Panelist: Financing Strategies for High Growth Companies, alumni panel at INSEAD

What was covered

Jeremy was a panelist on “Financing Strategies for High Growth Companies”, a 55-minute moderated panel for Harvard, Duke, MIT and UC Berkeley alumni held at the INSEAD Asia Campus in Singapore on 25 July 2025, alongside investors from credit, venture, alternatives and academia and a fellow company operator.

Photos

Key points

• Date and venue: Friday 25 July 2025, 6pm to 10pm, INSEAD Asia Campus, 1 Ayer Rajah Avenue, Singapore, with an afterparty at the INSEAD bar
• Hosts: alumni networks of Harvard (including the HBS Club of Singapore), Duke, MIT, UC Berkeley and others, with INSEAD as venue sponsor
• Format: a 55-minute moderated panel, followed by audience Q&A and an introduction to INSEAD Angels Asia
• Moderator: James Sullivan CFA, Managing Director and Head of Asia Pacific Equity Research, J.P. Morgan
• Investor and academic speakers: Claudia Zeisberger (Professor of PE and VC, INSEAD; author of Mastering Private Equity), Roger Zhang (Partner, Credit Solutions and Private Debt, Granite Asia), Joyce Ng (General Partner, iGlobe Partners) and Kelvin Teo (Co-Founder and CEO, Funding Societies)
• Company operators: Helen Li (Head of Finance and Corporate Development, SynaXG) and Jeremy Au (then COO, Lucence)
• Market landscape and timing: how founders should time financing rounds in today’s market, and how founder attitudes to dilution versus debt are changing
• Positives and negatives of sovereign wealth funds and government co-investment schemes as investors and partners
• Stage-appropriate financing: suitable funding sources at each growth stage, and how to weigh venture debt, growth equity and traditional credit beyond Series B/C
• Syndication and strategic partners: what makes a compelling co-investment, strategic versus purely financial investors, and managing relationships across VCs, strategics and debt providers
• Execution: operational changes to support larger rounds, governance requirements that come with debt, and the most common execution mistakes founders make after closing a major round
• Regional and sector insights: financing for cross-border expansion into Asia and Japan, how investor preferences vary across Asian markets, deep-tech and biotech AI financing, and how founders should think about the home location of their investors
• Closing: a lightning round on the one financing trend each panelist is watching for 2025–2026, then audience questions