new normal

2020 was supposed to be an exciting year for Southeast Asia’s thriving startup ecosystem. With strong economic growth, rising affluence, and growth capital strengthened, startups were entering into the region’s golden age.

But all that changed when the novel strain of coronavirus, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) coined as COVID-19, came into this world. And before you know it, face masks and toilet paper were sold out, oil prices went subzero, and the world continues to debate on whether barbers and bubble tea are considered essential services to continue operating in this current pandemic. Welcome to the new normal!

Most startups should be agile enough to adapt to all the “who moved my cheese” moments in what was destined to be a wicked roller coaster ride anyway. But this is an unprecedented global crisis where even the large corporations are taking a beating from. So here are four tips out of the playbook that might be useful for startups to rewire their culture, brave through this pandemic and emerge stronger than ever.

The ability to recruit exceptional tech talent

A bold vision must be accompanied by technology, as the key enabler for disruptive innovation, and the catalyst required for startups to grow and scale. It is an integral part of your internal operations, external communications, cross-border business activities, and the very foundation of the product/solution that would eventually be shipped to your customers.

Given the ever-rising expectations in today’s world, there is little or no room for a buggy UX and any half-decked features, even for the early adopters. That means no more cutting corners with your tech stack, and/or compromising on the quality of your tech team.

Also Read: ‘Our main barrier to growth is the status quo in retail sector’: KiotViet’s Deputy GM Tri Cao

The tech talent shortage is a global phenomenon, so it is even more pressing that founders and companies must now have the ability to attract tech talent and foster a healthy engineering culture within the firm.

Instead of competing with the FAANGs, the banks, and other large companies to vie for local hires, startups might be better served by tapping on overseas talent pools. Companies such as Sea Group, V-key, CXA, and Lazada, have done so by venturing offshore to build their software engineering teams and tech hubs in Vietnam.

Offshoring is the new market expansion

As a startup based in an ASEAN city, you almost always have to think regional from day one in order to reach a bigger market to grow the business. That usually means hiring across all teams and expanding into new markets once your startup achieves product-market fit and raised external funding.

There’s just one problem – the funds have to be shared amongst other forms of necessary spending in an effort to achieve the next set of milestones, and you probably don’t have enough cash to cover all the expenses of going abroad while focusing on the product at the same time.

Since you need to grow your tech capabilities and expand the business simultaneously, why not kill two birds with one stone by building your offshore tech team in the very geography that’s next on your hit list? This would act as a soft-landing for the business to gain initial exposure and establish an initial presence in the new market, before diving in deeper.

But don’t be a hero and do it all on your own. It is always recommended to work with a trusted partner to navigate the operational risks and administrative speed bumps along the way so that you can continue to focus on moving fast and breaking things.

At Tech JDI, we’ve worked with companies like ShopBack, Aspire, Oddle, and Minterest, to facilitate their market expansion into Vietnam.

Also Read: Can tech prevent the end of civilisation?

The consensus from the ecosystem now is for founders to re-strategise for a strong rebound in H2 2020, and this could be an approach for your startup moving forward.

Time to embrace remote working

In the tech startup world, where everyone ships code and claims to embrace the future of work, it still had to take a global crisis like this for us to get comfortable and embrace the likes of Zoom and Google Meet, amongst other digital tools to help facilitate communications and do our jobs better.

It’s not that we’re not tech-savvy enough or digitally ready yet. It was always about trust and execution. So maybe it’s a good thing that most of us were forced into lockdowns and work-from-home regulations with no time to think nor react. Founders now realise that:

(1) employees are able to get shit done remotely given the rights measures and policies in place to support this practice,

(2) there is a significant amount of time and monies saved from the reduced need for office rental and transport.

In the new normal, telecommuting will no longer be frowned upon as a last resort, and startups will have a newfound confidence and expertise to hire and manage teams remotely, even across geographical borders.

Also Read: How travel tech startup Travelhorse survives the pandemic by branching into new territory

Given this context, founders should now have a new perspective on Southeast Asia – not just as the promised land with a market of 655 million people, but also as an opportunity to also pursue a distributed team strategy to diversify cost and culture within the organisation.

Now, all we have to do is to keep our fingers crossed that COVID-19 is not just the MVP that forced the digital transformation of your company, but for your home’s wifi broadband and your local city’s digital infrastructure too.

Balancing growth, cost, and quality all at the same time

When tech startups became the modern-day kool-aid in this part of the world est. 2010, founders (and VCs) spent the better half of the decade in pursuit of a growth trajectory that was supposed to look like the first letter of Jesus’ name. More recently, the ecosystem realised that unicorn-ification in its initial form was not sustainable, and unit economics became the new holy grail.

Think of it as a hybrid between a unicorn and a cockroach, and that’s the beast mode that your startup has to escalate to. Moving fast and breaking things is still the name of the game, but no longer is it performed recklessly “at all costs”. Like the race to find a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2, the startup which manages to figure this out the fastest will find salvation.

It takes an ecosystem to raise a startup

More than ever before, the ecosystem must band together for all stakeholders involved to win the war against the invisible enemy.

At Tech JDI, we believe in global innovation for a better world. We understand startups and scaling, having started three years ago as a venture support services arm under TNF Ventures to help our own portfolio companies cross the chasm. Since then, we’ve supported more than 30 companies across southeast Asia to build-up their tech teams and establish a business presence in Vietnam.

If you’re keen to learn about how we can help you to expand your tech team and build a market presence in Vietnam, get in touch with us.

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