Savvy entrepreneurs start testing their ideas on potential solutions even before the concept is fully cooked. They have enough confidence in their ability to deliver. They don’t worry about someone stealing the idea to get there first. And they don’t forget to listen carefully to critical feedback. They become walking public relations machines for themselves, as well as their idea.

The alternative is to spend big money later on pivots. Lost credibility with investors, and delays at rollout trying to build visibility and credibility. I’m not proposing that anyone promise things that they don’t intend to deliver. But it’s time that founders switch to start selling their product before they build it. Rather than believing the old adage of “if we build it, they will come.”

I still hear too many excuses for not working early on the elevator pitch. Like wanting to fly under the radar, don’t have the team together yet, or can’t afford an agency. In fact, you don’t need a third-party public relations agency at this stage. There is real value in doing the key things yourself before your startup is even started:

1. Demonstrate thought leadership before selling a product

Highlight the problem and your concerns in industry blogs, speaking in public forums, and making yourself visible on social media and networking opportunities. You want people to see you as an evangelist for hydrogen fuel, for example, so your later auto engine will have credibility by default.

2. Craft and hone your elevator pitch early

Before the product is set in stone, you can test your message and continue to refine it until it connects well with investors, as well as customers. Later you may have the problem of being told by public relations firms to stay on message, even after you suspect it is not working.

Also Read: Book Excerpt: How I survived an elevator pitch session with Tim Draper

3. Visibly be a bit controversial to test the limits

This early in the game, any coverage and peer review are better than just being another unknown entrepreneur. It’s human nature that challenging the status quo gets more attention than quiet concurrence. We have a tendency to forgive controversial views. If you aren’t perceived as pushing a product.

4. Proactively seek out thought leaders and journalists

Entrepreneurs who wait to be found are destined to spend a lot of time alone. Social media sites today, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, provide ideal forums for presenting your cause and your concept. Start actively blogging on your own site, as well as on industry forums.

5. Make your business cards stand out in the crowd

Everyone exchanges business cards and most are forgotten immediately or never really seen. These days, images are especially important, as well as a tag line, and your social media links. Unique and professional business cards are still well worth the investment.

6. Follow up personally on every new connection

Key introductions in a networking meeting will be quickly lost. Unless you take the next step of calling or emailing later to request a personal meeting. Use these meetings to build the relationship, more by asking questions than by pitching your concept. Requests for investment come later.

Every entrepreneur has a story! Perhaps the inspiration for your idea; or the path taken to get to this point; or a key lesson learned from past mistakes. Stories are the grist reporters look for, and they make you unique and memorable. I use my personal hook! It can be key to your entrepreneurial success. Bigger than any given product or service that you are about to offer.

If you are a social entrepreneur, a natural hook is the environmental or humanity cause that you espouse. Perhaps you can amplify your position by sponsoring an event; travelling to a visible location; or donating your time and other resources.

Also Read: Going from 0 to 60 in a successful elevator pitch, from one founder to another

These days, winning in the crowded startup world is all about marketing. The sooner and more effectively you utilise all the available marketing channels; The more visibility and impact you will have later when your product or service arrives. As an entrepreneur, you are the most important part of your brand, not the other way around.

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The article was published on nfinitiv.

Image Credit: Patrick Robert Doyle on Unsplash

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This article is published as a part of a partnership with Future Food Asia. Agrisea is one of the 11 finalists of the US$ 100,000 Future Food Asia (FFA) 2020 Award to be hosted from September 21-25.

Agrisea was initially built to solve the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2, No Hunger. In 2018, when we started our process, as founders we both thought it was ridiculous that hunger could still be so prevalent throughout our society. As we grew and became the company we are today, we realised we held a unique opportunity to change the very fabric of our food and agricultural system.

A complete overhaul with sustainability as a core focus of agricultural development. Together we built a vision of the agricultural system that integrates planetary longevity with sustainable resource management and promotes ecosystem integrity. All of these components work together to solve world hunger and provide permanent food security for all of our futures.

We see Agrisea an ocean agriculture company, as the gateway to a truly sustainable future. To us, we can all be a part of Agrisea.

Growing rice in the ocean

Agrisea is developing oceanic salt-tolerant crops by identifying the genes in organisms such as mangroves and seagrasses that allow them to activate salt tolerance and thrive in the oceans. Rice, for example, has these same genes, and technology encourages the expression of these genes to create crops that have gained the ability to grow in oceanic salt conditions.

The genetic design is based on four key pillars that have been individually proven through in-depth academic research over the past 70 years. These four pillars manage the salt concentrations between our plants and their environment. The company is currently commercialising its technology by licensing it for specific crops to agriculture companies to grow.

As Agrisea scales, we will focus on the supply of agricultural goods, e.g. staple crops – rice and alternative protein sources – soybean and mungbean, by deploying our own farms in coastal waters as a means of sustainable food production. Now, more than ever, our second phase is ever important to replace the demand generated for alternative protein sources that taste excellent as we move away from high-density livestock production.

From rural England to the salt deltas of Vietnam

Agrisea started as an idea in a bedroom of a small village in the rural North of England. Through the friendship and vision bound by Rory and Luke, Agrisea has evolved into an international brand and company. One of our greatest achievement came as the graduation from IndieBio, the world’s most successful biotech accelerator programme.

Four months in the heart of San Francisco, meeting goliath corporations, monumental investors, and building a network spanning continents.

Also Read: Bringing innovation to the table: Why foodtech is the next frontier in Southeast Asia

Expanding from those four months and our final event of the IndieBio Demo Day, where we presented to 3,000 people split between our physical crowd and virtual viewers, Agrisea has continued to grow and build the foundations of an agricultural system that will change the fabric of the food industry.

Some highlights include our confirmed plan to create a pilot plot site and field lab on the coastline of Grand Bahama Island to support circular economies in the Caribbean and building relationships with key seed distributors across ASEAN, including starting our first contract to convert Vietnamese rice varieties for application in the Mekong Delta.

Inroads into Asia

Amid all the concerns around the COVID-19 pandemic, it is thrilling to be a part of a community working to build the world of post-COVID-19. We are excited to begin partnering with representatives from the entire Asian region and elated to be part of the Future Food Asia 2020 cohort of finalists. It is an honour to be recognised for our role in the world we are trying to build. It provides us with the opportunity to integrate deeper into the Asia wide innovation network that is critical for us to build the world we so often refer to.

A vision to grow more with less

Agrisea’s vision and supporting technology have the potential to redesign the industry. The fundamentals of agriculture have existed for 12,000 years without strong deviation from the existing model. Agrisea changes the fundamental assumptions to redesign why and how we produce our food.

We believe that food production does not have to come at the cost of our natural world and is proving that we can produce more food, with fewer resources and in locations previously considered infertile all while supporting the integration of the human and natural worlds for planetary longevity.

Also Read: 5 foodtech startups in Asia Pacific to watch in 2020

But Agrisea is such a colossal vision and disruptive technology that for us it is so important to work with environmentally and culturally conscious partners to ensure the best implementation and adoption of our technology across regions and borders.

We are also very aware of the public’s perception of new technology; we wish to clearly educate and share our vision so that everyone from the grower to the consumer can understand and align on why Agrisea exists and why we want to bring about sustainable change for the world.

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There is no denying that the COVID-19 pandemic is a turning point for global business. From international travel and workplace culture to international trade and supply chain logistics—COVID-19 has impacted virtually every industry. With serious disruptions causing a pronounced business slowdown around the world, it is becoming apparent that the old way of doing things is over, including for Singapore.

A long time hub of economic activity within the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore is home to numerous MNCs, an international talent pool, and much of the region’s shipping activity —it’s a city made for the globalised economy. However, as markets face a global pandemic, Singapore has entered recession following its worst quarter on record with a -42.9 per cent contraction in the economy (on an annualised, seasonally adjusted basis). This is almost double that which followed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

It is off the back of this dramatic change in Singapore’s circumstances that Trade and Industry Minister, Chan Chun Sing, has announced his belief that Singapore must now chart a new path, focusing on agility and resilience.

COVID-19 and the frailties of global trade

COVID-19 has resulted in increased trade restrictions on a global scale, which —combined with the deepening geopolitical tensions at play between the US and China— have dramatically slowed international commerce and laid bare the frailties of the global trade finance sector and international supply chains.

Already before 2020, the complexities of global trade were well-known, with cumbersome numbers of participants to transactions, arduous financial settlement systems, and outdated means of information exchange. However, the old fault lines of the globalised economy are under increasing pressure.

Also Read: Time to pivot, not panic: The startup advantage to dealing with a pandemic

For Singaporean businesses, this means that now, more than ever, leveraging technological solutions to reorient and strengthen their operations will be vital to their success. Minister Chan Chun Sing is correct to call for a new path for local businesses; in this “new normal”, it will be digitally-empowered organisations who emerge as leaders. Also, it is new technologies, such as blockchain, which will serve as the vital underpinning of the evolution of business’ technological solutions.

Evolution of business and digital solutions: Blockchain’s role

As Singaporean businesses seek to orient themselves within the new normal, digital adoption should be top of the agenda for decision-makers and business leaders. In particular, how to embed emerging technologies into their business to streamline operations, reduce costs, and better manage information.

This will prove incredibly important as the rules of business continue to change and the scale of value chains continues to expand.

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT, or more commonly termed as blockchain) is uniquely capable of reducing the complexity of elongated and complicated value chains needed to operate on a global level, particularly in the realm of international trade. Allowing parties to check that every link in a supply chain network is authentic, without the need of an intermediary, blockchain can be used to record, track, monitor, and transfer assets in a cost-efficient and transparent manner.

As businesses seek to reduce costs, become more resilient, and overcome challenges presented by a changing international business landscape, blockchain promises to provide faster and more affordable means of conducting financial transactions, storing and transferring information between parties, maintaining data security across industry value chains, and facilitating increased transparency.

The technology also creates an entirely “trust-free” environment and provides a new model for the way organisations interact with one another and operate internally.

One example of the profound impact which blockchain can have upon the supply chain is the Siam Cement Group (SCG), the largest building material company in Southeast Asia. SCG, in partnership with Siam Commercial Bank and Digital Ventures, has been operating a blockchain procurement platform to ensure that data from throughout the procurement process is secure and immutable for easy auditing, analysis, and invoice verification while decreasing the risk of fraud. Built on R3’s Corda enterprise framework, SCG’s Procure-to-Pay solution has cut the company’s average procurement processing time by 50 per cent, while reducing costs for the business by approximately 70 per cent.

Also Read: Will South Asian tech startups thrive in the new normal?

With such impressive early returns, it is safe to say the blockchain integration can have a transformative effect on business sustainability and long-term success.

Singapore’s future as a global leader

The good news is that Singapore is no stranger to digital innovation. In fact, the island nation enjoys a reputation globally for being forward-thinking and technologically daring. Already, financial actors such as DBS, are implementing blockchain technology to digitise cross-border financial processes while the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA) announced a partnership with R3 in July 2020 to provide startups with the blockchain tools needed to drive digital transformation.

Additionally, the local regulatory environment is highly supportive of technological experimentation, with government startup accelerators, grants programmes, and guidelines in place to help steer local enterprise towards more streamlined, future-proof business models.

Looking ahead, a business will be defined by a renewed premium on resilience, transparency, efficiency, and collaboration. By bringing together fragmented processes, information silos, and value chains onto a decentralised, secure, permissioned blockchain —many of the challenges presented by the new normal may be overcome.

Just as digital platforms disrupted trade in the past, COVID-19 will set similar change in motion and we are likely to see the replacement of physical offerings and ways of working, with digital. The success stories of tomorrow will be digitally empowered, lighter, and more agile than the corporate giants of today.

Also Read: Why the new Singapore variable capital company is a fund structure game changer

Although Singapore sits at the top of the global trade and business sectors, decision-makers must remain cognisant of intensifying competition to emerge from the current pandemic as the leader of the new economy.

The time for continued innovation and digital transformation is now. 2020 has shown us that no company or market is safe from disruption. If Singaporean enterprise wishes to remain competitive, it will need to change its way of thinking and adopt the new tools required to overcome new challenges.

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SIRCLO, an Indonesian company providing e-commerce solutions in Indonesia that help brands sell online, announced today it has closed its US$6 million Series B funding from a host of investors, including East Ventures, OCBC NISP Ventura, Skystar Capital, Sinar Mas Land.

“We plan to allocate this injection of funds to help strengthen our internal infrastructure and to keep serving the growing number of businesses that are entering e-commerce, including clients who have trusted our services,” said Brian Marshal, CEO and Founder of SIRCLO.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indonesian Ministry of Information noted that online shopping transactions have increased by up to 400 per cent. The crisis also accelerates e-commerce penetration.

As per SIRCLO Insights’s 2020 e-commerce report, the company saw 12 million new users as stringent social distancing measures were on in Indonesia.

Also Read: E-commerce website builder Sirclo secures funding from East Ventures

Since its establishment in 2013, SIRCLO offers four business solutions — SIRCLO Store, SIRCLO Connexi, SIRCLO Chat, and SIRCLO Commerce.

SIRCLO Store is a software platform for creating template-based online shops for small to medium-sized local businesses. It is now planning to improve SIRCLO Store to provide an integrated platform to access all of its digital platforms on various sales channels, such as brand.com, marketplace, and chat commerce.

SIRCLO Connexi offers an interactive dashboard to manage sales from various Indonesian e-commerce platforms.

SIRCLO Chat presents a conversational commerce platform in the form of an interactive dashboard that is integrated with the WhatsApp Business API. Through its end-to-end channel management solutions, SIRCLO Commerce helps facilitate the entire online sales process, from stock management, ordering, product delivery, to customer service.

SIRCLO’s latest merge

In May 2020, SIRCLO officially merged with ICUBE, a local agency that provides e-commerce technology and solutions. This allows the two companies to combine thousands of their clients and to help more businesses and brands carry out an effective and efficient digital transformation.

Following the merger, Muliadi Joe, Founder and President of ICUBE, took over the position of CTO at SIRCLO, and former CTO Leontius Adhika Pradhana was appointed as Chief Product Officer.

Additionally, in June 2020 SIRCLO appointed Danang Cahyono as Chief Operations Officer.

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Image Credit: SIRCLO

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E-commerce saw a surge in transactions in both essential and discretionary items in the past few months in Singapore, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced most people to stay at home, according to a joint study by iPrice Group and Similar Web.

Driven by high-value online orders nationwide, Singaporeans spent an average of S$113 (US$83) during the January-June 2020 period.

The average basket size increased by 51 per cent when compared to the same period last year, the study finds.

Also Read: How Shopee uses AI, data to build a marketing strategy that suits changes in user behaviour

Given the current situation in the island state, iPrice and SimilarWeb also updated the Map of E-commerce report to shed light on the biggest developments from the top e-commerce platforms in Singapore.

Data reveals that e-commerce platforms in Singapore experienced a two-digit growth (23 per cent) in total web visits (desktop and mobile web) throughout the first half of 2020.

This signifies a strong consumer confidence in e-commerce retail and further growth in the digital economy.

Based on the overall e-commerce traffic in Singapore, five of the top e-commerce players that emerged are Shopee, Lazada, Qoo10, Amazon and EZBuy.

Shopee led the pack

Shopee was the most visited platform in the city-state as of Q2 2020. The e-commerce firm saw a tremendous increase of 82 per cent from Q1 to Q2 2020, garnering nearly an additional five million in average visitors in Q2 2020 alone.

The surge was potentially driven by Shopee’s constant marketing initiatives to promote and help value-driven shoppers during the circuit breaker period. These initiatives included ‘shop from home’, ‘4.4 flash sale’, ‘super mart month’, ‘6.6-7.7 great Shopee Sale’.

Lazada played emerged second with a per cent rise in traffic when compared to Q1 2020, recording an average of 8.5 million visitors as of Q2 2020.

The Alibaba-owned firm retained a strong presence in Singapore as the platform acquired 23 per cent of the web market share, indicating its healthy growth in winning both customers and merchants.

Lazada also aims to stand out from its competitor through its strong brand connections in engaging livestreams. Moreover, it assisted more brick-and-mortar stores to be part of its online platform.

Its online supermarket delivery business, Redmart, reported a 4x jump in sales since Singapore implemented movement restrictions in early April.

Also Read: Alibaba-backed Lazada acquires online grocer RedMart

Additionally, among the most important initiatives to support future business strategies was the recent appointment of Lazada’s new CEO as the company aims to double down on tech investments in each market.

Given Lazada’s growth in numbers, its Group CMO, Mary Zhou, believes Lazada’s Super Brand Day (SBD) promotions are 2nd only to its 11.11 sales day, where 26 brands recorded sales of over $1 million across the region in 24 hours.

Dark horses

Qoo10 is another home-grown company that experienced string growth amidst the pandemic.

As the top-3 e-commerce players successfully maintained their positions in Singapore, a surprising element emerges in the form of an international e-commerce giant Amazon. With its strengthening presence in the market since Q4 2019, Amazon seems to be penetrating Singapore successfully.

Amazon was thriving during COVID-19 as it was the forth most visited e-commerce platform in H1 2020. Its traffic surged to an average of 3.6 million from 2.8 million.

Also Read: Is China the new global e-commerce leader?

Its strong performance could probably be attributed to the closure of many of  its international retail stores not available in the city-state, providing consumers with a variety of options across the globe.

Given its constant growth and maturity in the e-commerce sector, Amazon may catch up fast especially with its innovations to increase its market share in the upcoming quarters.

Securing the fifth position as the most visited e-commerce platform, EZBuy had garnered over 63 per cent increase of monthly visits from Q1 to Q2 2020.

Specialised in bringing wide varieties of consumer products from overseas, the company recorded 1.68 million in average visitors as of Q2 2020.

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Image Credit: Shopee

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