Nexting has also developed four startups in-house for an incubation program — Lifyn, Vision Building, Next Pictures and Pinnacle Living

Malaysia has got a new startup incubator, with Selangor-based Nexting Venturesannouncing its official launch.

In a statement, the company said it has also raised RM1.6 million (over US380,000) in funding from undisclosed angel investors.

Nexting aims to impact living in the coming decades.

“We want to provide a more convenient, humanized, and implementable solution for the next generation. We programmed impact living in all the aspects of our product and services — from the stage of ideation and development, to bringing it to our users and clients,” said Penny Leong, Chief Business Development Officer, Nexting.

Also Read: Alibaba, Facebook co-founders back East Ventures’s new US$75M fund focused on Indonesia

“Malaysia, with its strategic location and diverse culture, is a nation with a rapid-growing ecosystem that has much to offer the world. With that, we would like to seize the potential and opportunity of technology, talents, and innovation to redistribute opportunity in the community and society in which we live,” said Nexting Ventures CEO Sophia Tey.

Nexting was founded in 2017 by six founders. In the current form, Nexting is a multi-platform business solutions provider, focusing on a diversity of entities. The company intends to nurture diverse talent with great opportunities, including great products, services, and solutions geared directly towards next generation needs and wants.

The four-month-old incubator has also grown its team from six to 40 people in 2019, and recently expanded its operations to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.

Nexting has also developed four startups in-house for an incubation program.

Below is a brief profile of each startup:

Lifyn Co: A tenant management app, Lifyn is designed to solve problems between the house owner and the tenant.

Vision Building: A team building and training company in Malaysia. It helps organizations build a team with a vision, inculcate, and instill corporate vision, mission, values, and cultures to employees.

Next Pictures: A media production house specializing in channeling art through story-telling.

Pinnacle Living: It aims to empower people in creating a happy home by providing top-notch home and living products specializing in bedding, bathing, home decoration, and home planning items.

 

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Tips that will help you avoid the main challenges of a distributed team and move on to startup success

By Christin Baumgarten on April 11, 2017. Originally published on Startups.co– the world’s largest startup platform, helping over 1 million startup companies. More from Startups.

Remote work. Work from home. Telecommuting and teleworking. Whatever you call it, distributed teams are becoming increasingly popular …  and it’s here to stay.

A recent Gallup Poll noted that, in the US, telecommuting for work is up 37 per cent in the last decade. Thirty-four per cent of business leaders surveyed at a recent Global Leadership Summit in London predicted more than half of their company’s global workforce would work remotely by 2020. Around the world, more and more companies are building distributed teams, just like we have at Mailbird.

When you look at the benefits of having a distributed team, it’s understandable why we chose to build our team this way. Happy people make great work and, generally speaking, those who work remotely are happier, more engaged, and dedicated to the work they do. At Mailbird, we have access to some of the best and brightest minds around the world—not just within a 100-mile radius of an office. Our talent pool isn’t limited by geography, and that means we can hire the perfect person for every job.

Despite these benefits, it’s not always easy to manage a distributed team. We have faced (and still face!) a lot of challenges. But we think the benefits of remote work vastly outweigh the challenges. Through experience, we’ve learned how to tackle these challenges and become experts on telecommuting.

Also Read: Reid Hoffman: I think it’s always smart to be terrified

So let’s look at some of the keys to successful remote teams, and how we handle the challenges of them.

Hiring the right people

The most important step you can take in building a distributed team is hiring the right people. But that’s much easier said than done. It’s much more challenging to assess a candidate through technology, rather than in person. The best things you can do is clearly define what you’re looking for —and do not compromise on it— and take your time with the interview process. You wouldn’t buy the first car you test drove, right? Maybe you would, but most likely not. New hires are an investment, and you should interview multiple people before you decide who to hire, even if it doesn’t end up being the first person you met with.

Even if you follow all the right steps in the interview, people can still surprise you. They may have seemed great on paper and in the interview, but when actually put on the job, they fail. It happens! That’s why we always recommend a probationary period to assess fit and productivity, usually around three months. If it doesn’t work out on either side, you can go your separate ways.

Finding the right cultural fit

Hiring the right people isn’t just about finding someone with the right qualifications and skills to do the job. It’s also about matching on cultural fit. If your entire distributed team isn’t on the same culture page, it can be disastrous for your business.

At Mailbird, open communication, transparency, and autonomy are extremely important to our culture. If someone isn’t pulling their weight on the team, it’s obvious. That can be challenging, especially for new hires —but it also presents the opportunity to address the issue early and avoid any tension within the team. Transparency through time and task management tools holds our employees accountable, but also helps them feel empowered and that they have impact in the organisation. We’ve also built an agile business with minimal hierarchies. Some people need more oversight to be successful, and that’s okay. They just wouldn’t fit well culturally on our team.

Every company is different, and it’s important to be clear upfront with new hires on what kind of culture exists at your company. You’d hate to waste your time on someone who isn’t a good cultural fit, just like that person would hate to waste their time with a company that misled them on culture.

Also Read: Expecting chaos with former Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson

Maintaining great communication

Once you’ve hired the right people, open and effective communication is key to a successful distributed team. It’s how collaboration occurs, despite being around the globe. It’s how innovation happens. It’s how project move forward and success if achieved. Every employee has to be available when needed (or communicating when they’re not available) and actively communicating with their team.

Of course, nothing beats a face-to-face interaction in effectiveness. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be effective while distributed. There are so many tools available to stay connected with your team, from video calling to workflow apps to productivity tools. Real time, real life interactions (such as through video chats or conference calls) are ideal, but that can’t always work due to time zone differences. Still, the right tools will keep you on track and staying in touch.

Maintaining high productivity

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges on an individual basis for a remote worker is staying productive. Without your boss constantly checking on you, it can be easy to get distracted and difficult to manage your own tasks. The simple solution is to hire the right people —those who take initiative, work well independently, and have a strong work ethic. But we’ll admit it’s much more complicated than that.

We combat this challenge in two ways at Mailbird. First, by having an awesome set of tools in our productivity toolbox. Regardless of time, distance, and location of your team members, these tools will help you stay on top of tasks and get the job done.

Our second solution is to get our team together two times each year, in-person and in awesome exotic locations, such as Bali. We call these “Mailbird Hackathons,” where we prepare for a big software release/launch or update. It’s our chance to hang out in person and bond as a team over a huge accomplishment, while having a lot of fun as we do it.

Conclusion

Whether you like it or not, distributed teams are the future of work. Employees are looking for jobs that allow them the freedom and flexibility to work from anywhere in the world. If companies want to hire the best candidates, they’re going to have to start accommodating this desire.

Having the right programmes and processes in place before you adopt a remote work culture will help you avoid the main challenges of a distributed team. Make sure you have a solid interview process in place, so you can hire the right people with the right cultural fit. Implement the right tools, so you can maintain great communication and keep your employees motivated and productive. In the end, you’ll have happier employees and, ultimately, better results because distributed teams rock!

—

The article How To Deal With The Challenges Of A Distributed Team first appeared in Startups.co and was first published on e27 on September 27, 2019.

Image Credit: rawpixel / 123RF Stock Photo

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As automating anti-counterfeit systems are being adapted with AI mobile app technologies, it is becoming possible to overcome fakes on a global scale.

The immediate thought to a mediocre person, when spoken of counterfeiting, is the low rip off pricing of products that are sold at the sidewalk of any prestige or monumental building.

Whereas it is often overlooked, but the fact is that fake goods also include business and enterprise products. Which most certainly are part of an everyday consumer good.

The dangers of these counterfeiting goods can impact fatal as well. The WHO (World Health Organization) has calculated that to an approximate rate of 10 per cent pharmaceutical drugs sold in low or moderate earning/ income countries are found to have either fake or substandard medications.

As a consequence, thousands of people, every year, die due to these fake pharmaceutical drugs and counterfeit booze.

On a global scale, when seen the actual trending amazement is how technology is advancing with the collaboration of AI (Artificial Intelligence) to fight against counterfeits.

Also Read: Why AI will be critical to brand strategy

The technology of AI has truly aided as an asset. Even Google’s Duplex integrated by AI is seen to sometimes mimic humans. Presently AI has been collided to save mobile app tech from counterfeits as currently, online money transaction apps are the most popular medium used.

When speaking of AI integrated mobile apps that secure the apps from counterfeits.RetroCube is seen as a prime mobile app development company that takes account of security to the highest regards.

Due to its highlighting aspects, RetroCube was also mentioned in an article from Forbes for its drive to be one of the best entity which protects privacy as an app development company.

Through recent studies and analysis, it has been gathered that the problem of counterfeits is simply going to grow.

INTA (The International Trademark Association) and The International Chamber of Commerce informs that the values estimated by the counterfeits could rise till US$2.3 trillion by 2022.

AI is great to save mobile app technology from counterfeits on a global scale, as apps have a huge influence in making tasks quicker while acquiring huge information that is crucial to be kept secure.

App authentication

AI and ML algorithms have made it easier to reduce concerns regarding security breaches and multiple other frauds. Now mobile apps can analyse any occurrence of unauthorised security breaches or logins to smartphone users.

In terms of cybercrime, AI plays out with a massive role to encounter the issue. With the continuous evolution of technology and day by day, reliance and usage of mobile apps require an even advance level of data security as well.

Also Read: Malaysia approves motorbike-based ride-hailing services

One of the biggest concerns to new android app developers is to provide security. With the advancement and adaption of AI and MI technology security issues and concerns have certainly reduced.

As with the integration of AI, users are provided with alerts of possible threats and exposure to such viruses that can be avoided by analysing the behaviour of the users.

AI boosting the app security

AI is making a significant impact in taking security measures for mobile apps. Avoiding threats from Malware ensures optimum data and network security as a key concern of most mobile apps.

AI integrated apps can detect security vulnerability very effectively and efficiently at the very initial stage. AI also assists in filtering out a plethora of inappropriate content or material that can access the apps via social media or other mediums.

The AI followed with a cognitive structure and behavioural science assist in maintaining the correct and precise balanced amount of accessibility and security protocol in the mobile app technologies.

AI technology adapted in mobile apps are amazing in tracing fraudulent transactions that suspect the threat at the earliest possibility based on any irregular activities.

Crypto anchor verifier by IBM research

IBM Research has developed the Crypto Anchor Verifier that uses the concepts of block-chain to work as an AI-based counterfeit detector.

The best part is that you can run it on your phone and by simply clicking a few pictures of the item, the user will be able to check the products for any good.

The Crypto Anchor Verifier adapted with AI will function accordingly ahead to reduce fraudulently.

IBM has also stated that the Crypto Anchor Verifier not necessarily is adaptable to the smartphones hardware camera but may require a certain specification to be accessible.

Also Read: Creativity is humanity’s only advantage against AI, but can bots be creative in their own right?

The Crypto Anchor Verifier is used to verify an unnumbered item, including medicines and paper currency. It is best used to analyse liquids such as water to figure out the per cent of contamination or than to detect batteries in the water.

Financial frauds

With the ability to analyse data accurately, there has been a decrement in financial scams solely because of AI.

All the concerns and challenges of the banking sector have been somewhat minimised by the intelligent decision-making skilled by both AI and MI (Machine Learning).

It is by the assistance of the mobile app technologies and AI features that have created higher convenience and accuracy for the users to avail banking services via this reliable medium.

Technology has the risk to be hacked relatively easily, but thanks to the AI integrated mobile apps, the access to such vulnerability has reduced to an incredibly low.

Also Read: How Appinventiv Grew to 400 in Just 4 Years

These online money transaction apps are AI-assisted that helps the user detect any sudden counterfeit or abnormal activity compared with the user’s regular activities to alarm any financial fraud.

Detection of counterfeit products

Products such as handbags, accessories and even perfumes of notable brands tend to be sold in counterfeit forms. Now, AI technology can detect what is original and what is not to help you beware of potential frauds.

These integrated AI techs are adapted to mobile app technology that allows the user to scan the good or than compare the product with the picture generated in the app to detect if it’s an original product or then a counterfeit form.

Being a tremendous asset to reduce the implications of counterfeit items, the AI adapted mobile applications are of great assistance to detect such products.

They are easily and efficiently designed to be of assistance to users. These applications take action on a large and individual scale as well, which truly can be used to eradicate counterfeit on a global scale, especially during importations of goods.

Conclusion

Even with these adoptions, legitimate products must be circulated by their companies with complete ownership while also contributing to putting an end to these counterfeit products.

With advancement, even the perpetrators would evolve on their stealing/hacking practices. Therefore it is always crucial to stay in tacked on the most latest and better AI app technologies to stop them.

Also Read: RateIt raises US$5M to expand its real-time customer feedback solutions in SEA

Making it essential for any enterprise to take consideration of all the opportunities and options companies can avail on how to best use the AI integrated tech to avoid any effects from the counterfeiters.

–

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.

Image credit: Rami Al-zayat

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The other big development of the day is Indian startup Zendrive’s US$37M fundraise led by XL Innovate

Oyo plans to lay off 150-200 sales staff [The Economic Times]

Oyo Hotels and Homes plans to lay off 150-200 people from sales teams across the country, people familiar with the matter said.

About 60 salespeople in Oyo’s New Delhi and Gurgaon offices were the first to be fired and got their letters on Monday. A similar number is in the process of being let go in other locations including Mumbai and Pune. Those being asked to leave range from executives to managers.

“Other employees in sales are getting their letters and some will get them soon. No reasons have been given to employees in these letters. They are being given a one-month notice period,” said a person familiar with the developments.

SoftBank-backed Oyo did not confirm or deny the developments.

Mobile money soon to be piloted in Vietnam [KrAsia]

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has submitted a proposal to the government on piloting mobile money services in the country and if approved, this is hoped to further boost the country’s non-cash payment rate.

Despite much improvement, Vietnam’s cash transactions rate is still astonishingly high, at around 90 per cent. While there has been a boom of e-wallet services providers in the country, e-wallets in Vietnam thus far have to be linked with a bank account. This automatically excludes about half of the population that current do not have access to bank accounts.

Now, two of the country’s biggest telecom providers, Viettel and Vinaphone, have been given the green light to roll out mobile money services once the pilot project is approved.

India’s Zendrive raises US$37M [press release]

Zendrive, a data and analytics company providing mobile driving safety solutions, today announced it has raised US$37 million in Series B funding, led by XL Innovate. Hearst Ventures and existing investors, including ACME Capital, BMW iVentures, NYCA, SignalFire, also joined the round.

With this funding, Zendrive will continue to build out its mobile driving safety solution and grow its team across five continents to deepen its focus on the global insurance market.

Zendrive works to make roads safer with data and analytics. It uses AI and machine learning to improve driver safety and help insurers accelerate their digital transformation.

The startup has offices in San Francisco and Bangalore.

“Our world-class team of data scientists and engineers are building technology that reduces collisions, improves road risks and ultimately saves lives,” said Pankaj Risbood, Zendrive’s Technical Co-founder. “It’s of utmost importance that we invest in our teams as they tackle important technical challenges that also have a direct social impact.”

Porsche invests in Israeli startup TriEye [press release]

Israeli startup TriEye, whose Short-Wave-Infra-Red (SWIR) sensing technology enables vision in adverse weather and night-time conditions, has expanded its Series A round to US$19 million with an investment from the German sports car manufacturer Porsche.

The additional funding will be used for ongoing product development and operations, as well as team growth.

In May 2019, TriEye announced a Series A funding round, led by Intel Capital. Other investors in the round include Marius Nacht and TriEye’s existing investor Grove Ventures.

Lo! Foods raises US$500K angel funding [press release]

Lo! Foods, a low-carb and Keto-friendly range of packaged foods brand, announces seed funding to the tune of US$500,000 from a group of angel investors, including Anuj Golecha, Co-founder, Venture Cataylst; Rashmi Daga, Founder, Freshmenu; Raveen Sastry, Co-founder, Myntra; Mitesh Shah, CFO, BookMyShow; Sunil Chhabra, Advisor & Founding Team Member, Jumbotail; and Gaurav Arora,Chief Investment Officer, ASK Wealth

Lo! Foodswas started in early 2019 by former Ola senior executive Sudarshan Gangrade,

“Lo! Foods was started with a single purpose – to build a truly healthy product that works. A brand that creates a healthy and low carb keto friendly food that is inherently Indian. Our products have seen great traction and validation with our consumers, with extremely high monthly repeats,” Gangrade said.

 

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An analogy of building a leadership mindset and leading a team to success

 

When I started Melewi, it never crossed my mind how much time I’d spend figuring out how to lead.

It sounds laughable, and looking back, it feels as though I walked into a room with an elephant in it and managed to see everything BUT the elephant.

Growing a business from the ground up usually means you take on every role that exists. All at once I was the designer, project manager, sales manager, accountant, lawyer, HR, business strategist, admin assistant.

If we hadn’t been remote, I’d also have been taking the rubbish out and scrubbing the toilets.

Now with a full team, it’s easy to state what my role is: CEO or Founder. But describing what I do is difficult without a 5-minute monologue.

And while I’ve learned that a big part of my role is to lead my team, I could never quite describe what “leading the way” actually means.

So I’ve come up with a way to describe my role using an analogy (because as the Melewi team can attest to, I love analogies).

Also Read: A day in the life of StashAways CEO and co-founder

It doesn’t explain exactly what I do, but instead the leadership mindset I’ve adopted that drives my role. And that is the analogy of The Bushwhacking CEO.

Where do you want to go?

At any point in time, most businesses are trying to go from where they’re presently at (I shall call this “Today’s Spot”), to a goal future destination (and dub this “The Promised Land”).

The problems are two-fold. 1st, you’ve only a vague idea of The Promised Land’s direction, but no coordinates; and 2nd, there is no existing way to get there.

No trail, no pathway, just dense bush, muddy bogs, thorny vines, and a whole lot of very annoying bugs.

So when I think about leadership, I don’t think about sending in my team into the unknown mosquito-filled craptown. I go in first. My job is to whack my way through the thorny, muddy bush to get us to, well, ‘The Promised Land’.

It’s not that straightforward, literally.

Ever tried finding your way through an unmarked forest? I don’t recommend it. It’s never ever a straight line to get to your destination.

It’s the same thing with figuring out how to get to ‘The Promised Land’.

You run around in circles, you take bad guesses, you read bad intel, you get tired, torn up and more than a little annoyed.

But if you keep going, after all the wrong turns, running around in circles and stumbles, you finally find yourself at The Promised Land.

Awesome, what next?

A little dirt path is good enough (for now)

Over time as you travel back and forth, slowly straightening out the path, a little dirt path gets worn in.

Now if your team needs to, they can make their way from Today’s Spot to The Promised Land. It’s good enough, but everyone knows it’s not the most pleasant of journeys.

But as they walk through it, some of them clear branches along the way. Others lay out planks across the boggy areas. It goes from a grotty dirt path, so a nicer, wider dirt path.

Paving the way

Over time, as more people start to travel the route more frequently, you decide it’s time for an upgrade.

You clean up the route, making it straighter, easier and safer. Soon, it turns into a gravel path, then a few months later, a little concrete road.

And as the team gets bigger and their needs and speed change, it turns into a 2-lane road, then eventually a highway.

Also Read: Are you ready to go from side hustle to startup CEO?

So now everyone can travel back and forth to The Promised Land whenever they want, as quickly as they want, and probably with some Hotel California blasting and snacks in the car.

It all starts with you getting your hands dirty, by not being the smartest person in the room

My job as the leader — especially of a small business or startup with limited resources — is to be the first person to get my hands dirty.

Instead of tossing the job to someone else, I want to dig in, get lost, get un-lost, and then continuously make it easier and better for everyone else to get from Today’s Spot to The Promised Land.

Out of the forest; back to real life

Bushwhacking leading is really about starting with finding the simplest and least sophisticated way to do something that works. Whether it’s keeping track of cash flow in a word document, or managing a project via email — start with what works, clunky as it may be.

But you must constantly iterate to improve.

As you start to discover why a word doc is a terrible tool for numbers (lol), you can find better tools, systems or even automation.

Also Read: How Appinventiv Grew to 400 in Just 4 Years

You can start training people to help with the work. You can improve the process with their feedback and ideas, and codify them so now anyone can do the work.

Being the leader is not about being the expert at everything, or to be the smartest person in the (metaphorical if you’re fully remote like us) room.

It’s about getting your hands dirty, getting started, getting better, and bushwhacking your way forward, paving the way for your team.

–

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.

Founder of Melewi — We’ve helped McDonald’s launch apps in 4 continents, Visa test their tech innovations, and startups reach #1 in the app store.

(This article was originally posted on LinkedIn)

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It can be challenging, but if you succeed, the rewards can far outweigh being tied to venture capital money

With all the news always being focused on how much money is being raised by unicorn startups, let’s look at the bold reality of many entrepreneurs and businesses who decide to take a different road: bootstrapping.

Bootstrapping is notoriously hard, can be slower, and can even be limiting. But when a bootstrapped business succeeds, the rewards can far outweigh being tied to venture capital money.

I had a very honest discussion with a highly successful bootstrapped startup founder, Stefan Pretty, CEO of Subbly – a subscription e-commerce platform empowering entrepreneurs. During the conversation, a lot of wisdom came up about his bootstrapped business journeys and I have condensed some of those nuggets into this guide to help other entrepreneurs bootstrap with their business.

Full disclosure, bootstrapping is just one way to start your business, there are pros and cons to being funded, self-funded and bootstrapping.

Here are 6 tips (and a bonus) to increase your chances of bootstrapping success:

1. Be prepared for rejection and criticism – but remain persistent

Often when bootstrapping you’ll face rejection and criticism for your approach, or even towards your business idea in some cases. People may not believe in you and think that you should do it the tried and tested way – by raising money. In some cases, they may simply think that it’s impossible to achieve success with your business model and idea.

You must learn to see past this negativity and set boundaries for yourself.

You must be stubborn and determined enough to keep believing in yourself and your gut and what originally inspired you.

Sometimes you will need to carry yourself through hard times. That’s why you should choose something you’re passionate about to keep you inspired to keep going.

Trust in your gut and keep going until you have clear signs your vision and assumption is wrong.

Stefan said, “there were moments where I considered giving up when starting Subbly, but I knew deep down I had to keep going on this path, I had to trust my instincts, even if I was wrong.”

2. Don’t take “no” for an answer

Most of life is filled with different forms of rejection, or failures. But when bootstrapping you must be prepared for this and keep focusing on the wins and remaining positive.

Continuing to build your resilience and pushing towards your goal is what will help you to be patient to achieve your goal.

It only takes one “yes” to change the entire game and help you on your way to success.

Keep going!

Also read: Bootstrapping your startup? Here are 7 tools you can use to make launch and growth easier

3. Avoid temptation – personally and professionally

Life is always full of temptations. That dessert. That drink. That investment offer. The easy path, the path full of pleasure is so easy to walk down but it also doesn’t move you towards your goal.

When bootstrapping you must remain disciplined.

Of course, it goes without saying, you must reward yourself and look after yourself, physically, mentally and spiritually.  You can’t perform without having your best self-put forward.

You’ll know deep down when you’re giving into temptation. Listen to that.

4. Always be planning

Planning is essential according to Stefan, “I spend a large chunk of my day planning and processing, I believe it’s important to listen to your intuition and to not rush into poor decisions”.

This is something that continually comes up amongst the most successful. It seems balance must be struck between logical evaluation and listening to your instincts.

Furthermore, it’s pretty clear that instead of writing a set plan, you need to always been planning and responding to the market and customers etc. Be aware of analysis paralysis though. You need to make sure you’re not going in circles – that’s where intuition comes in.

5. Take meaningful massive action

In addition to giving yourself time to process and evaluate decisions always, the final key is to act on it when you’re certain and do it properly.

Stefan said, “I learned that it’s easy to keep taking micro-actions for small wins, but the times where the needle was really moved, was when I was taking massive action. Usually the thing I was dreading doing.”.

A massive action could mean it’s the thing you are putting off or don’t want to to do but Stefan aptly added, “I believe the way forward is the path of resistance”. In other words, often the hardest thing needed to be done on your list might make the biggest difference in achieving your goals.

6. Stay lean – iterate and “move fast and break things”

It’s clear that amongst all startups the approach of being LEAN is the best way to validate and grow a business efficiently. Stefan preaches this to new entrepreneurs that he talks to.

The process, in a nutshell, is simple: create an assumption, validate it by doing the minimum version, collect feedback, evaluate and then make a new assumption. Meanwhile, if you’re assumptions are right, double down and perfect those.

It’s a feedback loop and it’s essential to not waste resources and to build what the market needs.

Also read: The good, the bad, and the ugly of startup bootstrapping

Bonus: know when it is truly the time to walk away

Sometimes, we’re wrong in our assumptions, even if it is a project or your entire business. However, it seems that aside from being persistent and moving in the face of resistance and rejection, there is a point where you need to draw a line in the sand. It may be a subjective line, based on your own limits, but it may purely be metric based.

In any case, know when to walk away if necessary. As Stefan emphasized his beliefs on listening to your intuition, this is where this matters the most.

Closing thoughts

With all that said and after talking to many entrepreneurs, doing research, and having an honest real conversation with Stefan, ultimately it’s your journey and comes down to what works for you, but I hope this helps give some guidance on your own bootstrapped journey.

Above all else, believe in yourself and don’t give up.

—-

This article was first published on e27, on August 31, 2018.

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

Photo by HB Mertz on Unsplash

The post 6 powerful strategies you should know for successful bootstrapping appeared first on e27.

OpenNodes has the support of IMDA to bring government agencies, corporate, and blockchain companies onboard

TRIBE Accelerator, a blockchain accelerator based in Singapore, announced the upcoming launch of OpenNodes, a web-based engagement platform supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA).

TRIBE Accelerator said that it is meant to bring together government agencies, corporates, and blockchain companies onto a single online platform, fostering innovation and collaboration in the blockchain community.

With OpenNodes, enterprises and individuals from any level of expertise can take part in the ecosystem.

The platform’s key feature will include a directory listing of various stakeholders in Singapore’s blockchain ecosystem. Using the directory, startups can form industry-specific working groups to discuss how blockchain can be used across various verticals, such as mobility and healthcare.

Also Read: Singapore AI framework is a good start but will not make impact

Companies will also be able to connect with other global blockchain communities in cities such as Berlin, Hong Kong, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, and Zug.

OpenNodes will also provide educational content to help enterprises glean insights into blockchain technology as well as facilitating discussions led by leaders of different industries on the platform.

Additionally, there will also be job listings that will connect talents to recruiters.

OpenNodes is expected to be launched to the public at the end of this year.

The promising world of blockchain

Blockchain technology presents a wealth of opportunities for enterprises to tap on and make their processes more transparent and secure. However, challenges remain constant, with the lack of collaboration and poor visibility into the blockchain industry that hinders mainstream adoption.

Philip Heah, Assistant Chief Executive, Technology Infrastructure Group, IMDA.l, highlights that there are still many existing blockchain solutions in the current market that are use-case specific and specialised.

Also Read: Singapore’s data protection framework gets a boost with new appointment, initiative

“These solutions can provide greater value to the parties involved if they are participating in the ecosystem. This platform will bring the key stakeholders of the blockchain ecosystem closer together, consolidating efforts towards mass adoption,” said Heah.

Besides partnering IMDA, OpenNodes is also supported by more than 20 organisations, including:

• Government Agencies: IMDA, Enterprise Singapore, Government Technology Agency (GovTech), Monetary Authority of Singapore, National Research Foundation, SGInnovate
• Global Corporates: AXA, BMW Group Asia, EY, Fung Group Explorium, Nielsen, PwC, Temasek
• Technology and Blockchain Companies: ConsenSys, Digix, Ethereum Foundation, IBM, Intel, R3, VeChain, Zilliqa

TRIBE Accelerator was officially launched on March 27 this year and is part of TRIVE Ventures, an early-stage VC in Singapore.

It is supported by Enterprise Singapore, a government agency, and includes corporate partners such as BMW, Intel, Nielsen, and PwC Singapore’s Venture Hub.

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Image Credit: TRIVE Ventures

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Also, Polychain Capital and NGC Ventures invest US$10M to CoinFLEX

Singapore now has a mobile app-based trademark registration [Press Release]

Singapore announces that it has rolled out an app-based trademark registration that is developed by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS). The app is called IPOS Go, and it will allow businesses and entrepreneurs seeking trademark protection in Singapore to file their trademarks directly with IPOS via their mobile devices.

With a simplified user interface and features, it promises an easier, more affordable, and faster application, claiming that filing a trademark on IPOS Go can now be finished in less than 10 minutes, from the current average of 45 to 60 minutes.

With IPOS Go, applicants can also track their registration status, be notified of important updates, or file for trademark renewals via the app, on-the-go.

The app further integrates AI technology to enhance searches for similar trademarks on the IPOS register, which can prevent applicants from filings for trademarks that are too similar to existing ones. The new AI capability will help business owners better manage their brands.

HR platform Pulsifi appoints Peter Vogt and Terrence Yong as Advisor and Chief Business Officer [Press Release]

In a bid to support its global expansion plans, Pulsifi has added two talents to its leadership team: the first is former Nestlé Group Chief Human Resources Officer and current Nestlé Deutschland Board Chairman Peter Vogt as Board Advisor, and former SAP Senior Advisor and Managing Director Terrence Yong as Chief Business Officer.

Also Read: Singapore HR startup Pulsifi raises US$1.1M to enhance its AI tech

Peter Vogt is to contribute his experience in human resources and business, especially in the consumer goods industry. Vogt has managed to strengthen the business focus of the HR function and fostered a culture of diversity and inclusion during his tenure as Head of Group Human Resources at Nestlé from 2013-2018.

Terrence Yong, as a new Chief Business Officer, will bring on board his knowledge in enterprise software and technology, having served for over 20 years in country direct and indirect sales and regional operations of SAP and Microsoft. His specialties include the business and people aspects of strategy, go-to-market, execution, and transformation.

Pulsifi partners with industry-leading clients such as Nestlé, Reckitt Benckiser, and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems on talent acquisition and talent management across seven countries in Asia. Since its establishment in 2016, Pulsifi has raised over US$2 million in funding.

Hong Kong-based CoinFLEX secures US$10M funding from Polychain Capital, NGC Ventures [Press Release]

CoinFLEX, a physically delivered crypto futures exchange, has announced that it managed to secure over US$10 million in funding this year from Polychain Capital; an investor in cryptocurrency protocols and companies, and NGC Ventures II, the multi-strategy crypto fund of NGC Ventures.

Other investors include Divergence Digital Currency, a venture fund that invests in crypto assets and associated early-stage projects leveraging distributed ledger and related technologies, and Bitcoin Cash advocate and Angel Investor, Roger Ver.

CoinFLEX claimed that it currently has a US$150,000,000 trading volume, CoinFLEX expressed its need to support growth and further accelerate liquidity, which is why CoinFLEX also launches the Market Making Program initiative. Aimed at professional proprietary trading firms, hedge funds, and institutions within the cryptocurrency industry, the incentive program will allow eligible firms to participate in the platform while meeting CoinFLEX’s predetermined monthly objectives.

Viu and Wattpad enter into content partnership [Press Release]

Wattpad, the multiplatform company for original stories, and Viu, a pan-regional OTT video service from PCCW Media Group, today announced a collaboration to develop Viu Original series and film projects based on Wattpad stories.

Viu is known for providing premium Asian content. It said that it is committed to creating content assets through its growing slate of Viu Original.

Also Read: Viu to offer Singaporeans head start on Korean dramas and variety shows

Through the collaboration, Viu will work with Wattpad to develop youth-oriented shows across its markets. The companies will leverage Wattpad’s Story DNA Machine Learning technology to identify stories and guide the development process.

Viu currently operates across 17 markets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, India, and South Africa with Viu-ers spending an average 1.2 to 1.8 hours daily on the platform. Wattpad claimed to have a global community of 80 million users, including more than 22 million users across the Asia Pacific region, who spend billions of minutes on the platform every month.

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East Ventures was recently named one of the most consistent top performing VC fund managers in the world by Preqin

Southeast Asian VC firm East Ventures announced today it has closed its sixth fund at US$75 million, exceeding its initial target of US$30 million.

Investors in the new fund include Wang Xing (CEO of Meituan-Dianping), Eduardo Saverin (Co-founder of Facebook), and Kaling Lim (Co-founder of Razer), besides Pavilion Capital, Adams Street Partners, and Temasek.

Several Asian family offices including Indonesia-based Sinarmas Group, Triputra Group, and Emtek Group also backed this fund. Existing LPs also invested.

According to a Reuters report, the family offices of Alibaba Group’s Co-founder Eddie Wu also backed the new fund.

With this, East Ventures will continue to support the Southeast Asian startup ecosystem, particularly Indonesia.

Willson Cuaca, Managing Partner of East Ventures, said: “We could have raised more but we wanted to maintain certain disciplines in this euphoria era. It is important to the ecosystems that the value creation velocity matches with valuation expectations and this will translate to how our fund performs to our stakeholders; founders, business partners and LPs. What really matters to us is to be known as the best performing fund instead of the biggest fund in Southeast Asia.”

Also Read: Vulcan Capital, owned by late Microsoft co-founder, lands in Singapore with US$100M

The sixth fund has already invested in several companies in multiple verticals, including Wahyoo, Stockbit, AllSome Fullfillment, Katadata, Cicil, Mekari, Kedai Sayur, Advotics, The FIT Company, Nalagenetics.

Established a decade ago and managed by Cuaca, Batara Eto, and Taiga Matsuyama, East Ventures is an early-stage fund focused on Southeast Asia and Japan. Over several years, East Ventures has invested in over 160 companies in Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Its other portfolio companies include Traveloka, Tokopedia, ShopBack, Ruangguru, Sociolla, IDN Media, Waresix, and MokaPOS. In the past three years, the firm also introduced several internal projects such as CoHive, Warung Pintar, and the most recent Fore Coffee.

In 2017, two of its companies were acquired by Southeast Asian unicorns — Grab acquired Kudo and Go-Jek acquired Loket. In 2018, a successful SaaS company merger and acquisition happened through Sleekr acquisition to Jurnal and Talenta, which are both East Ventures’ portfolios.

In 2019, another East Ventures’ portfolio company Bridestory was acquired by Indonesia based unicorn Tokopedia.

Last year, the VC firm launched a US$200 million joint growth fund, called EV Growth, for the market.

East Ventures was recently named one of the most consistent top performing VC fund managers in the world by Preqin.

The post Alibaba, Facebook co-founders back East Ventures’s new US$75M fund focused on Indonesia appeared first on e27.

With improved clarity, c-suite business strategists have the means to budget SEO into the marketing make-up effectively

The single biggest problem for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has always been its inability to measure the return on investment (ROI).

This is a problem that causes headaches at the highest level when it comes to budgeting.

There’s a universal understanding that having an SEO strategy is hugely beneficial, but there’s no way of putting a figure and budgeting for the investment.

With a lack of clear measurements for SEO, there have been a number of metrics that have attempted to fill the void.

Examples include visibility score, which shows how visible a domain is in the search engine results pages (SERPs); rank trackers that show the number of keywords a website ranks for on page one, and the many domain authority metrics that tried to fill the void left when Google stopped publicly sharing PageRank.

Unfortunately, there’s often a clear disconnect between these metrics and the actual impact of the SEO investment.

The only right metrics that should be reported on to reflect SEO performance are traffic volume, revenue, or conversions against SEO budget invested.

The danger becomes businesses treating misleading statistics as truth, but missing the real impact of its investment. 

Historical problems

There are two main reasons why measuring SEO is so elusive.

First, after a webmaster makes changes to a site, it may take Google’s spiders as long as two weeks to crawl and index the website fully. That means that changes to a web page’s structure, content, or backlinks may not impact its search engine rankings for weeks or even months. 

Also Read: 5 effective tricks to boost your SEO

Google doesn’t mind this delay at all. It has no interest in showing immediate ranking changes, as it would allow SEO specialists to test out individual components of the Google algorithm. That’s one of the reasons it stopped sharing PageRank data. In this way, an inbuilt delay is enforced as a means of maintaining control.

The second reason is the complexity of measurements. While there are technical measurements such as readability, keywords and links, there are also measurements for how an audience interacts with the page.

These include click-rate, time spent on the page and averages for industry keywords.

This effectively means that when a change is made, user behaviour changes as well.

In real terms, this equates to changes taking anything from 3-6 months to have full effect. Within this time, competitors are also making adjustments to vie for the top spots, which could nullify the changes before they even become active.  

Ultimately, the problem for every business is there are too many moving parts to measure the outcome fully. What’s needed is a solid platform for analysis. 

SEO solutions

SEO should be managed the same as paid search – allowing marketers to calculate ROI at the keyword level. 

The only way to do this is to create a landing page for each specific subset of highly targeted keywords.

Once that landing page exists, Google Analytics can be used to report on traffic, conversions, and revenue generated by that specific page. Compare those metrics to the cost of creating the page, and you have a formula for ROI. 

The digital impact 

Having these statistics is a game-changer that gives legitimacy to the industry and shifts the way businesses look at SEO. SEO stops being a problem of how little companies can get away with spending, and becomes an opportunity where the investment gets a clear ROI. 

Life is made easier for digital teams, as SEO specialists automate the long tail of SEO, delivering an uplift to the overall business. The knock-on effect is the release of more budget that can be dedicated to link building, content creation, audits and technical SEO in general. 

Also Read: How to best optimise SEO practices

More work is created for the industry as the return on SEO becomes abundantly evident, yet the processes become far less arduous and the results more productive for digital teams. 

Greater transparency on the ROI for SEO relieves the budgeting headache at c-suite level and finally paves the way for unlocking budgets and revenues. In planning the marketing strategy, business leaders now have more clarity, where previously SEO investment was estimated and assumed to be worthwhile. 

Although not at the same level as paid search, due to the ads being placed at the top by the search engine, businesses move closer to developing strategies that strike the right balance of SEO in the marketing mix. 

Better budgeting

It remains challenging to measure ROI on any technical SEO changes to a website. This is still an industry issue in need of a solution. However, there now exists a fourth area of SEO which wasn’t present before – automating the long tail results of SEO with a landing page automation platform.

The landing page construct provides a platform where ROI can finally be measured, and this, in turn, improves SEO as a whole. 

Also Read: How to avoid SEO disasters

Not only does this go a long way to tackling SEO’s inherent legitimacy issue. But, it also addresses the increasing issue of businesses putting disproportionate faith in misleading SEO measurement tools. 

The only remaining question is, who will win the race to utilise the breakthrough and benefit from an unprecedented level of informed SEO?

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Image Credit: Merakist

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