As the dreary funding winter soars, at e27, we are kickstarting a new article series Line of Hire to understand a company’s culture and hiring philosophies to empower tech workers with the right growth tools to enable business owners to attract talent.

Jeff Lee founded Zoala in hopes of addressing mental wellness issues arising amongst adolescents and looking forward to seeing its impact on our community of young people and their families affected by mental illness every day.

Throughout his career, Lee has held prominent leadership roles in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia, and Singapore, gaining invaluable experience in guiding startups, SMEs, and corporations in devising and implementing effective techniques and technology strategies.

In this episode, Lee shares his organisation’s culture and hiring philosophies.

Excerpts:

What personality traits/qualities do you look for in potential employees?

At Zoala, we’re all about valuing individuals who not only rock their technical skills but also bring a positive attitude and genuine authenticity to the table. We absolutely love team players who are adaptable, curious, and have a knack for taking on challenges with gusto.

We place a strong emphasis on employees’ personal purpose alignment to Zoala’s vision, ‘mental wellness, first’, and personal values towards ‘building to serve that’s built to last, and doing the right thing’.

So, if our potential employees possess these awesome qualities, they can be sure that we’re already intrigued and excited to get to know them better!

How do they fit into your company culture? Tell us a little more about your company culture.

Our company culture fosters a strong sense of community and teamwork. We prioritise open communication, collaboration, and mutual support among our team members. Each individual’s ideas are highly valued, and we embrace diversity and inclusion as fundamental pillars of our culture.

While we work diligently to achieve our goals, we also know how to find moments of levity and come together to celebrate our collective successes. A harmonious balance between professionalism and a relaxed atmosphere defines our work environment.

Also Read: Be adaptable and willing to challenge your previous beliefs: Henson Tsai of SleekFlow

At Zoala, we encourage every employee (referred to internally as a Zoalie),

• To challenge the status quo
• To accept that success is final and failure is not fatal
• To not be afraid to fail but fail fast and forward
• To ‘lead with passion, harmoniously’

How do you foster transparency and encourage achievement in the workplace?

We believe in keeping the communication lines wide open and sharing information with our team. From regular updates on company progress to being open about challenges, we strive to create an atmosphere where everyone is in the loop and their inputs are considered.

Our team constantly and consistently requests to ‘ share more, so that they/all will worry less ’. Open communication ensures no ambiguity and any discrepancies/disputes are resolved at the onset.

And when it comes to recognising achievements, we give a big shoutout to our dedicated team members who go above and beyond. We celebrate big and small wins during our weekly team casual meets, monthly team alignment meetings, and quarterly town halls.

The post It is better to have a great team than a team of greats: Jeff Lee of Zoala appeared first on e27.

(This new series provides an opportunity for bootstrapped founders to share their venture-building stories with the audience. If you have a compelling story, please email it to writers@e27.co.)

OpenMinds has been quietly building a successful business, staying out of the press and VCs. Last year, the Malaysian martech company celebrated its 10th anniversary. The factors that helped the 45-employee group win the market have been aplenty, but one factor stands out: employees.

“We don’t always get it right but we try our best through robust hiring processes to find the brilliant minds to fit into the job role at that season in time. We monitor their growth, performance and culture fit, and if they don’t achieve their goals, we reposition them to different teams or entities to (hopefully) flourish. In our business, people are our greatest asset but our greatest headache too. We must be smart in how and where we invest our time and effort,” says Daryll Tan, Co-Founder and Director at OpenMinds.

In this interview with e27, Tan describes how OpenMinds won the confidence of the market and navigated different weathers to be a force to reckon with.

Edited excerpts:

Can you give us some background on how OpenMinds was founded and how it has evolved over time?

I had my own talent management and video company back in 2011. That was my first foray into entrepreneurship. I decided to pivot the business and find reliable and like-minded business partners.

After several meetings with various people, I finally found the right partner, and we officially formed OpenMinds in 2012. We had five partners then, of whom four remain now. We came together with a common goal to open people’s minds to the possibility of new technology and all digitalisation. We have always positioned ourselves as consultants focused on marketing technology (MarTech) and solving business problems with digital and tech solutions.

Initially, we tackled business hurdles by offering social media management and strategic planning. We then pivoted to analytics and eventually focused on providing enterprise solutions.

OpenMinds is now a group of companies offering various solutions such as digital marketing, strategy, consultation, enterprise tech development, product-market fit, performance marketing, CRM, and automation tools.

We have had more than ten other subsidiaries and ventures along the way but have streamlined to focus on the group right now while maintaining a few strong subsidiaries. One of the subsidiaries is OpenAcademy, an edutech firm focusing on on-the-go, bite-sized learning, corporate, and public training across Southeast Asia.

Also Read: Bootstrapped: How dating service Sirf Coffee takes on the likes of Tinder without raising VC money

OpenMinds has teams and offices in Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore. China is next in line. We have consulted multinational brands across F&B, finance, FMCG, automotive, e-commerce/retail, electronics, and more.

With a newly minted structure and a dedicated leadership team, we are now evolving to solidify our MarTech offerings across APAC and to enhance our internal culture and people development to ensure better ownership and relevant solutions for growing economies.

One of the unique aspects of OpenMinds is that it has grown without any external capital or VC funding. Can you talk about the decision not to seek external investment and how you have been able to finance your growth without it? Do you ever want to raise funding?

The main reason for bootstrapping from day one is maintaining control over our business. This allows us to make the right decisions at the right time without external influence. Full ownership enables us (partners) to speak freely and create counter-cultural habits and operational processes.

It also allowed us to grow our people the way we want to, invest in experiments as we like, develop solutions that require speed and push for innovative structures within the organisation. This also means allowing our solutions and products to speak for themselves, giving us the runway to prove product market fit and the opportunity to reinvest our profits towards the right channel.

We have since only relied on business revenue, cash flow and smart investment decisions to finance our growth. This has also led us to play in a different financing field where we build our credit line with banks for future funding, as and when needed.

We have since raised a successful round of funding for our subsidiary OpenAcademy. We have no intentions to raise funds from VCs but welcome other forms of funds from financial institutions, government growth grants and client work.

How has OpenMinds been able to compete with other companies in the same space that have received large amounts of funding?

1. We do not consider ourselves as an agency. We steer clear of that. We are consultants first and only execute work in the areas we are confident in, i.e. digital and tech. We always look at the business’s root problem before offering suggestions/proposals — even if it means looking at a broader company scope, addressing a more general need and offering more than the brief.

We have lost pitches because of this. Not that they don’t like us but because our solutions were bigger in scale, addressed business and operational challenges in-depth and required more involvement of other stakeholders. We have since reaped the beauty of approaching business solutions from these angles, and our clients are happy to enjoy the rewards of their investments in us.

2. We invest a lot in our people- from culture to career advancement. For example, we have practised flexible and remote working since 2012. We allowed our team to work out-of-office three days a week; no strict check-in system suffocated them. We are task-oriented and treat everyone as mature adults.

We offer one of the best employee benefits (OM Perks) in the industry, focusing on the team’s needs and having career advancement plans that allow for title promotion and overall upskilling, directorship and company share options. Talents are encouraged to work cross-teams, be responsible for their education (free OpenAcademy access for all employees) and take progressive rest whenever they need to recharge (we have since introduced a very practical 365-day leave).

We have a flat communication culture paired with a structure that allows for vertical growth, advancement, leadership opportunities, and accountability.

3. We have positioned OpenMinds as a multinational company, offering solutions that suit each country’s needs. We have created a network of intelligence and resources pool ready to be shared across our advisory work. While we have a presence in several countries, 99 per cent of our work is done in-house, including our tech development.

What strategies have OpenMinds used to achieve such rapid growth?

1. Pivot, pivot, pivot: We made quick decisions, especially in our early days, to position ourselves as best as possible to serve business demands in the digital and tech scene.

2. Innovate: We are also finding ways to innovate and stitch opportunities—a case in point is the multiple ventures and eventually laser focusing on our current group and subsidiaries.

3. Right people, right position: We don’t always get it right but we try our best through robust hiring processes to find the brilliant minds to fit into the job role at that season in time. We monitor their growth, performance and culture fit, and if they don’t achieve their goals, we reposition them to different teams or entities to (hopefully) flourish. In our business, people are our greatest asset but our greatest headache too. We must be smart in how and where we invest our time and effort.

4. Leadership team: This has gone through multiple iterations throughout the years we’ve been operating. The leadership team is different from mid-management. They don’t only perform their role as team leads but act as a “sub-committee” specially appointed to handle the group’s overall business continuity, decision-making, and succession planning.

This helps us with operations, people advancement, and business growth and for the founders to focus on steering the bigger vision.

Are you breakeven or profitable now?

We have been profitable since the first year of our operations.

Can you talk about some of your biggest challenges and how you overcame them without external funding?

1. Cash flow: This topic sounds too simple and has been reiterated a thousand times. But cash flow becomes very real in the business world. We had multiple times when we were rather tight on cash due to the payment terms of some of our invoices, overdue payments, and lack of proper financial planning. Most of the time, we overcame this with quick execution of payment recovery from clients, loans, and a whole load of faith. We have never shortchanged anyone, even at our tightest; we paid salaries on time and have seen the rewards of pure integrity, morale and trust.

Also Read: Bootstrapped: How 99VR raced against the clock to build a profitable business

2. Salary during the pandemic: We did not retrench anyone but had to defer some portion of the salary. I believe we aced this process by having the leadership and in-house finance teams ready. We put together a solid pay deferment plan, communicating this to all employees via a town hall, followed by group check-ins and open door policy where we addressed every concern in a 1 to 1 setting. We then made sure communication was written in black and white and communicated along the way. We eventually paid back all the deferred salary within a short few months, with interest! This helped us gain the confidence of the team.

3. The leisure of hiring very senior talents: As a people-driven organisation, the ideal situation is to have very senior and competent people from the get-go. But with limited funds, we needed to be wise in who we hired. We overcame this by breaking down the roles, ensuring a very tight and unique interview process and having milestones to gauge the talents’ performance and fit.

We also invested a lot of time in training internally and allowed the team to flourish by themselves, guiding them as we went along. We also promoted internal teammates so that our hiring cost remains low. Train them and allow them to take on bigger roles.

How has the company culture contributed to its success, and how do you maintain that culture as the company continues to grow?

We are big on culture. I always say this: Values create character, character creates habit, and habit creates culture”. From an operational or structural perspective, culture has allowed us to work in a unified mindset, sharing the same values and vision. Our culture has pushed us to be more gracious, understanding yet firm, and accommodating yet decisive in our wants and needs. It has given birth to a great employee benefit, working style and tenacity that echoes across the board. This big area has kept four of us founders going strong too.

Culture is easy to develop, but it takes one person to knock it all down. We try our best to maintain our culture through proper onboarding, accountability and leading by example. We maintain consistency in our speech and conduct.

Expanding to different countries doesn’t mean that every country must follow the same culture as Malaysia. This does not work as every country has its own social establishments. We only provide the framework, and they grow the culture that best suits them with the essence of our value. It’s like taking DNA and adding your own flavour to make it relevant.

What is the long-term vision for the firm, and how do you plan to achieve that vision without external investment?

The vision has always been to create an ecosystem of complementing, self-sustaining ventures where bright minds can do the things they love, benefit and thrive in. From a solutions point of view, we want to be a multinational company that offers relevant and results-driven MarTech solutions for any industry willing to expand and grow its tech and digital ecosystem.

As said above, we will continue strengthening our leadership team, maintaining our culture, investing in the right people, remaining innovative, solving business problems and setting proper structures for greater ownership. This will eventually lead to great work, monetary rewards, and growth opportunities.

Can you share any success stories or milestones you are particularly proud of?

1. I first dived into entrepreneurship without a bachelor’s degree (I stepped out of university and pursued entrepreneurship at age 21). I am proud because I took the time to understand myself, how I learn, and the best way to advance in life. I learn quicker and better by doing, taking risks and curating life lessons in every changing season. Taking that big leap is a success by itself as I did not stop at mere chatter but putting things into action (I can share a whole story on this).

2. Finding and assimilating the right business partners. There is no such thing as a lone wolf in business. I’ve tried that, and I’ve seen failures. We need fellow founders to battle through the business field because it can get messy, lonely and wild out there. Just by being able to maintain and grow stronger as partners despite all the disagreements, ups and downs, and roller coaster rides, the success is not only in the partnership but the journey we have gone through together to this day.

3. The next generation of leaders. Succession planning is unavoidable. Many know the importance but rarely succeed in implementation. This particular story is a success in the making. With our current (and future) leaders in place, we can successfully hand over a huge portion of the business to younger leaders to expand while we look for new pastures to advance.

4. The entrepreneurial journey is about more than just business. It’s about our lives as a whole. I am blessed to have built the business to where it is now and established a healthy family, circle of friends and purpose in life. It is well-integrated and harmonious. This is also through God’s blessing, and I can confidently say that no success is without the hand of God in our lives. An invisible power has led us and given us wisdom in our decision-making.

What is your ultimate goal? Do you have plans to launch an IPO or get any other forms of exit shortly?

We have no solid plans to exit at the moment. But several conversations and offers have taken place in the past. With the right structure and ventures in place, we may IPO. For now, we are open to funding for our other ventures or even business partnerships that can create a win-win collaboration. We also focus on investing in other firms/startups and place our funds in business expansion in other countries.

What is your advice for aspiring entrepreneurs who think it is almost impossible to scale the business without raising external financing?

My spiritual mentor always reminds me, “Don’t go where your talent can bring you but your character cannot sustain you.”. As entrepreneurs, you can be extremely talented and grow to great heights. But all those don’t matter if you have bad character. Eventually, that will be your downfall.

Also, always remain agile. Don’t stop at being an “A4 paper”. Allow your learnings to mould you into something greater, like a “paper plane”. Go further, soar higher and live purposefully.

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Echelon Asia Summit 2023 brings together APAC’s leading startups, corporates, policymakers, industry leaders, and investors to Singapore this June 14-15. Learn more and get tickets here. Echelon also features the TOP100 stage, where startups can pitch to 5000+ delegates, among other benefits like connecting with investors, visibility through the platform, and other prizes. Join TOP100 here.

The post Bootstrapped: How OpenMinds built a successful business rooted in a solid startup culture appeared first on e27.

TNL Mediagene, a digital media firm in Asia, has announced a business combination with Nasdaq-listed blank-cheque (special purpose acquisition) company Blue Ocean Acquisition Corp to go public.

The transaction gives TNL Mediagene a pre-money enterprise value of approximately US$275 million.

The transaction, subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of certain regulatory approvals, is expected to close in Q1 2024.

Also Read: How 5-year-old live-streaming app 17LIVE acquired 60M users globally

The new entity will build TNL Mediagene’s presence in Japan, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. It will expand its brand portfolio of millennial- and Gen Z-targeted Chinese, Japanese and English digital products and widen the reach of its AI-driven analytics, advertising and marketing technology products.

“By becoming a public company in the US, we would like to continue to grow with the support of international investors, with the goal of becoming a media company that connects the world by providing reliable information about Asia, including Japan, to the rest of the world,” Mediagene CEO and Founder Motoko Imada said:

TNL Mediagene was formed in May 2023 by merging Taipei-based The News Lens Co. and Tokyo-based Mediagene Inc. (MG). TNL Mediagene’s businesses include:

• Original and licensed media brands in Chinese, Japanese and English across a range of subjects, including news, business, technology, science, food, sports and lifestyle.
• AI-powered advertising and marketing technology platforms.
• E-commerce and creative solutions.

TNL Mediagene claims it reaches over 50 million unique visitors and has 550 employees across Asia, with offices in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Also Read: Taiwan’s TNL Media acquires recipe-sharing social platform iCook

Founded 25 years ago, MG is a digital media company that runs original and licensed Japanese-language brands, including Business Insider Japan, Gizmodo Japan, Lifehacker Japan, Digiday Japan, Roomie and Mashing Up.

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The post TNL Mediagene to merge with blank-cheque firm Blue Ocean Acquisition to go public in US appeared first on e27.

Use our special promo code: GO for 75% off your Echelon tickets!

The 2023 Echelon Asia Summit is happening at the Singapore EXPO on 14-15 June 2023. Are you a startup founder, investor, corporate, or tech enthusiast? Don’t miss out on one of the most anticipated tech conferences in the region! For more information, visit the official Echelon page.

The challenges that women face in building a career in the tech industry are well-documented. Of all the barriers that women face, one that often prevents them from moving forward and securing top positions is gender bias.

You might remember an article that The Guardian published years ago about how women are considered better coders in the coding community, but only if they hide their gender in their profiles.

According to a 2013 report by researchers, who looked at the behaviour of software developers on GitHub, found that code written by women was approved at a higher rate (78.6 per cent) than code written by men (74.6 per cent). They also uncovered a disturbing discovery of women’s work being more likely to be accepted than men’s unless “their gender is identifiable”, in which case the acceptance rate was worse than men’s.

This is just one example of gender bias in the tech industry that discriminates qualified women from securing top positions, raising funding for their companies, and, in principle, developing their full potential. To tackle this problem, there has to be active participation from leaders and members of the ecosystem to build an inclusive community that allows equal opportunity to thrive.

At Echelon Asia Summit 2023, we are going to hear from Chrisanti Indiana, Co-Founder & CMO at Sociolla, an Indonesian beauty-focused e-commerce platform. Speaking on the Forge Stage on June 15 with moderator Devina Mardiputri, Senior Account Executive, APAC, e27, Indiana will touch on the topic of how women can play an increasing role in the tech industry. She will also discuss whether this would be the right time for Southeast Asia (SEA) to have more gender-neutral collaborative organisations.

Also Read: Women in tech have leaned in enough. This is what we should do instead

For women by women

Indiana herself is widely known as one of the co-founders of the leading e-commerce platform Sociolla which focuses on the beauty and cosmetics industry. A household brand amongst beauty enthusiasts in the market, the market has expanded its presence to neighbouring SEA countries, including Vietnam, which happened in 2020.

The company’s business units include:

– SOCO, an online consumer review platform for beauty and personal care products
– Beauty Journal, an online beauty and lifestyle media with an O2O marketing service
– Sociolla, a beauty and personal care e-commerce which also has an offline store with the omnichannel concept
– Lilla by Sociolla, a beauty and personal care e-commerce service specifically designed for mothers
– Brand Development, the business unit that offers end-to-end distributor service for beauty and personal care brands

It raised a US$60 million funding round led by Temasek and L Catterton in 2022.

In a past interview with e27, co-founder John Rasjid named Dollar Shave Club as an early inspiration for the platform.

“Social Bella started out as a B2C e-commerce platform focussed on a single category, walking side by side with larger horizontal/marketplace e-commerce with much larger resources. The challenges have been there since day one; they just evolve from year to year,” remarked Rasjid.

A gender-neutral organisation

As a solution to the problem of bias in the tech industry, there are many solutions that are being proposed. One of them is building a gender-neutral collaborative organisation.

Also Read: Unleashing women’s potential: How tech companies are leading the way

“An inclusive workplace that offers the same opportunities for growth and productivity to all members of the staff, irrespective of gender, has to start from the top and actively encourage this within its design as well as the company policies and ethos. The discussion has to begin from a clear understanding of what gender diversity and inclusivity truly means and how that can manifest in the design of the physical environment,” Dr Pragya Agarwal writes for Forbes.

There are many ways that businesses can build a gender-neutral collaborative organisation from the moment an employee is hired by an organisation. To make it easier and clearer, the International Labour Office (ILO) even published the Gender-Neutral Job Evaluation for Equal Pay: A Step-By-Step Guide in 2013 to help businesses implement a fair job evaluation process.

But how exactly can this be implemented in the SEA startup ecosystem? Are we even ready for this? If not, what can we do to get there? Find the answers in this fireside chat!

Echelon Asia Summit 2023

This year’s Echelon is a great opportunity for you to meet experts such as Indiana and learn from them!

Echelon Asia Summit 2023 is happening on June 14-15 at the Singapore EXPO. Featuring a slew of speakers, exhibitors, business matching sessions, pitching stages, and more, the event enables participants to connect, network, and engage with the larger tech startup ecosystem.

At the Echelon Asia Summit, participants get the chance to attend a diverse range of sessions, including keynote speeches, panel discussions, and workshops, all exploring exciting topics like AI, blockchain, e-commerce, fintech, and marketing. You’ll also have the opportunity to join networking sessions and meet-ups where you can connect with fellow entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders.

To learn more about Echelon Asia Summit 2023 and sign up for the event, visit the official page here.

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Image Credit: Sociolla

The post Echelon: Building an inclusive startup ecosystem with increased participation of women in tech appeared first on e27.

Use our special promo code: GO for 75% off your Echelon tickets!

The 2023 Echelon Asia Summit is happening at the Singapore EXPO on 14-15 June 2023. Are you a startup founder, investor, corporate, or tech enthusiast? Don’t miss out on one of the most anticipated tech conferences in the region! For more information, visit the official Echelon page.

And we are done! After a series of rigorous screenings, we have completed all the TOP100 booths set out for this year. In total, we will be showcasing 100+ startups at Echelon Asia Summit 2023.

The selection process for TOP100 startups has been updated to leverage our existing membership platform and to follow feedback given by our community of startups across Southeast Asia. Today all 100 startups already have their startup profiles on the e27.co site, representing over 10 countries. Without further ado, here are the startups from across APAC that will be competing at this year’s TOP100 program.

Connecting ecosystem stakeholders

The goal for the e27 profiles is to push for visibility right from the start and encourage startup founders to use the opportunity and the connect features to start building up their digital connections and early conversations with over 400 active VCs on the platform.

Echelon Asia Summit’s TOP100 program will serve as the offline platform to conduct the face-to-face meetings through the ECCO (Echelon Connect zone), conduct the TOP100 pitches on Day 1 at the TOP100 stage, and provide networking opportunities around the booths with investors, corporates and partners.

Also read: Echelon: It’s official, all exhibition booths are SOLD OUT!

Post Echelon Asia Summit, these connections are encouraged to continue through the Pro membership platform, eventually tying up the Pro Membership platform as the online version of e27’s TOP100 program.

Echelon Asia Summit 2023

Get to know these startups and more at this year’s Echelon!

Echelon Asia Summit 2023 is happening on 14-15 June, at the Singapore EXPO. Featuring a slew of speakers, exhibitors, business matching sessions, pitching stages, and more, the event enables participants to connect, network, and engage with the larger tech startup ecosystem.

Also read: Echelon: Unlocking global growth opportunities with Web3

At the Echelon Asia Summit, participants get the chance to attend a diverse range of sessions, including keynote speeches, panel discussions, and workshops, all exploring exciting topics like AI, blockchain, e-commerce, fintech, and marketing. You’ll also have the opportunity to join networking sessions and meet-ups where you can connect with fellow entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders.

To learn more about Echelon Asia Summit 2023 and sign up for the event, visit the official page here.

The post Connect with this year’s TOP100 startups at Echelon 2023! appeared first on e27.