If there’s a will, there’s always a way

The year was 2014 when I was a college senior.

As a computer major, having my own startup was always on my mind. I really had some brilliant ideas.

Finally, in the last year of college, I managed to find some initial funding from my parents and friends to start my own thing.

From the many startup ideas I had, one of them was a digital couponing website.

Since 2015, there had been a few similar websites plus my brother had experience in this field, so I chose to move forward with this idea.

My brother was a coupon specialist and taught me different ways of utilizing coupons in order to save money. I took advantage of his skills and gathered a few other specialists to start my very own startup named SavingBro.

Now when I look back, it seems almost impossible — and it somewhat was.

But the adrenaline I had at the time had fogged every possible reality check.

It did not take long for me to realize that how I had anticipated it to go down was far from reality.

In just two months, I was struggling to keep a balance between work and classes. There was so much to do that I had to hire professional developers. And this meant finding office space.

Finding office space meant spending more rent in addition to my already expensive room.
We were burning through our money, which was not a lot to begin with.

I was running back and forth from different cities looking for more funding. Right when the SavingBro website was ready to launch, two of my best developers quit.

I had zero bank balance to spend any money on promotional activities. Before it could even pick up, I knew there was no way I can salvage it.

As much as I hated the fact that my very first startup idea has failed, I knew there were lessons to be learnt.

Soon after, I graduated from college and used my failed startup experience as a new starting point.

After careful consideration and analysis, I found three things that resulted in my startup failure:

Not every idea is a good idea

There were some serious flaws in my startup idea.

I did not weigh the technical expertise such a complex idea would require. There was no feedback or discussion with friends or people from the tech industry.

Just because an idea seems good to you does not mean it is and it never hurts to ask for a second opinion.

No money, no honey

If you do not have enough money to complete something you want to do, do not bother starting it.

You need to have funding for at least the first six months of operation.

This includes everything you will need to set up the business. Do not expect to get free services from friends or just ask around for money.

No strategy means more risks

When I started designing the app, I had absolutely no strategy.

I was treating it as one of my class projects. My entire focus was on the product.

There was no strategy for the future. There was no vision about what the startup would be like in a year or five years.

This lack of strategy made me overlook the possible risks.

So, how do we bounce back?

If you are reading this, you might have probably faced a failure like I did.

Maybe you are afraid to return to such a position in the future.

However, you need not worry as it is possible to bounce back from your failed startup.

Just because you failed once does not mean you will fail again. In fact, if we have learned anything from the most successful businesses is that those earlier failures do lead to eventual success.

If you are struggling to recover from a failed startup, here is what I recommend from my own experience:

Analyze the problems

The very first step is to analyze.

Also Read: This year, be a good friend and bring your BFF to Echelon Asia Summit 2019!

In fact, investigate what went wrong. Look back at every tiny detail, spreadsheets, programs, customer feedback etc.

Get to the bottom of the matter.

Learn the skills you lack

After your business failure analysis, you need to do a self-analysis.

Your own shortcomings may be a cause as well.

Do you lack leadership skills? Are you not good at managing money? Is there a new technology you need to master?

Work on the skills you lacked during your first startup.

Do not hide your failures

Many people are afraid to write about their failed startups on their resumes, professional profiles, and social media.

Your failure shows that you persevered and that you have learned your lessons.

In the professional world, this would be deemed as a learning experience which it obviously is.

Start thinking like a businessman

Many tech startups fail because there is no one with the business acumen on the team.

Things like marketing on social media, promotions through coupons, participating in conventions, and networking with established businesses are often overlooked.

Also Read: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists

They develop great products that no one knows about.

When you restart, you need to act like a businessman. If you lack such expertise then hire people who excel at running businesses.

Inspire yourself

You may be tempted to give up after your failure.

However, you need to keep yourself inspired to keep working towards your goal.

There is plenty of reading material about failures.

Another way is to surround yourself with people who matter most to you and who bring positivity in your life.

Before you know it, you will be ready to start again with your next great idea.

Conclusion

My failed startup was not the end of the road for me and neither is yours.

You must have heard many times that failure leads to success. There is a reason why this saying is so common — it’s true!

For some, it may take just one attempt, for some it may take many.

However, if you keep struggling and treat your mistakes as lessons, you too can succeed in the crazy world of startups.

Pat yourself on the back for making it through the tough times and start prepping for the next venture. Now that you know what can go wrong, it will be easier to dodge the pits.

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Moovaz champions the digital nomad lifestyle providing easier transition by handling all headache-inducing moving process

San Fransisco-based venture firm Hustle Fund has just financed the Singapore-based moving-logistics startup Moovaz for an undisclosed amount.

The funding will be used mainly for building a product team and for setting up the company’s go-to-market in Melbourne, Australian, which will be done in Q3 this year around August, said Lee Junxian, Co-founder and CEO of Moovaz.

Junxian added that, considering what Moovaz does in logistics is really niched, the company’s choice of Australia as their next go-to market is essentially a corridor to the rest of the world.

Also Read: Having the right team is the single biggest determinant of your success: 123RF Co-founder Stephanie Sitt

Moovaz primarily targets digital nomads, with the belief in location-independent working lifestyles for everyone. To champion the lifestyle, Moovaz’s service allows people to more easily relocate to-and-from Singapore, partnering with the destination country’s local logistics players.

“Moovaz works with our network of contractors and partners, the result of being in the moving industry for eight years. So let’s say you’re moving to Paris from Singapore. You only need to tell us the origin and the destination. What will happen next is that our contractors will come help you pack your stuff, followed by a container that would have been arranged to pick up your stuff, then a freight-forwarding partner of ours will take care of your stuff to get it safely to Paris, where our French partners will take care of the moving-in, all the way to the unpacking,” explained Lee to e27.

Lee mentioned how stressful the moving process can be, and Moovaz offers to take care of all the needs via several options of service that customers can choose from.

“Our main goal is to tackle lot of waiting and unpleasantness when managing travel visas, accommodations and bank accounts. Global citizens don’t want to deal with that. It’s down to the entire seamless experience of moving for our customers and partners,” said Lee.

True to Lee’s words, Moovaz’s services range from next-day sorting at higher prices. Cheaper options range from seven or 21 days.

“We are solving all things moving-related, like choosing the best rates of freight forwarder and warehouses in specific areas in your destination city,” Lee added.

Over the eight-years-long operation in offline moving industry, Moovaaz has assisted 12,000 moves in every major city in the world. Once an offline business, Moovaz just went online a year ago and has since facilitated a little under a thousand move with their new digital platform.

“Moving is an extremely fragmented industry which has often neglected customer experience and been slow to adopt technology, and Moovaz is doing it in a way that builds relationships with digital nomads from the start of their move into a new geography,” said Shiyan Koh, Hustle Fund’s Managing Partner who’s based in Singapore.

Also Read: Blockchain gaming platform PlayGame secures funding from TRON

Hustle Fund is a venture fund investing in early-stage startups in the US, Canada, and Southeast Asia. The fund was co-founded by two ex-500 Startups partners, Eric Bahn and Elizabeth Yin, and are backed by Shanda, a global investment firm focussed on the online gaming industry, messaging, and communications company like LINE, Korean search engine Naver, and others.

Previously, Moovaz raises seed funding from MOJO Partners in June 2018.
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Image Credit: Moovaz

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Having been non-active in the past one year, Assegaf left Female Daily Network due to personal reason

Following collaboration with Co-Founder and CEO Hanifa Ambadar, Female Daily Network Co-Founder and Business Director Affi Assegaf announced her resignation from the company’s management team.

Ambadar told DailySocial that Assegaf’s decision to leave the company had been made two years ago. In the past one year, Assegaf no longer actively working at the Female Daily Network office.

“The point is that Assegaf’s decision to leave the company is due to personal reasons. Assegaf, who was in charge of content on the Female Daily Network platform, could no longer contribute fulltime to the platform,” Ambadar said.

When asked about whether Assegaf’s resignation will affect operations at the company, Ambadar stressed that her resignation will not disrupt business and managerial activities. The CEO also stated that the company currently has no plan to recruit a new executive to replace Assegaf’s position as Business Director.

“We will remain focussed on recruiting young talents to host the Female Daily segment on YouTube and our own site,” she added.

Also Read: Indonesia’s women lifestyle portal Female Daily Network acquires mobile developer JTECH

Gaining popularity among Gen-Z

While the platform maintains its focus on beauty information, Female Daily Network claimed that it has begun to be visited by users of Gen-Z.

Millennials are no longer the target of startups and major brands; secondary school students have started reading and enjoying the content on Female Daily.

The Female Daily app itself is currently available on both Android and iOS apps.

“At the moment we have two million users, in line with our commitment to focus on 99 per cent beauty content since 2014. It is expected that the number of our users will continue to increase,” Ambadar said.

Female Daily also plans to announce its most recent business plans and updates in the year 2019.

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The article Affi Assegaf Keluar dari Jajaran Manajemen Female Daily Network was written in Bahasa Indonesia by Yenny Yusra for DailySocial. English translation and editing by e27.

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The startup is specifically aimed at people who are at high-risk of having a stroke

See-Mode, a medtech startup based in Singapore, has raised a total of US$1 million led by Cocoon Capital, also from Singapore. SGInnovate and Australia-based Blackbird Ventures join the round.

“We in particular invested in the multidisciplinary background of the See-Mode team and how they came up with a solution that is already creating strong interest in all corners of the world,” said Will Klippgen, Managing Partner at Cocoon Capital, who recently joined See-Mode’s board of directors.

Also Read: Hustle Fund has invested in Singapore-based moving logistics startup Moovaz

Inspired by the fact that stroke has been the second leading cause of death and the main leading cause in preventable disability, Dr. Milad Mohammadzadeh and Dr. Sadaf Monajemi co-founded See-Mode in 2017. Both founders have PhDs in biomedical engineering.

See-Mode uses AI, computer vision, and computational modeling that’s turned into a medical software to equip clinicians in predicting and preemptively treat stroke in patients.

See-Mode believes its method can help clinicians to save time, objectively interpret ultrasound images, and assess blood flow patterns in patients based on a routine CT scan or MRI and doctors to detect vulnerable plaques, setting the precedence for creating better stroke screening and treatment planning, something that’s currently inaccessible in clinical practice.

Its treatment planning mostly relies on tracking conventional risk factors of stroke that has a whopping number of 15 million sufferers in the world with one-third of that statistics ended up dead or permanently disabled.

In Singapore, See-Mode collaborates with the likes of National University Hospital, Changi General Hospital, and the National Neuroscience Institute of Singapore. The company is also starting a multi-centre clinical study with leading hospitals in Australia and USA.

Also Read: Co-founder Affi Assegaf leaves Female Daily Network management team

See-Mode was an alumnus of Singapore-based talent investor Entrepreneur First.

Regarding the innovation the company brings, Niki Scevak, Partner at Blackbird Ventures said that See-Mode’s technology essentially presents a new world where the collective intelligence of the medical community can be employed systematically via computers on every patient whose life has been affected by a stroke.
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Image Credit: Entrepreneurs First

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The Singapore-based company got backed by the global marketing company FreakOut Holdings

SilverPush, the marketing tech based in Singapore has announced the injection of US$ 5 million Series B funding into its company led by Japan-headquartered FreakOut Holdings, Inc., a global marketing technology company.

Also Read: Medtech startup See-Mode secures US$1M funding from Cocoon Capital

SilverPush shared that it will use the funding to expand business globally and enter new markets in the APAC region such as Hong Kong, Australia, and South Korea. It seeks also to increase it’s AI capabilities by applying the technology in industries outside of advertising.

The company plans to explore the possibility of tapping into the OTT space with its new product called Mirrors, followed by the relaunch of another product called Prism, as a brand reputation monitoring platform.

“We’ve expanded into Southeast Asia in 2018, and we’ve seen rising customer appetite for on-demand and multi-screen viewing across the APAC region. At the same time, advertisers and brands have become more open to integrating new technologies in their audience outreach strategies,” said Hitesh Chawla, CEO of SilverPush.

Although categorically being in the marketing sector, the company differentiates itself with the use of AI to improve the engagement between brands and consumers.

Its product, Mirrors, was launched in late 2018 to help contextualise ads when people are viewing video content on their devices with the intention of tackling the misplaced online advertising problem. To do so, Mirrors detects context in video content that aligns with an advertiser’s core communications objectives, allowing more effectively targeted ads using AI with computer vision.

With its products, SilverPush has supported the campaigns of APAC-based brands such as Indofood, Unilab, and Tiger Beer. Its international brands’ repertoires include Unilever, KFC, Coca-Cola, Samsung, Johnson & Johnson, and others.

Also Read: Hustle Fund has invested in Singapore-based moving logistics startup Moovaz

Outside of India and Southeast Asia, SilverPush is available in South Africa, Tanzania, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.
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Image Credit: YouTube SilverPush

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‘Health is wealth’ but who has health without their wealth?

Technological innovations in the financial sector have brought about a global bloom in the industry.

In the past three years, the industry has managed to amass US$31 billion and remains promising.

Similarly, the healthcare industry is also looking to advance in technology to bring about innovations in its service.

In our current climate, it is obvious that the rich are getting richer and the poor are living paycheck to paycheck — finding it increasingly harder to pay off loans.

That is why fintech should aim to solve the unaffordable healthcare crisis.

The parallels between fintech and healthcare

The financial environment has changed significantly.

This is due to the increasing popularity of decentralized currencies, tech payment options, digital wallets offered by companies like Apple, Samsung, Google, and online reviews.

The traditional financial institutions like banks are now struggling to prove their ongoing value to the consumers and strive to provide high-quality services at a low price.

On the other hand, the healthcare industry has been reluctant to embrace such technology at a similar magnitude.

However, fintech has the ability to bring significant change in this sector and make healthcare more accessible and affordable for the masses.

Also Read: Cambodia catches up with launching of startup professional service alliance

It can help the patients as well as the medical staff in the following ways:

Data and performance tracking

The worldwide wearables market is increasing by 16.9 per cent every year. Around 310.4 million wearable devices are sold in a year, generating a revenue of US$30.5 billion.

This success is owed to the monitoring of personal health and wellness.

The relationship between tracking fitness and the larger health issues is undeniable and the success of such products has direct implications on the healthcare sector.

Access to information

Providing 24 hours of access to important information has been exclusive for financial institutions — until now.

But its importance cannot be denied in other sectors too, thus, fintech should be utilized to introduce this in healthcare as well.

Through blockchain applications, one can store data, improve functioning with the help of AI, and help individuals in accessing the data.

Removing confusions from billing systems

The payments and billing systems in the healthcare industry are full of trouble, so a change is not just desirable but necessary here.

Fintech startups should help in finding ways to facilitate payments by offering online billing and bill payments.

The interest of the masses is to create a retail kind of experience in healthcare and introduce blockchain for easier and facilitated transactions.

Personalized programs

As individuals have become more open about sharing their personal details and lifestyle choices, it’s possible to formulate personalized programs.

Also Read: How to give your small business a boost with budget advertising

Depending on your age and health condition, these programs can actually lead you to a healthier lifestyle and help in keeping the problem areas under control.

Conclusion

Healthcare should be innovating itself with time and must be working for the betterment of the individuals.

Serving the health-related needs of individuals should be prioritized by different industries and they must work together to ease up the healthcare processes.

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Image Credits: jjvallee

e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

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