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 





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