The Low-Level Barbarians (LLB) podcast is a show focused on discussions and debate around technology, business, economics, investment, start-ups, society and more for the Asia region. 

While podcasts have been exploding in the region in the past few years, most are not hard hitting, and very few are really debating the current stories as they happen.

The LLB podcast wants to bring meaningful, in-depth, sometimes controversial, but definitely fresh and certainly Asian, perspectives. 

The name

You might be curious – why such a name? It actually came from Michael Church’s Theory of 3 classes in America. To make it easier to digest, someone actually drew this map: 

As you can see, at the pinnacle of the economic ladder are the barbarians. Of course, the host are not there, nor are the targeted listeners. However, the format lends to anyone listening a way to level up – hence the name Low Level Barbarians. 

The hosts

The hosts are Alex Le, Dave Chang, Jianggan Li and Andrew Gananantham. All the co-host are in one shape or another Rocket Internet alumni from Groupon China, Zalora, Easy Taxi, and Lazada. The Co-hosts also have much deeper experience in Southeast Asia from bootstrapping start-ups, angel investing, raising money, deploying capital, venture building, consulting, and much more.

They are diverse in their thinking, perspectives, and ways of approaching the current topics. Sometimes they disagree with each other, and they are quite candid about it. Only through meaningful debate can we collectively advance.

The 1st episode

For their first episode they take off the gloves and tackle discussion around three topics: 

  1. Grab SPAC IPO, 
  2. the nature of Chinese antitrust crackdowns, and
  3. the COVID-19 situation in Southeast Asia.

The first episode can be found on all major podcasting platforms such as Spotify and Apple Podcast and more.

And of course, for any of you who prefers something visual, you can watch it on Youtube as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rebz3BqQDHU&ab_channel=LowLevelBarbarians

We hope you like the first episode. We will come back with the 2nd episode in early August.

In the meantime, please feel free to suggest any topics that you would want the Low Level Barbarians to cover!


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