‍In 2021, after years of experience as founders and operators in the tech ecosystem in the Philippines, we saw a big opportunity to provide financial and strategic support to founders launching new startups in the Philippines, a country with a large and growing population that is developing rapidly but had so far punched below its weight in terms of tech startups. We saw how big the tech industry had already grown in Indonesia - a neighboring Southeast Asian country with 2x the population, 3x the GDP, but 50-100x the tech industry - and we believed the Philippines can and should follow a similar path. We felt one challenge for this development was a lack of early stage support for new founders. We had been discussing this informally over the years, but in Q1 2021, during the depths of one of the extended covid lockdowns in Manila, we decided to make a move and start Buko Ventures.
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We didn't know what to expect. We didn’t know if there would be a lot of founders in need of support, and we didn’t know what the quality of startups might be. To some degree, we expected we would lose all of our money, but we were ok with this; we felt the country needed this type of early stage fund and we felt it would be a valuable learning experience either way. 

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In fact, the fund hit a clear opportunity with fortunate timing. There were a lot of founders looking to launch businesses at that time - perhaps inspired by the growth of digital commerce during covid, and work disruptions perhaps increased peoples’ willingness to jump off corporate ladders to launch new ventures. We quickly received many applications for funding from talented founders. As things got off to a quick start, we were excited to share the opportunity and mission with all of you, whose financial support enabled us to scale up Buko Ventures’ investment resources. Ultimately, we made over 20 investments in startups in the Philippines. In multiple cases, we stepped up to support the founder as their first outside investor - following through on our goal to support new founders at the earliest stages of their startup journey. 

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So far, we are very happy to see that the portfolio has performed very well. A number of our early investments have gone on to become substantial players in their respective categories and have raised follow-on investments that have given our portfolio a solid ~11x gain in 3 years including a 50% cash return that enabled us to further expand our portfolio of investments. 

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In addition to the solid financial performance to date, we are also proud of the positive impact we feel we have had on the startup community and the broader economy in the Philippines. 
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Over the last year, we have been exploring what should be the next step for Buko Ventures. We want to continue to support the startup ecosystem, as we continue to believe that startups can be an extremely positive force for good in developing economies. The challenge is that the five founding partners of Buko Ventures all have their own companies to run and are not in a position to allocate the time and resources to help Buko Ventures reach its full potential - which now feels even bigger than what we originally envisioned. 

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We’re excited to share that we now have a very promising path forward that can continue what we’ve built and grow Buko Ventures to new heights. 

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We are excited to announce that Wade Eyerly is going to lead Buko in the next phase. He is leading a $35M+ fundraise to double down on our investment thesis and expand it to 6 new countries, including Vietnam, Indonesia, Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria and Kenya.  Each of these 7 countries shares a common place on a developmental path when it comes to digital adoption, internet access, and cell phone penetration.  As the new leader of Buko, Wade Eyerly brings a huge amount of experience and energy to this mission and has a powerful combination of emerging markets and entrepreneurial experience. 

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Wade’s emerging markets journey dates back to the late 1990s when he served on a church mission in Russia for two years. Amid the turbulent socio-economic landscape of 1990s post-Soviet Russia Wade developed fluency in Russian and saw first hand the impacts of rapid social and political change, currency hyperinflation, and rapid adoption of the internet. Shortly after returning to the US he then took a job in Manila where he spent several months.  He returned, completed his degree in International Economic Policy and Cross Cultural Relations and was in the first graduating class after 9/11.  Wade found his way to Washington, D.C. working on then Vice-President Dick Cheney’s staff, later joining the Defense Intelligence Agency where he worked on a transnational threats unit, addressing arms smuggling and human trafficking among other issues.  Wade deployed to Iraq in 2009 and shortly after returning embarked on his entrepreneurial career.  He is the inventor of the subscription aviation model, and built the airline Surf Air (NYSE:SRFM) which achieved a peak valuation of $1.4 billion. After Surf Air, Wade invented a novel type of insurance, guaranteeing a student’s earnings in the years after graduating college and built a full-stack insurance carrier from the ground up to support it. 

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At Double River Impact, an impact focused VC firm, Wade led investments into Peddlr, Shoppable, Humble Sustainability, and Prosperna here in the Philippines and along the way got to know Andrew and the crew from Buko Ventures. Wade’s commitment to bringing his career experiences to support entrepreneurship in developing countries aligned with our early stage VC fund. With shared goals and interests Wade proposed that we merge our efforts, which is now our shared plan. 

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We are excited to have Wade captain the ship into the future.