Today, TikTok requires no introduction. Together with parent company, ByteDance, the pair are among the hottest keywords on the web and in the papers. Following an executive order issued last week by President Trump banning transactions with ByteDance and its subsidiaries, namely TikTok, the video-sharing social media app has found itself in hot water once again.

Alleged by the US government to be capturing vast swaths of information from its users and potentially allowing Chinese government access to their personal information, TikTok has denied these claims. The main culprit behind this international fiasco the app has found itself in? Data privacy. And here the key takeaways for entrepreneurs.

Rise of data-driven decisions

Renowned data scientist W. Edwards Deming perfectly sums up the importance of data today by stating that, “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.” Making data-driven decisions is the process of utilising data to inform your decision-making process and validate a course of action before committing to it.

Famed frameworks such as The Lean Startup methodology by Eric Ries are examples of data being infused in business decisions. A study by the Harvard Business School (HBS) has shown that making data-driven decisions bring about a host of benefits.

Ranging from cost savings due to increase in efficiency by using data to pinpoint loopholes to making more confident decisions based on concrete data, it is no surprise why a survey conducted by PwC showed that data-driven organisations are three times more likely to report significant improvements in decision-making compared to those who rely less on data.

Also Read: Why Tik Tok is not a real competitor to Instagram

TikTok, like the majority of other social media platforms, utilise user data to tailor content for its consumers. Crucial to TikTok’s re-engagement strategy to retain users was the enjoyment users had derived from its content. Therefore, data played an important role in deciding the right content to showcase.

Personal data collection involving an individual’s interests and interactions drove algorithms that curated personalised and engaging content for users and in turn, significantly increased the appeal of TikTok.

Research conducted in 2019 by McKinsey has shown that personalised content will be the prime driver of marketing success in the next five years. The acceleration in the adoption of digitalisation, driven by the pandemic, has certainly brought forward the timeline. The desire for curated content has never been greater.

Thus, entrepreneurs, particularly those in the B2C sector, need to effectively harness data to understand customers and improve the user experience.

Ultimately, given the consumer-centric business model many of these startups adopt, founders should aim to connect with their customers on a deeper level and customise their offerings to their unique pain-points. The enabler for that to happen? Data.

How much data is required?

Having discussed the important role data plays in businesses today, an ongoing dilemma facing firms is the quantity of it required. With the rise of data privacy, first brought to light by the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018, authorities are clamping down on errant firms that collect excessive user data. Therefore, it is no coincidence that TikTok was banned by the American government due to excessive data collection.

The app starts collecting data the minute you download it. According to the company’s privacy policies and terms of service, TikTok tracks website users are browsing and how they type, down to keystroke rhythms and patterns.

Also Read: I tried TikTok out and now I get why it is the future of digital marketing

Furthermore, for most users that unknowingly grant the app the full permissions required, TikTok has full access to photos, videos, and contact information of friends stored in the device’s address book. Even after users close the app, TikTok tracks their whereabouts using IP addresses and GPS coordinates, providing the app with precise location while users work, exercise, or travel.

The amount of personal data harvested by TikTok is bewildering and begs the question of why so much is required. For example, it is difficult to rationalise the collection for certain data, such as keystroke rhythms and patterns.

With the likelihood that consumers will feel betrayed because of the excessive “snooping” on them, trust is the name of the game when it comes to data collection. Therefore, entrepreneurs should be mindful of both the amount and type of data their startups seek to collect and only store meaningful data which improve product offerings and the experience for users.

Importance of data security

Although TikTok has denied claims that government agencies have access to personal data of its users, the crux of the issue here is the amount of data the firm stores in its data centres located in the US and Singapore. With over 800 million active monthly users and over two billion downloads worldwide, TikTok’s database stores personal information of over 10 per cent of the global population.

As seen from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, huge amounts of in-depth personal information make social media firms the prime target for data breaching. Locally, studies have shown that there was a two-fold increase in hacking attempts in 2019 with more than 137 million malicious attempts to access personal details of users on media sites.

Given the high value of data stored in its database, it would not be surprising to read about a data breach, possibly on a larger scale than Facebook, occurring at TikTok in the future. Even though research by IBM has shown that the average cost of a data breach globally was US$3.9 million in 2018, perhaps the biggest long-term consequence of a data breach is the loss of customer trust.

A good reputation is often a company’s most prized asset and a data breach has the potential to tarnish even the cleanest of reputations. Therefore, founders need to build a culture of data security within their companies and invest in the needed resources to safeguard user data and build the element of trust with their customers that would ultimately, drive bottom-line growth for their firm.

Also Read: Today’s top tech news: TikTok’s creator tests out Spotify-like apps, Bio startup Aprogen has become Korea’s newest unicorn

Pursuing sustainable growth

The late Jack Welch, the former Chairman, and CEO of General Electric, shared that good management encompasses balancing both short and long-term goals and this is where founders, particularly for late-stage startups, need to focus on.

TikTok was arguably a victim of its own success. From its launch in 2017 to surpass two billion app downloads in 2020, the viral growth of the platform brought along its fair share of controversies too. Indonesian authorities banned TikTok in July 2018 for containing content promoting pornography and blasphemy. While the ban was lifted a week later after the app pledged to monitor such content, it marked the beginning of allegations against TikTok for promoting discriminatory content.

Other shocking allegations include platform moderators being asked to suppress users with “abnormal body shape”, “ugly facial looks”, “too many wrinkles” or in “slums, rural fields” and “dilapidated housing”. While TikTok has denied these policies are no longer in place, it was appalling they had existed beforehand.

TikTok resorted to focusing on short-term growth by prioritising aesthetically-pleasing users and promoting materialism, catering to the unhealthy needs of millions of teenagers on the platform. Given the young demographic of users on the app, TikTok chose the easy way out and rode on unethical trends to grow its popularity and chose not to actively police their content.

Even though it paid off handsomely in the short-term, the growth was simply not sustainable in the long-term. There were warning signs as various national authorities, ranging from Netherlands to India, started to open investigations into TikTok and their policies. This spate of inquiries culminated in the executive order to ban TikTok in the US, its second-largest market after India.

Therefore, entrepreneurs must have the discipline to look past instant gratification and focus on achieving sustainable growth. Being a founder entails additional responsibilities and the relationship with your business goes deeper than a conventional employee.

When things go south, the buck stops with the founder. Given the inherently greedy nature of humans, especially in entrepreneurs fixated on and desiring for success, it is therefore vital for founders to take a step back occasionally and evaluate whether their businesses are indeed achieving ethical and sustainable growth.

Also Read: Today’s top tech news, July 5: UK investigates TikTok over children’s data privacy handling

Learn from their mistakes

Due credit should be given to TikTok and its founder Zhang Yiming, for building an empire that connected global youths and gave rise to a new era of content creators and influencers. TikTok succeeded in the short-form video sharing industry where others, including Vine with over 40 million active users at its peak, failed.

Even though there were countless right decisions made along the way which entrepreneurs can draw insights from, what ultimately led to TikTok’s downfall were its mistakes.

Though mistakes were few and far between compared to the right decisions, the impact and severity of the former significantly outweighed the latter.

Therefore, founders should draw insights from this debacle on the importance of data collection, management, and achieving sustainable growth to prevent their firms from making the same mistakes which TikTok had made.

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Remember the Avengers? A set of Earth’s mightiest heroes coming together to save the world. Ring a bell? Just like a startup, that is most usually a few talented, driven people coming together to do something about a problem they have perceived.

Although the Avengers franchise has a happy ending, the way they get there is questionable at best. Startup teams could learn a thing or two of what not to do from the Avengers. A set of highly talented people coming together to attain a mission could often end up failing if they don’t get a time-travel redo!

Superstar syndrome

While you are building your startup, you are on the search for the best talent out there. This includes rockstar programmers, innovators, disruptors, and marketing champions. Everybody loves superstars. But when you end up putting a bunch of them together, while just filling skill gaps, oftentimes, you will not get a good startup team. Why?

Avengers movies are an ode to the issues of having a collection of superstars as your team. Throughout the franchise, you can pick up a thread of all-knowing egos and a complete disregard for teamwork.

Are you thinking this happens only in the superhero world? If only that was true. According to a study, a group of all-stars tend to move away from coordination and cooperation, and towards competition and conflict. Talent does facilitate performance, but only up to a point, after which it becomes detrimental as intra-team coordination suffers.

A chemical mixture that makes chaos

Captain America to Stark: “Fury didn’t tell me he was calling you in.” Stark answers, “Yeah, there’s a lot of things Fury doesn’t tell you.”

Also Read: The ‘Avengers’ of Singapore’s game development scene just secured funding

Right before Iron Man jumps off a plane, Captain America says: “Stark! We need a plan of attack!” To that, Stark says: “I have a plan. Attack!”

Captain America to Stark: “We have orders. We should follow them.” That gets him a “Following’s not really my style.”

Are you sensing a theme?

A running theme throughout the franchise is the lack of collaboration between different superheroes. Constant squabbling over who does what better and the “put on your suit, let’s go a few rounds” to see who’s better.

Many times, we see Captain America and Iron Man both independently working on the same thing, not trusting each other’s processes. Both getting to the same place, but through different methods. Only if all that superhero power was used in a way that does not cancel each other out!

If you take a moment to reflect, it is more common than it should be in startup teams. As a startup, you are mostly working on unfamiliar terrain, solving problems as they come, and as is expected of talented people, each of them thinks they have the best way to solve the problem.

But as a team, when you are strapped for resources, you need every soul in the team pushing in a single direction which seldom happens without good leadership.

“That’s my secret, Captain. I’m always angry.”

Captain America to the Hulk: “Word is, you can find the cube”.

Hulk: “Is that the only word on me?”

Captain America: “Only word I care about.”

Good, because the other words were his volatile and destructive nature, anger issues, and delusions of grandiose. Startup founders tend to follow a similar approach while choosing their team. Most founders aim to collect “smart” people in the team while giving no or too little weight to their people skills.

Also Read: What I learned from the Avengers of Southeast Asia’s venture capital scene

While the singular objective given to Hulk was to “smash”, you may need each of your team members to do much more than that. Undermining the importance of soft skills in the team could lead to catastrophic results as is obvious from the Avengers as they run around trying to contain Hulk’s “personality” for the rest of the movie. Do you need all that drama while swimming upstream trying to build your business?

“Bridgeport?” said I. “Camelot.” Said he.

This infamous Mark Twain quote used as a metaphor for communication (or the lack thereof) between civilisations with very different backgrounds is squarely applicable in many parts of the Avengers franchise.

Two words: Ultron fiasco. Stark and Banner came together to build an advanced AI solution to defend the Earth. Great initiative. But they did not speak about the project to any of the other Avengers to avoid criticism and objections. No adequate review or safeguards were in place and viola, catastrophe.

This is common not only in the superhero world but in the startup world too. Lack of communication between team members leads to misunderstandings and breakdown of team dynamics. Thus, creating silos within teams leading to trust issues. It is also one of those things that becomes a catalyst to many other problems that leads to failure like lack of passion, losing focus, etc.

So you have a bunch of Avengers in your startup. It is a task to handle, but they do get things done. How can you make them work together and save the day?

Creative leadership

Most startup founders do not actively think about their role as a leader of the team. Being a leader is not the same as being the boss. You may not need hierarchy in your team, but you do need leadership. Leading the superstars is going to be harder than leading a regular well-balanced team.

Understand that your superstars might not instinctively know how to value each other’s emotions, remember birthdays, and to catch the signs when someone in the team needs help.

Also Read: This team of Avengers offers you cashback for online purchases

As a leader, you cannot afford to be passive. Actively identify areas for them to work together. Understand the strengths and weaknesses, and the management style required for each teammate. For an Ironman persona, it may be good to give them the flexibility to explore innovative ideas and concepts, but be prepared to reinforce the objective, so that they don’t get lost in fantasyland.

If you have a Hulk, keep them away from the stress and give them space to problem solve. When you have other priorities, Captain America can be the loyal leader who never loses sight of the big picture.

Instil a common purpose

Despite all their differences, Avengers banded together, in the end, to save the day for a bigger and sentimental purpose. You may think it does not come along in real life just as it does in reel life, but that is not true. Find the “why” behind your business and actively champion your team behind the cause.

Do not mistake purpose-driven for non-profit. Purpose holds your team together, helps guide your decisions objectively, and ensures the authenticity of your actions.

In addition to being a glue, the purpose will also guide you on day to day decision making as to what is beneficial for the business against vanity based distractions. As unstable as a startup journey can get, you need your team to be united behind a common vision, ready to support each other and not only be content- but revel in being a part of the team that saves the day.

Cultivate trust through team building

Most startups think ‘team-building’ activities are for corporates that have way too much time at hand and money to spend. Team building does not necessarily mean an expensive retreat to Mauritius. It can be solving an escape room together, paintball, or board games.

Dedicating a few hours every month towards these inexpensive activities will take down the walls within the team. This will pay you dividends later as stories and inside jokes of “remember that time when…” which are uniquely yours and will bring your team together at every retelling.

Also Read: One man’s trash is another’s gold: How Tridi Oasis plans to transform plastic waste management

Another way to bring human emotions into play is to take away the screens. In a tech startup, communication is mostly through instant messaging sites such as Slack or Discord. Although extremely convenient for day to day operations, it keeps you removed from the emotional closeness cultivated from face to face communication. Encourage in-person communication that builds camaraderie in the team.

Repurpose conflict

Captain America and Ironman are not expected to agree all the time. It would make for a less thrilling movie. Conflict breeds creativity. The point is not to have a bunch of extremely talented individuals agreeing with each other all the time. That will lead to a very in-the-box team who never challenge each other. The first feedback you get should not be from your customer or your investor. Your team is the first line of offence.

You can do this by embracing conflict as a part of startup culture. Understand that no one in the team (including you) has a monopoly on being right. Encourage everyone to actively question assumptions, ask questions, and call out objectivity. Be cautious of the criticism getting personal.

We need teams that are talented, well-adjusted, and disagree enough to better the value of the product. Ultimately, the goal is that when you go out there into the shark eats shark world, your product could not have been any better than it is.

Consider a wholesome profile while hiring

While functional profiling should still be an important metric in hiring, the personality of the potential hire, and how the person fits into your overall team framework is equally important. It is hard to resist when you come across someone with a skill that is exactly what you are looking for.

But do not make split decisions. Take ‘meet the team’ part of the hiring process seriously. It would even help to get a potential hire to come on one of your team building activities to see how they react and work together when there is no formal interview setting.

As a founder, it is for you to understand the big picture, whether hiring this person will add something or take something away from the team dynamics. Maybe it is better to go for a well-adjusted candidate who is 75 per cent there in terms of skill than a 100 per cent skill match who just may not fit. But sometimes, when you are strapped for resources, there may not be a choice.

Also Read: 10 tips that will help launch your startup fast

In those cases, weigh the pros and cons and make an informed decision. It is then up to you as a leader to put in the extra effort needed to manage and keep the team together.

Everybody loves superstars. But having a cohesive group of highly motivated, and diversely skilled people is what your startup needs to succeed. As a founder, you need to take your role as “first among equals” seriously and rally your team to save the day!

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This article is published in partnership with Brinc, a Hong Kong-based accelerator.

We at Brinc are about to complete our global Spring 2020 accelerator programmes. This cohort was different from the rest. Due to the many COVID-19 limitations, all of our programmes had to be shifted entirely online.

A big move

With our headquarters in Hong Kong, the pandemic was increasingly causing fear as early as February of this year. Together with the global number of cases rising, we had to make a quick decision.

On one side, postpone the programme and wait for the lingering uncertainty of the virus to disappear, or, take action and pivot completely to a remote and online programme. We decided to host our latest accelerator programmes online to ensure that we could continue to support global startups especially during a time when they needed it most.

“The decision to move the programme online was the only choice to ensure we could continue to support our founders. Postponing was not an option. A full online accelerator made sense for us, as historically, we had years of experience running our programs half online and off on-site.

Moving fully online was a natural transition – we had the infrastructure, a tried-and-tested framework for delivering content and mentorship in place. This also meant our teams could spend more time focused on their business instead of dealing with logistics during these uncertain times,” said Manav Gupta, Founder and CEO of Brinc.

Also Read: This is the era of virtual accelerators. Are you ready? 

Thankfully, this wasn’t going to be a completely new approach for Brinc. In 2017, we made a careful decision to find a balance between running a programme both online and offline. We recognised that it was a stretch to expect the best founders and startups to move their operations around the world for extended periods of time.

Instead, we optimised the process by requiring startups to be onsite at the programme’s location for just one month of the three-month programme. This allowed them to receive in-person support from our team, attend in-person mentorship sessions, and most importantly, share and learn from fellow founders. The remaining two months are usually hosted online to allow the startups to participate within the comforts of their company’s headquarters.

Online curriculum

To support the shift to a fully online programme, we decided to revamp our existing online platform along with a new and improved customised curriculum to enhance our support to founders.

New content was created, and our global network of mentors, experts, and investors  were onboarded to further support the founders in their entrepreneurial journeys.

How startups can benefit

Founders from the current cohort have been receptive to the new online programme.

Jing Gao and Jin Xiaoxuan, Co-founders of Aurora Foods who make sweet indulgences healthier and more diabetic-friendly with their patented glycemic lowering technology, said, “the three-month accelerator programme helped us get prepared in almost every area from product manufacturing and fundraising, to business communication.”

With a series of online tools (Zoom, Slack, and Brinc’s Learning Management System), we are able to access course materials anytime. The remote mode makes the whole program more flexible, efficient, and condensed, as there is no limit to geography or timing.

At the same time, the interaction is not lost, as weekly meetups with mentors and managers are scheduled, and we are well linked to experienced entrepreneurs, government agencies, and professional service providers for any form of engagement we need.”

Also Read: Why startup founders should look for sharks as mentors

Other founders have also highlighted how we’ve been extra supportive to their needs while operating in this new normal. However, as expected, most founders agreed that the online programme does lack some of the more intimate moments that are usually present when meeting in-person.

To try and enhance the experience, we added extra check-ins with the startups and hosted sessions dedicated to meeting the other founders. In addition, we are grateful to have mentors that have been very accommodating during this process and have offered to host multiple sessions for different time zones.

We hope to give these founders the same experience of joining one of our accelerators by inviting them to the next in-person programme. In addition, we will also be leveraging the strengths of our global operations to further expand the access to mentors, partners, investors, and other stakeholders all critical for long term startup success.

“The fully online programmes have really been an eye-opener. Overcommunication is key. Although I miss meeting all the founders face to face, we’ve done our best to get to know them even more during the online programme, especially with the help of the many communication tools that are available,” said Edwin Lee, Hardware and IoT Program Manager at Brinc.

In order to create the same level of serendipity with an online accelerator, we’ve relied on tools that help us navigate timezones and deliver good content such as our ever-present Slack channels; the Brinc Learning Management System for content; Zoom for all our mentor and expert sessions, our proprietary calendar system, Google calendar integration, and many more. Being flexible to time zones and at the same time, keeping a strong structure to the program, has been key in our ability to support the startups.

Going forward, we at Brinc are carefully monitoring the daily challenges that COVID-19 is creating within every city that we operate in. But our goal remains to provide the highest quality support to our startups and partners while keeping everyone safe and adhering to global and local health authorities’ standards. We hope to eventually bring back the physical attendance to our programmes as we believe this adds significant value for the development of our founders and their businesses.

For now, our upcoming programmes will remain online for the foreseeable future.

Brinc is currently accepting applications for its next programmes starting this Fall. Applications will be open until August 15 with the final selections being announced by October. If you’re interested in learning more about our accelerator programmes, visit this link.
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Anchanto, a Singapore-based B2B software provider that enables enterprises to manage end-to-end e-commerce operations, has secured S$16.6 million (US$12.1 million) in its Series C investment round.

Investors in the round are Asendia AG (a European cross-border e-commerce shipping and mail services company) and existing investor MDI Ventures (the corporate VC arm of Telkom Indonesia).

Also Read: A peek into SelluSeller: an automated multichannel selling management system by Anchanto

Anchanto said in a media release that it will use the funds to strengthen its R&D portfolio to launch two new products, build data platform and expand to three new markets. It will also invest in hiring.

Additionally, Anchanto also announced that it has achieved profitability.

“Achieving profitability in these times is an excellent performance, and I feel this is a more significant achievement than raising US$12 million in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis. We are a capital-efficient company. Hundred per cent our revenue comes from a SaaS subscription with a high gross margin; we do not buy inventory or run services shops or warehouses,” said Vaibhav Dabhade, CEO and Founder of Anchanto.

“It took strong resilience, deep understanding of product design, engineering, marketing, sales, account management, and solid teamwork across seven countries to reach here,” he added.

Incorporated in 2011, Anchanto is a SaaS firm that helps brands, e-distributors, e-commerce enablers, retailers, third-party logistics providers, SMEs, warehouses and postal associations streamline and manage end-to-end e-commerce operations.

Its offerings include SelluSeller (online multi-channel e-commerce management software as well as a mobile app) and Wareo (full-suite warehouse management system that helps businesses manage B2B and B2C operations through a single system).

As of last year, Anchanto served more than 12,000 business and sellers consisting of over 300 global enterprises.

The company further said its customers manage over 67 million-plus stock keeping units (SKUs) and 115 million-plus listings, and have processed a combined Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of nearly US$2.71 billion via their platforms. Sellers process over four million orders per week on its systems.

The company also recently expanded into South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. It will now be looking to explore other markets within the greater Asia Pacific region and Europe in the future.

Ascendia  — a joint venture between the French National Post La Poste and state-run Swiss Post — is the fourth customer to turn into Anchanto’s shareholder after MDI, Transcosmos Japan and Luxasia.

Also Read: Pos Malaysia inks deal with Anchanto for its warehouse management technology

“Asendia Singapore cross-border e-commerce operations have been running on Anchanto Wareo and SelluSeller platform for over two years now. Asendia wholly owns wnDirect, which happens to be our customer for over six years. We see investment from Asendia as our gateway to European markets. Over 70 per cent of investment in Anchanto has been from our customers, which is a great testimony of how powerful and stable our platforms are and the trust global companies have in us,” Dabhade added.

As part of the investment, Marc Pontet, CEO of Asendia, and Donald Wihardja, CEO of MDI Ventures, will be joining Anchanto’s board.

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Image Credit: Anchanto

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Muhamad Fajrin Rasyid joins MDI Ventures as Chairman of Board of Commissioners

The story: Muhamad Fajrin Rasyid, co-founder of Indonesia’s e-commerce unicorn Bukalapak, has joined MDI Ventures as Chairman of its Board of Commissioners, according to a press statement.

His role: He will advise and oversee the firm and aim to increase its revenue.

The reason behind the move: According to Telkom Group, parent of MDI Ventures, Fajrin’s appointment is the part of the company’s push towards corporate digital transformation.

Malaysia’s Everpeaks raises crowdfunding via pitchIN

The story: Malaysia-based startup Everpeaks has raised US$340,000 via equity crowdfunding platform pitchIN, according to a statement.

Plans with funding: The startup will use 30 per cent of the funding to improve its technology solution and 20 per cent towards hiring.

It will also be making Malaysia its regional distribution hub to help European and American brands penetrate in the Southeast Asian market.

What does Everspeaks do?: It is a multi-channel e-commerce solutions provider that helps brands showcase their products to the global marketplace. It currently has partnerships with global brands like eBay and Amazon.

FundedHere joins ANGIN as a strategic shareholder

The story: MAS-licensed equity and debt crowdfunding platform FundedHere has joined Angel Investment Network of Indonesia (ANGIN) as a strategic shareholder.

What is ANGIN: ANGIN is an early-stage investment platform, which services investors, venture capital firms, foundations and corporates that desire to invest in Indonesian entrepreneurship.

Some of its clients include Amazon Web Services (AWS), UNDP, World Bank and many more.

Also Read: How Vietnam’s e-commerce firm Tiki manages to keep employee churn rate healthy

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Image Credit: MDI Ventures

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