Day: March 13, 2020

Remote work was first thought of as a trend. Today, that has changed substantially — especially during the coronavirus outbreak — and companies are also increasingly transitioning into remote, distributed teams, regardless of whether there’s a crisis or not. In reality, 70 per cent of people globally work remotely at least once a week, as seen in a study by real estate company IWG.

The “remote work revolution” isn’t just creating distributed teams within conventional incumbents, it has also given rise to fully remote companies such as Buffer and Reedsy. Teams live in Slack chatrooms and see each other face-to-face once or twice a year. Work is done in the comforts of their own home or desired workplace.

Remote work sounds sexy, but it’s potentially more demanding. With physical presence, sense, and emotions out of the window, manging remote teams can be tougher. Without proper execution, remote work can be more unproductive than working together physically.

Yahoo is an exemplary example: in 2013, the company forced employees to come back and work at the office, curtailing their previous remote work attempts. In 2017, IBM did the same with a harsher ultimatum: it’s either you return to the office, or you pack and leave for good. Social media photography app Timehop also failed in their remote work experiment.

One of the biggest problems with remote work is the lack of execution, stemming from a lack of good planning. Typically, companies imagine it to be the same as working in the office: the only difference is the travel to the workplace and being physically there at their desk. Instead, that’s replaced by pajamas on a swivel chair.

Also Read: The future of remote work is happening now, here’s how to make it work for you

To make things easier to manage, companies will also impose “core working hours” or “main online hours”, just so they can mimic the previous operating hours in the office. Having ‘everyone’ online at the same time during the day can seemingly make things easier to manage — especially when you communicate to everyone at the same time — but it’s a lazy remote work policy that makes no sense.

Respect the time zone difference

Not all distributed teams work in the same time zone. Unless the time zone difference is similar to how Chicago is 2 hours ahead of Los Angeles, it’s absurd to expect someone living 16 hours ahead to be awake at an ungodly hour. This can be a headache when the team is comprised of people living in different time zones (e.g. Vietnam + Australia + UK + Argentina).

Defeating the purpose of remote work

When you work remotely, you think of freedom — sure, you still have to do work, but unless there’s a video call meeting you can pretty much stay in your PJs the whole day. You can eat at any time you want and get copious amounts of coffee without your co-workers asking if you’re feeling alright over and over again.

By setting “core hours”, it forces everyone to be online at that moment in time, defeating the purpose of remote work that’s supposed to inject freedom into an employee’s daily work cycle.

Creates artificial anxiety

Suppose an employee misses a few core hours. During that time, a team video call was made. Messages were also sent back and forth in the chatroom. One might think that he can easily scroll through the chatroom and search for chat history, but it’s more likely to provide misinformation or inaccurate perspectives.

Over time, if the employee misses more core hours, he will feel anxious and stressed over it, knowing that he has no way to find out whether his colleagues are commenting about his absence behind his back.

Endangers performance evaluation

Does spending more time online means get more work done? That’s a fatally flawed mindset. Managers need to rethink how they evaluate work performance when everyone is working remotely.

Without seeing the employee sitting at his/her desk for hours (even if he/she is scrolling through Facebook), it’s difficult to have any impression of the employee being busy at all.

Managers that dictate working hours even while everyone is working remotely will send the wrong message about how they are evaluating performance.

In other words, it means that having everyone online during a period of time is equivalent to getting all the work done in that period—a quick look at a software company’s Jira will tell you something else.

Instead of setting “core hours” as part of the remote work policy, companies should give employees freedom of choosing when and where to work. The whole point of remote work is to give freedom and stimulate creativity. Hence, a great remote policy should:

• Set clear expectations of work done. Remote work measure by results and progress: how much work is being down and what is being achieved? It’s entirely fine for an employee to work only four hours a day when he is extremely capable in his role.
• Allow disconnection. If it’s urgent, you can call. If not, give it a rest and let employees fully disconnect from the incessant messages and Slack emojis.
• Create a central point of information. Don’t let employees hunt for information whenever they come online. Employees need to be in the know regardless of how long they’ve been offline. To do so, teams can create central points (i.e. wikis) of information, which can include things such as meeting notes, discussion notes, and important chat messages.

Rather than expecting remote work to occur naturally on its own, companies must take it by the hand and ensure employees can remain productive despite being at home.

In a Remote.co article, “poorly executed remote work doesn’t work”, which is potentially happening to many companies during this coronavirus outbreak. One thing’s for sure, as long as companies understand the inherent traits of remote work, they’ll never create policies and protocols that go against it.

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This article first appeared on Human+Business.

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There’s a great scene in HBO’s Silicon Valley that takes place at TechCrunch Disrupt where each founder is pitching their big idea at Demo Day.

We see each founder going up to the stage one by one where they start with “We’re making the world a better place by [insert super technical business proposition].”

One founder says, “We’re making the world a better place… through paxos algorithms for consensus protocols.” The next founder says, “We’re making the world a better place through … canonical data models to communicate between eggs.” One founder at the end finally says, “We’re making the world a better place through … scalable, fault-tolerant, distributed databases, ACID transactions.”

While the scene is a parody, in reality, this is not so far off from the stuff that reporters hear day in and day out with tech founders.

How do I know?

Other than working with reporters across the region daily, I’ve asked tech reporters from various media outlets including The Business Times, KRAsia and The Ken about their experiences interviewing startup founders in Southeast Asia.

Also Read: Using social media to grow your startup: What companies can do to avoid disappointment

Everyone thinks they are special …

Imagine yourself sitting in the shoes of a reporter, listening to a company founder droning on about how he is going to change the world.

“The thing with startups sometimes is that they believe that whatever they’re doing is the most novel thing out there. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s not,” said a tech reporter from a first-tier publication in Singapore.

So how do I stand out from the pack? What if I really am special?

Start from a clean slate and rewire yourself. Avoid technical jargon at all times. I have sat through interviews where the founder cannot help themselves from going straight into the nuts and bolts of their data-driven algorithms or proprietary solutions.

“The spokesperson should be able to explain succinctly why their solutions work, what pain point it addresses, and how they stand out from their competitors. Basically, why their news matters,” said another tech reporter.

Who should I speak to? How should I speak? And how should I know what to say?

This is what founders often ask me. So, let’s break it down:

Who should I speak to?

Let’s start with the first step. Do your homework. You have practiced your elevator pitch time and time again for your VC investors. You have by now spent hours absorbing details about the firm’s previous investments, its investment theses, what the partners like and do not like to hear in pitch meetings.

Just like the different VCs you speak to, media outlets come in different sizes, shapes and tastes — even within the tech universe. Within tech, there are reporters who cover a country, such as tech in Indonesia, reporters who cover ride-hailing only (which for the most part is Grab and Gojek), and reporters who cover tech across the region — e.g. The Information or TechCrunch.

Also Read: 3 genuine ways to get media attention for your startup in Southeast Asia

“Before pitching, it is essential to consider whether your news could really become a story on the reporter’s website. For example, at TechCrunch, I didn’t ever write about partner deals or appointments, but yet some people would still pitch these types of news. That showed they don’t read the publication. You’d expect a reporter to know something about your company before they speak to you, so it’s only fair to think you’d research the publication and reporter too,” said Jon Russell of The Ken.

So, do your research and get a sense of both what the publication likes to cover and what the reporter likes to write about. Do not send reporters the same generic email with a sales pitch for your company or product. The media landscape is small in Southeast Asia. It is even smaller for tech (and for the most part, a lot of the reporters know each other), so be sure to do your homework and shape what you say accordingly.

A good resource that takes a deeper dive into this topic is Tech In Asia’s article which is aptly titled How do I get covered by Tech in Asia? 

Many points in this article cover a lot of basic principles for approaching any tech publication.

How do I know what to say?

For the most part (and I can at least attest on behalf of our portfolio companies) as a founder, you are not in it for the money. You’ve conceptualized an idea, that became a prototype, that is now a product or solution that you truly believe will change the lives of millions. You have a team of 50, 100, 500 that you’re now in charge of that believe in you and the mission of the company.

Also Read: How effective PR can be a game changer for tech startups in 2020?

Tell a story. Show your passion. Demonstrate your expertise in the industry. And why you are the right company to do what you do.

I sat in on an interview last year with the founder of Saleswhale Gabriel Lim and the editor of Campaign Asia to discuss the growth of the company and outlook for the sales and marketing industry.

On one hand, Gabriel could have just spouted off the tech behind Saleswhale or the growing revenues they’re seeing year-on-year, and the fact that they were a recent graduate from the Y Combinator program. But rather, he started the conversation with why he decided to start Saleswhale, the pain point he was seeing between sales and marketing teams at organizations across the board, and why Saleswhale is best positioned to solve this solution and maybe even more importantly, why they are poised to solve this solution today.

Before going into the interview, think about the headline you want, the audience you’re intending to speak to and how do you provide the context and color to the reporter in an interesting and insightful way? When you are able to tell a compelling story to a reporter that is insightful and relevant, you will see it translate into a strong piece. In this situation, the published article led to sales leads for Saleswhale.

How do you be insightful? Often times, it is just about doing your homework and providing interesting nuggets of information including stats, facts or anecdotes throughout the interview.

How should I speak?

It goes without saying, reporters are people too and when you want to work with people, authenticity plays an important role.

“I hope founders or startup executives can provide honest insight, not too PR-y answers or general statements,” said Khamila Mulia of KRAsia.

Khamila cited her recent interview with the founder of Wahyoo as being honest and insightful which translated into this piece.

Where you can and without divulging any trade or business secrets, candidness and authenticity is key to not just a strong interview but a strong impression with the reporter.

“It would be great if founders can speak candidly about challenges as no one’s expecting them to be perfect,” said one tech reporter in Singapore.

At the end of the day, as a founder, you are there to solve a problem and it is okay to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of the industry that you are trying to solve.

Getting burned and how to work with media

As a final note, there’s always a degree of risk when being open to speaking to reporters. Though keep in mind you take a similar risk when you want to build any relationship — whether it is with a new investor, customer or team member.

I once went to Maxwell’s one evening, ate some cockles, and ended up with severe food poisoning with an IV drip at a public hospital in Singapore. Am I going to stop eating cockles? Am I going to stop going to Maxwell’s? You may say maybe, but I say no!

Ok, it may not be the best analogy for the cockle-haters out there.

The point is, in business, there are instances where you can get burned by a business partner or someone you’ve hired, but that does not mean you stop doing business with other business partners or stop hiring talent.

Also Read: How startups should approach public relations

Similarly, one bad instance with a reporter does not mean they should be shunned or for you to be guarded in an interview.

It would be great if founders have a degree of openness and trust when meeting with reporters,” said a reporter from a first-tier tech trade.

Good reporters value your insight and the relationship. It is important to build a rapport with them and invest time in your relationship and trust with them.

“The best relationships I have with founders/PRs are those that aren’t just transactional. That means that they don’t only call when they have a story to pitch, and likewise, I don’t only contact them when I want something. Keeping in touch has never been easier with messaging apps, and having a relationship with a reporter makes pitching far easier—because often the tricky part is simply getting them [the reporter] to read and respond. Reporters are spread pretty thin across various beats and companies, so they’ll always appreciate someone in an industry who can give them straight opinions or even story tips,” said Jon.

At the same time, do understand a good reporter’s job is to tell a balanced story and there are always two sides of a coin.

“I think the common misconception is startup founders tend to think tech writers are natural evangelists for the ecosystem. All businesses and companies are open to scrutiny,” said Ka Kay.

It probably goes without saying that when a founder invests the time in a media relations and builds a rapport with a reporter, it can pay dividends in supporting the growth of the company as you hire and fundraise.

Are there any other tips for engaging with media for startups? Feel free to share any thoughts or comments on the article.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post. We are discussing inclusivity at work and women all of March. Share your thoughts, tips and best practices on how we can make the startup ecosystem more inclusive, gender and culture diverse.

Join our e27 Telegram group, or like the e27 Facebook page.

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They co-founded HAUZ in March 2018 as a company that specialised in security hardware. But their multiple meetings with clients led to the pivot of the product, precisely a year later.

“When we spoke with our clients in the security industry, we realised that there is a major problem in managing the workforce effectively,” said Co-founder and CMO Shah Fariq Aizal Sha Ghazni.

“Currently, there are no solutions/products to address this problem. We realise that there is a gap in the market for businesses that operate multi-location and remote workforce manually. This prompted us to pivot in March 2019,” added Ghazni, who started the firm, along with Ho Di-Yan (CEO and Wayne Woo (Chief Business Development Officer).

In the current form, HAUZ is an online platform that helps organisations streamline their workforce management process. Its app also allows supervision and remote monitoring of employees.

The app also assists in the assigning and monitoring of work schedules, leave management, and checking on live updates of all sites in real-time.

“We help traditional industries and businesses to manage their large workforce attendance and operation reporting in multi-location around Malaysia and globally with zero proprietary assets. At the same time, we also offer a cloud-based platform with real-time updates that promises business continuity with zero downtime,” Ghazni explained.

Also Read: Once a scam victim, this entrepreneur has built an escrow service to check online shopping fraud in Malaysia

The product also features payroll integration.

Primarily, HAUZ caters to companies, which deal with multi-location and sizeable remote workforce. Its clients come from across industries, including security, recruitments, facility management, construction, retail, cleaning services, F&B and education.

Clients pay a one-time fee of RM800, in addition to RM12 per user/month for a subscription.

Roller-coaster ride

The journey has never been easy, admits Ghazni. “It was never easy to build a team that shares the same values and vision for our clients. It has been a roller coaster ride to get everyone to be in sync with our company’s direction in the early stages. Active communication is key to building a strong team.”

It was not easy to convince and win clients either, as they were not familiar with the whole digitalisation and its benefits.

“However, we are grateful to see our clients took the leap of faith to jump onboard and benefited from it. Our solutions have helped them save up to 40 per cent operation cost, reducing processing time and improving productivity and efficiency,” claimed Ghazni.

Opportunities are massive — many companies in Malaysia are slowly expanding into neighbouring countries. For now, HAUZ targets Malaysian SMEs and associations by conducting workshops and seminars on how to kickstart their digital transformation journey.

“Once we seize a more significant market share in Malaysia, we will move to work with the right partners in expanding our product into other Southeast Asian markets,” he said.

“We are working on our numbers and securing better market share in Malaysia first before proceeding to expansion to other countries and going for future fundraising rounds,” he added.

Also Read: Koh Boon Hwee’s new US$100M VC fund Credence Partners to invest in Series A, B firms in Southeast Asia

Part of NEXEA’s 2019 startup programme, HAUZ has secured a small round of funding the angel network. With this investment, HAUZ was able to reach out to more clients in other industries locally and make improvements to the platform.

Key learnings

Before thinking of being an entrepreneur and coming up with a minimum viable product, Ghazni advises, aspiring founders should learn as much as they can about the industry pain points and be an expert about it. They should also look for a mentor who can answer your questions.

“Always focus on the customer experience using your products. At the end of the day, you want to see the customer transformation journey is a success and grow after subscribing to your product,” Ghazni concluded.

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Finance

Singapore-based cybersecurity firm Right-Hand raises US$1M in seed funding led by Atlas Ventures

Singapore-based cybersecurity firm Right-Hand has announced a USS$1 million seed funding round led by early-stage VC fund Atlas Ventures. Participating in the round are Singapore government’s investment arm SGInnovate and talent investor Entrepreneur First.

The company said that it will use the funding to accelerate its product roadmap development.

Right-Hand offers a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for companies to monitor, measure, and mitigate human-induced cybersecurity risks. It analyses employee behaviour in real-time, produces user behaviour analytics, and delivers customised and user-friendly micro-learning training modules to educate employees on their risky behaviours.

Singapore’s SPH Ventures joins the US$3M seed round in US-based global influencer marketing community influence.co

The corporate venture arm of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), SPH Ventures, has joined a US$3 million seed funding round in US-based platform for influencer marketing community influence.co, as reported by DealStreetAsia.

Bonfire Ventures led the investment with participation from ACT Capital, Alumni Ventures Group, and Next 10 Ventures.

influence.co plans to use the funding to scale its community and launch a media division to cover the influencer and creator lifestyle.

influence.co was launched in 2016 by Ryan Angilly, Niel Robertson, and Jeff Smith to connect everyone in the influencer economy through content, community-building, and collaborative commerce.

Finastra’s global fintech hackathon chooses Philippines student team as the winner

Finastra has crowned Team ‘WonderTech’ from the Philippines as the grand prize winner of its global fintech hackathon FusionFabric.cloud.

The Manila-based team was selected among five category winners for its ‘Agree Farm App’ at Finastra Universe New York.

Also Read: 5 key trends in banking for 2020 and beyond

The app aims to connect rural farmers in the Philippines to access to bank loans, built using open APIs on FusionFabric.cloud, Finastra’s open development platform. It was chosen by an audience of senior professionals representing financial institutions.

Team ‘WonderTech’ consists of four young professionals and university students in Manila: Michael Puzon, Vaniza Dagangon, John Robert Tubale, and Clyde Palattao. More than 1,000 individuals, including data scientists, developers, and engineers, from across 38 countries participated in the ‘Hack to the Future’ hackathon.

The complete list of category-winning apps includes:

• Future of Capital Markets: Stratl

• Future of Corporate Banking: Accenture, with IN-CRE-D (Intelligent Credit Decisioning using AI) app

• Future of Payment & Banking for a Better Future: WonderTech, with Agree Farm App

• Future of Retail Banking: ING, with Financial Assistant on FB Messenger app

• Best App by an Established Fintech: Manager.one

Indian teen-targeting payment app FamPay gets US$4.7M in funding from Y Combinator, others

Bangalore-based fintech startup focussing on teens as its main target market, FamPay, announced that it has received a US$4.7 million seed funding round from Y Combinator, Venture Highway, Sequoia India, and Global Founders Capital (GFC).

Also participating in the funding round are angel investors and Twitch cofounder Kevin Lin, Robinhood cofounder Vladimir Tenev, CRED founder Kunal Shah, and Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau.

With the funding, FamPay said it seeks to expand its engineering team to enhance its technology stack and improve the platform.

According to an article by Inc24, FamPay was founded by recent graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee: Kush Taneja and Sambhav Jain.

Using FamPay, students can get a debit card without the need to set up a bank account. Parents can then top up the FamPay account of their teenage children and supervise their spending.

FamPay has partnered with ICICI Bank to issue the physical card that can be ordered through the app.

Also Read: Trax acquires European image recognition startup Qopius to expand digital retail presence

Business

PropertyGuru launches mortgage marketplace with PropertyGuru Finance, targeting home financing for Singaporeans

Singapore-based property technology company PropertyGuru has announced its expansion into home financing with the launch of its mortgage marketplace PropertyGuru Finance.

The PropertyGuru Consumer Sentiment Study H1 2020 reveals only 18 per cent of Singaporeans are ‘very familiar with the home loan process’. Almost 50 per cent of home buyers are not familiar with the paperwork that is required to apply for a home loan, and two in five Singaporeans are not aware that they can refinance their home loan and save on monthly costs.

The company will offer digital home financing services such as instant in-principle approval, instant offers, refinance checks, to enable property buyers to consume home financing services conveniently, securely and instantly online.

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Photo by Jefferson Santos on Unsplash

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Shopback raises US$75M led by Temasek to expand in Asia

Singaporean shopping cashback platform Shopback is announcing US$45 million in funding led by Temasek, with participation from Rakuten, EDBI, EV Growth, Cornerstone Ventures, and 33 Capital, according to TechInAsia.

Shopback will use the funds to expand into new markets in Asia and diversify its core cashback service.

The company with 450 staff in total said that its business in Singapore is already profitable in terms of earnings before interest and tax (EBIT).

Also Read: How ShopBack sweetens shopping in Southeast Asia

It is currently operating in seven markets, including Taiwan and Australia.

Grab partners with Wirecard to widen its payment method to more merchants

Ride-hailing giant Grab has announced a partnership with Germany’s Wirecard to extend the acceptance of its payment method to more merchants via Wirecard’s digital financial commerce platform, according to DealStreetAsia.

Users will be able to pay via GrabPay for online and offline transactions, and Wirecard will be processing the transactions.

Georg von Waldenfels, Executive Vice President Group Business Development at Wirecard, said: “Together, we aim to continue disrupting the payment, tech and mobility industries with innovative solutions that can improve the lives of millions.”

Malaysian B2B wholesale marketplace Dropee joins Y Combinator’s latest cohort

Dropee, an all-in-one marketplace platform for retailers, has been accepted into Y Combinator’s Winter 2020 batch, making it the second Malaysian company to be selected.

Prior to this, the company had raised a USD$350,000 seed investment from Vynn Capital and Prasetia Dwidharma, both of which are investment companies for early-stage companies.

Also Read:  Morning News Roundup: Cybersecurity firm Right-Hand raises US$1M in seed funding

Lennise, CEO of Dropee believes that “independent retailers will still have an incomparable edge over large chain retail stores that no other businesses can easily replicate.”

“Mom-and-pop stores are the best when it comes to customer service, and they have been doing so for decades. The way they treat their customers is almost like family, and we want to maintain this tradition by helping them to keep their businesses around many more decades to come,” said Lennise.

Standard Chartered launches ‘banking as a service’

Standard Chartered (SC) today announced that it has launched a new solution, called ‘nexus’, which will allow companies to offer loans, credit cards and savings accounts with the bank to their customers under their own brand name, according to a statement.

SC currently has a partnership with an undisclosed e-commerce platform in Indonesia.

The company has plans to expand into markets in Asia, Africa and the Middle East with established digital platforms.

“nexus is potentially transformational for the bank and our customers. We will actively partner with leading consumer platforms in our markets to enable convenient access to financial services to millions of new, tech-savvy customers. We are starting with Indonesia, as part of our strategy to grow digitally and expand our business in this important, fast-growing market,” said Bill Winters, Group Chief Executive of SC.

Property Guru enters the mortgage sector, launches ‘PropertyGuru Finance’

Southeast Asia’s property technology has confirmed its expansion into home finance with the launch of its mortgage marketplace, ‘PropertyGuru Finance’.

Through this initiative, the company aims to provide Singaporeans with a cheaper and smoother experience while financing their home. 

The company will also be offering in-principle approval, instant offers and refinances checks, for property buyers online.

CMO Bjorn Sprengers said that the company wants to target the pain points of the “process of how people will finance their homes”.

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Image Credit: Markus Spiske

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