Ep 56: Amra Naidoo (Co-Founder, Accelerating Asia & General Partner, Accelerating Asia Ventures)

Amra Naidoo is the co-founder of Accelerating Asia, an early stage venture capital fund that runs programs for startups and investors, and General Partner at Accelerating Asia Ventures. Prior to that, she was the Head of Corporate Partnerships at UN Women, including Project Inspire (a UN Women global social entrepreneurship program) and a part of muru-D’s, which was one of the top startup accelerators in Asia. 

She is also the APAC Regional Lead for Shaper Impact Capital and Outgoing Curator for the Global Shapers Singapore Hub, an initiative of the World Economic Forum and is the host and creator of the Doing Good Podcast. She has been interviewed and featured as a guest author on industry blogs, including The Straits Times, Techcrunch, Reuters and named as one of Harper's Bazaar’s Women Who Inspire Others.

Highlights

1:56 Growing up in Zimbabwee

3:14 Moving to Australia

5:23 Why Amra started dreaming of working at the UN

7:26 Selling SKII & Shiseido

13:53 Deciding on how to change her life

16:18 Getting a UN internship

20:03 Becoming Head of Corporate Partnerships at UN Women

21:00 Running Project Inspire

25:50 How startups can run successful crowdfunding campaigns

27:28 The struggle with marketing 

31:35 Why Amra ended up leaving the UN

34:17 Obtaining a marketing degree from the University of Newcastle

36:30 Meeting Craig, her current co-founder, at muru-D

37:19 How the idea of Accelerating Asia began

39:20 The “missing middle”

41:26 The biggest challenges in setting up an independent accelerator

43:21 Bootstrapping to set up a consultancy program

44:16 Running the 100 days accelerator program

47:22 The regulatory challenges behind running a venture fund

48:24 Fundraising for their venture fund

50:37 Why selling a fund is similar to selling Chanel

56:25 Why Accelerating Asia focuses on pre-Series A companies

58:48 Whether Amra looks for social impact in their startups

1:04:00 Starting the Doing Good podcast

1:05:44 What Amra thinks about the creator economy & how VCs/startup founders should get into the space

1:07:31 How Amra ended up joining the Payment’s Race - MoneyAsia 2020

📍Show notes: www.sothisismywhy.com/56 

💌 Sign up for the weekly STIMY newsletter: https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/ebf231f605