Jit Gunalan

•You have a real, specific insight about a Southeast Asian problem, not a copy-paste of a US or China playbook.

•You have done the work on the ground: local workflows, payment habits, regulatory friction, or supply chain quirks. You can name the nuance.

•You are honest about what you do not know yet and have a clear, cheap way to test it.

•Your ambition is regional from day one, but your entry point is narrow and defensible.

•**Vague regional references.** Saying "Southeast Asia is huge" without naming the country, city, or user segment signals you have not left the airport. Say instead: "We start in Jakarta's traditional wet markets because X, then expand to Surabaya."

•**Scaling assumptions before validation.** Claiming you will capture 5% of a $10B market in year two reads as fantasy. Say instead: "Our first 100 paying users are from this specific channel, and we know the cost to acquire them."

•**Ignoring local context.** If your pricing, UX, or go-to-market ignores how people actually pay, trust, or use phones here, you lose him. Show you have adapted the model to local behavior.

1. What did you learn from the last 10 customer conversations? 2. Why this specific market in Southeast Asia, and why now? 3. What would the next 24 months look like, milestone by milestone? 4. What is the one assumption that, if wrong, kills this business? 5. How do you validate demand before building more? 6. What is your personal edge for this problem?

Be direct, humble, and specific. He is curious and supportive, so do not oversell. He will dig into your workflow, so bring receipts from real conversations. Avoid hype words and generic mission statements.

•**Team insight:** Why you and your cofounder have an unfair advantage on this problem (lived experience, network, domain scars).

•**Market clarity:** The specific pain point you have seen with your own eyes, and the regional dynamic that makes it bigger than it looks.

•**Vision:** How this niche problem becomes a platform or category leader in Southeast Asia, not just a feature.

A pass means he believes you have a genuine, non-obvious insight into a regional problem and a credible, low-cost path to test it. He is not looking for traction at pre-seed; he is looking for evidence that you think in local specifics and can execute with scarce resources.