On writing about finance as a journalist-turned-anthropologist

I took a Master's in Digital Anthropology and wrote a 15,000-word ethnography about the culture of venture capitalists in Indonesia. Here's a preface to that project (i.e. why I took on the subject).

Stumbling into the world of finance is something of a serendipity for me. A product of chance—being at a certain place at a certain time. But the act of making meaning out of it is a conscious, laborious, and exhaustive effort. One that I try to approach with care.

My work as a journalist introduced me to finance. First, at The Jakarta Post, a national Indonesian newspaper, and then at The Ken, a Bangalore-headquartered media startup that writes about business and technology.

At The Jakarta Post, as part of its training programme, newly-recruited reporters received an opportunity to train for different “desks”, or departments that handle specific news. I was assigned to the “Business” desk, which covers business and economics, after a stint at the “City” desk, where I covered local affairs in Jakarta.

Business reporting came to me like a new language. I remember one of the first events I had to cover as a business reporter was a press conference by a bank. I sat through and listened to what felt like a barrage of jargons—“non-performing loans”, “net interest margin”, “net interest income”. I was lost, to say the least. How was I supposed to write a report due either that day or the next day when I couldn’t understand what the speakers were saying? On the ojek (motorcycle taxi) ride from the conference venue back to The Jakarta Post office at Palmerah, I messaged my editor. I barely understood a thing, I told her. She was kind enough to give me the time and confidence to work on my comprehension. (I did manage to get a hang of it in time.)

From business reporting at The Jakarta Post, I moved on to covering startups and technologies at The Ken. Another new “beat”—an area of specialisation—for me. I found myself evaluating startups’ “business models”, assessing their “path to profitability”, and gauging a reader’s interest based on the startup’s “valuation” and recent funding rounds—“Series A”, “Series B”, “Series C”, etc. I found myself in a similar position as I was when I first started reporting for The Jakarta Post’s Business desk: I had entered a new world that operates with its own language.

In both instances, after being dazed and confused, I eventually found great satisfaction in understanding and deciphering these new languages. The jargon—specific terms that kept being repeated—became an entryway to understand things considered to be of value in these specific industries. If anything, being able to not only “crack the code” but also use it as a part of my inquiry makes my journalistic endeavour all that more interesting.

Studying venture capital ethnographically was essentially that for me. Yes, I was exposed to the world of venture capital through my reporting on startups. Yes, I did interview a few dozen venture capitalists during my work as a journalist at The Ken, mostly as part of a coverage on startups. But rarely was the spotlight on the venture capitalists. My understanding of the world of venture capital, I would say, was limited before taking it on as a topic for my dissertation. (I’d like to think I understand it slightly better now.)

In one of my conversations for this research, one of my informants asked why I was interested in writing about venture capital. I gave them a version of my answer, but only so much can be said in one meeting. In this preface, I’ll attempt to write a more complete reply.

Firstly, I am drawn to the idea of deciphering its language. When I use the term “language”, I don’t only refer to the specific terms that are commonly used within the industry, but also the set of value systems, and the way the industry operates. I would say it’s a chicken-and-egg situation between my interest in the particularities of the industry and my interest in the study of anthropology. It would be true to say that anthropology allows me the opportunity to formalise this interest of mine, but it is also true that anthropology makes the case for the inquiry interesting.

Before I go any further, to shed light on the field of anthropology, I’ll borrow anthropologist Tim Ingold's definition of anthropology in his book “Anthropology: Why it Matters”: “Anthropology, in my definition, is philosophy with people in it.” Anthropology as a practice is about trying to inhabit a world just as the participants of that world would inhabit it. The goal is “to share in their presence, to learn from their experiments in living, and to bring this experience to bear on our own imaginings of what human life could be like, its future conditions and possibilities,” as Ingold wrote in his book.

In short, my project is about what it is like to live life as a venture capitalist in Indonesia.

That leads me to the second reason for my endeavour, which also serves as a reflection on my positionality in my research. So far, I’ve talked about how my journalism work shaped my research interest. I also took the time to ponder whether and, if so, how, my personal attributes—nationality, gender, economic status, religion, ethnicity, etc—affect the lens through which I view the world.

According to a World Bank report published in 2020, one in five Indonesians are middle-class. It is a cohort that has been growing faster than other groups. There are now at least 52 million economically secure Indonesians. While more recent data showcases that Indonesia’s middle class is now shrinking, I grew up with Indonesia’s fast-expanding middle class as a backdrop. My parents were part of that group making their way into economic security. Props to them, I did grow up with a sense of financial stability and ease. But being newly financially secure, as I understood from my parents’ stories, came with the perspective of seeing money as something fickle. It comes and goes, and you need to save up for rainy days. It is to be reserved, not spent.

My exposure to the world of venture capital has given me plenty of food for thought when it comes to what is considered as value in the world, and the ways to materialise that which is deemed to be valuable. Money has become a different breed in the world of venture capital. Its purpose is to feed the growth machine. My positionality—in this case, the economic condition and beliefs I was raised with—has allowed me to notice that gap between what money means in a country with a fluctuating middle class and what it means in the world of high finance where venture capitalists situate themselves. I am of the view that many of the insights I wrote about in my ethnography came from the ability to notice where things are juxtaposed.

Last but not least, I thought this inquiry was worth the while as I witnessed the consequences of money that comes in waves and moves fast—as opposed to the slow build-up and “leaky” as I grew up to see them.

When I joined The Ken in 2020, the startup and tech scene was booming despite the pandemic—or rather because of it—reaching its peak in 2021. The landscape was busy with funding announcements and tech companies going or planning to go public. A few months into 2022, however, the sentiment shifted. I started writing about startup and tech layoffs, as well as their closures. I spoke to people from both ends—the employees being laid off and the venture capitalist who approved of said layoffs. I noticed a sense of detachment between the two. I saw how employees took on a “neoliberal selfhood” (a concept I’m exploring at length in my project) while the founders and financiers cited “an uncertain macroeconomic outlook” in their press releases to justify the layoffs. I wanted to further inquire where that sense of distantness comes from; how it came to be. How did finance come to be understood as a set of macroeconomic headwinds and tailwinds as opposed to a product of people’s agency?

It is this interest that kickstarted my study of finance from a cultural standpoint.

You might ask, “What is it that you’re trying to say through your project? What is the takeaway? Where is the list of actionable items?” In its current format, my 15,000-word ethnography (and from it, a series of much shorter articles) does not come from a place of wanting to reach a conclusive statement on what venture capital should be or what venture capitalists should be doing. Rather, it is a critical read of how it is now, based on the author's particular interpretation of things. The reader should be the one deciding what to make of it.

Stay tuned.

Bonus photo taken by me on my walk to my campus at Bloomsbury. Something about the light glaring through the lens feels on theme for this edition.