About Oblique

I'm JJ Soriano. I lead marketing at PayMongo, a fintech company in the Philippines. I write Oblique Asia on the side — not as a publication, not as commentary, but as the writing version of the thinking I'm already doing inside the work.

What I write about

Three things, mostly:

• Build. What actually happens inside SEA companies — product, ops, hiring, AI-leveraged workflows, the unglamorous infrastructure of getting things done.
• Lead. Decisions that shape teams and culture, especially the ones that look wrong on paper but are right on the ground.
• Sell. Distribution, brand, and GTM in markets where standard SaaS playbooks break.

Underneath all three: how a small operator team with the right AI stack outperforms a large one without — and why the playbooks written for San Francisco rarely survive contact with Manila.

Why "Oblique"

The interesting answers in this region usually aren't where everyone is looking. They're at side angles — in the contradictions, the local context, the lived experience that doesn't make it into a deck. Oblique exists to write from those angles.

Who it's for

Operators who are tired of generic advice. Founders building in markets the standard playbooks don't fit. Anyone who'd rather read one specific decision than ten general principles.

What it's not

A news aggregator. A hot-take account. A consulting blog. A neutral commentary publication. If you want balance-for-balance's-sake, this isn't it.

Get it

One or two pieces a month, by email. No filler, no roundups, no growth-hacked sequences.

Reach out

If you're operating inside SEA fintech, building something interesting, or want to push back on something I wrote — [editor@obliqueasia.com]. I read everything.