Grocery delivery battle in Vietnam: David versus Goliath?; The e-grocery war may witness another ‘David vs. Goliath’ story in the foreseeable future – with Loship being natural Davids, fighting against larger and more established competitors who seemingly have all the advantages of strength, size, and resources. e27

Sea Group surpasses DBS Group to emerge as Singapore’s most valuable listed firm; NYSE-listed Sea was valued at US$54.2B compared with DBS’s US$38.6.5B as of July 22; Sea managed to narrow its net loss to US$280.8M for Q1 from US$689.6M last year; Sea operates 3 main lines of business Garena, Shopee, SeaMoney. SGSME

‘Acceloration’: What happens after disruption; Acceloration is the accelerated collaboration phase that occurs after the initial disruption phase; If we peel the layers of the onion deeper, we find many examples of leading companies that, although looking like disruptors in the first instance, are actually not; Instead, they are accelorators. e27

How to build customer trust even amidst a recession; Loyal customers are more likely to stay with your brand regardless of changing market rules and operational conditions during the lockdown; The loyal audience is a self-fuelling organism that generates increasingly more returning customers. e27

‘We’re imagining a world where any commerce can happen just by phone conversation’: iKala CEO Sega Cheng; He hopes iKala commerce can handle all channels, social platforms, stores, all kinds of e-commerce platforms you have in your hand; “That’s the direction that we’re going”. e27

Indonesian fashion e-commerce platform Sorabel to shut down by end-July; In Feb, it shuttered its Philippines unit Yabel; Sorabel has so far raised US$27M in four rounds from Gobi, Golden Equator, etc.; The firm had achieved break-even and was on its way to be profitable. e27

Hiip secures bridge funding led by Vulpes Special Opportunities Fund; The Singapore-based influencer platform plans to take advantage of potential acquisition opportunities that have arisen as a result of COVID-19; Hiip claims to be helping 500 brands to connect and work with more than 10K social influencers based on Big Data and AI. e27

Is ethical hacking the next big thing in the talent market?; Organisations are starting to place more emphasis and investment on cyber security by hiring more ethical hackers; They are highly sought-after and receive attractive renumeration which can go as high as US$81K annually. HRM Asia

Startup investments in SEA nearly double despite COVID-19; As per a DealStreetAsia data, the value of fundraising deals rose 91% y-o-y to US$2.7B; The number of transactions climbed 59% to 184 for April-June quarter, up from 116 in the same period last year. Nikkei Asian Review

HSBC, MDEC ink MOU to drive digital leap for Malaysian businesses; They will identify targeted investments in tech, healthcare, electronics, manufacturing, education from China, the US, the UK, Japan; The agreement also includes providing advisory and other banking services to businesses. Bernama

How Malaysian companies can accelerate beyond basic digitalisation; The digital economy contributed 18.5% to the nation’s economy in 2018 with a CAGR of 8%; Majority of companies is skewed towards digitisation, in which 73% inferred digitalisation to be the use of IT system (30%), converting manual to digital (27%) and use of data (16%). Tech Collective

What Ant Group’s upcoming IPO means for the SEA startup ecosystem; For the region, this will trigger even tighter competitions among local e-payments companies, especially those with ties to Chinese tech giants; The group is making big moves in foreign markets such as Indonesia. e27

COVID-19 triggers supply chain and logistics transformation, but there are still gaps, says Marc Dragon of Reefknot Investments; He elaborates on how the recent US-China trade war has led industry players to consider how their businesses are being run. e27

ESG, NRF commit US$29M to National Innovation Challenges (NIC) in Singapore; Startups and firms will work on 28 challenge statements focusing primarily on solutions that leverage Big Data analytics, automation, sustainability and post-COVID-19 efforts. The Straits Times

How Machine Learning (ML) is changing mobile app development; With ML app development, companies are better able to realise and set their goals; Developers are able to recognise a quicker way to develop an app; Users find it easy to operate a ML-based app. Tech Collective

Does profit matter more than impact?; There are many entrepreneurs who may be crossing the money and ethics line without really knowing it; You don’t have to choose ethics or money; Just put ethics first, hold your intention to help others as front and centre, and create products or services that people love. e27

Building your startup’s customer advisory board (CAB); The idea here is that you’ve a feedback loop from customers back to your product where you build, you go get feedback, you iterate; CAB should consist of about 3-6 customers, who should be luminaries or forward thinkers in the market you are serving. TechCrunch

gojek’s VOD service GoPlay expands to interactive live-streaming service; It allows users to interact with one another, buy food and watch in better screen resolution within one platform; GoPlay Live would cover more events soon, including reality shows and online public movie screenings. The Jakarta Post

Japan’s credit card firm JCB partners with Shopee to offer online merchants enhanced payment options; It will be first implemented in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam; A report found that the SEA internet economy soared to US$100B in 2019 after more than tripling in size over the previous 4 years. Vietnam News

Vietnam digital economy could be US$30B by 2025; The nation has 96.9M people but 145.8M mobile phone subscribers, 68.17M internet users, 65M social network users; A survey says Vietnam will obtain US$162M more in GDP in the next 20 years if it successfully carries out digital transformation. OpenGov

Ant Group unveils new blockchain brand AntChain; Currently, over 100M digital assets are uploaded onto AntChain on average every day; The group also unveiled an all-in-one workstation that reduces the deployment time of the company’s blockchain-based solutions by as much as 90%. FintechNews

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Stories of compelling company identities and innovative brands circulate the internet alongside a swarm of articles stressing the importance of culture. The reality of the matter is not at all embellished, as company culture when well-established, can frame the brand in a multitude of ways. 

The current fast-growing workforce is influencing just how important culture is across a variety of industries. The Millennial candidate especially finds this very important when seeking a new position.

It’s an enticing and captivating aspect of the business that when built and leveraged correctly, can attract the best talent for the job, influence employee retention, and even make the company more competitive in its niche. 

According to research conducted by Deloitte, 94 per cent of executives and 88 per cent of employees believe a distinct workplace culture is important to business success.

Furthermore, research from CultureIQ displays clearly that employees’ overall ratings of their company’s various qualities such as collaboration, work environment, and mission and value alignment are 20 per cent higher at companies with strong cultures. This is invaluable for the development of a motivated and engaged workforce.

Also Read: Is your new work-from-home culture stressing your employees?

The vision

Defining the goals to be accomplished within the company early on is the foundation of effective company culture. Your vision for the organisation needs to be captivating and unique to align the workforce.

It’s then vital to outline what needs to be accomplished and how your team can take the company from point A to point B. Identifying this journey is a major component in the creation of a collaborative workforce with a complete understanding of your business goals.

This understanding allows your HR or recruitment team to set specific goals while sourcing talent. It takes the recruitment process from a “minimum requirement” based approach to a more detailed campaign targeting a well-defined candidate profile.

Moreover, a solid company vision is a great way to show potential applicants the opportunities for growth that lie ahead, and the lengths to which the company goes for the employees’ professional growth.

For example, Google’s Tech Talks are one such display of company culture. The very concept is centred around professional growth, employee insights, and engagement beyond the scope of their operations. It plays an informative role, creating a community out of the workforce that collaborates and shares information that’s helpful for everyone’s professional growth. 

Also Read: 4 reasons why company culture is so important with startups

What does that say about Google? It says that this is a company where employees are encouraged to innovate, create, and to share without fear of being rejected or silenced. It says, to candidates and professionals in the industry, that Google stands behind employee contribution.

This is what makes the company culture dynamic.

Though employers traditionally prefer that employees behave in the same way set by management and executives, a dynamic business culture dictates the active contribution of each employee. Given the fact that company culture is most important internally, it stands to reason that its very foundation is built by the team.

Define, display and reward cultural values

For company culture to endure, there needs to be an established system that not only defines and displays culture values but also emphasises the elements that best define the brand.

For a dynamic company culture, the employee’s input and contribution are extremely important. Employers need to implement an approach where the workforce can come together and explore each other’s ideas and insights. 

Some companies create recurring events in which everyone’s perspective is shared and explored. The most brilliant of companies rely on this input to better orient the company and its strategy.

Also Read: Is this the end of the coworking culture?

But most importantly, it encourages positive behaviour within the organisation and shows potential candidates how your current workforce is given the opportunity to grow. This reinforces the values set in the vision.

Over time, as the culture itself becomes more solid, its nature begins to shape the brand. Google is renowned for how much it values its people, Apple for its appreciation of innovation, Amazon for its “Customers first” mantra, and Netflix for its “excellence, excellence, excellence” model.

These are just a few of the giants whose company culture and brand go hand in hand. For the everyday candidate, these values and goals are a promise of a better position, a better career, and an employer that shares the same values.

The right tech to foster change

At the very core of it, technology fosters the dynamic nature. Collaboration, communication, and efficiency are the hallmarks of a developing culture and significantly accelerate its growth. These aspects can be facilitated by implementing software and HR tech with an impact on all levels of the organisation.

Seeing as there is no single software to meet a company’s every need, a good strategy would be to build an internal ecosystem of interconnected software. Companies with this type of approach to technology are able to grow faster than competitors lacking the tools for digital change.

Not only that, tools that aid and support employees in their roles can save them valuable time and increase efficiency, giving the workforce the bandwidth to focus on innovative input for the next company event.

Also Read: Managing the millennial workforce over coffee and culture

The direct link between people and tech is the essence of the modern dynamic business environment. To that end, it’s a good idea to invest in tech that facilitates collaboration, communication and allows the team to contribute on different levels.

For example, implementing and normalising the use of tools such as Slack and Zoom for company-wide interaction and announcements gives the workforce a platform for open communication. Implementing HRMS software provides Human Resources with a way to navigate employee input. 

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is capable of automating such a large portion of the recruitment process and providing a range of features that help apply the dynamic company culture in the hunt for suitable candidates. 

Different tools serve different purposes. But one thing is certain, a company’s culture is as dynamic as the ecosystem it creates to simplify internal processes and encourage the characteristics needed to shape the brand.

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Register for our next webinar: Meet the VC: Vertex Ventures

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.

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

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Innovation is the process of coming up with ideas that creates value for your customers. As the world becomes increasingly competitive, corporate innovation is crucial not only for a company to grow, but also to sustain itself as it allows companies to adopt new technologies, and keep up with the changes in the market.

So as an employee, how can you innovate within your company? Let’s take a look at Canva and what you learn from it.

Canva is an Australia-based collaborative platform startup designed to help people who aren’t graphic designers to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and more. The user growth of Canva has hit over 10 million users within five years, and it has recently closed a US$60 million funding round, bringing its valuation to US$6 billion.

Canva has managed to carve out a new market of users for itself, even when Adobe has dominated the design industry for years.

So how did Canva innovate to become so successful, and what can you do to adopt the learnings into innovation within the company?

Also Read: The Jay Kim Show with Canva Co-founder Cameron Adams

Increase the value of your company’s social currency

Let’s first understand what social currency is. It is the amount of influence that your users have on others as they share about your company. When consumers choose to share information, “a person ‘spends’ social currency and places their reputation on the line”.

Social currency has enabled Canva to achieve high user growth over the years, and the good news is that it is not something exclusive to Canva alone. Large companies can make use of social currency to increase and grow their users too.

It’s important for employees to understand that they all have a part to play in increasing the value of social currency for the company.

For example, if you are a front-line service staff within a company, being friendly and exuding warmth to users can increase affiliation, which is the sense of community among your customers, and thereby improving the value of your company’s social currency.

Even if you are holding higher-level management roles within the company, you can still innovate as there are other dimensions of social currency that can be more relevant to your role.

To harness the value of social currency within your company, you should first learn to understand what social currency is, figure out which dimensions are applicable to your role, and then find different ways to add value within your means.

Also Read: Australian graphic design startup Canva raises US$40M in Series C, secures unicorn status

No matter what role you hold within your company, there will be different ways within your scope of work in which you can add value to the company’s social currency.

Iterate but do it wisely

The iteration process is something that should be familiar to both startups or large companies. With iteration processes, companies strive to improve existing products and services to meet the changing needs of their consumers.

Simplicity and integration– these were two things that caught my attention when I was analysing the way Canva built its product.

Integrating features is something all huge corporates always do. Adding new features, new designs, new upgrades to their product portfolio … and the list goes on. Companies are always rushing to build everything that consumers ask for, or throw a variety of products (or options) in their faces for them to do so. But is it always necessary?

Iterating without a clear purpose and stuffing too many features into a product may result in feature fatigue and cause your users to disengage and stop using your product instead. As a result, iteration resulted in more harm than good for your company.

For example, If you are a product manager in the company, you should consider “offering a wider assortment of simpler products instead of all-purpose, feature-rich products”.

Also Read: With Mogees, the world becomes your musical canvas

This point also emphasises why integration worked well for Canva because while they integrate different processes together, they also ensure that there is the element of simplicity. In an increasingly complex world, consumers are overloaded with information and spoiled with choice.

Companies should make their consumer’s lives easier instead of making it confusing and harder for them to make decisions and complicating their way of life.

Whether you are on the management level or a regular employee within your company, if you do see that your company is innovating in a way that is making the user’s life harder, it’s best to sound out and feedback on the problems in any way that you can, so that your company can seek improvements and iteration in the right direction.

Don’t be too focused on the competition

Canva didn’t set its direction by focusing on trying to defeat Adobe or trying to disrupt the industry. They decided on a future that they wanted to see – one that focussed on solving a specific problem, and they set off to achieve it.

For large companies, they would have found the solution to the problem a long time ago, which was how they get to grow and scale in the first place.

But as they grow larger and more competitors come into the market, bigger companies start to be “at war” with each other and sometimes, they lose sight of the problem they wish to solve in the first place.

Also Read: Australian online design platform Canva raises US$15M in Series A

There are many large companies that have always been at war with each other. Famous examples include Apple Vs Samsung and Snapchat versus Instagram. Even recently, Apple’s new iOS 14 sparked a debate as many commented that its new interface layout is similar to that of Samsung phones.

At times, large companies may lose sight of their company’s mission and as they are too focused and too tied up with their competitor’s movements.

It is not a must to be able to provide the same functionalities and features as your competitors – unless extensive research and experimentation prove otherwise.

A recent example would be the shutting down of Lasso, Facebook’s version of Tik Tok which was launched back in 2018 in a bid to become more competitive in the social media industry. It is quite apparent that Facebook is trying ways and means to fight this new competitor and without much success.

The main takeaway here is to always remember to focus on the end-user and not the competitors. It’s okay to take a look and see what your competitors are doing but don’t be too focused on what they are doing and forget what you originally set out to achieve.

As you go about your roles within the company, use competitors as a reference point to improve but never as an idea generator. Focus on your own users, own problems and iterate accordingly.

Also Read: Canva wants to make design simple and collaborative

Enhance the emotional value of your product or service

Feeling confident, proud and accomplished. These were emotions that Canva users felt while using the platform and these emotions were real – not just marketing tools used by Canva to advertise themselves.

Canva enabled users to realise these emotions by creating a platform that is easy to use, made users comfortable in playing around with the features, and they made sure that the users can achieve the results that they want. All of these sparked positive emotions throughout the user journey.

Another point is that Canva doesn’t use emotional appeal actively as part of their marketing campaigns but rather, to showcase these emotions through storytelling during interviews such that it becomes more credible and trustworthy. They also understood that the users will naturally feel these emotions on their own, so there was no real need to use emotional marketing on their end.

On the other hand, large corporates love to use emotional play in marketing. A well-known example is Coca-Cola, where they portray the feeling of happiness in their campaigns.

One of their iconic campaigns that you may be familiar with is the ‘Open Happiness’ campaign, launched back in 2009. But as companies forcefully shove the emotional appeal into the face of consumers over and over again, the overuse of emotional appeal may actually harm your credibility instead.

Rodolfo Echeverria, the Global Vice President, Creative at The Coca-Cola Company, mentioned that “emotion had pervaded popular culture and advertising” and Coca-Cola eventually ditched their ‘Open Happiness’ campaign in place for ‘Taste the Feeling’ which reduces the focus on the emotional appeal in 2016.

Also Read: Australia’s latest US$31.1M series A fund Blackbird Ventures invests in collaborative online design platform Canva

As you innovate within the company, it is good to think about how you can enhance the emotional aspect of the company’s product or service without blatantly shoving the emotional appeal to your audience.

A good way to do so is by enhancing the positive emotions and eliminating the negative emotions during their user journey. To figure out what emotions are triggered at the different stages of a user’s journey, you can use different methods to do so such as by conducting user testing, research and feedback channels, face-to-face communication, and so on.

Figure out what is the best way to understand the user journey, and what you can do about it within your means to enhance emotional value for the users.

Also, large companies tend to spend lots of money to hire third-party agencies to conduct user research to find out about their sentiments and they do not come up with actionable that solve their user’s problems afterwards.

Companies should learn to make use of the results, listen to the user’s comments and come up with targeted solutions to the problems that surface as these data carry the emotional value that your product has on its users.

If you would have to take away just one lesson from this entire article, you should remember to always put the users first. By focusing on your users, you will be able to increase the value of the social currency, iterate wisely, not get side-tracked by the competition, and enhance emotional value. And that way, you can innovate in the right direction.

Also Read: The only advice VCs and founders in APAC need right now

Also, it may be challenging to act on every single lesson so do adapt and adjust these pointers according to your company’s needs. It’s time to use your efforts innovating and creating something that creates positive impact and growth.

As I end off, I hope that you will now be able to improve and innovate better within your company!

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Register for our next webinar: Meet the VC: Vertex Ventures

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.

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

The post What Canva’s astonishing growth can teach us about innovation appeared first on e27.

Rachel Lau has been actively contributing in our e27 contributor channel platform since the beginning of COVID-19’s physical distancing back in March 2020. Her first contribution shone a light on the edutech startups in the time of what would be a global pandemic.

Her recent one, just published on Thursday, posed a question on why the Philippines’ economy couldn’t rely solely on technology despite being one of the biggest markets in Southeast Asia.

Lau is the Managing Partner at RHL Ventures, a Southeast Asia-based private investment firm that focusses on growth capital investments in Southeast Asia and the US region.

Previously, Lau was the Vice President at Heitman Investment Management in Hong Kong and Australia. Lau helped manage US$4 billion of global long-only and absolute return equity strategies, focussed on the APAC region. Prior to this, Lai worked as an investment analyst with Dutch investment manager NN Investment Management, which manages US$225 billion

How tech has changed during her time

Lau shares her time in the tech industry with e27, since her comeback three years ago.

“I think it has changed tremendously over the last three years. At that time, it was more focussed around marketing, and now, even pre-COVID-19, there’s a lot of emphasis on the company’s sustainability and margins, which is a good thing and I really like it,” she shares.

“And also, I think, there’s a lot of maturity coming from investors, them being more involved in the ecosystem and building it, instead of just being invested in a company,” she adds, on her overall view of how the tech industry has changed so far.

Also Read: How the Coronavirus is teaching edutech startups a much-needed lesson

On writing

With nine contribution articles on e27 and counting over the course of five months, we’re curious of what inspired Lau to write and actively share her thoughts.

“I like to keep it topical. Like during COVID-19 time, it’s mostly about how COVID-19 affects the industry or a certain sector that I’m inspired to write about,” she explains.

She then shared further examples, stating how we now have to work from home instead of from the office as one of the interesting topics to explore, and the polar opposite of the more relaxed topic, like supply chain stuff, where the industry saw a lot of issues in production and how it is delivered to the consumer.

She also shared that she’s especially intrigued to explore on how the world now is in shifts thanks to the US-China trade war. “Southeast Asia is literally in the middle. Like, I’m Chinese but I work with the US, so that’s also an interesting topic that I like to talk about,” Lau adds.

“At the end, I think it’s necessary to think about what happens in our surrounding dictates how we react, which is also true in how we treat our investment at RHL Ventures as well,” Lau concludes.

Thought leadership

With e27 striving to become the platform for thought leaders to contribute and become the voice of the tech ecosystem in Southeast Asia, Lau also shares about her take on the whole thought leadership thing.

“I think thought leadership is someone who’s not afraid of welcoming new ideas and is willing to try the alternative to the norms, which is good for us (as an investor), right?” she says.

Also Read: RHL Ventures launches accelerator programme for startups in emerging technologies in Malaysia

“I don’t feel the need to write about what’s widely accepted and I kinda like the fact that people don’t like what is widely accepted, and therefore become extremely different from what we normally have and seek. I think that’s what thought leaders are,” she adds.

Lau emphasises on the need to set yourself apart as a thought leader, or otherwise, there will be no innovation. “You need to be dared to be different to change the status quo,” she says.

Lau thinks that writing can be a tool to become a thought leader, but not necessarily limited to that. Choosing e27 as one of the platforms where she regularly shares her views surrounding the tech ecosystem, however, has been a great experience, she admits.

“The visibility has been great. Like, someone from LinkedIn would occasionally say to me ‘Hey I read your article on the Vietnam stuff and I think it’s great”, and it’s nice to get that kind of message. I think the contributor channel has the right exposure from the right target audiences, which also becomes a challenge to me to write to the right target audiences,” she shares.

“If you’ve been wanting to contribute, you know, just start writing, you never know where it may take you,” she said.

Eyes on Indonesian logistics and micro landscape

As an active investor in Southeast Asia’s startup, Lau shares that RHL Ventures is now heavily focussed on building the infrastructure for the e-commerce space in Indonesia. “Which put us in perspective to really take a look at the logistics sector of the country. Because e-commerce is great, but it’s even more important to keep it going, and so we’re looking at that now,” she says

Besides that, Lau also shared that the sector and in this case -topics- that has been capturing her attention has a lot to do with understanding the micro landscape.

Also Read: Why technology alone will not save the Filipino economy

“Things like the individual impact between US and China war, and how China is really coming up with its huge edge in terms of hardware, and in the dawn of 5G network, there might be a Chinese company that comes to take over the whole thing, you know?” she says.

Down at RHL Ventures, the VC also does a little more digging on that. “We also take an interest in the education sector. It’s interesting to watch what will happen in this sector next,” she adds.

Final thoughts

Her latest contribution post on how the Philippines’s tech advancement isn’t enough to save its economy may best summarise what it’s like on her mind, and where it may take her next: the impact the global issues may bring to Southeast Asia’s tech scene and society as a whole.

“I think, to some extent, COVID-19 forces a reverse mobilisation, whereas you know the US is trying to force foreign students out of the country, which means well-versed people coming back to where they’re originally from with skills they gained having lived in the US, I wonder would that mean we’ll have better talents and well-equipped people where they’re supposed to. These questions are what intrigued me,” she says.

Taking an example from how Malaysia has less diversity in terms of its governance of management, Lau is convinced that this shows how people are not so accepting of diversity after all. “There are issues like Black Lives Matter and the US-China war. It might not be so much of a technological and innovation issue, but it’s necessary because to have a look into in navigating the tech industry as well, simply because it’s tricky times,” she closes.

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Image Credit: RHL Ventures

The post Rachel Lau of RHL Ventures on the kind of thinking that allows innovation appeared first on e27.

Startup land is incredible in many ways. It’s a place where world-changing companies are built. It’s the arena where the biggest talents congregate. It’s a scene where the ‘pay it forward’ concept of helping others is in full effect.

But, conversely, it’s also a realm where some of the most toxic leadership and management styles imaginable converge. That’s part of the reason we wanted to start C-suite, our ‘lifetime learning platform for executives’. More on that later.

Now, with all that said, disclaimer time. While I’ve worked for some startups over the years, my background is very much media and events.

I started out as a journalist and although I climbed the management ranks over the years, I’ll always think of myself as a journo first. Therefore, I’m not a full-blown creature of the startup scene just yet.

However, many of my friends and industry contacts are. Because of that, I know how bad things can get. I’ve seen people on the verge of a breakdown due to toxic work culture. Their whole lives dominated by trying (unsuccessfully) to rationalise the lack of professionalism and humanity in the workplace.

I’ve witnessed people being relentlessly belittled by those higher up in the hierarchy. And it’s not just limited to early-stage startups –where the pressure is admittedly immense due to the threat of failure, and the inexperience is palpable– as portrayed in the Netflix documentary Print the Legend.

Also Read: For COMEUP 2020, the post-pandemic future will be led by startups

No, in his brilliant book Idea Man, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen laments the lack of compassion for colleagues shown by his co-founder Bill Gates; even after unicorn status was achieved and chasing revenue, and users no longer meant the difference between survival and success.

Why is this negative scenario more of a norm, rather than an exception to the rule? Why have many first-time managers decided the Steve Jobs book of dysfunctional leadership (Apple design genius Jony Ive famously felt he had to present Jobs with two solutions, in order that the CEO could slam one of them and feel righteous) is the way to go when chasing their startup dream? And why does tech rival politics, in terms of the elevated level of skullduggery in play?

The answer is simple –a lack of training, feedback, experience, and self-awareness. Disclaimer time again (sorry if this leitmotif is getting annoying, but bear with me – it serves a purpose).

I’ve come to realise that at times in my career I wasn’t always the best leader myself. My Damascene moment came via some candid feedback from colleagues, microscopic leadership training, and a progressive career mentor who helped me along the way.

Seeing the benefits of these things first-hand inspired me and my co-founders Don Tsai (COO) and Alan Yudhahutama (CTO) to create C-suite.

All three of us believe deeply in its mission to nurture leaders, managers, and aspirational professionals across all of the knowledge economy industries (not just in tech).

Also Read: In brief: Investments in SEA startups double in Q2 despite pandemic; GreenPro invests in Ata Plus

So what is C-suite exactly then? You might ask.

Here’s a blurb from our pitch deck (which I’m happy to send out to anyone with even a passing interest, just drop me an email): “C-suite is a lifetime online-to-offline-to-online learning platform for executives, where management becomes leadership. It is an exclusive community hub, a social network, news and views forum, and a recommendation engine – in the coming ExecTech wave.

“Super-serving Singapore and Asia, but in a global context, our mission is: ‘To help managers become high-performing leaders. To help leaders become better managers. To help aspirational professionals join the C-suite ranks. And, as a result, to help businesses win.’

“We do so through a paid-for app, virtual gatherings, real-world conferences, and much more besides. Our focus is to support the three pillars of community, content and connectivity.”

Ok, that’s enough of the spruik, back to the matter in hand. Sticking with the startup scene, I mentioned earlier the ‘pay it forward’ behavioural tendencies. As a new co-founder, I’ve found this to be somewhat of a revelation. The camaraderie among those starting new companies is breathtaking.

People are so willing to help you – whether it’s providing free advice, making introductions, or even revealing their trade secrets. You reciprocate. It’s beyond quid pro quo.

In short, you want to help every startup founder in the same boat and they want to help you back. It would be great if we could somehow bottle this altruism and provide the same level of support to our own teams, don’t you think?

Also Read: 3 mistakes early stage startups in Singapore make in product development

Only through mutual learning, as opposed to command and control, can we achieve this. That’s the crux of it all. Indeed, the startup paradox of altruism juxtaposed with toxicity is a topic I want to explore further in our ‘Leadership Mixer’ series of virtual events.

Beyond that, I’ll be blogging on a regular basis in order to take you behind the curtain on the journey of a startup. At times, it might be warts and all. My hope, though, is that the transparency about the challenges faced along the way will provide some value to others on a similar path or to those in a leadership position.

Of course, speaking honestly, the goal of these tasters is also to start building a community around the C-suite brand before our product even launches. For you can expect our MVP app in quarter four of this year. In the meantime, enjoy the free content and please do donate to our cause if you like what you see.

Also, we are running a Kickstarter campaign whereby the first 1,000 contributors can get lifetime C-suite ‘professional’ membership for just US$100. Check it out here.

Well, that’s all from me for now. I hope you enjoyed this first installment of the blog. If you did, I’d love to hear from you, so please do email me at dean@c-suite.sg. And if you didn’t, I’d still be delighted to receive your constructive criticism.

For with everything we do at C-suite, we want to listen deeply to users so that we can iterate and evolve. Only with this agile approach will we be able to create a sustainable platform that gives you the added value you need.

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