Don’t let Alice fool you, the rabbit hole isn’t a magical affair at all

With the economy roaring right now, it’s unsurprising that eager entrepreneurs across the nation are keen on announcing their ambitious startup companies to the world.

Before you think about finally going public and acting on your plans to start your own business, you need to do plenty of research to ensure that your company doesn’t fail from the get-go. More often than not, startups suffer because they lack legal expertise and the ability to properly plan out their future with a lawyer’s help.

Here are the five biggest legal mistakes startups make time and time again, and how you can avoid them when launching your own business.

1. Passing up on a founder’s agreement

Many startups that are launched by a group or pair of similarly minded entrepreneurs feel that they can pass up on a founder’s agreement, which they wrongly view as an unnecessary expense that will take up time, money, and potentially divide them in the future.

While it can be appealing to launch your startup without feeling constrained by a founder’s agreement, such an agreement is absolutely necessary to the longevity of your business. Far too many companies failed because they mistakenly believed they could survive and thrive off the force of the personalities of those running them.

Also Read: Blockchain-based fintech company Everex signs deal with Krungthai Bank, SHWE Bank

Avoid letting a small conflict spin out of control in the future and destroy our startup’s chances of success. You should take some time now to read up on why founder’s agreements are so important, and what crucial details you should be covering when forging an agreement of your own.

2. Hiring a shoddy lawyer

In order to navigate all these legal documents without going crazy, your startup will likely be depending on the expertise of a lawyer sometime in its opening days. However, if you hire a shoddy lawyer, the consequences could reverberate and diminish your business’ ability to succeed for years to come.

Having excellent legal expertise isn’t cheap, and you may think this is the proper time to keep expenses low, but don’t hesitate to spend what’s necessary on acquiring a good lawyer who can give you solid advice in times of trouble.

What you should know about hiring a lawyer largely revolves around testing their character, credentials, and determining if their personality is a good fit for your startup. Keep focused on recruiting stellar legal experts to your team and your startup will be sailing in safer waters than many of its competitors.

3. Dismissing compliance as an unnecessary regulation

The bane of any new business owner is the dizzying system of regulations on false advertising he or she will soon have to grapple with as they attempt to wrestle a profit from the marketplace, but it’s a terrible mistake to dismiss compliance with industry standards as just another regulation to be ignored.

Cutting through red tape isn’t always worth it, and if your company starts cutting corners when it comes to making sure it’s compliant with all the necessary regulations you’ll soon land yourself in legal jeopardy. Unless you want to face an expensive lawsuit, you should be sure to make compliance a priority at your startup.

If you lack a compliance program, that says a lot about your startup’s ability to ensure a future for itself in a crowded marketplace where regulators are always looking to cull the weak from the rest of the herd. You may think a dedicated compliance professional on your team is expensive, but they may end up saving you a ton of money in the long run by avoiding stiff fines and legal nightmares that occur when you’re noncompliant with important laws.

4. Your startup and its roles are vaguely defined

You may think keeping the roles of your senior executives vague gives you some flexibility in your daily operations, but it’s a crucial legal mistake that could end up muddying the waters in the near future.

Also Read: Why an open office design makes you less productive

Your startup’s founding partners may quickly find that the task they set out to accomplish was completed much earlier than they thought possible and try to foray onto another partner’s turf in search of additional work, overstepping his or her boundaries.

Making sure that everyone’s role is clearly defined, and responsibility is fairly dished out, is essential to success.

5. Remaining ignorant of tax laws

Finally, the biggest legal mistake that countless startups make is remaining ignorant of local tax laws and how they can be exploited for a profit. If your company isn’t properly incorporated, for instance, you could be saving yourself literally thousands of dollars a year in taxes.

Furthermore, knowing where to incorporate and where to base your business operations could end up being the difference between a startup in the black and one that’s struggling to make a profit.

Dig deeply into your local regulations and arrive at a comprehensive understanding of your nearby business environment before you create your startup, and you’ll be avoiding the biggest legal mistakes that countless other entrepreneurs have made before you.

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Image Credits: frimufilms

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People buy from people

Becoming a globally prominent expert authority is something many authors strive for, but struggle to achieve. The name of the game for most experts is exposure and credibility.

Expensive PR campaigns and enormous time and effort are expended to secure exposure, with the expectation this will increase credibility and overall ROI.

In researching the platforms of today’s leading content experts, including Dr. Phil, Tony Robbins or Wayne Dyer, and resource experts like Dr. Oz or Oprah, I have found a common denominator.

Even on the expert platform of lesser-known experts, I see the same pattern for experts and authors who have been effective in increasing their audience and attracting opportunities that surpassed their hopes and goals.

Here are the insights that will move you from exposure and credibility to global loyalty and conversion for your message.

Shift your perspective

Your initial message should be focused on how people will experience their lives emotionally and how they will feel, rather than what they will do, based on your work. Experts typically provide strategies and specific tools to help people, but they often do so without creating a tangible emotional connection, or emotional brand, first.

Also Read: The biggest legal traps startups fall into

Information is better received once we can determine trust that the expert is truly invested and committed to our well-being and that we can foster a meaningful connection. The academic approach will attract strong media interest, but it will not typically build a platform to effectively build your business.

Step back

Take the time to re-evaluate the emotional presentation and impact of your brand. Choose a few key words that reflect how you want to help your audience to experience life, regardless of their circumstances.

Once they feel a strong emotional connection with you, your strategies and credibility will be far more relevant. Be very specific and choose emotional words. Avoid words that describe a state, like ‘happy’. ‘Excited’, ‘content’, ‘satisfied’, ‘joyful’ — these are emotional words. There are many thesauruses online that focus on emotional words.

The stronger and more unique your words are, the more you will create a unique and powerful presentation for your message and brand that will connect with audiences.

Create a content map

Utilising the emotional words you have chosen to reflect your brand, create an editorial map of potential articles that speak directly to audiences you want to reach. Your content should closely correlate to your emotional branding.

Leading with your emotional message and then including strategies and research tie ins will increase conversion to your products and services and attract media, speaking and other business opportunities.

The “Tony Robins effect”, as I call it, is about creating a powerful, sincere and meaningful belief in the impact of his work to people who are looking for his specific expertise. Effective experts impart a profound and intense sincerity about their audience.

They are also extremely accessible emotionally to their audiences. Utilise a specific content design to build that bridge, based on your emotional brand.

Brand integration

Review your website, current and past content and related materials. Look for ways to incorporate your emotional branding into your entire body of work. It should be clear, prominent and repetitive.

Sound bites

Create media sound bites and short quotes that represent your emotional branding. As you build your exposure with your emotional message in front, audiences will begin to connect with you personally, and then to your work.

The more methods you have to communicate your message and your emotional brand, the more people will remember it and identify the concepts with your work.

Branding evaluation

Review how audiences are reacting to your new branding and build on the messages and emotions that resonate the strongest. As you create your emotional messages, you will be able to evaluate which messages truly connect with people.

Also Read: Blockchain-based fintech company Everex signs deal with Krungthai Bank, SHWE Bank

As long as the response is consistent with your brand, you can let audience response help direct your path to new content, products and services.

Message compartmentalisation

Rather than creating content and media segments based on demand from media outlets, focus on creating ongoing materials that closely mirror your EB words and concepts. Stay on brand.

Tony Robbins could write about anything, however, he maintains a clear voice to reflect his message and maintain his audience. It becomes tempting as interest in your work increases to broaden the scope of your work. However, you can dilute your brand all too easily in today’s world.

Avoid the common mistakes of being too broad and scattered in your messages, accommodating media requests regardless of the content and its relevance to your brand, and being too fragmented in your work creation.

You can create a platform that lacks continuity and an emotional presentation crucial to creating a meaningful connection and long term loyalty from the public. Too many authors and experts find they have been spinning their academic wheels and end up feeling burned out, as they didn’t build their PR on a solid foundation of emotional branding.

People buy from people.

Credentials, media appearances, great content, proven strategies and attractive branding are all meant to support an emotional brand and meaningful messages that truly connect with audiences. They are not meant to be the entire branding process.

It is this crucial difference that builds powerful platforms with global impact and provides the opportunity to change millions of lives.

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The app will give single point access to multiple transport options

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) company mobilityX announced that it has officially launched the beta version of Zipster, an all-in-one transport app, as reported by The Straits Time. The transport app will facilitate a single point access to transport options such as MRT, buses, private-hire vehicles, shared mobility devices, and car-sharing services.

Zipster will also put on trial its Zipster card that will enable users to access all Zipster functions and pay for the fee using the card that’s integrated into the app’s wallet.

mobilityX aims to integrate journey planning, booking, and payment in one app so users can compare available transport options, their estimated duration and cost, and proceed to arrange the selected trip all on Zipster.

With recent MoU signing between mobipityX and OCBC Bank, the latter’s digital payment app OCBC Pay Anyone has been integrated to allow the use of OCBC credit and debit cards within Zipster’s ecosystem.

The year-old company has been in partnership with the likes of SMRT that’s also one of the company’s investors, Grab, Go-Jek, bike-sharing platform Anywheel, e-scooter startup Neuron, and EZ-Link.

Also Read: Blockchain-based fintech company Everex signs deal with Krungthai Bank, SHWE Bank

The users of mobility X and Zipster are also subjected to coverage for personal accident, accident medical reimbursement, and personal liability from AXA Insurance Singapore.

Both Singapore’s Land Transport Master Plan 2040 and the land use Master Plan 2019 aim to make Singapore’s transportation experience more seamless and connected, which are in line with the launch of Zipster.
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With the funding round led by FirstFloor Capital, the company is looking at strengthening its regional expansion

Southeast Asia-based TheLorry, the logistic platform headquartered in Malaysia, announced its US$5.85 million Series B fundraising led by FirstFloor Capital. Participating in the round were PNB-INSPiRE Ethical Fund I, Cradle Seed Ventures, and Axiata Digital Innovation Fund, as well as SPH Ventures who made a comeback after joining the Series A round.

The company stated that it plans to use the funds raised to strengthen its operations in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia.

TheLorry was founded in September 2014 with the vision of providing efficient and affordable logistics. It focusses on a logistics platform operation that connects both individuals and corporate clients to lorry, truck, and van owners in their database across Southeast Asia.

Using the platform, individual customers can do a transparent and reliable house moving and furniture transport. TheLorry highlights that it also serves multinational corporations in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), retail, industrial, and e-commerce sectors with technology-enabled distribution and long haul transport solutions.

Aside from using the funding to strengthen its position in the four mentioned markets, it will also be used to develop and improve the perception of lorry and truck drivers in their respective communities.

Also Read: Blockchain-based fintech company Everex signs deal with Krungthai Bank, SHWE Bank

“There is a lot of value in a lorry and truck driving career that many people have yet to see and appreciate,” said co-founder and Executive Director, Nadhir Ashafiq, “We want to be the agent of change in uplifting the status and income of lorry and truck drivers in this region.”

Since its Series A funding in 2016, TheLorry has managed to expand to Thailand and Indonesia just in 2018. According to Co-founder and Managing Director, Goh Chee Hau, TheLorry’s built ecosystem and optimised logistics technology continue to bring down logistics cost for its customers.
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Image Credit: TheLorry

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The fundraising of the Singapore-based startup was led by Tencent’s Co-founder Jason Zeng

Koku, the startup that provides foreign exchange (FX) technology solution in Singapore, announced today that it has raised a Pre-Series A funding for US$2 million led by Jason Zeng, Tencent Holding’s Co-founder and founder of Chinese angel investment company Decent Capital.

In its official statement, Koku mentioned that the funding will be used to accelerate Koku’s product development roadmap and for regional expansion into new Southeast Asia markets.

The expansion in question itself is said to be focussing on the growth of Koku’s FX TechUP suite, onboarding of deep technologies such as AI, and machine learning to leverage data in order to maximise benefits for users within the ecosystem

Founded in 2016, Koku works with Non-Bank Financial Intermediaries (NBFIs) including non-bank remittance companies and liquidity providers. Its Foreign Exchange (FX) technology solution allows these NBFIs to provide cheaper, quicker, and digital-first remittance services to their customers.

“Tech-enabling non-bank remittance service and liquidity providers requires quite a complex and different business model, it’s hard work,” said Calvin Goh, Founder and CEO of Koku. “Having said that, it’s extremely rewarding when we’re able to tech-enable this group of NBFIs and help them succeed in scaling their operations. We’re confident that we’re in good standing to further develop our offerings and expand into new markets as we move towards Series A.”

Also Read: mobilityX introduces all-in-one transport app Zipster

According to Chris Cao, Vice President of Decent Capital’s Angel Investment Department, Koku is the first company in Singapore that Tencent’s Co-founder Jason Zeng has invested in since co-founding Tencent.

Since the initial funding round, Koku said that it is able to increase cross-border collaboration between non-bank remittance service and liquidity providers in the region. Koku aims to raise a target of US$10 million in Series A funding by H1 2019.

Currently, the company is already working with NBFI partners in Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. Koku said that this round will set them up to achieve growth in headcount, increase transaction volume of US$10 million per day to US$22 million, as well as potential entry into markets in Southeast Asia including Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia and Cambodia over the next six months.
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Image Credit: Koku

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