How to survive 2022: a guide for investors and entrepreneurs 

The following is an excerpt from Momentum Works CEO Jianggan Li’s keynote at the “Taking your company global: People, Culture and Leadership” event on 26 October 2022. 

Over 90 investors (LPs and GPs), founders and corporate executives participated in the closed door, invite only exchange. Blake Larson, former global MD of Lalamove, flew from Dallas, Texas to share his personal stories building, operating and expanding a global team, as well as the people, cultural and leadership reflections in the process. 

Jianggan divided his 30 minutes keynote into four parts: 

1. Elephants, grey rhinos and silver linings 
2. The brighter side: opportunities 
3. The real challenges 
4. The bottom line

We all know the global backdrop we are in now, with stocks of tech companies we are familiar with taking big dips: 

And Shopee withdrawing from almost all markets it had entered during the pandemic, with the exception of Poland: 

While many have been taking about Fed’s aggressive rate hikes, but a simple view of the history tells us that the last decade was truly exceptional:

And “the great layoffs” we have been talking about recently seems to be a repeat of the beginning of the pandemic – only this time we do not have a massive stimulus coming (quite the opposite, in fact): 

And all those investors looking at Asia need to interpret this: 

(Interpretation abound, the truth is nobody from the outside knows for sure what is in store for the next few years). 

But how should we look at the opportunities -we like to stare at global population density map, which always tells us a lot: 

As as well as recent investor trends – not that they will predict the money movements in the next years, but they tell you which infrastructure has been built, or market educated (through massive investment):

And we trust many investors are asking these same questions: 

While a simple set of (in)equations has already addressed many of the facets of these questions: 

Path to profitability can really be modelled in a simple, easy to understand framework: 

We are really building a report on 81 hurdles – do subscribe to our newsletter to receive your complimentary copy in the coming weeks: 

We have also summarised the real issues in the POP-Leadership framework, in our latest book “Seen the unseen: behind Chinese tech giants’ global venturing”

The good news, obviously, is the historical high amount of dry powder sitting on the side, waiting to be deployed: 

But to be successful, the one key piece of advice from Ben Horowitz: