it. And inevitably, as I see this grows, there will be bad actors, right? There will be slip ups that happen, as we have seen in financial markets. So I think it’s really sort of the collective ability for us to sort of recover and also build and learn from these mistakes and build a strong, you know, infrastructure as strong processes as much as possible, which is why also, I think this is a opportunity space that people are maybe not catching on that quickly because it’s really something that it takes time to build. Right. But it’s once again, like what I said in the start of the conversation, if it’s already obvious that you are late to the game, right? If talking about Bitcoin is a great opportunity, I’m like, sorry, right? Like that. That was an opportunity sort of ten years ago. Right. But now kind of it’s sort of known. So really it’s about taking a bet and just insight into where the future could potentially head into.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah, that’s a good way to put it for sure. So are you. You’re obviously very knowledgeable and passionate about Web3 and blockchain. Are you particularly drawn to early stage startups that are companies that are involved somehow with Web3? Is that something that you just kind of naturally are drawn to?

Qin En Looi: Absolutely, absolutely. You know, since I started this job with my venture fund three years ago, have led more than 50 investments across different Web3 companies. And I think really sort of the energy, the dynamism and the level of sort of engagement with, like your users, your community, I think that was really sort of what, what, what what has drawn me in.

Kevin Rosenquist : So you said 5050.

Qin En Looi: Yes.

Kevin Rosenquist : Oh, wow. Holy cow. I wasn’t sure if you said 15 or 50. That’s a substantial amount. Yeah. And they’re all Web3.

Qin En Looi:  all Web3. I mean, okay, they all have blockchain related components. Okay. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah.

Qin En Looi: Blockchain components. And importantly, these I would say the vast majority, like 8,090%, were invested since the crash of FTX, which is something we take pride in, right, because it’s easy to invest in the bull market, right, where everyone is hopping on the bandwagon. I always call these people Web3 tourists, right? Yeah. Like I said, during the bad times, you just leave. But I think for us, we truly put our money where our mouth is.

Kevin Rosenquist : It’s like when you stop watching a sports team just because they’re not they’re not as good, right? Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. So what’s next for you. What’s next? Are you just solely focused on blockchain technology and investing in that? Do you have an interest in other areas? Do you see other emerging markets coming our way?

Qin En Looi: Yeah, I think for me it’s it’s I truly believe that this is going to be revolutionizing for the financial industry. Um, over the past 1 to 2 years, a lot of the effort has been sort of understanding and then building up what’s happening in Asia, where I’m spending my time Actually, more of it’s in Latam, especially in Brazil, right? Um, having been there and then spent the past few months, um, there to sort of understand the market, I truly believe it. It will be one of the first markets where tokenization really takes off. And that’s because the central bank is extremely forward thinking. Um, in driving this, they have like somewhere close to 16 consortiums of, you know, from your largest banks to your early stage startups that are building on an EVM compatible blockchain by the central bank, which is insane, right? Because no other central bank in the world is launching their own blockchain or is this close to it? And I think sort of having been in this space for three years, I’m very used to what I would say PR right, where certain countries come out, you know, put out a blast to say, oh, look, you know, we welcome all this innovation and all. And if you really think about it for months later, you ask the builders, they’re like, dude, my application is stuck for a license, right? So, you know, it’s like they don’t walk the talk. Whereas Brazil is one of these places where they have truly walk the talk, and they have a central bank that’s actually building the technology, building the infrastructure. So really sort of trying to try to understand the market, which is for me very far away. Right. It’s a 30 hour flight from Singapore. But I think that’s sort of where well, what excites me, right. In a place that has very similar dynamics as Southeast Asia, where I’m out of very young population, crypto adoption is high, fast growing. But in terms of readiness, it’s just on a whole different level.

Kevin Rosenquist : Interesting, interesting. Yeah. That’s wild. I didn’t know about that in Brazil. That’s really that’s really incredible. Well chin on with Saison Capital. Thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much, Kevin.