Eduardo Saverin — a Harvard student who helped Mark Zuckerberg create Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) — recently sounded off about his bullishness in the Asian startup scene.
In a recent interview at a Wall Street Journal conference in Singapore, Saverin said he considers Asia a tremendous growth opportunity for the Internet and mobile as the region becomes an increasingly massive consumer market.
Saverin hopes to benefit from the trend by investing in early-stage startups, though he’s not looking for a quick hit, believing that big returns will come by waiting five to 10 years. Some of his investments include Jumio (a mobile payments platform) and Shopsavvy (a mobile shopping app).
He also discussed Facebook. Despite the falling out that eventually led to his departure from the company, and even the U.S. — he renounced his citizenship and now lives in Singapore — he has no ill will toward Zuckerberg and praised his stewardship of Facebook.
Still, Saverin is concerned about the risks involved in the company growing too fast; namely, that it could harm the user — especially as it aggressively moves to monetize the platform — and cause issues on the privacy front.
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPO Playbook. He is also the author of “How to Create the Next Facebook” and “High-Profit IPO Strategies: Finding Breakout IPOs for Investors and Traders.” Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
A long-time follower of the IPO scene, back in 1999 Tom started one of the first sites in the space called WebIPO. It was a place where investors got research as well as access to deals for the dot-com boom. Tom also wrote the top-selling book, Investing in IPOs. In it, he covers all the aspects of analyzing an IPO, such as reading the prospectus, detecting the risk factors and understanding some of the arcane regulations. But don’t worry — if that process is too intimidating for you, thankfully Tom will do the legwork for you right here in the IPO Playbook blog.
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