Post COVID Blessing

Standard

I’ve always been a glass half full person. It used to be that I have to as an entrepreneur/founder. Now, maybe I got used to it, or it’s just effortless. During this pandemic, there is even more urgency for me to do so.

  • Working remote: I never thought a business/non tech department/individual can work remote, I’m proven wrong. It’s definitely helpful that we’re all remote so people didn’t demand to meet in person, but I definitely would like this to be an option or even a default
  • Walking: At first, it’s just a way to replace my exercise because we all couldn’t go to the gym. I love walking now that I concurrently listen to podcast while walking around my block. I look forward to my walking session every day, it’s almost my favorite part of the day!
  • Catching up: It’s mostly my fault where I’d always say to a friend or a colleague “let’s catch up soon” but we never and years passed by. Over the past few months, I’ve managed to reconnect or have a conversation with people I’ve always wanted to talk to.

What’s yours?

Mindfulness

Standard

Lately this is the keyword that has been prominently filling my mind, especially as we get to the end of the first quarter of 2017. I felt like I haven’t done as much as the time spent and I realized failing to plan is basically a plan to fail.

One of the things I realized I’ve been doing a lot for the past few months are constantly unlocking the iPhone – reaching out to the Instagram app icon on the dock – and just keep scrolling and liking and watching Stories. Without realizing that 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or even an hour passed by.

I’ve been also playing this game Tower Keepers. At first it was just to fill my waiting time or maybe when I’m in the traffic. Now, I kept opening the app, for the sake of spending the “energy”, adding that I have to watch a 1min ad every time I finish a “fight” – I rarely spend less than 15 mins.

(Read: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/28/how-technology-gets-us-hooked)

After reading some articles on the topic, one of the definition that I like is this: What is mindfulness? Refer to Jon Kabat-Zinn’s traditional definition of mindfulness: it is a way of paying attention to, and seeing clearly whatever is happening in our lives. The attention paid is purposeful, in the moment, without judgment. It’s about having the time and space to attend to what is ahead of us, in spite of distractions competing for our attention and our past history that shapes how we think and perceive the world.

I think most of the time we spend the day, week, month, without realizing what we spend our time for. The opposite of being mindful is just procrastinating or spending your time to do unproductive things or worse, doing bad things to yourself. Ever since I read these articles I have:

Moved Instagram outside the dock and even to the last page of my iPhone. This way I spend less time on Instagram per day. The least I want to do is to spend more time reading book vs scrolling through Instagram. I’m even considering to delete the app from my phone and just access it from time to time from the web.

Spend less time on the game and currently thinking to delete the game this month.

Started planning my month, week, and thus days better. I really want to spend an effort to make my day more productive including ending the day knowing that I have created more than I have consumed.

What do you think about mindfulness and have you did anything to create the culture of mindfulness in yourself?

Yet Another Best Year Yet!

Standard

I am still amazed that I can keep saying this year in year out. 2016 was nothing short of incredible for me. Another year full of travels. Wanted to update this blog earlier in the year but the past 3 months has been awesome that I kept pushing this day by day. Finally get to update this!

2016:

January:

Celebrated the New Year with the BFFs at Sentosa

Starting the year with all hands on deck meeting at Talenta and our monthly dinner

Reunited with my sisters

H Island weekend out

Watched Justin Kan (YC Partners & Founder of Twitch – $1B exit to Amazon) keynote/on-stage interview on a weekend.

February:

Growing Talenta’s family dinner

My sister’s – Michele’s birthday

Chinese New Year! The year of Monkey!

Went back to Medan, my dad’s hometown!

Did a keynote at Clapham conference

Another keynote at GnB Accelerator launch.

March:

Participated in Wirausaha Muda Mandiri 2016 at Jogjakarta

Exhibited at Binus Job Expo 2016

Finally visited Borobudur!

Traveled to Bali for PMSM (HR organization) event and had a break there

Given a chance to create a profile for myself by Enricko Lukman.

April:

Trip to Korea (Tagging along with CIDAuto team to their team retreat, saw the cherry blossom with my sister, shared my experience to Korean startup scene)

East Ventures’ SaaS meetup

April Talenta family dinner

Attended Tech in Asia Singapore 2016 which coincided with my birthday

24th birthday dinner with people that I became close with in 2016

First ever East Ventures Career Day

Opening of new East Ventures Hive

May:

My first ever uni friend got married

First ever Talenta HR gathering

Got into Google’s Launchpad Accelerator

Moved into Talenta new office

Attended my first ever Korean wedding

Had our first ever Talenta outing to an island without any reception or even electricity at day

Shared my journey in front of one of the biggest university in Surabaya

Watched Dimitri Vegas Like Mike

June:

Traveled to Taiwan for my sister’s graduation and also the youngest sister’s birthday(probably the only birthday in the family where the whole family is in the same town for a while now)

UMF KOREA 2016 (Garrix was sick and Van Buuren crazy!)

Landed in SF for Google Launchpad 2016 – wrote a piece about the experience.

Blk 71 San Fransisco! (SG startup founders would relate)

Google booked the whole ferry for our Golden Gate Bridge tour

Went for Yosemite and Bay Bridge tour

Finally checked “Skydiving” off my bucketlist 

Profiled by Asianentrepeneur.org

July:

New York, New York, finally! Went to:

Brooklyn – Times Square – Insight Venture Partners’ nice office – Grand Central Terminal – Top of the Rock NYC – Statue of Liberty – NASDAQ (NYSE) – Ate the original Halal Guys – MoMA – Brooklyn Bridge

Las Vegas! Went for a 4th of July party with Christina Suria (Steve Aoki!)

Had our largest town hall in 2016

East Ventures Founders meetup: Scaling organization

Back to Jogja for mentoring and judging of Fenox Startup WorldCup event

Interviewed by MNC TV for Google Launchpad experience

August:

Announced our funding led by Skystar Capital and East Ventures.

Pitched at Fenox Startup World Cup event in Jakarta

Covered by InfoKomputer magazine

Celebrated Indonesia Independence Day with the team

September:

Did our next HR gathering 

Our office is covered by Tech in Asia

Talenta’s management team dinner

Second Korean wedding ever!

Covered by Metro TV!

Celebrated Talenta’s 2nd birthday!

October:

Probably the most beautiful Bali wedding in my life so far

Halloween party with the gang

November:

Speaking at a panel for IWIC 2016

Singapore trip with bae

Speaker in two panels of Tech in Asia Jakarta 2017- always fun!

Interviewed by Billy Boen at Young on Top radio!

Talenta HR gathering with Googlers as a speaker

December:

Ended the year with Korean trip and started the year right

Christmas is Not (Just) a Celebration, but a Reminder

Standard

It’s Boxing Day today and you probably had scrolled through tons of Christmas dinner posts, even you probably uploaded one yourself. Despite it’s festivity and all the sale and discounts you see in the malls or even online, I chose to take the meaning of Christmas this year rather differently.

I went to Christmas celebration on the 24th in NDC (Nafiri) at Baywalk Pluit. The theme was Christmas is a Miracle. Why? Because in the Jesus’ birth itself is a miracle. Virgin Mary give birth to our Savior, and indeed until today His miracles still exists, even amongst ourselves.

The meaning of Christmas stressed out even more by the service on the Christmas Day at my church, Gereja Kemah Tabernakel. Pak Handoyo Santoso clearly reminded us of how Jesus is NOT a baby anymore (despite how He is pictured on every Christmas, year in year out). He should grow in our life and we SHOULD let Him take over.

We always feel like we can’t handle the pressure or the problems that we are facing, that’s because we still rely on our own strength, we believe that our power is strong enough to handle anything. But, if you choose to do the opposite, if you choose to let Him take over to handle your problems, imagine how easy it is for God who has created miracles in this world to solve your problems.

This service really hits me because I do felt that this year I have let myself on the front seat and even didn’t let Him on the passenger seat as I feel my life gets better. I get big headed or cocky sometimes, I became arrogant and even bailed on going to church more often than not. Because of this, these past couple of months, more than a few problems, hit me in my face. I feel like I couldn’t handle most of it. This really reminded me to kneel in front of God and really, let Him take over. Let him take control. Let His will be done in my life.

The verse that I got for 2017 is another reminder for me (At Gereja Kemah Tabernakel, we got 1 verse every year on Christmas to help us and remind us of next year) – Psalm 7:18

I will give glory to the Lord according to his justice: and will sing to the name of the Lord the most high.

God reminded me to give thanks of what He has done in my life, and of what is yet to come. And I can’t thank Him enough of what He helped me achieve in my life. I really can’t wait for 2017 and I really want to let Jesus take control of my life and create miracles in my life.

Merry Christmas and God bless you :)

Looking Back and Looking Into the Future

Standard

2015 flew so fast yet after reviewing the first half of 2015, the second half got even crazier. I traveled to several countries and so much more. Some of the highlights:

While that highlight reel seems like really awesome, in reality there are tons of hardships and pure grunt work while building the company that is Talenta. I am beyond blessed to have such friends, teammates, family, and investors, that is supporting my journey.

2016 is going to be the best year yet, I believe, as (some might believe, some might not) it is the year of Monkey (I am born in the year of Money, I mean Monkey). So, despite me not achieving most of my resolution last year, I’m going to keep it simple this year:

  • Work harder for Talenta. Harder doesn’t equal just putting hours in front of my laptop but it means how can I set a higher bar for myself and the team and push even harder. With this I believe we can raise our A and B round. So far we have grown to a team of 30 and I believe that it’s possible to double it again by the end of this year.
  • Write more and read more. This is something that has always been in my mind. In fact, it can be my life motto. By writing you can be a better storyteller and by reading you can discover so much more in the world vs watching a drama.
  • Travel more. If everything goes as planned, I’ll be traveling to Europe for the first time (yay!) and hopefully also watch the Euro 2016 final. Other than that I’d also be traveling to Taiwan for my sisters’ graduation. Hopefully I can go to one more new destination!
  • Earn more money, spend less of it. I’ve been pondering on a few small passive income projects and I really love creating and producing. The problem is, I also love/tend to spend more. I hope to spend less by decreasing my visits to the night clubs and also on shopping.
  • Simply be happy. One’s purpose of life can simply “be happy” – in fact a friend of mine recently told me so. Despite me being negative about it, I’ll try to embrace this and be more thankful of who I am and what I can do/have.

I do hope that instead of quantifying the resolutions, we can relatively achieve the goals that we have in this new year. It’s going to be another roller coaster ride, but I do hope that we can enjoy both the highs and the lows.

The Rise and Battle of Virtual Private Assistant in Indonesia

Standard

Ever since Magic launched, and raised funding with $40m valuation. There has been a race to replicate the success in Asia, with BeMalas from Malaysia raised $500k, YesBoss from Indonesia raised from 3 prominent VCs, and also Nihao Concierge from Singapore. But I’m going to focus on the battle of HaloDiana and YesBoss in Indonesia.

HaloDiana, which was born inside SribuLancer backed by East Ventures and Infoteria is poised to battle YesBoss for Indonesia huge market. I believe that the timing and also the culture of Indonesian people are fitting of Magic style concierge service. The reason is that people here loves to be served, if you see in almost every place that involves paying or buying, we’d rather choose to be served than using a self-service machine. Example would be when I visited Blitzmegaplex on most malls, there are long lines of people queuing and few people on the self-service machine. Another reason, a lot of executives actually are served by personal assistant, hence, having virtual personal assistant like Diana or YesBoss, sort of boosted our “ego” and at the same time, super helpful since most of us are quite lazy to do simple things like “ordering your Gojek”

With all that mentioned though, I would highlight several key things that can make or break the Magic clones:

  • Scaling: As the services get popular and get used by more and more people, it will be a lot tougher to serve 10,000 people compared to say, few thousands people. YesBoss’ plan to create a Natural Language Processor are one way to do it. Otherwise, scaling the customer service team is needed. One of the advantages being based in Indonesia is that human resources are still relatively affordable compared to our neighboring countries. Other solution is to create a freemium model where paying members can be prioritized and served faster. If used frequently, I think people won’t mind paying $3-$5 per month.
  • Overreliant on on-demand services: As both players are built on top of the on-demand services such as Go-Jek, this creates a problem where if one of the deliveries are late for example, the one that is getting the blame is the services not the on-demand players. I saw my friend ranted against one of the two, but when I investigated, apparently it’s because of the courier. Another problem is the business model part, since so far both players are relying on making money from its partners/merchants, it puts the leverage on the partners, the revenue won’t be that big. Not to mention, there’s always a possibility of one of the on-demand services creating their own concierge service.
  • Low barrier of entry: Let’s say Magic expanded to Indonesia with millions of dollars in funding. I think that the model is actually have a low barrier of entry, proven with how fast HaloDiana is catching up with YesBoss (yes, I did consider that SribuLancer has bigger funding and well-positioned). Someone with huge capital can enter the market and erude the market share quite easily at this point.
  • Vertical private virtual assistant: in the Valley, there has been multiple Magic clones focusing on verticals instead of processing all requests. Such as Native for traveling, Vida for diet consulting, and more. As Nir Eyal discussed in his blog, Assistant as an App might be the next big thing and both YesBoss and HaloDiana might have bigger problem when the vertical players are coming in. For one, Travelio has developed its own travel concierge service, although focusing on its own inventory.

Despite all of the worries, the market is huge, and it’s ready for this kind of services. I’m definitely excited to see who will win and how they will try to beat each other on this rise of private virtual assistant.

Disclosure: Talenta is funded by East Ventures, also an investor in SribuLancer which creates HaloDiana.

The Act of Creation

Standard

This one is going to be a shorter post than the usual. Trying to get more sleep in a day by sleeping earlier than usual. Nevertheless, this topic has also been bothering me recently.

We, as a human being, consume a lot. We consume all the time. From the moment we wake up, we consume the air, the water or coffee you drink right after, the breakfast you eat, all the contents you read all day, the big lunch, the fancy dinner with the wine.

Yet, when it comes to the act of creation, to create, we lack willingness, we lack the motivation to do so. Why? Sometimes it’s because we are forced to – the job and the work you choose push you to create something you don’t even enjoy. Sometimes it’s because it’s just simply easier to just consume than create. To sit back and relax.

This post is a reminder to myself that I need to consume less. Whether it’s food, or content, or time. And create more. More posts like this. More awesome work for Talenta. More contribution to the Indonesia tech ecosystem.

Because the reason we live. Is to create. Not just to consume.

Writing Regularly

Standard

I think the hardest part of writing is creating a habit of writing itself. Especially writing more than just 140 characters or less. With world that is trying to steal our attention all the time with all the notifications. We barely have time to: stop, think, and just write.

Another Medium post inspired me to take the challenge and just basically write a post every day for a month and see how it feels. To be honest, my biggest challenge of doing a post regularly is not finding a topic to write but instead “what would people think if I write this?” or “what if I can only write one or two paragraph and that’s it?” or “I can only imagine people rolling their eyes as they read my blog posts”

I have always have a special room for writing and reading. One of the biggest regret of not going to foreign university is the lack of writing assignments especially in English. Imagine how good I would be if I were writing essays in English every week. That would help me in a lot of things as it already is today.

Writing also helps you remember what happened today, yesterday, the past week, month, year, you name it. And it’s always fun to do that. Outside the personal posts though, writing your thoughts on a specific topic in your professional field is also creates a personal branding that can only benefit you. Let’s take this challenge together and improve our writing ;)

Tempo

Standard

For the past months, or shall we say the first half of 2014, it has been all about politics. From our TV stations (not that I watch TV, but my dad does) to the Internet, especially social media. For those who have been living under the rock, Indonesia has just went through a legislative election and the presidential election. The winner have been decided officially, though the opponent are still insisting that it is not over yet.

image(1)

Putting all that behind, I want to talk about how I have been reading Tempo magazine a lot ever since politics get into our daily life. I mean I have been hearing about it a lot and how great it is but didn’t really realize it until I actually read it. To be honest, I didn’t exactly love reading in Bahasa Indonesia, I have always preferred to read in English (thus, making me better writing in the language as well), but Tempo has changed that mindset.

Compared to any other media, I probably will say that Tempo has a really, really good investigative journalism. It has courage to write something that other media might not write about especially on how corruption isn’t only happening on this place, but apparently it’s all over Indonesia and it manages to dig deep on more and more things. So, with this post I’d love to recommend you to read Tempo (it has English version as well) and subscribe to it.

Back to Writing

Status

I realize that I didn’t really write anything this year except some articles for Tech in Asia. Even compared to my 2013 commitment, I really mess it up. So here I am in another effort to do a blog post a day, even though it will be just a paragraph. One of the thing that is holding me back sometimes is that, I think too much about what will people say about my posts – then I realized that I’m nobody, why should I worry about that. Hopefully I can commit to writing more!