Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. 

Research suggests that entrepreneurship has gained much popularity. After all, more people are exploring entrepreneurship instead of conventionally securing employment under corporations or Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

This could be a consequence of mainstream media’s deceptively glamorous portrayal of the entrepreneurial journey. After all, news of startup fundraising and the growth of unicorn companies are covered more extensively in the media, while the reality of the entrepreneurial grind takes a backseat. With that in mind, is entrepreneurship truly a glamorous endeavour?

All in all, entrepreneurship is not easy to figure out. Most entrepreneurs will have their stories of adversity and business struggles to share. If you are new to starting up, you will need conviction in what you want to achieve and how you want to grow your startup and team. 

A clear goal and a well-thought-out plan to success will help you determine whether you want to build fast, sell fast or develop a long-lasting business. These are some of the few factors that will also help you determine if you need to raise substantial funding or not.

So, what is the grind like behind the glamour of entrepreneurship?

Focus, focus and more focus

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is real. More often than not, I have seen entrepreneurs– including myself in the past– fear that if they don’t build another feature or app, they may lose out on market share and even a good chunk of their existing users.

If a startup or small business lets this fear drive the course of their business journey, they may end up spreading themselves too thin. After all, they don’t have much resources that can afford them the luxury to lose their focus on building more features or apps.  

Also Read: How should SMEs and startups prepare to handle a ransomware attack?

Most successful startups that I come across, only have one focus right at the start, such as:

• Google – to build the best search engine
• Mailchimp – to build the best email marketing tool
• Amazon – to be the world’s most customer-centric company

or even that famous hawker I frequent, who focuses on just one really good dish.

Focus is never easy.  It comes with making tough calls along the way.  Some tough calls may kill your business and at times, after knowing your odds, it is up to luck. Take Talenox (that I co-founded) as an example. During our second year in 2015, we made some tough calls:

• Cutting revenues from larger enterprises so we could focus on the SMEs market.
• Dedicating our resources to make Talenox truly self-serve, to ensure onboarding is scalable without need for manual intervention unlike our peers in the market

This move was a first in the region and it was really challenging due to the complexity of payroll and leave management. However, it was definitely a necessary milestone for Talenox to automate further and scale sustainably.

In addition to that, Talenox made the tough decision to stop developing our former Scheduler and Time Tracker modules further. This was done so we can truly focus our resources on HR compliance for Payroll and Leave. It also allowed us to ensure that we build in-depth localised features for each country so that we are one of the best in our niche. 

Our efforts paid off in the coming years, as our peers were chasing to build features for various modules and some even tried to venture to insurtech and machine learning without much success due to the loss of focus.

You only have so many resources as a startup.  To gain initial traction and to scale for growth, you’ll have to stay focused, prioritise well and optimise as much as possible.

Don’t add fuel when there’s no fire

Though adding fuel to the fire means causing conflicts, I’m referring more to adding fuel (funding) if there is fire (good growth). Without proven initial growth, it doesn’t make sense to raise funds to dilute the current shareholding and future rate of returns (ROR) of investors.

In the current climate, there is a ready supply of VC funds and the dwindling supply of good deals or startups in the market to invest in. This makes it relatively easier for entrepreneurs to raise funds to manifest an exciting idea and sustain the business growth spurt brought about by early-stage traction.

Indirectly, this creates an opportunity for financially-savvy entrepreneurs to ensure that their startup looks good on paper. However, their startup may not be sustainable, especially in the long run.

Also Read: Uninhibited African startups in search of a win-win collaboration with SEA

Let’s say you’re looking to grow a business that stays for the long haul. As you focus and get your initial traction to prove product-market fit, it is time to ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you want to build fast, sell fast or create a long-lasting business?
• Does fund-raising make sense for your startup’s goal?
• If yes, how much is needed? 

Your answer to these series of questions will help you determine how you should raise funds.

Build fast, sell fast approach in entrepreneurship

If you are raising funds from VCs, you are planning an exit in five to seven years or at most 10 years due to the investment horizon of most VCs. You may have heard stories that once you have raised VC funding, it is all about numbers and getting growth at all cost.

Culture will be tweaked towards getting more revenue or Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), depending on the valuation metrics that your particular vertical uses. This is simply because VCs need to get the ROR for their Limited Partnerships (LPs); after all, VCs are investments that seek returns.  

How Talenox created a long-lasting business

However, if you are thinking of spending time on building a really good product and only raising funds when you experience hyper growth, then you should focus on getting more revenue on board in a sustainable way and raise buffer funds to help you bridge your cash flow. 

Funding can be from angels or family offices with longer horizons; alternatively, you can bootstrap if you are able to.

You will be surprised to learn that there are a number of well-known startups that have not raised funds or even minimal funding to grow.

Some great examples are Mailchimp, GoFundMe, Basecamp, Buffer and Zapier. What is even more surprising is that tech giants like Google and Apple (pre-IPO) only raised a tiny fraction of funds compared to that of “modern” unicorn companies.

For us over at Talenox, we monitor our growth and SaaS metrics pretty closely and we only raised very minimal funding to ensure that we can achieve a “steady state” with positive cash flow.

We do this because we noticed that pouring in funds to get more growth just doesn’t work well in the HR Tech industry in the region currently amongst our VC funded peers.

B2C vs B2B

For consumer-facing startups (B2C), I agree that funding is crucial as it is usually all about who can get the most mindshare in the shortest amount of time and create the stickiness to your product so that competitors will face greater friction to gain more market share. 

As for business facing startups (B2B) it really depends on the region and the level of education for SaaS adoption in the region.  Premature investments will usually result in an over expenditure to acquire users creating a much higher cost of acquisition than what is supposed to be healthy.

Both paths have their challenges and it depends on which path suits you most.

Entrepreneurship is a team marathon, not a solo sprint

Growing a startup is like running a marathon. You will need to pace yourself and not a sprint that you find yourself burning up within a couple of years. Many times, I see entrepreneurs burn out at the early stages of their startup. It is important to realise that very few startups like YouTube get acquired at the very early stage.

In fact, the whole journey of building a startup up is like a team marathon. You are not the only one running the race. You are also building a team with a culture as you run the marathon with them, supporting them and growing with them as they add value to your users and customers.

Also Read: The 27 Indonesian startups that have taken the ecosystem to next level this year

Usually, it takes time to build such a culture. It is even tougher to nurture such a culture if you are a fast-growing startup.

Many startups took a few iterations to get their culture right, while some just focus on growth at all costs and at the expense of culture. The issue with that is that you’ll have a bunch of mercenaries jumping onto the bandwagon to “get rich quick”. If it is the culture you can work with, then by all means go ahead and build that startup.  

The mainstream media is filled with the glamour of successful unicorn companies and company exits. Before you kickstart your entrepreneurship journey, I encourage you to dig deeper into each story, perform your due diligence and reference checks to understand the stories thoroughly.  

Entrepreneurship is never an easy journey and most have failed. Nonetheless, this should not deter you, but provide you a clearer lens of what you are getting yourself into.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast or infographic

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Sometime in 2008, Italy started a revolution by offering properties in villages for EUR1 to encourage people to move to rural areas. These properties range from tiny houses to larger villas. The reason is simple: dwindling or ageing population.

Cut to now, almost 7,600 Italian villages are offering this scheme.

Dr Tausif Malik, a passionate entrepreneur based in the US, sensed an opportunity. “Why not conflate the ideas of entrepreneurship and the EUR1 scheme to support entrepreneurship globally?” he thought to himself.

This led him to launch Startup Villages, a village startup ecosystem to promote villages in Italy and Japan as ideal destinations for startups and sustainable development.

Last week, e27 spoke to Malik for more details of this project.

Below are the edited excerpts:

What is Startup Villages? How and when did the idea occur to you?

Startup Villages is the world’s first village startup ecosystem to promote villages in Italy and Japan as ideal destinations for startups and sustainable development. The project is promoted by myself through my company TMA Worldwide.

The idea occurred to me in 2008 in Chicago. It was summer when I read a CNN news report that Italian villages launched an initiative to sell properties at EUR 1 as an incentive to repopulate the dying Italian villages.

Approximately 7,600 Italian villages started offering the same scheme to invite new residents. As a result, many people bought and refurbished the homes they purchased in these Italian villages, but most were holidays homes, which didn’t trigger economic activity.

Hence, I started toying with creating an economic system and blending my knowledge of reverse migration with the Italian villages, and thus, I started documenting the concept of Startup Villages.

Also Read: Sustainability: the new business reality

The idea of reverse migration idea was germinated in 2018. I established a crypto mining training programme (Bitcoin training programme) based on his theory of reverse migration.

Under this programme, we planned to train young people of Indian villages and offer crypto mining rigs. The aim was to create a sustainable economic environment in India’s villages and make the country the most prominent crypto mining hub globally. But the programme had to be shelved for some policy reasons.

Can you explain how the Startup Village project works?

We are creating a platform and ecosystem to connect the villages of Italy and Japan initially. These two countries have the developed infrastructure, and they are already offering houses for EUR 1. We will move to other global locations later.

We are already in talks with over a dozen villages in Italy.

In the first phase, we tested the idea with two municipalities and submitted the proposal. In the second, we will conduct an online awareness programme for Italian Mayors, investors, startups, and the media. The plan is to launch the signup campaign in September and run a webinar every week.

In the third phase, we will sign in municipalities and do one-on-one training for them. Later, we will conduct a web conference in January 2021.

In the last phase, we will do an in-person Startup Villages conference in Italy and Japan.

The Startup Villages ecosystem will comprise the following:

• Events and meet-ups
• Communities
• Incubation and acceleration
• R&D
• Investors
• Startups

What incentives does SV provide to startups/entrepreneurs who are in moving to these villages? How many startups do you expect to join you in this project? Do you invite startups from across the world?

Italy is already offering incentives to digital nomads and whoever is interested in working remotely.

Japan is already offering cash incentives to tech companies establish in rural japan.

We are inviting startups from across the globe. The advantage is startups relocating to Italy will get access to the European Union market.

How many do you expect to come and join the Startup Villages project from the Asia Pacific?

We estimate that many APAC startups could take advantage of the Italian government’s incentives, EU market, and EU Investors.

In Japan, startups can benefit from the government’s cash incentives, the Shibuya district startup ecosystem, and the J- Startup government initiative.

As we are in phase, we can only give an estimated number of startups after some time.

What kind of startups do you target? Any specific segment/vertical? Can even an idea-stage startup join the project? How long can a startup work in these villages?

In Italy, we target startups in food, dairy, agriculture, automotive & electric vehicles, and fintech.

In Japan, we look for companies in the fintech, future technologies, drones, AI, food, and automotive & EVs sectors.

Startups of any stage can join us in this programme.

Also Read: Chototel gets you a room for US$2 a night in Dubai and Mumbai

The duration depends on the startups and how long they want to stay. But if they take any government benefit and incentives and then they have to adhere to government guidelines.

Can you shed some light on your working partnership with the respective governments of these villages/countries?

As mentioned, we are in the outreach phase, and we have submitted to two Italian villages and conducting an awareness program for onboarding.

How does the Startup Villages project boost the rural economy of these countries?

Startup Villages would be a game-changer to promote reverse migration and generate economic activity in rural Italy and globally.

Below are the advantages for the villages:

• Creates a new brand image for villages
• First-time villages to promote as a startup hub
• Startups get investments
• Startups generate economic activity
• Creates employment
• Attracts news residents and organisations
• Incentives the rural youth to stay back at home
• Generates revenues & taxes
• Develops positive media and public relations

How will startup founders cope with the expenses related to their stay and operations, especially if the startups don’t have any viable business model yet?

Entrepreneurs are hustlers; when they see an opportunity, they will grab it. Most of the successful startups are bootstrapped and don’t seek funding until they are viable.

We can’t comment on these cases. But, if startups need help, we can advise them and educated them. Then, after that, it’s up to them how they can leverage it to their advantage.

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Image Credit: Startup Villages

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Mindtera, an Indonesia-based personal growth learning platform, has raised an undisclosed funding round led by East Ventures, an early-stage venture fund focusing on Southeast Asia and Japan. 

Hustle Fund, a pre-seed and seed-stage VC based in Silicon Valley, and angel investors including Henry Hendrawan (executive board member of Traveloka) also participated.

With the fresh investment, Mindtera plans to launch new features of the product, strengthen the technology team, accelerate brand awareness, and build capacity in responding to market needs. 

Founded in 2021, Mindtera provides curated personal growth learning curriculums across key areas of life — family, love and work, assisting people in a structured manner to better navigate through life.

Serving both individual and corporate clients, the startup targets the imbalance between hard skills and emotional intelligence (EQ) by designing and building curriculums and tools around its proprietary multiple-intelligence approach, including emotional, social and physical intelligence.

According to the Harvard Business Review, EQ is twice as important as other skills to achieve personal growth and well-being. During the COVID-19 pandemic, EQ is said to secure society over uncertainties and unprecedented changes.

“As the first institutional VC-funded personal growth learning platform in Indonesia, we want to bring life-changing content to more corporates and people,” said Mindtera co-founder and CEO Tita Ardiati.

Bayu Bhaskoro, a 10-year senior creative professional in multinational advertising agencies, such as Leo Burnett, Y&R, and JWT, joined hands with Ardiati in establishing the company. As a certified life coach and a 14-year senior statistician, Ardiati and her small team of 15 people work in product, engineering, life coaches, psychologists and content creation team. 

“Tita deeply understands the issues that our mass young society is facing,” said Melisa Irene, partner at East Ventures. “We believe Mindtera will pave the way to change our societal understanding about holistic intelligence, and equip people with the right tools so they can achieve fulfillment in life.”

Mindtera claims its products are validated scientifically and clinically by coaches, educators and psychologists. In the future, the company plans to build communities as a daily support system for its clients.

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Image credit: Mindtera

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Southeast Asia’s tech sector has been breaking records and making headlines in the first half of this year, no small feat amid a global pandemic.

With significant deals for on-demand mobility and e-commerce companies such as Singapore-based Grab and Indonesian giant Gojek, the upturn in activity has already been termed a ‘boom’ and a ‘hot streak’ by UK media outlets including Financial Times and The Economist.

Southeast Asia’s digital economy is expected to surpass US$300 billion by 2025, according to a 2020 report. The region’s tech success story is evolving and international opportunities for partnerships, investment and company expansion are plentiful. 

Specifically looking at the UK – where I am the Chair of Tech Nation, the growth platform for UK tech leaders – the opportunity for Southeast Asian startups is bright.

We recently announced that the UK now has 12 tech decacorns, and that out of the seven new decacorns this year, six of the founders were not from the UK. A compelling argument for Southeast Asian tech entrepreneurs looking to start, scale or grow in the UK. 

The UK tech ecosystem is valued at US$585 billion, more than double the next most valuable European ecosystem, Germany, at US$291 billion and has huge potential in these three key areas for Southeast Asian scale-ups who are ready for their next big step.

A well-connected fintech sector

The UK’s world-leading fintech hub presents an attractive opportunity for Southeast Asian scaleups, not just due to the maturity of the sector, but also because the major global financial centres– London and Singapore– are well-aligned with similar approaches to regulating innovation and encouraging collaboration between fintech and traditional financial services firms.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS) have both taken a proactive approach to foster digital transformation in the financial sector.

The FCA’s innovation unit runs regulatory sandbox programmes for fintech to ensure market stability without holding up innovation, and MAS offers a similar scheme alongside an ‘express’ sandbox to rubber-stamp low-risk innovation.

Singapore and the UK recently launched a new financial partnership that will help boost collaboration on important areas including fintech with Singapore and the Asia Pacific region.

Also Read: (Updated) Eezee raises pre-Series A led by Wavemaker, secures government contract

Driven by innovation and technology, our financial services sector continues to deepen its connections with financial centres across the world.

With 10 per cent of the world’s total fintech investment coming into the UK, our fintech sector remains at the cutting-edge of digital finance, with unicorns (and Tech Nation Alumni) such as Revolut, Wise, Starling and Checkout.com who have all scaled into Asia Pacific, born in the UK.

The size of the market opportunity in the UK, presence of world-class talent and levels of investment into its fintech sector, provide real growth potential for fintechs in Southeast Asia.

Accelerated cybersecurity growth

The combination of world-leading universities, a high density of cybersecurity accelerators, and the prioritisation of security on the national agenda has created a cluster of cybersecurity activity in the UK. This includes globally successful companies such as Darktrace which was founded in the UK. 

The pandemic has accelerated growth in the sector, with the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) Annual Cyber Sector Report showing a 21 per cent increase in the number of cyber firms, and almost 4,000 new jobs created in 2020.

Companies and national infrastructure in Southeast Asian nations, including Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines, are particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks and breaches.

A recent ‘urgent report’ explained that the region’s growing strategic relevance and low cyber resilience makes it a prime target for cyberattacks.

Southeast Asian scaleups which can leverage the UK’s expertise and experience in cybersecurity have the opportunity to become pioneers in this fast-growing sector.

The UK’s healthtech boom

For more than five years, Southeast Asia has experienced a ‘digital healthcare leap’ with the emergence of accessible health services designed specifically for a ‘mobile-first demographic. 

According to data from Tech Nation, healthtech in the UK is also booming, showing record-breaking investment in 2020 at US$2.33 billion.

The UK is home to more than 3,000 healthtech scaleups, of which around 400 have shown at least 20 per cent growth over the last two years. 

A key factor for success for healthtech scaleups is forming crucial partnerships with healthcare providers, insurers and corporate partners.

For example, UK-headquartered Babylon Health partnered with Prudential insurance to provide its digital services to Asian customers, while Asian ‘superapp’ Grab partnered with Chinese healthcare platform Ping An Good Doctor for a joint venture that delivers online healthcare in Southeast Asia.

Also Read: How Asian governments are leading digital health promotion

The synergies between the healthtech sectors in Southeast Asia and the UK, alongside the importance of international partnerships, have the potential to generate world-leading healthcare innovation without limits. 

The UK and Southeast Asia are perfect partners for the future of tech. Launched in 2021, our Tech Nation International Growth Programme is one of the many ways the UK continues to collaborate in the digital economy globally.

We are working closely with the UK government, specifically the Department for International Trade, as part of the Digital Trade Network, to help not only UK tech firms enter new markets in Southeast Asia but also help build foundational links for businesses, offering the Global Talent visa to tech professionals from the region so they can immerse themselves in the UK’s tech vibrant ecosystem.

I look forward to seeing more international partnerships between our ecosystems, creating the next generation of tech unicorns and decacorns.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast or infographic

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

Image credit: irstone

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Singapore- and Indonesia-based growth-stage VC fund Centauri Fund has received an investment of KRW 10 billion (US$8.5 million) from sovereign wealth fund Korea Growth Investment Corporation (K-Growth).

The partnership aims to boost the tech investment corridor between South Korea and Southeast Asia.

As a new Limited Partner, K-Growth will contribute to Centauri’s goal of backing the most promising startups in the region, focusing on Indonesia.

“With K-Growth coming into Centauri Fund, MDI expects Centauri Fund to help us to scout for innovations to bring into Indonesia, which MDI will bridge to support the initiatives of Telkom and other Indonesian state-owned enterprises,” Li added.

Launched in December 2019 with a target of raising US$150 million, Centauri is run by KB Investment (a business unit under Korea’s KB Financial Group) and MDI Ventures (the corporate VC arm of Telkom Group).

Also Read: MDI Ventures’s new US$500M fund seeks to push digitisation of Indonesia’s state-owned firms

The fund — headed by General partner Kenneth Li (also managing partner at MDI Singapore) and KB Investment CEO Kim Jong Pil — invests in machine learning and fintech, with strong potential for scale and expansion as a growth-stage venture fund.

The ticket size ranges from US$1 million and US$5 million in a startup, from pre-series A to Series B stages throughout ASEAN, with an emphasis on Indonesia.

Telkom Group Director of Digital Business Fajrin Rasyid said: “Hopefully, the collaboration between K-Growth and Centauri Fund can strengthen relations between Indonesia and South Korea, especially in terms of developing the digital economy.”

Since its launch, Centauri Fund has made four investments in the region.

In April 2020, the fund led the Series A financing round for insurtech platform Qoala, which closed at US$13.5 million. It also backed WEBUY, a Singapore-based social commerce startup, alongside Wavemaker Partners in October 2020.

Its more recent deals include an early-stage investment in Indonesian logistics startup Paxel.co in April 2021. It also participated in the Series C round of fintech company Cermati.

In January, Centauri backed the Yogyakarta-based RUN System, which provides solutions for streamlining and revolutionising various business management processes.

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Image Credit: Centauri Fund

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