Vincent Lau of Maria Health on being a “distributed enterprise” and how to get investors to sit up and take notice.
We, at e27, believe in Asia’s startups. As such, we value their insights about the ecosystem, put the spotlight on their contributions to their industries, and celebrate the wins that they have.
This community spotlight is on Maria Health, an online healthcare platform that gives individuals, startups, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) simple, easy access to healthcare plans.
We had the chance to talk to Vincent Lau, CEO, about fundraising and what it’s like for a founder based in San Franciso to build a startup in the Philippines.
On their whys
“Maria Health’s mission is to impact one million lives. We believe the country [the Philippines] is severely underinsured and the reason this problem exists is because for the 99 per cent who don’t work for large corporations, it’s very difficult for insurance brokers/agents to service smaller groups because it is ‘unprofitable’.”
On his entrepreneurial journey
“My path to entrepreneurship started in consulting at Accenture for Fortune 500 companies enabling them to become high performing. What I noticed very early on was that I wasn’t cut for this. I opted to spend the majority of my career in early seed stage to venture-backed stage companies building digital products and teams from the ground up. This journey has allowed me to work with some of the most talented entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley.
I’ve always wanted to start a business, and believe me Maria Health isn’t the first idea. But Maria is my first VC backed company, with a kick-ass team. I’m very confident we have product-market fit and pathway to building a very big and impactful business.”
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On the best part of being a startup
“The best part is we can build a platform and product that can help real people and real lives.”
On the biggest challenge of building a startup
“The biggest challenge for every entrepreneur is to take the leap of faith. For Maria Health, it was leaving the comforts of Silicon Valley and having the insight of going to an emerging market like the Philippines to start a company.
Initially, people thought we were crazy, but luckily if you’re solving a real problem and you find a passionate team and build a culture to solve these problems, you can overcome any challenge. ”
On building a startup in the Philippines while based in the U.S.
“We like to call our setup a ‘distributed enterprise’ and for me, this is the future of how work will be. We’re not the only company who follows this culture. There are companies that believe in this culture like Altitude games (PH gaming startup) and even Buffer and WordPress’s parent company Automattic are all abandoning their San Francisco office.
In my opinion, technology has only compressed speed and time and has made it very easy to do business and collaborate.
People in the Bay Area spend 2-3 hours a day commuting. In a week’s time, that’s 10-15 hours. In that same time, I can fly from San Francisco to Manila. So, technology along with future changes in transportation like self-driving cars will change the meaning of work.”
On the downside of this setup
“We still have to deal with the bad internet quality issues in the Philippines, which can sometimes make for very choppy video conference calls.”
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On why the Philippines
“My connection to the Philippines is through lifelong college friend Paul Rivera, CEO of Kalibrr. I was inspired by friends who also left stable jobs in Silicon Valley to start companies that were not only building big businesses but impactful businesses as well.
Also, the Philippines is one of the most Western cultures globally and, for someone from Silicon Valley, a very easy transition and amazing beachhead to expand regionally into other markets like Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia.
In addition, you have an extremely talented workforce that powers the gig economy and very skilled at working in a distributed fashion, which for an early startup can help us stay lean and agile.
When people say why the Philippines, I say why not?”
On what Maria Health’s Day One looked like
“Our day one goal was simply to test our assumption such as, I think healthcare is a big problem in the Philippines and we know only 5 per cent of 100 million have access to healthcare. What if we could provide a service so everyone could get the support they need to help them find the best health plans they are eligible for.
That manifested into actually talking to customers and insuring them to a health plan.”
On their journey to being funded
“I’m a strong believer that zero multiplying it by a factor of 1 million still leaves you at zero. So our job as entrepreneurs is to bring validated business models with traction/data and an investible team before you start thinking to fundraise.
To put things in perspective, we were under-raising but really wanted to focus our energies on executing our business model while de-risking our assumptions about the business.
We didn’t really start to fundraise until we had a fully built out leadership team, customers and six months of strong traction/data, and really be able to understand the levers of the business.”
On his outlook on the industry
“I’m extremely bullish. But our bullish outlook is not based on industry reports, it’s based on what we see as a startup and the daily interactions we have with Filipinos, from SMEs to freelancers.”
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On their current investors
“From a fundraising standpoint, we felt that no better investors could help us than entrepreneurs who have built wildly successful brands in the Philippines (Maria Health investors include founders and CEOs of two of the country’s top corporations).
Also as entrepreneurs, we were actively looking for a VC that is either run or founded by previous entrepreneurs and Wavemaker is one of the few VCs in the region with that credibility. I think that having investors who have been entrepreneurs themselves allows them to provide insightful feedback and advice based on actual experience, rather than theory.”
On what advice he can give startups raising their initial funding
“Make sure you have your numbers down cold and can defend every section of the lean canvas with data. Generally, it’s good to have a solid six months of real data, which means your product should be out there as soon as possible for validation and feedback.
With real market insights and data, you should be able to project that into the future. It shows you have a good sense of the levers of the business.”
On what he thinks made investor sit up and take notice of Maria Health
“First, we are solving a real problem and, fortunately, we’ve been able to find product market fit on both sides of the marketplace both customers and providers. Second, we have a cofounding team that is able to pull together an investible team. This is an indicator on a lot of fronts. It can shed insight into if the founder/CEO can find the best talent and if the problem is interesting and feasible for people to commit their time and energy.
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Maria Health is an online marketplace for healthcare plans in the Philippines. They partner with the top Health Management Organisations (HMOs) in the country and aggregates the available health plans for their users to compare, select, and purchase. They have recently announced raising an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Wavemaker Partners, and has recently been part of the History Channel’s The Final Pitch, where they secured funding from two of the Philippines’ top entrepreneurs.
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