MANILA — For years, the biggest question surrounding Philippine startups was whether they could raise enough money to survive.
Today, one of the country's leading startup ecosystem builders believes the bigger question is something else entirely.
Who will buy the future?
"The future is over here, but nobody's willing to pay for that future yet, locally," Startup Village founder Carlo Calimon said in the inaugural season of ANC's Startup series.
It is a striking assessment, especially at a time when the Philippine startup ecosystem has never had more government support, investors or innovation programs.
For Calimon, the country no longer suffers from a shortage of ideas. What many founders struggle to find are customers and companies willing to take a chance on technologies that may still be ahead of the market.
"We need companies that are willing to invest in those crazy ideas," he said. "That's where the hypergrowth sometimes comes from."
From funding gap to demand gap
For much of the past decade, the conversation around startups centered on financing. Founders pitched venture capital firms while government agencies worked to create a stronger innovation ecosystem.
According to Calimon, that ecosystem has matured. The challenge now is commercial adoption. Many Filipino entrepreneurs begin with ambitious solutions inspired by global technologies. But once they enter the market, they often simplify their products because customers are only willing to pay for less sophisticated versions.
"The market only wants to buy this level," Calimon said. "So you adapt your idea so that you can sell at this level."
That creates what he calls an innovation paradox. Instead of building products for tomorrow, startups risk spending their energy adapting to today's market, even when they have the capability to compete internationally.
Did the Philippines get its startup bet right?
A decade ago, one of the biggest complaints among Filipino founders was the lack of an ecosystem that could nurture startups from idea to commercialization.
Much has changed since then. The Innovative Startup Act (Republic Act No. 11337) now serves as the country's legal framework for startup development, coordinating programs among the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Trade and Industry, and Department of Information and Communications Technology.
According to the Department of Science and Technology, the country has established 54 Technology Business Incubators, with 27 more planned, while its ₱120-million Regional Startup Enabler for Ecosystem Development (ReSEED) program is helping strengthen startup communities outside Metro Manila. DOST also said its Startup Grant Fund has supported 15 enterprises with ₱53 million since 2021 and continues to accept proposals under its 2026 funding cycle.
For Calimon, who founded Startup Village after a visit to Silicon Valley nearly a decade ago, those developments represent remarkable progress.
Inspired by the incubators and accelerators he encountered there, he returned convinced that Filipino founders deserved the same support system that helped fuel some of the world's biggest technology companies.
Today, he believes much of that foundation is finally in place. The tougher challenge is turning promising startups into globally competitive businesses.
Capital is looking. Founders still have to convince it. Contrary to the perception that investors are scarce, capital has become more accessible for startups that demonstrate strong execution and the potential to scale.
Philippine venture firms such as Kickstart Ventures and Foxmont Capital Partners, together with global investors including 500 Global, have backed local startups across fintech, logistics, enterprise software and digital commerce. According to the firms' published investment strategies, they look beyond breakthrough ideas, focusing instead on founders who can solve meaningful problems, execute consistently and grow across markets.
That philosophy closely mirrors Calimon's own approach. Before evaluating a business idea, he first evaluates the founder.
"The idea is one thing," he said. "Working on it is very different."
Passion matters, he explained, but so do resilience, adaptability and the willingness to refine an idea after testing it in the market.
Founders often become attached to their original concept. The harder task is accepting that the market may demand something different.
"The core idea started from here," Calimon said, "but in the end, you end up with something else."
That flexibility, more than the originality of an idea, is often what separates startups that survive from those that stall.
Think global before you launch
Calimon believes one mindset separates startups that stay small from those that become regional players: thinking beyond the Philippine market from the very beginning.
"It's nice that you're solving this local pain point," he said. "But can you actually scale it out of the Philippines?"
For investors, that question matters as much as the technology itself.
"Your initial market is here. But the idea is you export it."
Building for a local problem is only the first step. The bigger opportunity, Calimon said, is creating products that can be replicated across Southeast Asia and beyond.
Innovation is no longer a Manila story
The next generation of founders is also emerging from places once considered far from the country's startup scene.
"I've seen a lot of great ideas, especially from the province," Calimon said. "I don't want to lose the talent to just employment."
He credits the growing network of university incubators, regional startup communities and government-backed innovation programs for making entrepreneurship more accessible outside Metro Manila.
"You don't have to be in Manila. You don't have to be in Cebu," he said. "There are clusters all across the country that you can tap."
That shift could prove just as important as new funding. A broader pipeline of founders means more ideas rooted in local industries, agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare and education, with the potential to solve problems that resonate far beyond their communities.
AI changes the rules, but not the fundamentals
Artificial intelligence is making it easier than ever for founders to validate ideas, study competitors and understand global markets.
But Calimon believes AI has not made incubators or mentors obsolete.
Instead, it has raised the bar.
"You can ask AI a lot of things already," he said. "Most likely your idea isn't unique anymore."
If information is now available to everyone, competitive advantage comes from execution, judgment and the ability to adapt, qualities that experienced mentors help founders develop.
Innovation, he added, is rarely about inventing something entirely new. More often, it is about improving what already exists and making it work better for a different market.
The next chapter
Ten years ago, Calimon returned from Silicon Valley convinced that the Philippines needed a stronger startup ecosystem.
Today, many of those building blocks are in place. Government has established a legal framework through the Innovative Startup Act. Incubators have expanded across the country. Venture investors are actively looking for scalable businesses. More founders are emerging from outside Metro Manila than ever before.
The next challenge is no longer building the ecosystem. It is building confidence among businesses to become early adopters, and confidence among investors to back ambitious founders.
And confidence among entrepreneurs to build companies that can compete well beyond Philippine shores.
Somewhere in a university laboratory, a provincial coworking space or a college dormitory, the country's next globally competitive technology company may already be taking shape.