Subscriptions

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I had a great conversation with my ex-boss and acquirer Suwandi, CEO of Mekari, on this podcast.

Some of the highlights:

  • Subscription isn’t a new business model, we’ve been subscribing to newspapers, magazines, cable tv, or even utilities like electricity and water
  • Payment is key to unlocking this business model, the easier/less friction it is to create recurring payment, the likelier this business model will succeed in a particular country
  • Subscription is a way to lock-in your customers, for example if I only have $15 for content subscription budget, I will only be able to pick one between Netflix, HBO Go, Disney Plus, and more
  • Subscription also works as a way to create behavior loop as proven with Amazon Prime. Customers with Prime are buying more things compared to customers without prime.
  • As generations change, ownership became something of a luxury or perhaps, an option. Subscription helped with this transition.

 

Human Resource

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Recently I had this discussion in one of the calls I had with people who are researching the HR/tech space in Indonesia: “What is HR problem? What are the problems that they face?”

My answers:

  • When people see HR, they don’t see people champion, they see the king or queen of admins doing administrative stuffs
  • And so, they are treated as such, they are part of cost center and it’s just a support function, with little to no budget to improve
  • Management/board rarely support the expansion of this team with the reason of ROI
  • Even to purchase a software/product that can help serve HR better, it’s hard to convince management
  • As HR evolve into People Experience in US/EU – HR in Indonesia are mostly still stuck in the 90s or 2000s. They care more about certifications rather than actually connecting and helping people inside the company
  • HR are mostly firefighter = waiting when there is FIRE instead of detecting them early and solving those problems.

We need to improve and evolve HR, because organizations in the tech enabled industries rely on people, and what is people without proper HR?

Pension Funds

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I live in a region and in a country where we skew towards young demographic. With that reason, conversations around dinner table or lunch break are rarely about how or when are you going to retire.

If we see the West, whether US or EU, they have a huge pool of retirement funds which are also being invested in innovations through VCs.A little bit out of topic but despite SEA is still in an early phase of tech startups, it would be even better if we have more pension funds invest in startups indirectly rather than only family offices or conglomerates.

In Singapore, (please CMIIW) CPF is 30% of salary this helps you to not only save for your retirement but also to buy your government subsidized apartment. Pooled fund is also invested in a very transparent way if you see Temasek and VC funds created by them.

While in Indonesia, BPJS Ketenagakerjaan only requires 1% from the employee and 2% from employer to cover this. This is definitely far from enough. Which is going to prolong sandwich generation where people only rely on their kids to live after they retire.

 

COVID19

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Disclosure: I’m not an expert in health or in COVID19, take below information with caution and please research deeply before making your own decision/thought. Below are simply my own personal thought and serve as a personal reminder.

We are around 20 to 21 weeks in since the first impact of COVID in Jakarta and we are definitely not slowing down any time soon. I just feel tweeting about this can’t fit in 140 characters so here goes:

  • Testing: we are nowhere near enough, despite Jakarta governor saying that we are fulfilling WHO demand. This created an illusion as if COVID isn’t growing as fast as in the US or EU. If we are testing 100k people a day, then we can compare.
  • Mask: Despite all the campaigns and also the decreasing of prices of disposable mask and creating of reusable mask — wearing mask is not 100% yet in the streets. People are still wearing it half heartedly just covering mouth, or even wearing it on their neck
  • Health facilities: Jakarta, or in this case, Indonesia – doesn’t have nearly enough beds or ICU if this gets to US or even India level of daily cases

Prediction on 6-12 months ahead?

  • New Normal is going to be the normal We will have to live with COVID and face that fact. Mask and the limitations of people in a small space is going to be the default.
  • Vaccine is going to come, but I personally won’t get it until at least a year after it’s commercially available. I’m more afraid of the side effect vs actually contracting COVID.

 

Ten Thousand

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It has been more than a year since I posted my vision of value driven life and while I might add more to that vision after reading Ray Dalio’s Principles and Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — I’d like to add a mission and or achievable goals as a measurable metrics in my life

10,000 Business and or Business Owners

I have been doing B2B for the past 4 years of Talenta and if you add 2 years of Tech in Asia (dealing with startups) and another year of KakaoTalk (reaching out to brands to having account on KakaoTalk called Kakao Plus Friend just like Facebook has Facebook Pages) then it has been 7 years of B2B for me.

I love every single day of doing B2B because I feel that I’m solving a real problem which can impact a larger group of individuals. I believe that B2B is still underrated and undervalued in the region especially Indonesia and I want to gain expertise on this niche.

10,000 Digital Makers/Creators

While B2B won’t die and legacy businesses will live in the future, I won’t and can’t close my eyes to the future. There will be millions of digital makers or creators from people who creates newsletters, to musicians, to films, to e-sports players, even to someone who are basically just famous because of their appearance and they create content out of themselves.

I want to be in this space by creating a platform or a solution that will help them create sustainability in their job vs doing it on the side. I believe that these creators job will be the new hot dream vs the typical being an actor/actress POV.

10,000 Experts

One of the most important part of living/in this world is knowledge. As generations change and information, thus knowledge, sharing are getting easier — it actually creates overload.

I’d love to be able to create a network of experts all over Asia and just learn from them and then share it with more people. There is Quora in the US, and they want to be a global company but I believe a self-serve nature of Quora won’t work all over Asia.

10,000 Software/Subsciption

Software will basically disrupt all lines of businesses, the only question is when and how fast. I’m predicting a mass adoption in the next 5-7 years and I just love if an Indonesian software company/startup can be the go-to product for a regional problem.

I have drafted lots of ideas that will most likely churned out of SaaSia — which I believe will be my life long work.

10,000 fans

As for personal goal, I do really hope that I can inspire, mentor, develop, (add more positive things here) 10,000 people over my working life. I’m not necessarily saying they have to “love” or “like” me the way Kpop Idol fandom works but I’d love to have a tight relationship with people that I help.

I Have (Not) Made It

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Nowadays, when I went to a wedding of a friend or high school/university gathering or a reunion. Most of the time I will hear something along the line of:

“Boss, how are you? Wow, you’re such a success now!”

“Talenta Boss! You’re growing so fast! Remember me when you succeed!”

And usually I just brush them off by saying “We’re just getting by” or “we’re fighting for survival” or just thanking them for their good wish.

I think I just want to reiterate, and probably if there’s a lot of people that read my post, announce — that I have NOT made it. There is still looooooooooong way to go. I’m barely surviving. Not that I’m cocky, but the exact opposite, I don’t want to get people’s expectation and perception too high.

I am not saying that we didn’t make progress or we didn’t achieve anything, it’s more of like reminding people that not all startups are going to end up like Go-Jek, Tokopedia, or Traveloka. In fact, 9 out of 10 — startups will die. The question is when?

We have passed 3 years so far, most of the time limping from one client to another, educating companies the importance of software especially in their HR. We have also raised more than $1m so far, and hopefully we can raise more soon.

Whether I will raise more money or close Talenta in the future — this post serve as a reminder that I have NOT made it, but yes I have made a progress over the past 3 years. I have learned a lot. It’s such a humbling experience. Thank You God :)

Being a Founder is a Privilege

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Michael Pryor, CEO of Trello, was up on stage at SaaStr 2017 (a conference for Software as a Service/cloud software) and as I watched the interview with Jason Lemkin (SaaStr), he mentioned something that I’d love to highlight.

“I’d like to mention that I came from a very privileged background as a white male and with high education and a nice family to back me up”

Something similar to that.

And the point being, if he wasn’t all that, he might or he could not have started Trello.

While diversity and gender are all the rage in Silicon Valley, we might not highlight it enough in the SE Asia region, or specifically in Indonesia.

Events and conferences might not highlight or showcase this but if you dig deeper into funded startups in Indonesia, you can see a trend where most funded tech startups are founded by founders who have studied overseas and came back. In fact, 2 out of 3 unicorns in Indonesia are founded with such background. Which I’m kind of dumbfounded of a VC who announced they will only invest in such background, while the market reality is already happened that way.

Founders with such background has a safety net where they can take the highest risk and if the company was shut down – they will always can go back to their family business (however small or big they might be)

Despite not being part of such background, I still want to be thankful of the fact that I have a supportive family, I don’t have to work to support each and every one of my family, and even if I failed (knock wood) – I know I can find a decent job. I have all the time to learn languages by myself through the internet (fluent in English and Korean now). I definitely would state that I am privileged and thanking God for it.

This lack of diversity will also resulted in less snowball effect as the rich gets richer and might have less rags to riches story from tech. Again, I’d love to applaud William Tanuwijaya (which went to the same university as I did) as he might be the poster boy for that story.

Here’s to hoping there will be more diversity of (funded) startup founders in Indonesia and in the region.

It’s a Payment War not Ridesharing Battle

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As it became official today — Kudo has just been acquired by Grab. This just confirmed my theory that I fought for in a WhatsApp conversation with a startup friend: This SE Asia region war isn’t in the ridesharing, but actually in the payment space — and Uber might be losing out.

Let’s look back and track how the two companies are doing it:

GoJek — yes they started with a ridesharing, and then expanded even more successfully in the food delivery space: GoFood. After that it keeps adding more use-cases (Go Massage, Go Glam, and more) and became an on-demand platform (for platform play, see WeChat in China).

At first, I was thinking that GoJek was aiming to become WeChat indeed — adding all things into one app and become the go to platform in our daily life. I heard they are even on the verge of closing a $1B round from Tencent (HA!)

After launching their payment platform, GoPay, and basically just subsidize the whole lot of usecases for the sake of people pumping money inside its wallet. Now, I’m confirmed that in fact this is a payment war.

It is the war to actually banking the unbanked

if you think about it GoJek are creating its own ecosystem with its drivers — they are essentially the drivers’ bank by holding their income and in fact even enabling them to buy things through its payment system. Imagine this: whatever things that GoJek sell to its drivers — most likely they might buy it e.g. micro insurance or even loan.

With GoJek present in technically all big cities and potentially all cities, it has the (huge) potential to become THE bank for people who are usually out of reach from the traditional banks.

Now on top of that growing ecosystem is also all the middle class who are becoming more and more used to using GoJek that having millions on its GoPay system are a norm now.

Back to the big news of the day (congratulations for Albert and Agung — you two never cease to amaze me, and can’t thank you guys enough to be our early paying customers), at the other side of the arena, Grab is a bit too late in expanding its use-cases, such as its GrabFood (May 2016) and even its payment system.

While its ride-sharing market share isn’t far from GoJek, it has to add more users and more use-cases to its platform to make the payment (or digital bank) works. Kudo, who’s basically went from 0 to $100m (the unconfirmed value of the acquisition) in just 2 years, has tens of thousands agents on the field who are giving access to:

a) e-commerce for those who aren’t familiar with it and doesn’t even trust it and, b) banking the unbanked again by its payment platform

By buying Kudo, Grab gained access to its ever expanding ground workers who are acquiring more and more users. While this might not beat GoPay, yet, it is a step in the right direction and in my opinion — they might be buying Kudo while it still can :)

I’m going to close this post with two predictions:

1) Similar players to Kudo such as Ruma (one of the most awesome – yet under the radar startup by the way!) and or Kioson might be on the radar of GoJek to expand its payment user base

2) GoJek might not be acquired by a “similar” player such as Uber and or Didi but in fact payment players such as Ant Financial.

What do you think? :)

Why Twitter Will Decline and Snapchat Will be the Next Big Thing in Indonesia

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Indonesia is huge. All the numbers are there, starting from its 250 million population, young age, mobile-first country, people having more than one smartphone, social media country as top 5 in terms of users for Facebook and Twitter. In fact, Twitter said that Jakarta is the Twitter capital city.

Yet, despite Indonesia making the worldwide trending topic over and over again, like what’s happening for Twitter outside Indonesia. Its unclear use-case or usage made the barrier of entry or usage pretty high for a country with small percentage of the population received higher level of education.

Why am I bringing the level of education to the play in this article? When I started using Twitter, I was mesmerized by how Twitter made it possible for me to say hello to my favourite artist, soccer players, and so on. Then, I moved on to following smart, funny, or insightful users. For a lot of Twitter users in Indonesia, they still see Twitter as a way to connect with their friends. Tweeting what they are doing and or chatting through mentioning their friends.

Back at my argument, with so many ways to chat or connect with your friends, Twitter loses more “general” users and only those who have or understand the use-case staying. For the past three to six months, I have never seen even one friend who opens up Twitter. In fact, some of my friends asked me “Oh you’re still using Twitter?”

Instagram is already the big thing in Indonesia. If you are famous on Instagram, people will talk about you. Instagram is also very simple and visual, so it attracts people to post every day, stalk your friends or crush, and or even for a simple usecase like following people who post awesome pictures. The barrier of entry is pretty low.

Here comes SnapChat, with no marketing push at all, I have seen more and more people using SnapChat starting with a simple use-case just like Twitter back then. Following artists with almost real time feeds of video made fans feel so much closer as if they are there with them.

The use-case also has very low barrier of entry. You don’t have to be smart/insightful like you’d probably need on Twitter. You don’t have to be able to showcase awesome pictures like on Instagram. In fact, Snapchat allows us to be free and post literally everything with no censors as it will all disappear within 24 hours or even faster if you send it privately. This creates a great user loop with people checking Snapchat for more contents.

Where does Path fall into this? I’d say Path will become the next Facebook where you will have your families and not so much of a close friends wanting to be friends with you. Although there’s the “Inner Circle” feature, you will still filter what you post (like what I’m doing). I use less and less of Path now and more Instagram and Snapchat. How about you? What do you think of Snapchat?

Living in Jakarta

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Posting this after 12 hours (SFO-ICN), 6 hours (ICN-SIN), 4 hours transit at Changi, and another one and a half hour flight to Jakarta. Despite all the glamour and what I posted here about living in the Valley. Plus an awesome public transportation and people in general. We should be thankful that we are living in Jakarta:

  • Most of the things are cheap. We can literally eat for as little as $1 and drink coffee for $3. Decent food in the Valley cost you at least $4-5, so does a cup of coffee.
  • Despite lack of public transportation – gas and parking are still generally cheap and definitely far cheaper than the US.
  • Human resources are also much cheaper, we can compare the minimum wage. Thus, allowing us to hire maids, drivers, baby-sitters, and so on.
  • THANK GOD FOR BIDET ON MOST PUBLIC TOILET IN JAKARTA!
  • There are so many problems to solve, so many opportunities.

I believe there are more things to be thankful of, but I’m definitely out of energy and need some sleep. Thank you for reading!