Southeast Asia’s Iterative has closed $55 million for its second fund to double down on seed-stage founders, it announced on Wednesday.
Iterative’s Fund II is led by Cendana, K5 Global, Village Global, and Goodwater Capital in the US. It also received strong participation from Silicon Valley founders and executives including Dropbox’s Arash Ferdowsi, Bukalapak’s Achmad Zaky, a16z’s Andrew Chen, former Y Combinator COO Qasar Younis, Foursquare’s David Shim, Airbnb Asia’s Kum Hong Siew and others.
Iterative positions itself as Southeast Asia’s answer to Y Combinator, enrolling the region’s founders into its accelerator programme where it would help startup founders refine ideas, seed and launch their products in the market.
The latest fund will enable Iterative to expand its ambitions by seeding more startups and writing larger cheques including follow-on investments, which it did not do for its $10 million Fund I. According to Iterative, Fund II will see the VC invest in over 100 companies across pre-seed to Series A, with a capacity to write up to $500,000 per startup.
“We’re very grateful to our founders for letting us be a small part of their journey and equally thankful to our existing and new LPs who continue to believe in the power of entrepreneurship to positively impact the region,” said Brian Ma, co-founder and general partner at Iterative.
Since making its first investment in June 2020, Iterative’s portfolio firms have gone on to raise $163 million in follow-on funding from investors like Insight Partners, Tiger Global, Monk’s Hill, Wavemaker, Hustle Fund and others. Iterative’s total portfolio is currently worth $1.2 billion.
Some of its portfolio firms include Singaporean fintech startup Spenmo, Pakistani travel startup GoZayaan, Singaporean proptech startup Propseller, and home services startup Sendhelper which was acquired by PropertyGuru in October.
Edited excerpts of the interview with Brian Ma, co-founder and general partner, Iterative:-
