In January 2020, we sold a venture we had spent several years building.
Like many founders, we thought we had a reasonable idea of what would come next. We would take some time to reflect, explore new opportunities, and start building again.
A few weeks later, the world shut down.
COVID disrupted markets, businesses, travel, and many of the assumptions that people had taken for granted. Plans became irrelevant overnight. Companies scrambled to adapt. Leaders found themselves making decisions with incomplete information and very little precedent to rely on.
Like everyone else, we adapted too.
What eventually became Momentum Works was never fully planned from the beginning. It emerged gradually as founders, operators, investors, and business leaders kept asking us similar questions.
What is actually happening in Southeast Asia?
How are consumers changing?
Which business models are working?
What are the Chinese platforms doing differently?
How should we think about Vietnam, Indonesia, the Middle East, or Latin America?
Who should we be talking to?
We started helping where we could. One conversation led to another. One project led to another.
Over time, reports became a meaningful part of what we did. Advisory engagements followed. We started organising executive immersion programmes that brought business leaders into markets they wanted to understand better. More recently, we launched Momentum Works Intelligence, our effort to build a deeper and more continuous conversation around Asia’s digital economy.
Looking back, it is obvious that all these activities are connected.
At the time, it was not always obvious to us.
What we learned
One of the privileges of our work is that we spend a great deal of time with people who are building businesses, allocating capital, entering new markets, or making important decisions under uncertainty.
Over the years, we have observed something interesting.
The people who consistently make good decisions are not necessarily the people with the most information. In today’s world, information is abundant and increasingly accessible. AI is making it even easier to obtain answers.
What remains scarce is judgment.
Judgment is the ability to separate signal from noise, to understand context, to recognise what matters and what does not, and to make decisions when the available information is incomplete.
It is also surprisingly difficult to develop.
Judgment comes from seeing enough situations, talking to enough people, making enough mistakes, and learning how to connect seemingly unrelated dots across markets, industries, and business models.
Over time, this observation became central to how we think about Momentum Works.
What Momentum Works actually does
People often ask us whether we are a consulting firm, a research company, a media platform, or a business school.
The honest answer is that we are a little bit of each, but not entirely any of them.
We publish research and insights, but we are not primarily a media business.
We advise companies and investors, but we are not a traditional consulting firm.
We run executive learning and immersion programmes, but we are not a business school.
What connects all these activities is a simple idea: helping people develop better judgment about Asia’s digital economy and the opportunities emerging within it.
Everything we do – our reports, advisory work, immersion programmes, content, and community – serves that objective in one way or another.
Why we’re hiring now
Momentum Works today is very different from the company we were a few years ago.
Over the past several years, we have built recognised research franchises, developed trusted relationships across the region, and created programmes that bring together founders, executives, investors, and decision-makers from different markets.
Just as importantly, we have gained much greater clarity about what we want Momentum Works to become.
The next phase of our journey is not about chasing every opportunity that comes our way. It is about scaling our impact, strengthening our products, deepening our community, and building something that remains useful for years to come.
To do that, we need more than additional headcount.
We need people who are excited by the same questions that excite us.
Who tends to do well here
The people who thrive at Momentum Works are usually curious about how things work beneath the surface.
They ask one more question than most people do. They are comfortable changing their minds when the evidence changes. They care more about substance than politics, and they enjoy building things that did not previously exist.
Many are fascinated by technology, entrepreneurship, digital transformation, and emerging markets. Most are comfortable with ambiguity. All of them have a sense of humour.
What they have in common is not a particular degree, background, or career path.
It is a desire to keep learning.
Open roles
We are currently hiring for a Management Associate Programme (MAP) role and a Director, Ecosystem & Products role. Full job descriptions can be found here.
More importantly, whether you join us, work with us, travel with us, or simply follow our work, we hope Momentum Works continues to be a place where people can better understand the changes shaping Asia’s digital economy.
