Turtle Venture Studio Fund-01 is a pre-seed fintech fund built for a market most institutional capital still treats as unreachable: South and Southeast Asia’s frontier, where a billion people remain unbanked, 1.2 billion are uninsured, and MSMEs face a $1.5 trillion financing gap.
I cofounded it in 2022 and serve as General Partner. The fund writes $125,000 first cheques into pre-seed founders — and then, unusually, moves in with them for twenty weeks.
Why a studio and a fund
Most pre-seed funds in frontier markets fail for the same reason: the capital arrives before the company is ready to use it. A founder with a working MVP and six months of history doesn’t need a wire and a quarterly check-in. They need someone inside the business while product-market fit is still being found.
So the fund runs on a dual-entity model. The fund supplies direct capital and pro-rata rights. The studio supplies the hands-on work — problem-solution fit, scalable MVP development, product-market fit, and investment readiness — across a structured build sequence: experimentation, validation, commercialisation.
The result is that risk gets taken out of the company before the next investor looks at it, rather than priced into the round.
What we back
Four sub-sectors, chosen because each sits on a structural gap rather than a trend:
- Payments, digital wallets and cross-border transactions — against $290 billion in annual remittance inflows to the region
- Embedded finance — financial products distributed through the platforms people already use
- InsurTech — against a 1.2 billion uninsured population
- Wealth and investment infrastructure — the missing rails for a first generation of retail investors
Cheques go into pre-seed companies at up to $2M pre-money, with an MVP in market, two co-founders, and six to twelve months of operating history.
How founders get in
Cohort-01 accepted 3.2% of applicants. That number is the output of a six-stage funnel, not a filter applied at the end:
- Networking — 700+ founder touchpoints a year across the region’s ecosystems
- Call for applications — roughly 120 per cohort, each reviewed by at least three team members and two investment advisors
- Primary selection — 50 advance on growth potential, business model, founder profile and early traction
- Pitch sessions and interviews — 15 to 20 pitch to industry experts, mentors and investors
- Due diligence — 8 to 10 go through financials, customers, partnerships and regulatory review
- Final selection — 5 join the cohort
The twenty weeks
Selection to spin-off runs six months. Selected companies are incorporated in Singapore, receive a first tranche, and begin with need assessment and KPI-setting sessions. Then twenty weeks of intensive venture building — product roadmap and MVP, the push to product-market fit and minimum market traction, and a complete data room for the next round. It ends at a Demo Day in Singapore, where companies that clear the traction bar are introduced to international partners and VCs.
Two cohorts run a year, five companies each.
Track record
Six investments across the Pilot and Cohort-01 programmes. As of the most recent portfolio review:
- 6.27× average portfolio MOIC [CONFIRM period — see notes]
- $40M+ cumulative portfolio value
- $6.34M+ raised by portfolio companies
- $45,000 average monthly revenue per company
- 40% average growth in monthly revenue over the year
One position has exited. The portfolio spans micro-insurance for the 98.5% of the lower- and middle-income population without cover, MSME loan aggregation against a $73 billion credit gap, digital distribution built on an underemployed workforce of 13.3 million, and cross-border payments for 1.5 million freelancers.
Team
The fund is run by two general partners who between us have designed and delivered 30+ accelerators and incubators, accelerated 700+ startups, and seen portfolio founders raise $25M+. Alongside us: a CFO with seven years in financial strategy and audit, a head of investment analysis and portfolio, an INSEAD alumnus and Ashoka Fellow who has managed 16+ projects worth over $22M, a partner with twelve years in private equity and asset management, and a venture partner with a decade in cross-border execution.
The Thesis is Simple: the region’s best pre-seed fintech founders are not underfunded because they are unbankable, they are underfunded because nobody is close enough to see them. The studio is how we get close.