VENTURE capital (VC) firm Wavemaker Partners has appointed Andy Hwang, formerly from Meta and Stripe, as its new general partner.

Hwang, an angel investor and startup coach, will join the firm’s investment committee and work with Wavemaker’s managing partner Paul Santos to grow the organisation, the VC firm said on Wednesday (Nov 23). He will also sit on the boards of portfolio companies.

Hwang grew up in California and started his career in Silicon Valley before moving to Singapore in 2011 as part of the Asian founding team of Meta, then known as Facebook.

He spent 10 years at the company, first as managing director responsible for the advertising business targeting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Asia-Pacific. After growing the segment to over two million customers and US$6 billion in annual revenue, he became director of business integrity for the region, said Wavemaker.

Hwang later joined Stripe, where he led risk partnerships and strategy for Asia-Pacific. He has personally invested in over 60 startups, special-purpose vehicles and funds, including Iterative, an accelerator focused on South-east Asia.

“When I looked at the opportunity to come alongside Paul and the team, that was really exciting to me because I would be able to continue my work coaching founders, and sharing all of the mistakes I’ve made over the last 20 years of my career,” Hwang told The Business Times.

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He recalled how in the early days of Facebook, his team made a “classic mistake” when hiring a leader for Japan. They were impressed with a Japanese candidate who spoke the best English, but he ended up being the wrong fit for the business as he lacked strong ties to the local ecosystem. “We were coming from a Western background,” he said.

Hwang reckons startups will need more guidance as economic conditions get more challenging. He said he has been spending time with portfolio companies, encouraging them to find out whether customers are spending more on their products, spending less, or cutting their spend altogether. Wavemaker focuses on business-to-business startups.

“If they’re spending less or cutting spend, you should get really curious because that’s a sign that what you’re offering may not be indispensable for them,” said Hwang. On the flip side, startups that continue to generate interest from customers should think about how to promote the value they are creating, since it is a sign the company is solving a real-world problem.

“When we were building Facebook’s SME business in the region, we got to about two million paying customers. And the revenue we brought in from those customers – we never thought of it as revenue. We thought of it as investment. This was money the SMEs were investing in Facebook to promote themselves,” said Hwang.

The long-time tech executive is entering the ranks of venture capital just as VC firms accumulate record billions of dollars in dry powder, which they need to deploy even amid the downturn. Wavemaker in March closed its fourth fund at US$136 million, joining a handful of firms with freshly raised capital targeting emerging startups in South-east Asia.

Since 2012, the firm has backed over 180 companies and manages over US$300 million in assets. It has had 24 exits with a combined value of US$800 million, according to Wavemaker. Companies it has backed include Indonesia’s eFishery, the Philippines’ GrowSari and Singapore’s TradeGecko, which was acquired by Intuit in 2020.