Scott Weenink: what scaling technology in emerging markets teaches a New Zealand investor about building anywhere

Some of the most useful lessons I have learned about building technology businesses did not come from the places you might expect. They came from markets where very little could be taken for granted. Networks had to be built from the ground up, teams assembled almost from scratch, and the gap between a plan on paper and a working business was wide and unforgiving. Those markets are demanding teachers, and what they teach travels well.

I spent a large part of my career building and scaling businesses across Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and the Pacific, much of it in telecommunications and technology. Looking back, a handful of lessons stand out, and they apply just as much to a business in London or Auckland as they do in Yangon or Jakarta.

The infrastructure others take for granted is where the opportunity lives

When you help build a mobile network in a market that has had almost no connectivity, as I did with a 3G build in Myanmar, you see in fast-forward what technology actually does for people. There is no legacy to protect and no incumbent habits to unlearn, so adoption is rapid and the impact is immediate. It is a reminder that the biggest opportunities are often where the gaps are largest, not where the market already looks comfortable.

Scaling is a human problem before it is a technical one

Growing a regional office in Singapore from a single person to a full team, and helping bring a business of around ten thousand people in Indonesia into a larger global group, taught me that the hard part is rarely the technology. It is trust, communication, and getting people who have never worked together to pull in the same direction. Systems can be bought. Alignment has to be built, patiently and in person.

Growth and discipline are not opposites

Fast growth is exciting, and I have been fortunate to be part of some extraordinarily fast growth businesses, including taking the value managed in one role from around US$500 million to US$6 billion, and helping grow a messaging business from roughly $8 million to $30 million in revenue in another. But growth that outruns its foundations does not last. The markets I worked in did not forgive sloppiness, because the margin for error was thin. The discipline that demands, around cash, governance and execution, is exactly what lets a business scale without falling over.

If you can build there, you can build anywhere

The principles do not change when the postcode does. Understand the customer, build a team that trusts each other, respect the local context rather than imposing a template, and keep your fundamentals tight. Markets that strip away every convenience force you to get those basics right, and once you have, you carry them into every business you touch afterwards.

There is a tendency to think of emerging markets as the place where developed-world ideas get exported. My experience was closer to the opposite. They were where I learned the things that mattered most, and where the difference between a good idea and a working business was made plain every single day. For anyone building in technology today, wherever they are, those are lessons worth seeking out rather than avoiding.

Scott Weenink is an investor, company director and corporate finance lawyer, with a career spanning financial services, funds management, telecommunications and technology across New Zealand, Asia and the Middle East.

He is Chair of Xceda Capital Group, which owns a licensed non-bank deposit taker, and a founding shareholder of Generate, one of New Zealand’s largest KiwiSaver providers, which he chaired for several years. Earlier in his career, Scott Weenink held senior legal and executive roles at Ooredoo Group, Auckland Airport and Modica Group, having begun as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer admitted in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom.

He holds a masters in law from Oxford and remains active as an investor and board member in high growth businesses. You can read more from Scott Weenink on his portfolio, and follow the latest thinking from Scott Weenink on finance, governance and technology.