EME's 2020 Outlook

We’re just about keeping our feet on the ground after an incredibly exciting 2019. We added five great companies to our portfolio last year and established a team to help that portfolio grow. You could say we went from zero to one. But enough about how great EME is;  what this post is about is how we build on what we’ve achieved to make sure that in Jan 2021 we’re asking ourselves the same question as this year “how do we top last year?”. We’ve given it some thought and decided we’d share this with our readers - as many of you may be a part of our 2020. 

Engage Strategic Stakeholders
EME provides a lot of hands on support to our portfolio companies and this starts as soon as we invest and continues for as long as we’re adding value. With a portfolio of seven (soon to be eight…) companies, we have plenty of exciting work to do. But we recognise the benefits that a strategic player can bring to a startup. There’s untold value in someone who’s learnt the hard way, understands the problems that exist in particular sectors or business models, and has networks and expertise in a specific field. That’s why this year we’ll be bringing together new strategic stakeholders with our portfolio companies to help them receive the best insights and expertise to help them expand in Myanmar and across the region. 

Seek Synergy in New Investments
EME is sector agnostic. The Myanmar startup ecosystem is still developing and so we invest in the best startups and founders that have the greatest potential. With a healthy portfolio which includes B2B and B2C startups, we’re better equipped in 2020 to find synergy between our portfolio companies and new investments we make. Right now our portfolio companies have customers inside the home and at the office, in urban and rural areas, and purchasing on and offline. We see strength in diversity and this year we’ll be especially looking for companies that can leverage and contribute to the skills and experience in our portfolio.

Work With Partners to Expand Our Knowledge
​We’ve learnt a lot in the last couple of years and yet there’s always so much more to learn. Henry Ford said that anyone who stops learning is old and anyone who keeps learning is young. Whether you prefer Bob Dylan’s classic or Alphaville’s 80s rendition, at EME we’re planning to stay forever young. We’ll be engaging with new partners, where together we can expand our joint understanding of investing in the sustainable development of Myanmar. If we’ve learnt one thing, it’s that startups in Myanmar can experience phenomenal growth in short periods when they solve a real problem with a truly valuable solution. By enhancing and expanding our knowledge, we aim to increase our advantage for uncovering big problems and the founders solving them. 

Get Close and Personal
To-date we’ve used our newsletter as our main mode of outreach (aside from lots and lots of one on one meetings). This year we’ll continue with our newsletter, but we’ll also be working on some new means of getting closer to our market. We won’t be throwing regular cocktail parties (although we will pull all the stops out in Q4 for our birthday). But we will seek to set up some small, intimate get-togethers where we can cosy up with founders, would-be founders or even corporates looking to work with startups and their founders. We’re working out the details, but we think it’s time to get a little closer now that we’ve built some solid traction and have a lot of lessons and insights to share. 

Hire Someone Special (Tell Your Friends)
We’re a small team that works hard and we enjoy what we do. We don’t expect to have regular openings in our core team, but a position that we tried out last year turned out to be extremely valuable. Sadly, our young protege was always set to leave us for further education, but this means we’re hiring. We don’t consider EME to be ‘just another company’ and therefore we’re not looking for ‘just another employee’. We’re seeking a young, Myanmar individual who wants to build their career working with startups. It’s a very junior position, but it has every potential to grow into something much larger - as EME itself is growing rapidly. We’re looking for someone to mentor and invest in, or as Richard Branson puts it: someone we’ll train so well that they can leave, but treat so well they won’t want to. It might seem a stretch to put a single junior position in a blog about our year ahread, but that’s how seriously we take this role. If you’re reading this and have a tingling sensation about working with us, you’d do well to drop us a line. Full JD on our careers page.

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If you read any of the above and thought along the lines of “hey, I’d be interested in…” then drop us a line. We tend not to bite and we’re always very happy to get coffee or beers and chat through some ideas, whether that’s a new venture, partnership or just putting the world to rights. Reach us at [email protected].