“We invested in seven companies in total this year,” Joan Yao, general partner at Kickstart Ventures, told BusinessWorld in an interview. The venture firm said its local portfolio has generated about 600 jobs and raised $305 million (P17.4 billion) in follow-on funding. The funding push comes amid a downturn in Philippine startup equity financing. A joint report by Kickstart and Singaporean business news platform DealStreetAsia showed that startup equity funding in the country had fallen 55% to $86.4 million as of end-June from a year earlier. Across Southeast Asia, startup equity investment fell by 20.7% year on year to $1.85 billion, the lowest in six years.