Lapasar allows companies to purchase supplies for their businesses via a system that acts very much like a ‘add-to-cart and checkout’ service used in B2C marketplaces

Lapasar Co-founder and CEO Thinesh Kumar

Kuala Lumpur-based Tenderin, the startup behind online B2B procurement platform Lapasar.com, today announced it has secured a new round of investment totalling US$500,000, led by Singapore-based VC firm SeedPlus, wth participation from early-stage investor NEXEA.

Lapasar will use the capital to support product development to further automate ordering and request for quotation (RFQ) processes as well as to support business development activities.

Lapasar was founded in 2016 by Thinesh Kumar (CEO), along with Lakshman Das (COO) and Dannis Raj (Chief Process Officer). The platform allows companies to purchase supplies for their businesses via a system that acts very much like a ‘add-to-cart and checkout’ service used in B2C marketplaces. According to the founders, Lapasar helps corporates save time and cost, and makes it easy for them to buy in bulk.

Lapasar’s corporate clients include Malaysia Airports Holding Berhad (MAHB), Telekom Malaysia, and Tenaga Nasional Berhad.

“Corporations used to spend days before they could place an order for a product but with Lapasar, that task can now be accomplished within a few minutes– making efficiency an essential part of their corporate culture,” said CEO Kumar.

Also Read: I don’t think true-blue text-based digital media companies exist anymore: theAsianparent Founder Roshni Mahtani

“In the past twelve months, Lapasar has been experiencing an impressive transaction growth of over 20 times. Currently, our platform has already a database of over 10,000 suppliers of products and services from all over Malaysia,” he added.

In early 2018, Lapasar raised a pre-seed round of funding from NEXEA. The startup, which currently employs close to 30 people, also received a grant from Cradle in that year.

SeedPlus is a Jungle Ventures-backed VC firm looking to invest in and partner with founders building globally disruptive start-ups across Asia. Some of its investments include Moglix, Homage, CardUp, Evie.ai and CoveIOT.

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What do Google search, social media and email have in common? Besides being communication platforms, they are tools of digital marketing

We are now entering a new era where things are moving online and millennials depends on them for both work and leisure. We spend 27 hours on online media a week and more than 50% of us stay updated on brands through social media. The internet does wonders, and audiences of all ages are hooked. So, the question is, how do we build attention that subsequently translate to dollars?

We interviewed 4 digital marketing experts on the topic of digital marketing. These wizards will show you the different tried and tested methods to start getting traction for your business through digital platforms. From low cost advertising to startups tips, read on and you will be amazed what these hacks can do for you.

1. Bin Teo, Director of Bin Teo Consulting

He’s spent the last five years helping small business owners grow their clientele through digital marketing. More importantly, he helps them cut through the noise by assisting them to clarify which activities would be pivotal in moving the needle forward.

What advice do you have for a startup with a small digital marketing budget to grow quickly?

1. Stop trying to boil the entire ocean.

Unless you have an unlimited marketing budget (startups usually don’t), focus on dialing in on your ideal audience. Make sure you are clear about the pain you’re solving and how you are different from other solutions in the market.

One of my clients runs a commercial legal practice. Initially, their marketing materials were loaded with industry jargons such as liquidation and insolvency. While those were standard industry terms, it did not resonate with their target audience — startups. Therefore I assisted them in re-positioning them as “legal insurance” for startups in case things go wrong. This shift differentiated them from “run of the mill” legal firms where the generic claim was they had superior customer service. The change in messaging on their website design also proved useful in acquiring new qualified customers.

2. Continually test various acquisition channels to see determine which are the most profitable ones.

From there we tested various acquisition channels relevant to startups. For instance, buying advertising space and guest posting on startup news sites. Also using Facebook advertising to target users who followed startup-related pages. Regarding determining the most profitable channels, most companies focus on vanity metric such as the number of ‘clicks,’ ‘Facebook likes’ or ‘Twitter followers.’

Instead, you need to focus on the Cost Per Acquisition (CPA, how much it cost to acquire a customer on average) and the Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV, the total value of a customer on average). If CLTV > CPA, you are generally on the right track.

For one of my previous clients, we used email marketing as a new medium to help them sell more presentation courses and services. It was a no-brainer because of the low cost of using an email software versus the potential revenue they could get in a single sale.

Also read: 10 mistakes digital entrepreneurs commonly make

How do you envision the digital landscape in Singapore changing?

I envision that video marketing is going to be more popular since visitors’ attention spans are decreasing. Facebook ads would start to get more expensive due to market maturity, with more marketers jumping on the bandwagon. Along with findings from the Content Marketing Institute, I predict there will be more focus dedicated to content marketing, conversion rate optimisation, email segmentation and AI-driven chatbots in the coming years. Basically, automation is something that will inevitably hit the digital marketing scene and make it way easier for newbies to get into the space.

 2. Ian Tay, Founder of Your Idea Crew

Ian runs Your Idea Crew with a team of subject matter experts. They are a full-service web and app development agency that provides a range of services ranging from development, to digital marketing and cyber security.

His clients are small business owners trying to understand how their business are able to leverage on technologies to reap benefits from going digital. His team takes on the consultative role and strategise plans for their clients to execute, from the creation of digital assets to protection in terms of security, to marketing of the digital assets.

He is one of the few digital marketing experts that has success in both consumer (grew a consumer startup from 0 to 10k paying customers.) and B2B space (hit 6 figure revenues within first 3 months.)

What advice do you have for a startup with a small digital marketing budget to grow quickly?

Having a small marketing budget is great as it forces the team to be creative and find proven methods to scale their business. However, before even scaling their business, we need to know who are the target customers and the real buying customers for the startup. It is often in this marketing phase where they find the difference in ideal and real customers are. I would advise that they use this a small budget to first test their ad copies to find test groups of customers to know who and what kind of customers they exactly want and need. With that done they can do a proper profiling of their customers and know where to advertise to get them or their look-alike audience.

For example, if you managed to find out that most of your customers are mothers with children below 2 years old, you would want to place your ads on Youtube Kids channel where they will frequent during meal times.

How do you envision the digital landscape in Singapore changing?

With platforms maturing and changing their algorithms frequently, every company will need a dedicated CMO whose role is to understand how to convert users from digital marketing and get the strategies executed. Companies are just getting around that Digital Marketing is the lifeblood of companies, just like Sales. Therefore, the perception is changing from a “Cost Centre” to a “Revenue Centre”. “Cost Centre” is a term that is used to describe if the departments of a company, like HR or Admin, incur costs but indirectly contribute to revenue. “Revenue Centre” means that the departments that help generates the company’s revenue directly, like Sales or Ecommerce for example.

3. Joel Leong, Founder-Consultant at Sidekick Marketing

Joel is founder at Sidekick Marketing where they help brands raise massive amounts of cash in crowdfunding projects through consulting and strategy. They’ve helped clients raise more than $1.5Million in crowdfunding proceeds and provides digital marketing consulting as well. Joel is also CEO at Grouphunt – a marketplace where people can organise their own mass orders.

What advice do you have for a startup with a small digital marketing budget to grow quickly?

Being digital is about communicating your core values and making communication available to your prospects or customers. Businesses can go a step further by lubricating that communication, in other words, making it clear, easy, and personable for their customers to contact them.

We find that most newer businesses trying to get into digital don’t have a good handle on their value propositions. In essence, they assume that the nature of the service is enough to attract new customers. Something as simple as separating benefits from features can set you apart from your competitors.

For example, if you’re selling marketing services, you’ll want to flesh out the inherent benefits of the service. If you’re writing for small businesses, driving more qualified traffic and conversions will be a benefit you want to showcase. It is not always talked about, but effective copywriting can accelerate your business by convincing your audiences online at-scale.

How do you envision the digital landscape in Singapore changing?

I think adopting digital is a natural evolution in the way of doing business. As more and more businesses get digitised, ironically it levels the playing field and it goes back to basic business fundamentals. Are you providing a unique solution to an addressable market, and are you communicating that clearly and taking the right steps to reach the right people?

Take Carousell that basically digitised how people purchase goods from others locally. These communities used to exist on digital forums like Hardwarezone Forums where users would deal with each other with second-hand goods.

At Grouphunt, we’ve also tapped on that progression by allowing people to conduct mass orders at scale rather than posting on forums in a manual fashion.

Think about your current model of selling and adding value – is there a way to digitise it and scale your marketing in a similar fashion?

4. Joseph Ho, Founder of E-Alchemists

Joseph Ho runs a digital marketing agency E-Alchemists based in Singapore. In 2006, he encountered his first experience in digital marketing and eventually specialising in search engine optimisation.

What is ‘digital marketing’ to you?

To me, digital marketing is a data-driven marketing. You market your product/services on the internet and then collect the data from the campaign. Based on the data collected, you improve your next campaign.

For example when you start your paid traffic advertising like Facebook ads. You first create 5 to 10 different ad sets targeting different interest or etc. After you run for 2 to 3 days based on the data collected, delete those ad sets that are not performing and keep those that are performing well.

Repeat this process until you are satisfied with the result and save the winning ad sets and use it for your next campaign.

Also read: AI is set to kill digital marketing, thus marketers need to evolve

If you could recommend one digital marketing hack for a new business to grow fast – what would it be?

You can actually start your local SEO campaign while you are still building your website.

Here is the hack:

• Register your business address with google my business (google.com/business)
• Verify it and then use Google my business website function
• Input the basic information and then start by filling up all the information required on google my business. Add photo, posts and select the correct business category
• Then start building citations to your website

By doing these few steps, you will have a chance to rank up in the top 3 map listing packs without having your website fully ready.

Anything else to add?

As paid advertising is getting more expensive. Businesses should think of considering building digital traffic assets (aka. reusable traffic) such as Facebook groups, followers on social media and email lists. By building these assets, it allows businesses to recycle the same audience for different platforms.

Well there you go, here are the tips and tricks from the digital marketing experts. We hope that it provided some insights on how you can boost your traction on the internet with the help of these pieces of advice. Let us know in the comments below if you have found it useful!

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This article was first published on e27 on February 28, 2018.

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

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Featured Image: 123RF

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Before you pick up that phone, take a look at these inbound marketing tips

My father was a great businessman, entrepreneur, successful CEO and avid reader. I’ve been fortunate enough to inherit his books, and I came across this older one recently: Cold Calling Techniques (That Really Work!)

Have you ever cold-called or do you now? Cold calling can be exhausting and frustrating.

“I wanted to introduce you to my product and see if you had some time to sit down for 15-20 minutes to go through some information.”

Ninety-nine per cent of the time, the prospect is thinking, “Wow, what a waste of time that would be.” Their response: “I think I’m all set for now, thank you for the call though.”

Yikes!

Finding the light

When I started my career, I utilised only outbound sales methods:

• Cold calling or emailing lists from paid lead services
• Cold emailing
• Trade show appearances
• Walking into someone’s office and knocking on their door to introduce myself

I realised there had to be an easier way to reach my audience. My goal was to “get in front” of the people who needed a product that would solve their problem. Once people knew we existed, they’d find value in the product. I just needed help getting the sales process started! That’s when I started supplementing my sales efforts through inbound marketing.

Following up with inbound marketing leads

In 2011, I convinced my boss at the time to switch to HubSpot (disclosure: our company is a certified partner), adopt an inbound marketing methodology and transform how we relate to prospects and clients. That shift was monumental for the business and for myself as a sales representative. The difference between calling inbound lead versus cold calling an outbound lead was night and day.

Using our marketing software tools, I could see the person I was calling had viewed 17 pages on our site and was interested in specific topics. Conversations were easy. Prospects were interested in learning more. The shift in our marketing and selling strategy was so gratifying, I wanted to help other clients do the same thing.

This is how our growth agency was born and our mission was set: to help other companies increase their website visitors and sales-ready leads.

Also Read: How do you grow your startup? Take some advice from 4 experts in digital marketing

From inbound marketing to inbound sales

Inbound sales mean aligning your sales efforts with the way prospects want to buy. People don’t like being sold to. Prospects want to be shown how a product or service will accomplish their goal(s) or solve their pain point(s).

Pipeline generation and inbound sales tips

In my journey to become an inbound sales expert, I participated in the Hubspot Pipeline Generation Bootcamp program with Dan Tyre. Below are my top 10 inbound sales takeaways from the programme:

1. Warm calling is crucial. Switching to inbound does not mean you can retire your phone. After you start generating website leads, you need to call each one (multiple times, intermixed with short, helpful emails). You may have to reach out seven to eight times before connecting with the prospect.
2. Do your pre-call research. Many sales representatives haven’t considered insight for the prospect that will actually help. Review the company website and comb through their social media platforms. Find the prospect on LinkedIn to locate some points to help you build rapport.
3. Don’t rush the sales process. The goal of this “connect call” is to establish rapport and see if it makes sense to schedule a follow up exploratory call where you’ll discover their goals, challenges, and timelines.
4. Use pauses to your advantage. Let the inbound lead/prospect do the talking. Once you say your name and what company you’re from, shut your mouth and get comfortable with pauses. It’s easy to visualise but difficult to execute. Pausing is your new secret sauce. Embrace the awkward pause — it puts the prospect in the driver’s seat, which is where they should be.
5. Practice before picking up the phone. Find a buddy to hold you accountable. Bonus: If you’re like me, you’re competitive and can be motivated by hearing what others are accomplishing.
6. Embrace the art of the voicemail. Most people are terrible at leaving voicemails. Learn how to leave quality messages. This article is packed with helpful suggestions, especially number three.
7. Use video voicemails for an effective, less mundane approach. Try the free Soapbox tool by Wistia (disclosure: our company is a certified partner). You can easily produce personalised video voicemails to include in your email.
8. Listen. The best salespeople aren’t loudmouths that can work a room. The best salespeople are good active listeners.
9. Between calls, send emails. Your emails should offer relevant, personalised information. The following guides are packed with helpful information you can use in your sales outreach.
10. Vision boards are underrated. Why are you doing what you do every day? What’s your personal motivation? A vision board can be a collection of family photos, things you love and hobbies with bullet points of what inspires you. Keep this on your desk in plain view.

Also Read: A guide to marketing apps effectively through affiliate marketing

Inbound sales representatives sleep better at night

When someone says they’re “in sales,” we immediately start thinking of ways to get these people to stop calling or emailing us nonstop. This is all thanks to traditional outbound sales representatives who call and email us nonstop while bringing no value to the table.

Flipping this mindset on its head, inbound sales can be thought of as a way of aligning our sales outreach to how the prospect prefers to buy something. This is a more powerful, sustainable position. Hopefully you found these takeaways to be helpful with your own sales outreach efforts. Start practicing these tips and let me know how it goes!

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A version of this post originally appeared here.

Stephen Beach is co-founder and CEO of Craft Impact – a growth agency helping B2B companies generate more quality leads from their websites.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organisation comprising the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship programme that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

Image Credit: Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

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Is failure really the mother of success?

Is failure a good or a bad thing in business? Most people may answer that it is a “bad thing” because obviously, no one plans to fail, but sometimes, it takes failure to succeed. In this post, we look at 8 reasons why failure in business isn’t too bad after all.

Helps us appreciate the reality

Without failure, we are likely to become arrogant and think we have full knowledge of the world of business. It may even lead us to lose sight of the value of our customers, suppliers, government authorities, and many other business stakeholders. We can easily feel invincible to the extent that we fail to see the need for advertising, prudence in resource management, and even proper human resource management.

Also Read: How the world’s most successful founders approach failure

When we fail in business, we are able to sit back and reflect on what went wrong and what we can do to improve going forward. It is a strong rallying call back to reality; back to respecting every employee, customer, investor, and any other person or thing that is significant to your business.

It is the best chance of learning from our mistakes

Sometimes failure is the best teacher in the world of business. As much as we look for case studies and learn from other people’s success or failure stories, we still need to make our own mistakes in order to qualify as established entrepreneurs.

And don’t get me wrong: No one should go out looking for failure, but if it comes, then the best thing to do is take it in our stride and move on, better and wiser. Think of a case where your failure came as a result of not acquiring the right legal documents or the right insurance covers for your business. There is a high chance that you will never repeat that mistake ever again.

Prepares us for future downtime

Why did you fail in the first place? Sometimes we fail not because we did something wrong but because of strong external forces that are beyond our control. For example, changes in your niche may happen so fast and throw you off balance, maybe because you don’t have the right tools needed to withstand the changes.

Or maybe the government introduced new business tariffs that significantly hindered your business. Or maybe some politically-motivated decisions were made by those in power and they affected your business negatively. The good thing is that you now know that these things can happen in business and you will, therefore, be better prepared for a rainy day when they hit you next time.

It’s a new dawn

This might sound like a big, fat joke to many but it is true: Failure marks the beginning of a new dawn. It is the perfect time to rebuild and do things right. When you fail, hit the restart button, dust yourself, and move on. What’s more, if you succeed in getting back on your feet after a failure, you will have developed a thick skin, a higher level of courage, and an inner strength that you didn’t have before. You will have tons of doubters to prove wrong and that will make you perform even better this time. This is one chance that only comes once in an entrepreneur’s life.

Teaches us to self-motivate

Being able to motivate yourself when everyone around you is losing patience with you is vital in succeeding in business. After failure, people who hang around you just to get a share of your success will leave and only the ones who truly believe in your ability will remain. And when everyone abandons you, you motivate yourself back and work towards success. In the future, that helps you to work your socks off without caring whether or not someone is watching.

Also Read: Learning from early failures: An inside look at Singaporean startup Outside

Challenges make entrepreneurs strong

With the right entrepreneurial spirit, you definitely see every setback as a challenge, not a failure per se. You probably even have plans B, C, and D in case plan A fails. In that case, failure makes you want to try other plans and approaches. It even helps you discover strengths that you never imagined you had.

It eliminates fear

Sometimes we fail because of our fear of failure. New technology is injected into your niche but your fear of uncertainty prevents you from leveraging it. You get new ideas, but you put them on hold for the fear that they aren’t good enough. Then, out of nowhere, failure strikes! That is the point where you learn that being careful and slow adaptor isn’t always a guarantee that everything will run smoothly. When rebuilding, therefore, you implement ideas without the fear of failure.

Conclusion

After tasting both failure and success, this would be a great time to become a life coach and be helping upcoming entrepreneurs to make the right business decisions. What’s more; you will make another revenue-generating opportunity out of it.

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

Join our e27 Telegram group here, or our e27 contributor Facebook page here.

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Before you evaluate and assess startups for your potential portfolio, keep these in mind

Through my personal experience in AngelCentral over the past couple of months, I observed that the amount of interest in angel investing has been increasing steadily. With the rise of equity crowdfunding platforms and activity among angel networks in this region, many more individuals are keen to explore the possibility of investing in startups as an alternative class. While angel investing should not be seen as an activity purely for making financial gains, I have found the five most fundamental things that new angel investors have to master if they wish to be successful.

1. Generate quality deal flow

No matter how good you might be at evaluating startups or sizing the market, it will be of little use if you do not find quality startups to meet with in the first place. Unless you are blessed to know many people who can bring you potential startup opportunities, it is difficult for you to meet and gain access to quality startups when starting out.

Compared to the stock market where investment opportunities are easily accessible, finding quality startups to invest takes time and effort. You will need to know how to network, position yourself as a value-adding angel investor, get exclusive invites to demo and pitch days, etc. This is why when starting out, many beginners will join angel investment networks to gain access to startups that would have already been curated for them. Overseas platforms like AngelList or OurCrowd are great options for those looking to start their angel investing journey.

2. Pick the right founders

The world of startups and entrepreneurship is complex and chaotic. People can have the best ideas, but executing them well is a whole story. Through your journey as an angel investor, you need to learn how to pick founders who are the most suitable to grow their business in a sustainable and meaningful manner.

Sam Altman, Partner of YCombinator, also believes in finding founders who are not only intelligent to recognise trends and patterns not easily seen by others, but also creative enough to constantly generate ideas for potential solutions to overcome various issues and challenges. Other traits to look at will be a founder’s ability to communicate, execution speed, and their motivation to do what they do.

Also read: Why e27 Academy will turn 2019 into the best year for your startup

3. Invest in only what you understand

Warren Buffet, the legendary value investor who is currently the 3^rd richest person in the world, believes that everyone should invest within their “Circle of Competence”. Earlier this month, AngelCentral organised a panel on deep tech investing, and one of the biggest takeaways for investors were that they should always look to understand what they are investing in. It might take some effort, but it is important work for you to do if you wish to be an effective angel investor.

While following more experienced angels through syndicates can be a worthwhile strategy for those who just started out, it is still important to have a good understanding of the market, technology and solution behind the startup that you are investing in. Stories in Silicon Valley such as Theranos and Juicero are stark reminders that even the most “sophisticated” investors can make serious and even silly mistakes at times.

4. Portfolio sizing

One of the key messages we emphasize to participants at AngelCentral’s workshops is that that angel investing is an illiquid and binary activity that is highly risky. This is why we believe that portfolio sizing is something very important that all angel investors should do.

Another general rule of thumb is to invest in about 15-25 companies. However, this presents a huge challenge for many angels, as the minimum cheque size for each startup tends to be about $50K at best. As a rough illustration, following what former founder and angel investor Huang Shao Ning noted in her blog, the cash you need for angel investing should be about 15-20% of your investment portfolio. If you invest in $50K for each of the 20 startups and leave another $50K for 10 follow rounds, your investment portfolio should have about $7.5million for this to make sense, which could seem rather intimidating for the average angel.

This is why one of the key values I see that startup investment syndicates can bring to angel investors, as it helps to effectively bring down the minimum cheque sizes that angels have to invest for each deal.

5. Evaluating and assessing the right companies

My belief is that only when you understand the 4 points above, should you look to start assessing and evaluating startups.

Generally, based on what I have read, most of the assessment frameworks tend to focus on the following: 1) People (as shared above) and execution capability, 2) Potential market opportunity, 3) Strength of solution, and 4) Deal terms.

Conclusion

It is my hope that the angel investing scene in Southeast Asia continues to develop and we see a lot more investors coming into the space. If any of you are keen to find out more and learn about angel investing, check us out at our website here!

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This article was first published on e27 on October 29, 2018.

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

Join our e27 Telegram group here, or our e27 contributor Facebook page here.

Photo by Pierre Gui on Unsplash

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Held at Hong Kong’s RISE, PITCH is said to be the world’s largest pitching competition

Singapore-based logistics startup Haulio announced that it has come up as champion of PITCH at this year’s RISE tech conference in Hong Kong, held from July 8-11.

Often dubbed as the world’s biggest pitching competition, PITCH saw over sixty startups competing over three days.

“As the first Singaporean startup to win PITCH, RISE has been a tremendous opportunity to set Singapore and Haulio on the world stage. It has already opened valuable doors for us to form strategic partnerships in the region,” Haulio CEO and Co-Founder Alvin Ea commented in a press statement.

“Haulio’s win this year further cements that the haulage problem we’re solving is global and real. We’re excited to partner with stakeholders to transform this global problem and bring this space into the digital future,” he continued.

Also Read: In an increasingly complex industry, HAULIO takes on a massive challenge

The company said that since its launch on May 2017, it has been working with industry partners and stakeholders to overcome various industry challenges, with the aim to build a digital and interconnected
haulage industry with greater productivity and operational efficiency.

It has helped to digitalise the movements of over 150,000 TEUs containing 2.5 million tonnes of cargo.

In May 2018, Haulio raised S$1 million (US$736,000) in a seed round investment. The funding round was led by PSA unboXed and included the participation of 500 Startups, NUS Enterprise, and several logistics industry angel investors.

The funding followed an S$75,000 (US$55,000) pre-seed funding from PSA unboXed and 500 Startups.

Haulio is also one of the transportation services that Singapore-based taxi company ComfortDelGro has invested in recently.

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Image Credit: Haulio

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Don’t waste your time and resources fighting lawsuits when you could be focussing on build your startup

A business is a legal entity, and because of that, it will be subject to the laws of the land. It takes a lot to register a business the right way, but it’s imperative to do so. For a savvy con-artist, a legal loophole is the most natural thing in the world to exploit.

It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of doing something because it’s more comfortable, but that only marginally obeys the law. While it might save money in the short term, the long-term impact could be devastating.

Building a business is more than just having a dream and following it. You need to protect the business against anything that could occur, and that means being aware of what legal issues might arise. Bulletproofing a company legally requires that you follow the major pillars of the law.

Ensuring that you’re covered helps to give you peace of mind and makes sure that you can spend more time building the business and less time worrying about potential legal problems.

Incorporation as a tool

Incorporation, as defined by The Business Dictionary, is a method by which an intangible, artificial legal entity called a corporation is produced. The process of incorporation provides a level of abstraction between what belongs to the company and what belongs to the individual, i.e., you.

Also Read: Screwing up IP law is an easy way to doom your startup

You don’t want the company’s actions to affect your private assets and vice versa. Additionally, any transactions regarding the business won’t have any hold on your assets. This separation is essential to protect your property by separating it from what the corporation owns.

Intellectual property considerations

Some businesses deal in the production of new ideas. In many of those businesses, employees are required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement as well as an acknowledgment that whatever they produce for the company becomes owned by the corporation. Drafting these agreements is a crucial step to protect the business against competition from its own former employees as well as leveraging its new creations on the open market.

Remaining on the right side of the law

A vast majority of corporations are limited liability companies, meaning that there’s an invisible line between what the company owns and what its shareholders own individually. In most states, corporations must conform to a series of steps to remain “in good standing” with the state. If they don’t fit those steps, that invisible line dissolves, and the owner and shareholders may all face fines on their private assets.

Get the right insurance

Business insurance coverage is one of the most important steps a business owner can take against liabilities. For some businesses, getting the lowest auto insurance is also a concern that registers significantly.

Chron mentions that a single mishap could potentially wipe out all the assets of a particular business, and having insurance guarantees against that mishap. In the case of a natural disaster, insurance may be able to cover the cost of replacing inventory or infrastructure. Insurance can also help a business’ reputation with their clients.

Employee rights and wages

Employee contracts need to be well-crafted to both protect the business and ensure that the employee knows exactly where he or she stands. Forbes advises that contracts allow the company to set boundaries and limitations on expectations.

This is especially important when it comes to dealing with employees since knowing their rights empowers them and allows them to make decisions that can aid their productivity as well as their well-being. Additionally, airtight contracts with employees give the business a solid foundation for future negotiations.

Write down everything

It might seem like overkill, but ensuring that everything is recorded can be essential in proving what a company has done. Having a paper trail can prevent or curtail lawsuits. It is imperative that a company documents every step it takes, regardless of how insignificant that step might seem.

Also Read: The importance of failure: 7 reasons why it makes us better entrepreneurs

Furthermore, having written agreements set out what the company expects and what is likely to happen if the employee or business partner doesn’t live up to the expectations of the contract. It puts all the signatories on the same level, considering what is at stake should the agreement fall through.

Bulletproofing using the law

While there is no guaranteed way to stop people from bringing suits against a company, setting a legal framework in place helps prepare the business for any lawsuits that may come their way. The law exists as both a warning and protection.

Having an experienced legal firm drawing up company documents and contracts is vital to the long-term success of the company. Legal battles should not impact the growth of a business because the company failed to protect itself adequately. The onus is on the business owner to ensure that his or her business can withstand any legal bullets that are fired in their direction.

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Before you even embark on building out your idea, think about whether this journey is for you

For many business leaders, a life of entrepreneurship is often more of a calling or vocation than it is a job. If you’ve been considering becoming an entrepreneur, the reasons for doing so may be many, but honing in on the right motivations for pursuing a path towards entrepreneurship can and should be a difficult proposition requiring much soul-searching.

The good news is that when entrepreneurship is pursued for the right reasons, it can be one of the most rewarding paths that a person can take in life.

Here are just a few questions to ask yourself to know if entrepreneurship is the right path for you, and why realistically planning for the future is one of the best things that an aspiring entrepreneur can do.

Are you passionate about your product or service?

While the rewards of starting a business are many, the truth is that entrepreneurs work very long hours for very little money in the initial stages of developing a company. Even when a company succeeds, founders need to work hard to ensure that their company will reach its full potential.

Also Read: There’s no such thing as motivation

Fortunately, a passion for one’s work can get entrepreneurs through any road bump that may arise through this process, but without passion or genuine interest in their field, individuals can burn out long before their company gets off the ground. If you’re truly passionate about your business idea, you’ll already be miles ahead of the competition.

Does your product or service have a good likelihood of succeeding?

As any successful business founder will tell you, one of the greatest assets an entrepreneur can have is a realistic plan for success. A realistic business plan will help entrepreneurs acquire funding for their business, it is true, but such a plan will also let individuals know whether their efforts will be worth the time and expense of creating a start-up and entering the marketplace.

To test the waters on an idea, try looking at the current market to see how similar businesses are faring in everything from acquiring clients to creating an IPO.

When you can develop a realistic expectation for how your company will succeed, you’ll be all the stronger when you make a case for funding to your investors, and you’ll feel confident in your ability to meet new challenges head-on.

What truly motivates you to create a company?

Years ago, psychologists developed the notion of “intrinsic” vs. “extrinsic” motivation. In study after study, psychologists found that people who developed a personal sense of satisfaction in their work ended up being far more resilient and successful than peers who derived their self-image from the opinions of others.

To wit, intrinsic motivation is based on a deep sense of personal satisfaction with one’s self and one’s work; extrinsic motivation derives itself from exterior factors such as social pressure or a deep (and often unhealthy) need for accumulating wealth or social status.

Also Read: Why mentorship is critical for startup founders to succeed

When our sense of motivation is based on what we want for ourselves, in other words, we’ll be far more likely to achieve our goals. When we’re pursuing a career path simply because we feel pressure from parents, friends, or society to do so, on the other hand, we’ll experience deep resentment and burnout in the long-term.

For these reasons, a decision to pursue a path of entrepreneurship is a major life step that should not be taken lightly. If you’re passionate and self-directed in your goals and planning, however, pursuing entrepreneurship as a calling may just be the best decision that you can make in life.

Indeed, if you love meeting challenges as they arise and derive a personal sense of satisfaction from developing your ideas and seeing them through, you may just find that life as an entrepreneur suits you perfectly. And that is entrepreneurship done right!

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Image Credit : Marina Gloria Gallud Carbonell

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Southeast Asia provides exciting opportunities for agritech startups. Investors are definitely not ignoring this

In Southeast Asia, the agricultural industry has contributed greatly to tackling some of the greatest challenges the region has faced.

According to the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2017-2026, “The development of the agricultural and fisheries sectors1 has contributed to the improvements in food security, and both sectors remain a key part of food security policy for regional policymakers. In this way, agricultural and fisheries policy settings are interlinked with food security objectives.”

The region provides plenty of opportunities to explore and challenges to tackle for tech companies. Singapore is definitely not an exception in this matter; with its focus on innovation, we have seen several startups offering groundbreaking tech. These companies aim to make a change in various ways, from helping farmers improve yield to connecting F&B businesses to suppliers through an online platform.

Within the e27 startup database, we recorded at least 20 active agritech startups operating in Singapore.

While we aim to list down some of the most well-funded agritech startups in the country, it is also important to note that many of these companies are keeping their funding rounds undisclosed.

Also Read: Meet the 10 agritech, foodtech startups pitching for Future Food Asia’s US$100K grand prize

The following is a list of the most well-funded agritech startups in Singapore, based on their disclosed funding rounds as recorded in the e27 database.

We will start with the two companies that have raised millions of US Dollars:

Chemopower Technology Pte Ltd

Funding raised: US$10 million in Series A funding round from undisclosed investors (2016)

Chemopower Technology is a tech company which provides efficient and cost-effective solutions to identify chemical compositions via novel approaches.

The services that it offers include Data Analysis Service, Herb Data Inquire Service, and Universal Chemical Analyses Platform.

“To this end, ChemoPower developed a software that can reconstruct pure components’ spectra and its concentration without prior information using solely experimental data, without any simulation or peak matching,” the company explains in the e27 startup database.

“Our solution is built on the foundation of chemometrics: mathematical techniques based on statistics and optimisation method to find local/global optima of a system and is crystallised from the knowledge of more than 200 International Journals on chemometrics-related algorithms,” it continues.

The founding team was awarded the Gold Award for the High Performance Computing (HPC) Quest 2003 in Singapore, hosted by IBM.

Overdrive IoT

Funding raised: US$2.9 million in Series A funding round from Tin Men Capital (2019)

Overdrive describes itself as a true Internet of Things (IoT) platform that manages the information flow from a multitude of sensors, ranging from complex machines such as an automobile to a simple mobile device.

It also manages information flow from cloud platform that allows companies and developers to easily access the information to build smart applications.

In the automobile, transportation and logistics industry, Overdrive has a widely tested range of sensors that reads the engine diagnostics, driving behaviour and location of any vehicles.

For the B2B sector, Overdrive is enabling fleet operators and fleet managers to better manage their vehicle assets.

Also Read: Agritech is giving a globally vital industry a facelift, startups take center stage

In addition to Chemopower Technology and Overdrive, the following companies have also disclosed their funding rounds:

Brightree

Funding raised: US$350,000 in seed funding round by undisclosed investor(s) (2013)

Brightree provides an industrial IoT platform that is described as easily customisable for most industrial IoT applications such as marine, plantation, and factory automation.

Gaining experience from a remote oil well monitoring project for Schlumberger, the founders developed the unified platform for remote monitoring and ubiquitous control of industrial types of machinery. They formed the corporation with the assistance of the Singapore government’s Spring TECS grant.

The company provides innovative and quality satellite solutions with applications in remote engine monitoring and diagnostics, remote fuel management, agriculture plantation yield monitoring as well as asset tracking.

Zeemart

Funding raised: US$200,000 in pre-seed funding round from Neeraj Sundarajoo (2016)

Zeemart is a B2B sourcing platform for the F&B industry, with a mission to enable businesses make smarter purchasing decisions via its e-procurement platform.

Buyers will be able to view catalogs online and place order for suppliers to take. Suppliers are also given an app to manage deliveries. All the process is automatically recorded, enabling buyers to manage their time more effectively.

MapGage

Funding raised: US$50,000 in pre-seed funding round from an undisclosed investor (2016)

MapGage is a cloud-based solution that enables clients to integrate drone maps, blueprints, sensors, and field observations. It aims to increase the practical and operational value of drone-acquired data.

In addition to agriculture, its services are also used in industrial inspections, construction, infrastructure maintenance, and golf clubs.

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Image Credit: Skull Kat on Unsplash

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Be ready for a long and arduous journey

When I got to Singapore in 2011 and was starting Perx, the ecosystem looked a lot different than it does today. I am committed to the region for the long-term, so I really want to see the ecosystem expand and mature here. As a result, I’ve spent a lot of time working with incubators, speaking at tech events, and mentoring startups to help grow the ecosystem.

As I mentored companies, built my own or helped build others, I noticed that I was hearing the same issues and was offering the same advice, so I started to create a playbook to building a startup. I’m hoping that learning from my mistakes will help save you from making some of them yourselves and get you to your next milestone faster.

I’ve never been a one for writing, so I’m going to try a different format for this post… ie. Lots of bullets!

Identify your purpose

As a founder, there are two important things you need to do:

1. Be ready for the long journey

2. Hire great people to delegate as quickly as possible

You’ve heard this many times, start-ups are hard. There will be high-highs and low-lows. Having a purpose for yourself that you truly believe in will help you get through the many times you’ll want to give up.

Also Read: Traits in a startup founder that VCs look out for

But that’s not enough, where I think a lot of new founders make the mistake is not spending enough time to clearly articulate to their team what the company’s purpose is. This may or may not be the same purpose you have as an entrepreneur. Once you have identified this purpose:

• Make sure everyone in the company knows what this is and all interpret it the same way.
• Make sure you only hire people who believe in and are legitimately excited about this purpose.
• Your progress will accelerate dramatically as soon as you start to hire people that you can delegate to and get a load off of your plate. If people are aligned towards the goal, you can be confident that they can make decisions autonomously and will focus on the right things.

What problem are you solving?

Ok, so now you have a purpose, but what problem are you solving and is it really big enough? I’ve heard hundreds of company pitches and probably 99% of them were either too small or weren’t solving a painful enough problem. Or even worse, they were a solution in search of a problem.

My rule of thumb when trying to identify a problem is to ask these questions:

• How painful is this problem?
• If you were to shut down would your users be knocking down the door to get you to reopen?
• How big is the market the problem is solving? This doesn’t mean I want you to go solve the problem for everyone that has the problem immediately, more on that later, but you should see a path to large scale.

Who are your customers?

• • Figure out at least 3-4 personas of potential customers you think would benefit from your product

• • Start to test these personas, whether through product features, user studies, research or sales. At Perx, we tested new merchant personas almost every week to figure out who really needed our product.

Also Read: What makes a successful corporate-startup engagement? Here are 4 questions to ask yourself

• • Start to eliminate personas as they fail your tests. This may mean they don’t convert at high enough rates, they don’t find the problem that compelling, they have poor retention rates, or they are not ready. You don’t have time to waste on difficult personas, they can come later.

• • Once you find your “easy-money” personas, it’s time to double down. Focus your entire team on this customer. Plaster it everywhere in your office so everyone remembers. When everyone is aligned, you suddenly see that your product team knows what features to prioritize, your sales team knows what customers to sell to, your management will all be able to make decisions much faster.

Don’t worry about having a narrow focus. If you create a great product for this customer and scale them, you’ll find that a good portion of what you built will apply to the next persona you target and the next and the next.
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The article was originally posted on Monk’s Hill Ventures’ blog and was first republished on e27 on August 6, 2018.

Jon Sugihara is an Operating Advisor at Monk’s Hill Ventures. and has founded a number of companies in the US and Asia. Currently, he is the head of strategic partnership for the Next Billion Users group at Google. Previously, Jon held positions as Chief Product Officer at KODAKIT and RedMart. He first entered the Asian market as the founder of Perx in Singapore.

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

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