Frank Meehan is the the co-founder of SparkLabs Global Ventures, and partner at SparkLabs Accelerator Korea.

Prior to SparkLabs he represented Horizons Ventures on the boards of Siri, Spotify, Summly and many others, plus sourced the AI company Deep Mind for Horizons.

Now he’s the Co-Founder and CEO of SmartUp, an for entrepreneurs to learn and start/find their own community. If you’re interested in starting one send us an email here: erik@smartup.io

He held an AMA on SmartUp last week answering questions from aspiring entrepreneurs.

Here’s the highlights

Why should I start a startup in Asia over SF? And what is the best city in Asia to start a startup?

Well it depends what you want to do. If you want to do deep tech — AI, AR, Robotics etc — perhaps SF is better because of the big visions that Facebook and Google are working on, there is more talent in the sectors, and more large exit opportunities. But otherwise I would say Asia. Because I think Asia will lead the tech world in a few years, and the earlier to get into the scene there the better. Asia is all about long term relationships. You can’t just turn up there and think you can do business immediately. So many US startups make that mistake.

It depends on location. SparkLabs Korea, the biggest accelerator in Asia, has an incredible depth of startups in AI, Big Data, IOT, AR etc. I like Seoul — because there the combination of the enormous tech talent there, plus a lot of young smart Koreans coming back to Korea after school and college in the US, and the Korean ability to scale a business globally makes it very interesting.

If you are doing e-commerce/marketplace/delivery — well Jakarta/Singapore/Saigon are very interesting spaces.

As an immigrant, starting up a tech company that doesn’t need £200k investment to have it qualified for a visa application, in order to pursue my dreams and ideas, is rather impossible in the UK and most other tech havens. In the US there are efforts such as FWD.us in order to convince the governments that immigrant entrepreneurs can be seen as assets and not threats. As a person who has operated in most of those countries, do you have advice for those entrepreneurs who are in such disadvantage?

It’s a great question. It is hard no doubt, but I do think the best thing about doing a startup these days is that you can do it anywhere. Do you need to leave your home market to do your dream now?

For a beginner, what advice do you have on how I can educate myself about investing?

I struggle to know what is useful to learn from, and what is leading me astray.

Awesome question! It’s a real tricky question. Firstly knowing what you want to invest in and why is important. And then I always try to invest in co-founders, and when I haven’t followed my own advice I’ve usually gone wrong. But most importantly talk to people — to angel investors that have been very successful — or read their advice — Chris Sacca for instance.

What’s the biggest difference between startups in Asia and Europe?

StartUps in Asia are able to work with a much bigger market. If you are a startup in Indonesia alone you have a 200 million size market to work with. Plus costs are lower. And I have to say, the energy levels in Asia startups are very high, people seem to work harder and are more driven.

Do you really believe in the value of accelerators ? If so, is that for all entrepreneur profiles ?

Yes I do. I really do. I am very privlieged to be part of the amazing SparkLabs Korea, who have built SparkLabs to be the biggest accelerator in Asia in a very short time. But they, like the best in the US — YC and TechStars _ focus on real tangible benefits to their cohort companies. The average raised by startups entering SparkLabs in $440,000. The average raised in their next rounds after SparkLabs is $2.2 Million. Across 42 companies. That shows the very real benefit of what SparkLabs brings to the companies, and now the competition is very hot to get accepted into the next cohorts. Same with YC and Techstars.

HOWEVER — there are a lot of startps — and like schools — it’s about quality. You have the Stanford, Harvard, MIT of accelerators and then you also have a lot less quality ones.

Also I recommend looking at specific verticals — Barclays Techstars and Disney Techstars are great accelerators that focus on verticals

How do you recommend paying for living expenses during the time before getting funded when cash flow is low? Working jobs etc takes a lot of time and energy from the business.

Love this question too — but the only real answer if that you either have to save up a lot or cut your expenses to a minimum to do a startup as you have to have complete focus on it — it can’t be something you do on the side. So I would right now work as muchas you can — maybe 2 jobs — and save up as much as you can and then maybe start the business in a year…