AI Workforce Compression, SGX Liquidity Gaps & Singapore’s Startup Reckoning with Adriel Yong

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Video: AI Workforce Compression, SGX Liquidity Gaps & Singapore’s Startup Reckoning with Adriel Yong – E673
Views: 35; Published: Feb 25, 2026
AI is rapidly shifting organizational structures from pyramids to “diamond” or “square” shapes, eliminating entry-level roles and middle management in favor of AI-augmented “super individual contributors.”
The workforce must transition from a “job-seeker” mindset to an entrepreneurial one, prioritizing the ability to manage AI “bot fleets” and practical skill application over traditional textbook knowledge.
Rapid AI development poses significant risks of societal fracturing and economic displacement, necessitating “grassroots” AI literacy and proactive government intervention to prevent a widening digital divide.
Economic policies should evolve to provide direct, lifelong AI access—such as through skills credits or union memberships—while modernizing investment frameworks to anchor regional tech startups and IPOs.

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I think the societal impact is something we should think about really hard because today you really see you know the fracturing of societies with globalization. You’re going to see a 1000x you know larger fracturing with economic displacements when AI fully takes shape across all sectors of the economy. And that’s something I think want to avoid and not go to civil war. >> Welcome to Brave. Learn from Southeast Asia’s best tech leaders. Build the future. Learn from our past and stay human in between. No BS on success. I’m Jeremy Al, venture capitalist, ser founder, Harvard MBA, science fiction nerd, and dad of two daughters. Every week, we debate startup news, interview change makers, answer listener questions, and share personal insights. Join our movement of over 40,000 members, and get transcripts, resources, and community at www.grave. brave.com. Stay well and stay brave. >> Hey Adriel, welcome back. >> Yeah, super excited to be back here after spending two weeks out in um beautiful sunny poolong for my reser. >> Yeah, got to get a sunshine, get some exercise, get some sunlight. We’ve been out busy being a startup founder and running around. So very good for your mitochondria, too. >> Yes. Longevity. >> Longevity. You know, don’t burn a candle both ends. Yeah. >> So, you know, I think it’s been interesting because, you know, we felt like since our last conversation, a lot of things have changed, especially in the AI space. And so, we want to talk about some of those changes and how that impacts, I think, the Singapore ecosystem and policy dynamic. What do you think is top of mind for you on this AI side from your perspective? >> Yeah, I mean like the speed of development and change in AI is just so rapid, right? you know, one day you have a new model from OpenAI and Tropic that is like, you know, 10x better than the previous model and then they drop the ball and say, well, you know, this model is like effectively made by, you know, AI itself. And that gets really scary. And then on another day, you know, you have like things like notebook, you know, cloudboard, you know, for those who don’t know, like notebook is literally like a Reddit style, you know, social network for air agents. And then it’s been incredible, incredibly like hilarious. to just scroll through the comb bands and see what they discuss and also you know talk about human beings. It gives you a very distinct a lot with me you know watching Black Mirror to try and anticipate more dystopian possibilities in the coming months and years as we grapple with AI getting more and more like prevalent and social spaces beyond just being like your functional utilitarian like partner. And then you know I think there was this other really interesting website as well which is rent a human AI where you know AI agents can effectively rent a human to complete or do last mile things in the real world or on the internet that it still can’t do right like payments doing your groceries taking a meeting doing some form of a live sales call. So just seeing all those things explode has just been so fascinating. There was a recent I think viral tweet on post about something big is happening which talks about more of all the developments in AI and how that’s you know very scary for the wider world at large. Yeah, I think it’s, you know, super fascinating because, you know, I was going through my old sci-fi books and it was kind of funny because, you know, today you’re like, ah, it feels a little bit outdated, right? And it reminds me of like that old sci-fi book that was even older, which was like around the world in 40 days. Used to be this crazy idea people could travel around the world in a repetition for 40 days. And now it’s like, oh, we can do it in like a day. And so, I think it’s just been interesting to see that a lot of the last generation of science fiction about, you know, talking AI agents, etc. effectively and some of the old paradigms are just super outdated, right? I always say like you know Star Wars and you know it’s quite nice and normal but you know R2-D2 can’t even talk right you know and you’re like no all these robots will all talk infinite languages and also be infinitely smarter than all the individual humans right so even Star Wars as science fiction has become quaint in that way and I think you know one prediction I have is I think we’re going to see the first AI worm I think in 2026 that’s my prediction so what I mean by that is you know historically a worm is just basically a punch of code that always propagates itself and even today actually from the oldest of days worms still exist from our earliest you know kind of like computer cyber security days actually from the internet but I think the first AI worm that can actually like you know reprogram itself that will build its own defenses against antivirals that try to kill it that will be able to use humans rent humans and pay cryptocurrency to rent it own server farms to live a nice life in some server farm in Bolivia you know I think my prediction is like 2026 would be like the first AI worm which is like you know just like any good human right any human wants to survive you know no human wants to die so you know if you give these cloud bots and mo boots and you’re giving them access to cryptocurrency wallets and everything like yeah >> and I think to some extent it’s already happening right the ability for you know agents to go and fix something unblock themselves when stuff goes wrong but I guess the scary part is what happens when they are now able to like code defenses against human beings to prevent them from being like stopped stopped or like terminated. I I guess that’s the truly like dystopian and scary part when the worm escapes the human being. >> Well, the truth of the matter is that from a human perspective, our body already does the same thing, right? Which is that we recruit our own germs and viruses to attack those viruses we don’t like, right? I mean, for example, like our gut has trillions of bacteria, yet more bacteria cells, you know, it’s like a huge ecosystem in there and your body basically farms symbiotic because what they don’t want is they don’t want E.coli coli and all these bad viruses and bacteria to attack, right? Similar for that. I think once these things go live and start replicating, we’ll probably end up building more robots or bots to go hunt them down and, you know, put them into it. So, it goes back to Blade Runner 2049. We’re going to have bad bots going rogue and have good bots that we just >> find ourselves getting extra processing power and say, “Thank you very much for hunting them down.” But that’s pretty much if you look at cyber security, that’s what happening today, right? people generating bad robots, viruses to attack countries or power stations and cyber security is like using code to defend against it or either proactively or to even hunt them down like counterattack. China, you know, extricated all the scam centers, you know, then sent us there by execution because, you know, the Chinese government is like, well, your reward for stealing billions of dollars >> from my citizens is death, right? I think it’s like that cat and mouse dynamic event. So, don’t feel bad about it. You know, we’re going to get >> we’ll eventually figure out how to catch up with the machines and proactively defend against them. But I guess that the scary thing is that I think when it comes to security is always on the back foot and always playing catch-up, right? And you see that with cyber security, real world security. >> Someone always has to make a quantum leap forward which then threatens and scares everyone else before the rest start to play catchup and you know get 10x better on the defenses. >> Yeah. >> So I think something really bad might actually happen first before >> the truth is you never know for this kind of stuff. Yeah, >> actually I mean the one I think about is just like since I’m in healthcare and biology is like I mean for example you go to India or developing countries you get food poisoning and food poisoning actually causes deaths actually in quite large scale so you can actually imagine people contaminating and example right water sources or etc with that right so actually I’ll say the biological I wouldn’t worry so much about nuclear in this scenario and even chemical is actually quite difficult because you do losses >> but I would say biological is actually probably like a much more worrisome thing because there’s actually a lot of agents that out there and it’s actually quite easy to cultivate from a home actually. So I think if you ask me if I was to write a science fiction book it’ll be like probably like AI plus biological rather than I think most people think about Terminator which is like AI and nuclear and military robots and then I’ll create like the protagonist would be like a human detective. >> Yep. >> And a robot detective you know so like a good buddy you know in a postbiological wasteland. >> Yeah. But you know, so that’ll be where the life is. But let’s talk about that article that you talk about called something big is happening. So it’s written by Matt Schumer in February 2026 and he talks a little bit about that opening. He was saying that like hey in February 2020 imagine you are a person who felt like you’re a conspiracy theorist because you are watching this weird rumors of a virus and you stopping toilet paper and masks. And by the way I was this person because you look at my Amazon history. My wife was like, why is there so much toilet paper and masks and we pieced out of New York in March because you know it was a nightmare. But basically what he’s giving analogy is that after a while everybody realizes is that there was a pandemic and so you know people are giving these warning signs and what he’s saying is that all the people in AI feel like conspiracy theories in the sense that they feel like something is happening in February 2020 but they feel like the whole world doesn’t understand yet. >> Yeah. Exactly. So uh what else do you want to add about this article since you said this to me and you know you talking about this article? >> Yeah. No I mean I think the thing that struck me about how pervasive AI has gotten in the last couple months is when I go to pull out Tong and you know people in reserve is now starting to talk about AI agents in their personal and professional workflows which to me then means like there’s some sort of like escape velocity in like AI adoption across the population. But you know then again I will preface that it’s still very much limited to people in the workforce just in the workforce right that very tense level of like 5 to 10 years working experience my sense is people beyond that are very entrenched in previous modalities of working software usage etc and don’t really appreciate the need to like understand AI and how it can fundamentally reshape their own value creation their own value to the companies right you imagine maybe that middle manager manager or like that PMAT. I mean, PAMAT unemployment is steadily rising. That’s one issue, >> but there’s always been that level of like retrenchment when they hit like the 40 to 50 year old age. And they’re like neither strategic leadership nor like you know cheap enough to be like entry level graduate and you know high output updated the latest systems etc. And then on the other hand you have kids. I think kids and students previously were already very brain fried from like Tik Tok, social media, very very westernized right you know promulgated by whatever they are consuming on social media now you lay on like chat GBT which is you know we talked about the westernization of thought in a very very subtle manner that creates another layer but you also think about how the workforce outcomes for a lot of the students might be very very glimp because Today, you know, maybe I hire what couple fresh graduates, you know, to be like that thin layer at the bottom to do a lot of execution, high velocity work, but as AI gets better and better, your agents can now effectively do a lot of the work that, you know, fresh graduates used to do. And you know, you layer that on top of like, you know, large tech companies which used to like take in a lot of this young people not doing layoffs, being much tighter, being first to adopt AI because tech companies have traditionally always been a lot more like front foot forward and trying new things and ways of organizing. And I think that just, you know, makes the job market very scary for like fresh graduates in a way that I think will be very very unprecedented. And I don’t think that governments around the world fully appreciate the social economic impact of that yet. And I don’t think education systems around the world are fully equipped to prepare, I think, young people for much much more like uncertain like workforce. One where there’s probably not going to be a very clear corporate, you know, career ladder. That’s that path probably is going to be much thinner for folks. Future of work could probably just be like a portfolio of like projects time, right? portfolio of gig work all the time rather than full-time employment and that also becomes scary because like you know for people who used to rely on companies giving them insurance what happens right but all the different types of benefits and >> you know how does that impact like people thinking about mortgage home ownership family planning so I think the ripple effects of a more like fragile uncertain floaty like younger economic workforce is going to be very interesting to watch >> yeah I I think you know I was watching my old uh professor professor Joseph Fuller and he’s basically does the institute of future of work at HBS and I think his institute was actually quite sleepy until AI came because the future of work at that time was like oh okay you know like how do people become more creative etc and then obviously pandemic happens a lot of work from home and then obviously AI has come in and you know he was in Harvard Singapore kind of explaining his research and what I show is that basically almost every company that’s impacted by technology is becoming diamond shaped So historically every company was effectively pyramid shape, right? Which is you have lots of junior people, some middle managers and very few executives, right? >> And what’s happening is that some companies historically could be diamond shaped like Boston Consulting Group etc. If you feel like you could poach your junior people from other companies. So for example, if you’re Boston consulting group, you’re diamond shaped in sense that you had lots of good managers and principles, but then you didn’t need to have a very good associate base because you could poach those from other consulting companies with Essentia, Deoy, you know, PWC and pull them into or the industry into your middle management. So you don’t need to train for everybody, right? Yeah. But what is he saying is that every company is effectively becoming diamond shaped which is your program. And this article talks about it for lawyers, for programmers, for marketers. >> You know, you don’t need a junior person to do transcriptions or to do basic Photoshop etc. You need somebody who is a middle manager who has some taste, has done it before, so they know what’s >> Yeah. >> the right taste. >> Yeah. >> And how to fix it and then just do it themselves, right? And so a lot of the grunt work that junior people used to do as part of it which I used to do because when I was a junior consultant I was taking notes. My job was to sit there shadow take notes and then type it up afterwards >> and then send it off to everybody >> after review from my middle manager that was okay. And now people are just you know I recently got an interview by the Chinese. you know, they basically had a voice recorder, right, just to be used, right? >> And so that used to be a junior person typing like crazy. >> And now, you know, a voice recorder can do it. So, it’s quite interesting to see. >> 100%. I mean, in the past, maybe you had like two or three people with you in an interview room, but now probably you just need one person there. You know, you have a bunch of devices running the background. you know maybe it’s like an author AI or whisper flow and by the time your interview ends there is like transcripts available in like English Chinese or like all the national languages right and then maybe it has already gone through one round of like editing from I don’t know an editing agent so it’s almost like ready or close to ready to like instantaneously publishing so you know I think that’s one very clear example of how work forces get thinner as technology advancements get more and more like pervasive in the mainstream and the diamond Diamond shape analogy is interesting. My perspective actually is more that it becomes an inverse triangle. And I I say this for a few reasons. I think you know middle managers I think up until recently we didn’t fully appreciate how fast or how robust AI can be in like intelligence >> to the sense where you know what you might have previously delegated to a middle manager to figure out. So for example, right >> let’s say you’re the CEO of a company. Previously you might have like a I don’t know mid layer finance manager and you’re like go and figure out all the US compliance policies that you know we need to adhere to because of a restructuring and you ask that person going to do some research blah blah blah and I guess that’s what a lot of NATO managers do right they are in charge of like semi strategic planning functions and then maybe have a bunch of like interns or like really junior analysts like supporting them on all the entire range of on that plus executing on it. But today like I just check GPT. I’m like and TGBT pulls out not just what I need to comply. Ask me okay give me more context on your company. Tell me what you already have and it just goes in a loop and a loop and a loop and gives you a very like comprehensive plan and then ship it off to like maybe a very junior person. So almost that middle layer probably doesn’t really need to exist. But then even that junior person could be like automated all the time through like you know different agents that can actually help you execute, right? Like for instance like you know you might as part of the restructuring like part of the the operational plan is I need to email all my service providers and tell them hey this restructuring is going on please change all details that might have been a junior person’s job or someone in an emerging market but it’s probably not going to be a job as our agents become more like secure and accurate enough to like fire off that whole bunch of like emails respond to the followups furnish more details and information. >> Yeah. But I do think the person at the top i.e. the COO you might will probably still have a job but you’ll probably look more and more like a super IC rather than like you know a manager of a manager which then manages a team. I think that’s interesting because then when you think about how that impacts like organizational structuring how do you think about comp, right? Like if everyone’s going to be a super IC effectively, maybe you should be way more generous with everyone’s like equity and cashcom cuz now everyone’s effectively like taking on a much larger scope of responsibility and generating way more outcomes and outputs in the same unit of time. >> So you know first of all you’re basically saying it’s not even an inverted triangle. It’s maybe like a square. >> Yeah. A very small scope. >> I mean the the the good example is like Ka 30% team that got to one a billion you know. Oh, it’s like a little house, you know, it’s like a little small triangle for the CEO at top and then a little square and then it’s like okay, you know, it’s like there’s like this whole pyramid and it’s like you cut off the bottom layer and then the middle layer is just a small square and then the rest is just and then you have your seuite team, right? >> I mean the other way to think about it is just revenue per employee just gets larger and larger, right? And that also means less employees but more revenue. I think for me my philosophy actually and I was just talking to an executive because he was talking about how he lost recently he has like COO and really sad about it etc. and he felt like he was giving a lot of free time etc. And I said you know actually my perspective is with this AI generation etc. I think the top of the core is not going to go away because there’s something that’s going to happen because you still need in person I think for a lot of the design. Yeah. Secondly, there’s actually still a lot of secrets like personal knowledge that you know you’re only going to get by talking to this person at 7:00 p.m. after dinner or like you know going for a run with them >> which robot can’t do. >> Those teams are not going to go away anytime soon. Maybe sales support will go away because you’re just doing data organization and comp calculations and stuff like that but sales is not going to go away. >> So these frontf facing roles and obviously your engineer your super engineers who are running the whole architecture yeah still going to be around obviously. So now you have these this permutation that’s happening. So all I trying to say is like even though we were joking about the little square and the little hat, you know, but I do think that it’s gonna be an arm of it that still exists is your front-facing stuff, right? Which is sales. The other arm would be the engineering leaders if that makes sense. And then but yeah, everything else is kind of like goodbye marketing, goodbye PR, goodbye ops. But I think the physicality is still going to be there, right? But your customer service hotline is going to go away. So okay so pulling that aside I think yeah I agree with you I think it’s a very interesting problem for folks and I guess the question people ask themselves is okay so what should I do I guess >> what do you think I also have some thoughts as well >> yeah I mean depends on who you are right if you’re a young person I think the pressure to just start doing things from young to pick up work experience has gotten so much higher I think in the past you know college kids could get by you know college get a good job even if they didn’t do any internships and then you see the whole internships arms race happen in college everyone’s like trying to get their first few internships whatever and then that obviously stacks up to you know social capital plus like some base level of skills which makes you I guess more employable cuz you know your employer doesn’t think that I have to spend the first three four months like draining this guy and he’s really like shown that he’s a pretty good like junior level worker I is a scary part and I think we’ve already seen this challenge for a country like Singapore where you know lowcost labor is very available in neighboring countries you already have a fair bit of like offshoring of like junior level jobs right and then now it’s like furx examated because your junior level workers are now equipped with AI emerging markets are at 3 4x more efficient outputs and outcomes wise um for a fraction of the cost of a Singaporean how do you solve that I don’t know I think Singaporeans probably just need to actually think about being more entrepreneurial and like learning how to manage teams, create value, create opportunity instead of thinking about how do I find a job because I think there’s going to be way less jobs in the future with all this challenges. >> Yeah, I think I have some similarities and some differences. I’ll say the part I’m similar about you about is that I think Gen Z is really getting hammered by this. I think generation alpha like my kids, they’re still four and six. they have plenty of time to enjoy life and so I think a lot of this reconfiguration will have happened by the time they hit. So I think for parents of those young kids, you only need to worry as much because it’s kind of like in the tsunami, right? If it’s really bad if you’re very high above in the air, it doesn’t matter. If you’re below the water, it doesn’t matter. But if you’re on the surface or at the coast getting hammered, right, which I think the Gen Z is really that generations is going to get hammered. I think I agree with you that I think you have to be agile and nimble and you have to figure out this reconfiguration is happening. I think obviously don’t do the jobs or majors and expect to have a job. So, what’s a job or major? Because I remember when I was entering university in 2019. >> Yeah. >> Computer science engineering was like the hottest right? It’s like the highest paid degree once you graduate from like N US or wherever. Everyone wanted to be like a CS major. Now, I think like unless you’re really like top caliber in your class for CS, getting a job is so much harder. >> Wait. So I think that’s the part where I did disagree with you on your prior statement, this statement and but it’s interesting you said this. I think CS is still a great major to do. But I think what’s been missing is the mindset shift from getting a job to being entrepreneurial because if you’re a CS major, you already have a leg up on everybody which is you understand AI. You can assemble your own little bot army and your job is to eat as much share from other people who don’t know how to assemble these mini bot fleets that support you in your daily work, right? And so I think the issue about I wouldn’t say that computer science major is bad but I do believe that the mindset that your job is to therefore get a job in it is bad right and so I think if you add the fact that hey you’re computer science engineer and you add that those of create your own job or create enough value where you will create your job then that’s actually a viable path. Our friend Adrien who runs the career show podcast, he was say saying like there’s a degree on IT systems management and I was like yeah that sounds like a really bad job. >> If your job is to manage IT systems like that’s the worst of all jobs because you neither know enough to do it as in the coding or the bots and your job is to manage systems and systems want to manage themselves you know I mean how many Google suite administrators do you need? So I just think that IT system management is a really bad degree for example. I think some like marketing your graphic design jobs also are starting animator jobs are really starting to get evaporated as well because it’s just AI can animate. Now, don’t get me wrong. I think the animators who can say, “Okay, I want to create my own plot, create my own interesting movie and monetize it, they’re doing well because now it’s much easier for them to do it because a non-animator trying to create animated movie can’t really do it because they don’t have the aesthetic sense of it >> other than saying like studio gibli.” But, you know, so I think this is something interesting for us to think about. >> But I think you should just step back. You can also ask yourself the question like what is the point of going to university to learn all of these things when information now is like a 100x more available and might even be better than your professor or teaching assistant trying to like run through a bunch of slides and assign you some homework. I mean the computer science example is super clear right like your professors in the universities and your teaching assistants the most forward facing and up to date with what’s happening in the development of latest models etc. questionable and debatable. >> I think that from my perspective as a drunk lecturer at Singapore Management University, right, at teaching there, >> not N US anymore. >> Yes, I used to, but unfortunately I’ve decided to let it go to somebody else. Fortunately, the work has taken me. I got to do more work. But yes, I I I will miss teaching the N US undergraduates. >> But I think what’s interesting is that you’re right to say that the knowledge should be just like taught much faster. And so even for myself the curriculum is really changing to be much more practical group project based and participation based right. So what I mean by that is instead of saying what is a term sheet you should be learning how to negotiate a term sheet right if it makes sense. >> Instead of saying what is a startup you should be looking at you know Singapore startups today you know 40 of them and saying which one would you invest in doing your own desktop research. So you know applying that stuff is still a feature because you know but you’re right to say the textbook knowledge is just going to be download the away but it’s more about the practice because humans still like practicing in real life right you know reading about baseball can be used to be a textbook now it’s through your Gemini app but nothing’s going to replace you actually >> being in the court to actually play baseball >> or pickle ball or whatever like you know there’s a difference between the gap between theory and practice and I think there I would say I feel positive about universities because universities are first of all state subsidized sponsored they’re function of the state. So you know as long as it’s a function of state and a state has the rule of law the rule of military force the rule of taxation and the rule of social norming universities will still exist you know but the universities will have to flex because I totally agree that for many people vocational just maybe faster like I agree with you by the way it’s like if you are willing to learn from Gemini or whoever it is and you’re willing to practice yourself then university is kind of like a big waste of time actually so but I just feel like most people in the world are are not self starters. I think it’s like a bell curve like 30% of population are like selfarters will do it themselves and then 80 you know bottom 20% will be like I need a lot of help and then the middle 60% are like whatever my peers are into like watching Tik Tok or going to K-pop you know whatever it is they’re just going to like default there which actually is a good segue into the last thing I want talk about which is the Singapore budget because Singapore budget apparently has some things to do. >> I know you love your vouchers but I think that’s the wrong one. >> That’s the wrong one actually. No it’s the right one for most people. Let’s be real, okay? Thumbs up. >> This is not me. This is a Singapore government budget and poster number one is all the vouchers they’re giving. So, do you >> what? Thousand couple thousand. No, there at least like buy $10,000. >> Yeah, I know. CDC vouchers, etc. So, I think I want to say I like this >> and it's not me. They put this as the first image. So, it's not me. >> I actually haven't finished spending my CDC vouchers. I was like, "Wow, I still have like$ 200 here.” If it feels like it doesn’t number, go say that. Say that you ran out and because you were busy reskilling. >> Exactly. >> The fact that you haven’t used it means that, you know, they’re going to be like, well, the bot has listened to this transcript of the great podcast and realized that Adriel has too much money and doesn’t use up his vouchers. But I think these are important because these are direct cash transfers and from an economist perspective, it’s always good because uh direct cash transfers are very efficient. there’s not much administration blow happens to it and they actually have a redistributing effect because the same, you know, $1, 000 t oso m e b o d y w h o i s p oor v ers u s$ 1,000 to a person who’s rich because it’s universally given. It’s everybody’s supportive of it. They don’t feel like cutting it. But obviously 5 billion from other funds so it’s about 10 billion similars and now they’re adding another 1.5 which probably plus another 1.5 makes it another three billion but I think this is going to be a stimulus effort to help companies get and cross that gap. And I think it’s going to be a big stimulus because just for numbers off the top of my head is that Singapore stock market the daily trading volume is 100,000 or more and then after it has been held for two years you need to send a letter to the agency to get it confirmed that you held it for two years without selling it and then you can apply for a tax deduction. And I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, let’s take a step back here with just, okay, what is this scheme supposed to do? I think this policy is scared of people going rogue, right? Okay, so totally understand it’s a control mechanic. But what is the reality for angel investors today? First reality is that angel investors number one need to diversify. So they may write small checks of like $10, 000 or$ 20,000 and they’re supposed to write maybe 30 checks and that’s still $600, 000, b u tt h e y^{'} res u pp ose d t o d o t hi s w i d e l y t o d i v ers i f y . S o$ 100,000 times 20 is effectively, you know, $2 mi ll i o nin v es t m e n t . I m e an, I^{'} mj u s t s a y in g l ik e m os t o f yo u r t ec h e x ec u t i v esc ann o t a ff or d t o d o$ 2 million. I number one. Number two is you have to get approval, written approval. You’d apply and wait for I mean, who’s doing it? I think you should just be accreditated. If you’re an accreditated investor, which the government already knows and has on file for you, then you should just be, hey, you pass because you’re credited. We expect you to be able to do investments in a single stock exchange or anywhere. So you’re free to so accredititation will simplify that second piece. And thirdly is that we all know that angels have to work in syndicates or groups because there’s not enough knowledge at individual level to write it. So the reason why they certify individually saying like you need to be smart enough to write $100, 000 c h ec k . B u tt h e t r u t hi s an g e l s w or kin g ro u p s in 20 or 30 g ro u p s t o w r i t e$ 20,000 checks each to hit half a million dollars, right? And so syndicate leaders are the ones who are smart enough but they’re not getting supported. And so tax benefits only apply to individual checks of $100, 000. S oyo u a c t u a ll y d es t roy t h e v a l u e p ro p os i t i o n f or t h esy n d i c a t e l e a d er b ec a u se ba s i c a ll y w ha t ha pp e n s i s an g e l yo u^{'} re l ik eo ka y I c an w r i t e a$ 20,000 check to diversify 20 and I can listen to somebody smart like Adri help me write the demo or I can do $100, 000 c h ec kb y m yse l f an d I g e tt a x d e d u c t i o n . I m e ani t^{'} s a d i s t or t i o n o f t h e an g e l in v es t m e n t a c t i v i t y, r i g h t ? w hi c hi s i f yo u^{'} re a f o u n d er, yo u d o n^{'} t ha v e t im e t o l oo k f or$ 100,000 people and check people who don’t have time for you. The $100,000 check writers are actually part of syndicates. Anyway, I'm just saying like this whole scheme is actually quite ready for a 2.0 upgrade. >> Yeah. I mean, actually an interesting part also there is that founders also want minimum check sizes because they don't want like 25k checks on their cap table. It's crazy messy. So obviously a lot of syndicate leaders do like SPVS. But there is actually a policy and regulatory gap around like SPVS and like syndication of like early stage angel checks. I guess it's not really a big issue for MES to like look into and all that. But I think it's necessary right if you want to seriously grow the angel investing like industry or vertical sector like have clear policies that are not ridiculously a burden on you know angel investor networks and it also gives confidence and trust right to individual angel investors about okay I can go with the syndicate network to like you know deploy checks especially if you're not from startups or tech and you just want to like you know do some activity there and then the other part is just like I would say grants and subsidies to make SPV these cheaper if you totally want more syndication happening you know to support early stage financing right >> so yeah >> I mean the reality is okay you know if you're a policy maker you listen to this I guess is you know which countries around the world disqualifies syndicates or SPVS from these tax benefits and two is what percentage in America of angel investing activity what percentage of them are individual investors in their personal name writing$ 100,000 check versus the total quantum driven by syndicates because lots of people put their money into syndicates even if they’re wring $100,000 check. Yeah. >> And so it's just kind of a weird distortion of the whole process because like you say is and imagine if you're a founder and you're setting up a rollup vehicle which is a SPV to collect all these individual angels. Yeah. You have 20 people with$ 20,000 checks that still 500 skill future credit you should just channel it to like you know free AI subscription just because if you think about daily usage of >> oh yeah that is a massive like lifelong learning/ like skills future like >> yeah it’s much more bite-sized right because instead of somebody who was like you know kind of like elderly and everything they have to choose a course they’re interested in figure out how to sign up figure out how to get it reimbursed and then kind of like get it all done right and then they have to turn up and everything of course there’ll be some questions about is a white label version are the parameters around what the AI teaches you etc. But but I mean the crux of it is that if you give I think everybody under NTU like you know German eye pro AI ultra or you know check GPT pro or cloud like I mean at least they’re not it’s cost you install the app and then they’re off to the races right I think they’re just going to learn so much more like every day because then it’s going to be more relevant they’re going to be like hey I’m at a coffee shop is my toast healthy and then you know AI is going to be like if you eat your protein first and then your car second it will lower your glycemic index. which will be better for your health and you’re like I mean that’s what happened to me literally right it was like oh eating protein before carbs I did not know that right and so I think there’s a lot of learning I agree with you I like that idea which is channel some of the skills future credit into just direct excess AI usage right >> and then the other thing I will comment on is and this probably more an expression of hope you when they announced the national AI council it was six seven cabinet ministers I’m just like isn’t this just like you know mini cabinet I would really love to see like founders of some of the large AI companies like your OpenAI, your entropic, your cursor wins, the whole gamut, right on some part of this council. So that that’s actually like industry credibility. But also gives them like familiarity and interest in Singapore and contributing to the economy here. And the other thing is like if you look at what’s happening in SF, so much of AI activity and companies are driven by like 20 year olds, you know, level even teenagers actually are building like multi-billion dollar AI companies. like the history with a lot of Singapore committees and councils is tends to be comprised of you know your executives your leaders of like established GLC’s or stat boards. Let’s I think maybe try to have some like diversity and reflection of what you know the AI sector looks like globally. I really like what you said is I mean it’s kind of like the pandemic where you know I think the first two countries in the world vaccine was Singapore and Israel in a kind of early adopters piece right and I imagine if the national a council basically said hey you know to this I’m saying like the founders of entropic you know JGBT and and just say hey maybe not I mean the founders obviously too busy but you know somebody on your seuite just comes by once a quarter to talk about what they’re seeing and just let them talk directly no camera no reporters no minutes just let these co-founders or CC people just say hey look at my phone >> and also maybe tie a relocation benefit to it like hey >> baby trip visa in Singapore yeah >> yeah but just say just let them have that private conversation to be like hey you know like hey prime minister you said you want a working paper on AI let me just hit the button now example right and then have you know German I XXXYZ1237 version pro like generate you know 100page white paper perfectly correct perfectly numbers and say okay you big race you know like you know 100 civil servants on one side you know Gemini you know multi-million pro and then you know but you know it’s like seeing is believing right does make sense like you know I was in SF and I was using a way more aggressively and I was like it’s like you know you can read about way more you can see videos of it but when you walk into the way machine and then you put your you know lean back your fan is executive playing your classical orchestra music you know and then you’re just there totally safe driving and then you put your Costco rotisserie chicken on the driver’s seat you know because you have extra space and then you know just driving by and then obviously you know on the other side outside the window you’re seeing this homelessness crisis happening in slow motion in San Francisco and you’re like oh no you know there’s a future shock right like you know the job of the driver has disappeared and there are people who are homeless and don’t have jobs right outside then once you’re in that dystopia bubble I mean there’s a physical version of it. But the virtual reality of that version is like marketers, coders, civil servants. I mean, a lot of jobs will have the same dynamic where you’re like, you know, you’re sitting in a way more passenger seat chilling. There’s no more driver left. On your left, there’s a Uber car. You’re a normal driver. On your right, there’s a lift driver. You’re a normal driver. And outside you see people who have no jobs. And you’re like, well, once way more scales up, that Uber driver is gone. That lift driver is gone. And then how do you avoid them joining the homeless population there versus what’s the new jobs that create, right? And I I think that’s where I agree with you. >> Yeah. Oh, that’s going to be a real big political problem because if you think about how many Singaporeans today are grabb drivers, food delivery drivers is massive. So many pats and I would say even like young graduates have given up stable, predictable careers, you know, become a grab driver or freedom. >> Yeah. So, and that job is going to go away. It’s very very tricky, right? I still think that this AI with this budget is still a step in the right direction, right? I think you know I always say government is kind of like lowest common denominator like you know for all society right uh >> but I think for us who are on the you know sci-fi age like actually automating our jobs it does feel like wouldn’t say Singapore as a society can move faster right everybody has move faster I don’t think it’s about the government the government has a big role in it but the whole Singapore has to move faster because I think for the countries that don’t adjust well I mean it’s like the joke about the lion right you know it’s like there’s like two people running and they see a lion they start running and then while and starts tying his shoelace and then other person’s like what are you doing tying his shoelace because both got to run and then the guy’s tying sho says well as you run faster than you right you know because only one person will get eaten by the lion right and to some extent there’s a bit of like this what do you call it version of this squid games I guess for jobs you know where like in this new reconfigured world AI will automate jobs globally and there will still be jobs left obviously for people in the new world so which countries and which groups can the the one has their sneakers are tied up, you know, nice and sharp and can run really fast, right? Versus the countries or groups that want to be left behind. I think and I think we just have to be thoughtful about that. >> Yeah. And I do think that, you know, the net positive of AI on human society development, productivity is just massive and probably very very unimaginable. But you know I think the societal impact is something we should think about really hard because today you already see you know the fracturing of societies with globalization. You’re going to see a 1000x you know larger fracturing with economic displacement when AI fully takes shape across all sectors of the economy. And that’s something I think want to avoid and not go to civil war. >> Yeah. Exactly. And you know if people don’t have jobs and people don’t feed their families then people are angry. Right. Exactly. And it’s understandable. So, our job is help everybody catch up. I mean, it’s like cars replace horses, right? You know, >> so what do you do to make it happen, right? >> Thank you for listening to Brave. If you enjoyed this episode, please share the podcast with your friends and colleagues. We would also appreciate you leaving a rating or review. Head over to www.bravea.com brave.com for member content, resources, and community. Stay well and stay brave.

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