By SGN | 6 May 2024
As a teenager browsing bestsellers at a bookstore, Xaviera stumbled upon Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Inspired by its insights on achieving financial independence, she built her first portfolio.
“I had an eight-month gap before university where I was earning about two thousand dollars a month from tutoring. Buying stocks on SGX with those funds was the start of my investment journey,” she recalls.
After studying business at the National University of Singapore, Xaviera landed a role as an investment analyst at J.P. Morgan. Through events like the J.P. Morgan Tech Exchange, she got her first taste of how impact investing with a focus on technology could add a more meaningful dimension to her career.
“In Asia, working in finance at a respected firm is deemed prestigious. My initial plan was to stay in banking until I became a managing director, but I decided to leave my comfort zone to pursue my passion for impact investing,” she says.
That decision greatly altered her career trajectory and led her to join Clermont Group, a private investment firm focused on building businesses that create a better world.
Nothing beats on-ground experience
Within months of joining Clermont, she was seconded to Ho Chi Minh City to lead business development for Movi, a fintech that broadens access to financial services for blue-collar workers.
“True to my finance background, the first thing I did was put together a financial model on Excel and a business strategy presentation on PowerPoint,” she says. “When I presented it to management, they asked, ‘So what do our customers need?’ I was stumped.”
The next day, she went down to the factories with a sales agent and sat through an entire sales cycle with a customer. She learned more in that hour than in a week at the office.
Xaviera returned to Singapore at the onset of the pandemic, but soon found herself on another secondment, this time to Seattle. Once again, she was to lead business development, this time for an electric aircraft startup called Eviation.
“I got the news five days after my husband proposed to me. Honestly, I was caught completely off guard by both events,” she shares. “We decided that long distance wouldn’t work for us, so my husband started looking for a job there and landed a role at a logistics unicorn.”
As an investor, Xaviera’s hands-on involvement in startups undoubtedly shaped her philosophy of the ‘ground game’. “Being in the proximity of the challenges that a company faces operationally gives you a depth of understanding that you can’t get from a back-end office thousands of miles away,” she observes.
In 2022, Eviation made history when it flew the world’s first all-electric commuter aircraft. It was also around this time that Xaviera began exploring angel investing through communities like Hustle Fund Angel Squad, Epic Angels and NUS Alumni Ventures.
Impact investing is a win-win
“I believe capitalism can lead to dire consequences if left unchecked. On the other hand, non-profits and philanthropies aren’t able to scale as sustainably,” Xaviera notes. “What I’ve come to be most attuned to is ‘moral capitalism’, a middle ground where profits and societal benefits aren’t mutually exclusive.”
She says it’s a misconception that social impact investing necessitates sacrificing returns. At its core, impact investing prioritises democratisation – improving access to healthcare, education, etc. – while venture capital favours businesses with large total addressable markets (TAMs), or revenue opportunities within a market.
“The two ideas marry very well. Democratising access to more people equates to larger TAMs. The key ingredient is innovation that gets your cost curve down,” she explains, citing the example of vast populations in developing countries underserved by financial services.
“Most traditional financial services don’t serve low-income consumers or SMEs because they are costly to onboard,” she says. “However, I’m seeing startups in Southeast Asia lower costs by integrating new technology for digital onboarding and the loan approval process. This allows them to serve more customers on the social impact front and grow their TAM on the VC front. It’s a win-win.”
Providing early capital to the right leader and empowering their early-stage growth can be incredibly fulfilling, Xaviera says. One of her most recent investments is in The Beans, a fintech that automates financial plans for educators, healthcare workers and nonprofit professionals.
“This was the first deal that I sourced with GoingVC Partners, where I reached out to the founder first and did a reverse pitch,” she says.
“I learned that ‘selling’ goes both ways – as an investor, you need to be able to pitch yourself to the founder. Finding alignment in values and principles from the get-go is important.”
Regardless of a company’s mission, return expectations for angels should remain high. “At the end of the day, this is a business with impact, not an NGO,” she says. “I’d go further to argue that impact startups have a higher bar to hit on multiple fronts.”
How to become an angel investor
For those new to impact investing, Xaviera recommends angel networks as a good starting point, particularly communities that make early-stage investing more inclusive and less limited to the wealthy. These include GoingVC, which offers educational and hands-on programmes, and Hustle Fund’s Angel Squad, which has reduced minimum cheque sizes of $1,000.
She describes the investment life cycle in three stages. Upstream activities involve networking and deal sourcing. “There are inbound deals – warm referrals, or cold messages via LinkedIn – and outbound deals, where I reach out to founders,” she shares.
Midstream activities refer to due diligence once both parties have agreed to pursue the deal. “This is where we’ll present our case to the investment committee. For angel groups, we’ll also organise sessions for the founder to pitch to the community and receive questions,” she says.
Lastly, downstream activities begin after the deal has closed. “For early-stage companies there’s usually not much portfolio management. You want to let the founders build and hit milestones,” Xaviera explains. “You can add value by opening your network to them, or helping them prepare for their next fundraising round.”
In impact investing, methodologies for measuring social return on investment (SROI) vary. “The truth is, it’s still very difficult to quantify something that intangible. There’s no set way to go about it yet,” she says.
One aspect that Xaviera monitors is consistency, or whether the company stays true to its purpose. An inspiring mission matters little if financial motives override intended social outcomes, she points out. Yet she understands profits can take longer for impact startups addressing complex problems.
“You can’t control investment outcomes, only the discipline of your selection process,” she says. “Focus your energy on what you can control. Adhering to strong investment principles gives companies you believe in the time to build trust and navigate product-market fit while working towards a great impact trajectory.”
As for her next move, Xaviera excitedly shares that she has been admitted into her dream school Stanford, where she will start her MBA in the fall of 2024.
“I am pursuing an MBA because I have a long-term goal of setting up my own fund,” she says. “And there’s no better place to learn about entrepreneurship and venture capital than in the heart of Silicon Valley.”
Meet Xaviera
Xaviera is an angel investor with Hustle Fund Angel Squad, Epic Angels and NUS Alumni Ventures. As a senior investment associate at Clermont Group, she accumulated investor, operator and board experience in the US and Vietnam.
Connect with her here.
