I’m Rene Philippe Raymond Dubout, founder of Venture Capital Studio and FintechLex, and I write everything you read on this site.
I studied law at the University of Geneva, graduated in 1988 and obtained my lawyer’s licence in Geneva in 1990: I have been a licensed Swiss lawyer ever since. In 1995 I left Geneva for Asia, with no job, no client and no network. I have spent the thirty years since working on cross-border deals between Asia, Europe and Switzerland: market entry, joint ventures, licences, and the purchase and sale of regulated financial businesses.
In Bangkok I founded a law firm, a fiduciary and a consulting company. I worked on projects in Myanmar and Cambodia, from telecoms to a wine estate near Inle Lake. Back in Europe, I moved into financial regulation: Swiss SRO structures and FINMA, payment and e-money companies, bank acquisitions, crypto clients. Along the way I helped clients obtain two banking licences.
I have had to start again three times: when I left for Asia, when I came back to Switzerland in 2013, and after Covid shut down a business whose clients were almost all abroad. Some projects worked, others failed. That is why Venture Capital Studio exists: to design a venture properly before the money goes in. Smaller. Smarter. Safer.
What I write about
Venture building and how small founders actually find money; foreign direct investment and the traps of setting up abroad; family offices; crypto and stablecoins; buying and selling regulated businesses.
Books
I am the author of nine books in two series: What Nobody Tells You, seven books (investing abroad, buying property abroad, buying a bank, investing in crypto, buying or selling a business, the Swiss SRO, the plumbing of crypto) and How to Safely Buy Real Estate in Thailand, third edition in two volumes. The Bangkok Post called me “the real-estate veteran”. See all the books.
Media and teaching
I appeared more than twenty times as an outside expert on Dukascopy TV between 2014 and 2018 (the interviews can still be watched on my YouTube channel), and wrote four articles for L’Agefi, the Swiss financial daily, on FINMA’s client-identification rules (“Des procédures lourdes et surannées”), the dollar and banking secrecy (“Dollar incompatible avec le secret bancaire”), investing in Myanmar (“Pourquoi investir au Myanmar”) and valuing property abroad (“Évaluer l’immobilier à l’étranger”). I have taught at master’s level at the Asian Institute of Technology and Mahidol University in Thailand.
Contact
insight@venturecapitalstudio.com · WhatsApp +41 787 983 770 · YouTube · LinkedIn
Latest articles
- Why Hong Kong Still Matters
- The Fund Raises. The Bank Lends: Why a Venture Platform Might Build Its Own Banking Layer
- Why We Build Companies Instead of Buying Stakes in Startups
- From Advising Investments to Building Them
- Before Revolut There Was Dukascopy
- How Long Can You Do Banking Without Being a Bank?