On March 8, I had the pleasure of speaking and sharing the stage with some of the most important Startup Ecosystem players in the Philippines. I was in the Philippines for only 2 days, and glad that I spent the time in Manila to reconnect with my friends in the start-up world, as I haven't been back for more than 2 years, since December 2016 when I went back for a few days for the TOYM (Ten Outstanding Young Men) Ceremony.

The goal of the session is to take stock on the past 7 years of progress and the plans to think of the next 70 years moving forward. The event was hosted in QBO Philippines, a concept that was started when I led IdeaSpace and announced in APEC, that now is one of the epic centers of Innovation in the Philippines as the official Public-Private Partnership focus on the space and co-sponsored by Amazon Web Services.

Of course, the start-up that is Startup Philippines started many years ago, from the early dot.com era, to the academic led initiative such as the MIT-PESO, the Roof Camps, ON3 and the Startup Weekends. What people said was one of the break away year was in between 2011 and 2012, when the first 2 seed stage funds or accelerators were started in the country, one called IdeaSpace and another called Kickstart, announced their funds with one day apart of each other. This opened the floodgates since it will be the first time in history that people with ideas, prototypes or plans can potentially get some funding to build out their business, when the previous times, it wasnt the case - you would need a rich uncle or lots of connections to get some capital since the bank always asked for "personal collateral" even for business loans.





With this, we had an amazing panel, and a candid conversation over beer and food with 150 of the start-up leaders and founders in the room. We had former Undersecretaries Noya Terrado and Monichito Ibrahim, who were instrumental to land government support on Innovation, Paul Pajo who led the first Developer network in the Philippines, Marthyn Cuan, IdeaSpace Co-Founder, Jojo Flores who started Plug and Play Tech Center and Ron Hose who's Coins.ph start-up was recently acquired by Go-Jek a few weeks before the event (and the first exit for both Kickstart and Ideaspace).





I wanted to share a few of my thoughts on how a country like the Philippines can digitally transform itself. A playbook, a love letter, a "Jerry Maguire-ish" manifesto of some sort, that if we are serious, we hope to look for ways to at least reflect on these areas:

What Does the new Digital and Data-Revolution Mean for Places like the Philippines:

The Plus Side:

Opportunity to redefine our economy in the global stage coming from a service, agriculture and outsourcing reputation: Everytime there is a break, there is opportunity for a country to catch a new wave - think of China catching the electronics industry and Japan with the manufacturing industries. This new break presents new opportunities for us and our people. Opportunity for new leaders to emerge in business and government vs. the Old guard or the "oligarchies": This is a time for a new boys and girls club to emerge, a new breed of leaders in government, private sector and founders that is born not with exclusivity in mind, but with inclusivity. The old way of doing this will not survive in a data enabled world and the people will need to be refreshed. Young dynamic population that gets digital and understand the power of data: This is our advantage - our youth. We must embrace and capitalize on the young population and how we can build this out to create products and services for this generation.

The Challenge:

We have 3-5 years to get our “act together” else we will miss the boat: The train has left the station, and we either are in or we are out. We can still catch the wave if we put our hearts and minds together, but if we over analyze, over plan and do nothing, we could have missed a defining moment that might not come back for another 50-100 years. Many current legacy industries will be affected and how to get our talent ready is the problem (e.g. call center contracts already being cancelled): Are we ready if call center contracts are called because of AI and automation? What will we do if this is real? Are we in denial? Lets just look at the worst case scenario and plan for this.

I am proposing 6 major areas to look at how to Digitally Transform the Philippines:

Re-Imagine Human Capital – our focus, skills, training: The Philippines should have a long-term plan in conjunction with academia and industry to look at the mix of skills, people and programs to get the people ready for the jobs of tomorrow and not just the jobs of today. (e.g. AI Trainers, Data Analysts, Coders, Business Intelligence, Visual Artists, etc) Hedge the Outsourcing Industry – rapidly use our skills in creativity and empathy to post AI-world: What is our game plan if outsourcing was gone tomorrow? The strengths of the Filipino on empathy and creativity will be some of the most valuable assets we can have, so how do we plan for this and double down on these strengths? Make the Backbone of the internet at par with the world: The prerequisite to data is the ability for it to be collected and move into places. That is where bandwidth and speed come to play. In a Web 2.0 world like social network, 3G speeds are OK, but in the data-enabled world where AI cannot work effectively with latency, we need speed. Help inspire the next generation of start-ups to address data: Start-ups is very important, and if we benchmark ourselves, we should have start-ups and business have a data-first strategy, and how to make sure the the rapid shifts can bring about unique global innovation for the world from the Philippines. Know what makes us uniquely Filipino – what is our new unique advantage: Let us think what make us a nation. I think that having a large population, educated in English, with a deep empathy because our latin roots make us unique. Lets embrace our challenges and history and make them our advantages for tomorrow. We will have to work together or be left behind as a country. The Philippines' GDP is only 0.4% of the World GDP, it is up to this next generation, to bind and work together, not against each other to build a better Philippines. The time of crab mentality and envy ("inggit") is not sexy anymore, that's what non-digital, non-data people think. There is no room for negativity. We are a generation of believers, that the future is for the youth of the Philippines to take, and we will work together to make this country a global superpower someday.

The story of the Startup Ecosystem in the Philippines is an inspiring one, but still in its infancy, but we must recognize the amazing feat that it has brought out - the first end-to-end exit like Coins.ph, the government involvement like Slingshot, Filipinnovation, and the TBIs with partnerships like QBO, the almost passing of the Startup Bill and the thousands of founders that grind everyday for a better Philippines.

The future is bright and we will build a better digital, data-enabled Philippines together. Are you in?

About the Author:

Earl is a strategy and transformation executive, speaker and venture adviser. He is currently the Managing Director of Digital Transformation for a Fortune 500 company and has advised hundreds of start-up companies, incubators and VC funds in multiple continents. He is a Stanford MBA graduate and honored as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. He was also awarded by the President of the Philippines as as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the country. Find out more about Earl at earlvalencia.com and his podcast “The Digital Mindset” that you can download from iTunes or Stitcher.