In a conversation with YourStory Gulf Edition, William Bao Bean, Managing General Partner of Orbit Startups, talks about Orbit and the plans the fund has for the GCC region.
William Bao Bean, Managing General Partner of Orbit Startups, is no stranger to the startup ecosystem. He was earlier with SingTel Innov8 Ventures, where he was the Managing Director supporting China investments. Here, he led investments in firms such as Yodo1, GMobi, DemystData, Lekan, and Massive Impact.
Prior to this, William was a partner at SoftBank China and India Holdings, the venture capital firm backed by SoftBank and Cisco, where he was leading investments in China and South East Asia.
Currently he is also on the board of companies like Robin8, Neonan, iTalki, Silk Road Telecom, Yodo1, DYAD, kineticOne, and others like AAMA Shanghai, US China Strong Foundation, Angelvest, Angelcrunch, and others.
After spending over 11 years as an equity research analyst, Williams was most recently with Deutsche Bank, where he was responsible for Internet and Telecom Equipment in Asia and China technology, media, and telecom. He has also covered Digital Media at Banc of America Securities in San Francisco and PC/Enterprise Hardware at Bear Stearns in New York. William was an active angel investor with 39 investments between 2004 and 2014. Last year, SOSV programme Orbit Startups focused on the MENA and GCC region. In a conversation with YourStory Gulf Edition, William talks about Orbit Startups and the plans the fund has for the region.
Edited excerpts from the interview:
YourStory Gulf Edition (YS Gulf): Tell us about Orbit Startups and what it does.
William Bao Bean (WBB): We are focused on bringing the best global tech from across the world for emerging and frontier markets. We are looking at markets where the first and only experience of the internet for people would be on their mobile phones. These are markets where there is a revolution being driven by technology. There are three things we look for–inexpensive mobile data, inexpensive working smartphones, and payment that actually works. It could even be cash on delivery.
When you get these three, they have the ability to change the lives of the middle class and low-income groups. We are looking at where technology can change the mass market, not just the top 10%.
