Eliminating risk is impossible, risk must be managed

Risk management begins with understanding your assets—where and how valuable they are. A vulnerability in an access database used by 20 employees is not as important as a vulnerability found in your publicly exposed API.

Any risk found goes through a cost/benefit analysis. The possible exposure is compared to the cost to mitigate the risk. If a realised risk will cost you $10,000 but it’ll cost $50,000 to fix, then it is a low priority. It simply doesn’t make sense to fix it right away.

Risk ratings are a necessary part of any risk management strategy.

Simple rating systems help the relationship between security and development teams. Developers need to understand what needs to be fixed, and what doesn’t. Introducing intermediary levels, such as Medium or scales from one to ten can make it harder for developers to plan upcoming work. Medium risks are the ones most likely to sit in limbo because no one knows how important they are.

Be clear on your priorities to avoid confusion. Any risks rated highly should undergo root cause analysis. Find out what led to such a critical risk and how to prevent the same thing from happening again. Over time, the emergency, “hair on fire” vulnerabilities should begin to disappear.

Patch management

Dependencies are inevitable when building complex software systems. Your business operations likely depend on a mixture of in-house applications, open source components, and third-party vendor applications. All require good patch management to stay secure.

The code you write depends on open source libraries and frameworks. When vulnerabilities are found within these frameworks, all applications that use them are also vulnerable. It’s essential to update libraries and frameworks quickly so your applications aren’t getting exploited. The code you write might be bug-free, but what about the code your code depends on?

Third-party vendor products undergo the same testing as yours. This testing could find vulnerabilities that put your users at risk. Patch management processes ensure that patches released by third-party vendors don’t sit for months before being applied to your environment.

Once a vulnerability is announced to the public, attackers will try to exploit it. The longer you wait to patch your systems, the longer attackers have to find your application and take advantage of your sloth.

Patch management processes can be difficult to create, but they don’t have to be complicated. Whenever possible, work within the confines of your developers’ daily workflow.

For example, if an open source library needs to be patched, create a pull request within the repo of the application so all developers will see it. Explain in the pull request what you’re updating and that all they have to do is merge and their job is done. You’ll not only help your application stay secure, but you’ll also generate plenty of goodwill with development teams.

Security assessments 

Security assessments are a necessary part of every security leader’s job.  However, it is important to understand which assessment to use when.

1. Black-box and White-box 

Security assessments can either be white-box or black-box assessments.

White-box testing refers to allowing the tester to see into the inner workings of an application. The tester can see code or system diagrams, allowing them to find problems in the implementation of an application.

Also Read: Despite security risks, IoT offers practical benefits for the business and at home

Black-box testing refers to testing an application with no knowledge of how it works. These tests simulate the vantage point of an attacker who has to learn by exercising the system. This type of testing better illustrates what an attacker would have to accomplish to successfully attack a system.

2. Vulnerability assessments 

Vulnerability assessments are white-box tests designed to reveal as many vulnerabilities as possible within an environment, along with guidance on remediation and priority.

Vulnerability assessments are not the same as penetration tests. They are a comprehensive look at all of your systems with access to the inner workings via code or diagrams.

Vulnerability assessments are the best choice if your organization has a low to medium security maturity. The goal is to find as many vulnerabilities within your environment as possible so you can secure the most critical pieces quickly. Once your environment has been hardened by several of these assessments, you can better take advantage of other assessment types.

3. Penetration tests 

Penetrations tests and vulnerability assessments are sometimes confused, but they are not the same. Vulnerability assessments are white-box examinations of all vulnerabilities within a system. The point is to fix as many problems as possible within a short period of time.

Penetration tests are tightly focused, black-box tests aimed at specific functionality within a system. Penetration tests should be done after you’ve cleaned up the vulnerabilities found and have a reasonable level of confidence in your application. Penetration tests have a specific goal in mind, such as exfiltrating data or gaining admin rights to a server.

For instance, you may perform a vulnerability assessment (or multiple assessments) against your shopping cart functionality to find common configuration and coding errors. Once all of the findings from that first assessment are fixed, you run a penetration test against the shopping cart system to make sure it’s been sufficiently protected. This order of testing ensures that penetration tests are used effectively—finding difficult to detect errors that code scanners won’t find.

4. Red team services 

A red team is a permanent team used to improve the information security posture of a company.
Red teams are not a one-time assessment but are continually testing applications to find vulnerabilities.

Red teams focus on using real-world tactics to attack an organization’s assets. They are made up of highly trained and experienced professionals who think like attackers.

5. Audit 

An audit is not a true security assessment. It measures how well your systems match up to a chosen standard. Even if some vulnerabilities are found during an audit, that isn’t the main purpose.

You can be compliant with a standard and be insecure at the same time. Audits don’t verify security but verify conformance with an interpretation of what security should be. This is an important distinction.

Also Read: The concerns, risks and success factors of any startup

Organisations with good security practices are very likely to be compliant. But compliance, while necessary, should never be confused with security. Juggling various security assessments and audits is no easy feat—you can do it when you understand the purpose behind each assessment and when to use it.

Securing the shifting sands 

The ever-changing risk landscape exposes your company to new and dangerous risks every day. Here are some general principles that’ll help you keep ahead of these risks.

Third parties and vendors 

Third parties have practically become a requirement in today’s connected world. Using third parties, however, brings risks to your business. There are three ways risk increases when using third parties:

• The risk of data being misused by a third party
• The risk of poor security practices leaking your data without your knowledge
• The increased attack surface if the third party application contains vulnerabilities
  

In today’s environment, you’re only as secure as your weakest vendor. Vet your vendors carefully and make sure you’re comfortable with their security policies before signing a contract with them. Once you hand over your data, it’s too late to worry about security.

Your Attack Surface Changes 

Companies are adopting DevOps practices more as time moves on. These practices encourage dev teams to put code out and get fast feedback wherever possible.

Don’t sacrifice security in exchange for “better, faster, cheaper.” Fast-moving development environments increase the risk of services and applications being deployed without the security team’s knowledge. This is especially true of cloud environments, where developers could create virtual machines and deploy code to them at any time.

Strong policies are needed so admins know what they are allowed to do. Policies preventing the abuse of cloud resources are a good idea, but you have to enforce them. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud aren’t going to police your admins and developers for you.

Automation can be used to help enforce policies. For example, AWS Lambda can be used to scan file uploads to S3 buckets in AWS. Policies can prevent developers from creating new virtual machines using their accounts. A good rule of thumb is to use a build pipeline to build any infrastructure your applications need, preventing humans from deciding how to build VMs and deploy them.

Also Read: How to bulletproof your business against lawsuits

The security team should be made aware of any new assets and what their purpose is. This can be daunting in a micro-service environment but is absolutely necessary. Know when new services are created and released. Understand what cloud service accounts exist and have a clear process on how to create new ones so they can be monitored. You must proactively look at what is currently running in your environment and respond to anything weird.

The key to keeping up with the security of your systems is to reduce the element of surprise. Build processes that enable security teams to stay up-to-date with new assets. These assets must be tested and deployed according to well-enforced policies. Hold your vendors to the same standards you’d hold yourself. Don’t trust your data with just anyone.

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By Miju Han, Director of Product Management at HackerOne

Editor’s note: e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

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Image Credit : everythingpossible

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In case you missed it, here are some lessons shared and learnt at e27 Academy

Earlier this week, I gave a talk at e27 Academy in Batam, Indonesia, about how we can unlock the visionary within and consistently build world changing products. Radical Product Thinking means devising improvable systems (“products”) to achieve your desired impact on the world.

The change you are working to bring to the world isn’t necessarily through a high tech product. It could be through the work of your non-profit, the research you’re conducting, through freelance services you’re offering, or even by remodelling the kitchen for your family.

Anything could be your product if it’s your mechanism to bring change.

Consequently, you can apply product tools (Vision, Strategy, Roadmap, Execution and Measurement) to any product you’re building, to create change more effectively.
e27 Academy brought together a diverse group of over 150 entrepreneurs and innovators representing more than 16 countries, and a range of verticals, from social enterprise to tax software, from modular furniture to supply chain logistics. This diverse group of people had one thing in common: They are all working to bring a change to the world by solving a problem that inspires them.

Here are some of the questions that came up at e27 Academy that have also been asked on other occasions by entrepreneurs I’ve met around the world:

1. We’re fundraising — how do we demonstrate traction for our product?

The startup world teaches us that “traction” means showing growth in popular metrics such as registered users, ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) and LTV (Lifetime Value) of a customer. Pirate metrics might be exactly the right kind of metrics for you to track, but they come packaged with certain assumptions about your business which may or may not be accurate.

The activity of “growth hacking”, a term coined in 2010, means making growth your “true north” and scrutinizing everything “by its potential impact on scalable growth”. But growth alone is not the right metric for success. Your product should be measured by whether it’s helping you create the change you desire in this world.

Trying to simply improve on metrics, whether or not they align with your vision and strategy, leads to a product disease we call “hypermetricemia”. The biggest symptom? Making many small changes to the product and iterating to optimize metrics, but not necessarily getting any closer to your vision. A data-driven approach to building your product is great — but only if you’re measuring the right things. “Data-driven” is often taken to mean that the business and product are driven by the metrics.

Instead, derive the right metrics to measure traction for your business by starting with a clear Vision, building a Strategy based on that vision, a Roadmap based on the Strategy and then a hypothesis-driven Execution and Measurement plan. Here’s a link that explains how you can arrive at the right metrics for your business.

Educate your team and investors. Don’t fall prey to setting your measurement strategy based on how investors or popular metrics might define “traction”.

Think of measurement as burning down each of the risks in your business so you can prove to yourself that there is a market and that your approach at addressing this market is working. Educate your team and investors on why the metrics you selected are the best indicators of traction for your company.

Also read: We need to tap more into culture in determining our product strategy

2. Working on my new product will help me reach my end goal. But what if I have a cash-cow today that I need to maintain and support if I want to survive? What do I prioritize?

As a startup, your resources are limited and you have to make decisions on how to spend these resources in reaching your vision while balancing day-to-day needs. It helps to visualize your prioritization. This approach for prioritization requires defining two concepts for your team:

1. Vision: What’s the end-goal for the team? You can define the “source-code” for your vision using this approach that will then be “compiled” into a more polished form for specific media and audiences.
2. Sustainability. What’s the biggest existential threat to your product? Typically, for startups, running out of money is the biggest threat, but this may not be the biggest threat for your startup — use this approach to evaluate yours.

With those defined, you can use the following rubric to evaluate opportunities and features on how they contribute towards achieving the vision vs. helping the product survive. Here is an example on how an organization, The Avenue Concept, used this approach for prioritization.

To summarize the quadrants in the rubric:

• Ideal: Opportunities in the top right quadrant are those that most closely match your vision and reduce existential risk — if there are features that are genuinely needed on the cash-cow and your new product, they fall in this quadrant.
• Vision Investment: Items in the top left corner are a good vision fit, but might raise your risk exposure in the near term. These can be worthwhile to pursue, but not if you’re already in a precarious situation. Take on as many of these as your situation allows.
• Vision Debt: Items in the bottom right corner are ones that reduce your risk exposure, but are a poor fit for your vision; pursuing them results in “vision debt”. Incurring vision debt can help keep you alive during tough times, but ultimately will derail your efforts if too much is allowed to accumulate. Use vision debt wisely to fund investing in the vision.
• Avoid it: Items in the bottom left are both a poor vision fit and expose you to additional risk.

The approach is simple but powerful and has proven immensely useful to companies when I’ve introduced this in workshops — these companies use it at all levels, from product teams to boardrooms. You’ll find that this approach helps you get more buy-in from your team because it communicates not just the priorities but also the rationale for priorities. Further, it gives your team the tools to evaluate opportunities so that they can make decisions aligned with your collective goals, even when you’re not present.

Also read: Craft your mission-vision not just for yourself, but also your detractors and competitors

3.1 My product addresses the needs of 2 different customer segments. Am I Strategically Swelling (or bloating) my product if it serves more than 1 customer segment?

When you are addressing 2 different customer segments, you are most likely creating two different products (or bloating one). It may look like they have the same needs, but as you start building your product, the differences start to emerge. For example, if you’re building robotics for the beverage industry and for general merchandise, at a high level the problem might sound the same. These robots have to pack cases on top of each other. But as you delve into testing your product you discover that the weight of these products has implications — in the beverage industry you can stack cases of Pepsi on top of one another, but in general merchandise the robots would destroy stock if they were to stack heavy goods like canned beans on top of aluminium foil.

This is also true for B2C. When I founded my startup, Likelii, to build Netflix for wine, we could have targeted amateur wine drinkers or the experts — after all, both customer segments were looking for wine recommendations. But the needs of the two groups are very different: Wine is subjective, and the wine expert would always have a strong opinion on the accuracy of a recommendation. But an amateur wine drinker finds wine intimidating and is open to suggestions rather than scrutinizing them. So our focus was on the amateur wine drinker.

As a startup it’s very difficult to target 2 customer segments and to sustain parallel development efforts. This is why the Vision worksheet only gives you one slot for identifying your target customer segment. Choosing the right customer segment for your business is a hard but rewarding endeavour. Here’s a post about how you can start to identify Real Pain Points for your customers. By having only one product vision for your product and thinking strategically about your target segment, you can avoid Strategic Swelling.

3.2 My product is a marketplace — I have 2 customer segments, buyers and sellers. Shouldn’t I have 2 visions for my product?

Even if you have this marketplace problem, your product vision must be to serve a specific customer segment. But to serve that customer segment, you may need to also make other groups happy. For example, let’s say that buyers are your chosen customer segment. In a marketplace buyers won’t be happy if there are no merchants selling on that platform. So you’ll need to also do enough to encourage merchants to be there. By keeping your primary focus on one, you can establish trust with that group. Amazon has buyers and sellers on its site, but it’s very clear that their vision focuses on the consumer.

You may occasionally need to trade-off which of the two sides of the marketplace you need to please — use the Vision vs. Sustainability approach to make these trade-offs when needed.

In the interest of keeping this post short (relatively), in our next post we’ll cover more questions we hear from entrepreneurs globally. In the meanwhile, share your questions and feedback below!

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A shoutout to the e27 team for putting together an impeccable event at e27 Academy and bringing these inspiring founders and innovators together: special thanks to Mohan Belani, Jiaway Koh, Shernice Lum, Jared Meng and Ash Philomin.

Product is a way of thinking. Radical Product is a movement that’s applying the best insights and techniques of product thinking throughout life and work. You can use the free and open source Radical Product Toolkit if you’d like a step-by-step guide to help you start applying Radical Product thinking today.

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This article originally appeared on Medium and was first republished on e27 on December 6, 2018

Editor’s note: e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

Join our e27 Telegram group here, or our e27 contributor Facebook page here.

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JUUL targets over 67 million adult smokers in the country with the technology

JUUL Labs, an electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) brand in the US, has announced its entry into Indonesia, following its launch in South Korea and the Philippines.

JUUL device and JUULpods will now be available in Jakarta.

The startup offers an alternative to combustible cigarettes. In Indonesia, JUUL partners with PT Jagad Utama Lestari (PT JUL), a subsidiary of PT Erajaya Swasembada Tbk (Erajaya Group).

The company currently has kiosks in Pacific Place (Jakarta) and Beachwalk Shopping Centre (Bali). In the near future, it will also have stores in Cilandak Town Square, Plaza Indonesia, convenience stores such as Alfamart, Minimart, Shell Select, and Pepito, as well as select vape stores and F&B outlets in Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, and Bali.

JUUL Labs was launched in 2015 by Stanford alumni Adam Bowen and James Monsees. The company introduced a closed vaping system with pods and a patented temperature control design, without buttons or switches and free from ash and odour.

Indonesia is home to over 67 million adult smokers, which account for over 39 per cent of the adult population, making the country the third largest smoker population in the world. Every year, the economic cost of smoking in the Southeast Asian country can reach IDR 600 billion, which includes direct costs related to healthcare expenditures and indirect cost related to lost productivity due to mortality and morbidity.

Kent Sarosa, Country General Manager, JUUL Labs Indonesia, said: “Smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death in Indonesia. It is JUUL’s vision to offer smokers an alternative to combustible cigarettes. We also support having an open dialogue with the authorities for the future of the product in this innovative category.”

Also Read: SeedPlus, NEXEA invest US$500K in Malaysia’s B2B procurement platform Lapasar.com

Sim Chee Ping, Direktur PT JUL said: “PT JUL welcomes JUUL Labs’ initiative to improve the lives of Indonesian adult smokers by providing an alternative to traditional cigarettes. We believe that through this partnership, Indonesians now have the choice to manage the effects of smoking to themselves and the people around them.”

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Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash

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Should human analysts really be afraid of having their rice bowl taken from them?

There’s a long ongoing debate about whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) will replace the human brain and surpass its capabilities. Many scientists and psychologists are still not convinced by the idea of a machine being capable of replicating the function of the human mind.

How is AI useful?

There’s hardly any industry that’s been left untouched by AI training. The mode of AI applications may vary, but it is now the backbone of almost everything you use today. Usage of AI is evident among marketers and researchers who use it extensively for outreach and data organization. Other industries like healthcare, tourism, aviation, media, e-commerce, agriculture, job search are all powered by AI in some way to increase task efficiency and reduce human intervention for complex functions.

How AI works?

AI uses Machine Learning (ML) to achieve human brain-like capabilities. It gets fed by a set of a pre-decided chunk of data, and this is the learning process, it learns to respond upon training. It is capable of evolving on its own and thus learns to update its responses based on practical experiences.

The algorithms and historical data are the keys to any AI model, allowing them to perform tasks or make predictions in a way they do. The scope is immensely vast as AI makes it possible to remove the human dependency involved in work; it also frees up time letting the person work on more complex tasks.

Role of AI in business analytics

AI is a disruptive technology which is changing the shape of how people interact. Researchers at Accenture predict that by 2035, AI could double the economic growth of developed countries.

Thanks to cognitive computing, companies can use complex algorithms to break down consumer behaviour and gain business insights, as most of the data, is now in unstructured form because of data sources like smartphones and messaging services.

Also Read: Demystifying artificial intelligence: Breaking down common AI myths

The movement towards data being in unstructured form is evident. In 2017, Google acquired Lattice, a then startup that converts unstructured data to structured form powered by AI.

With the introduction of AI, Business Intelligence (BI) software has evolved from reactive analysis to pro-active analysis-

• Descriptive Analytics– This BI system is self-explanatory; it inputs raw data and breaks it down to human-interpretable form and provides descriptive summaries. It influences companies’ future decisions based on their historical data.

• Predictive Analytics– Enabling companies to predict future outcomes through insights. No system can predict with a hundred per cent accuracy, but such a system helps companies to make proactive decisions, helps them in anticipating results, and make forecasts.

• Prescriptive Analytics- This is one notch above predictive analytics; these systems provide actions and solutions for possible outcomes. They not only predict the result but also state the reason for the result.

Why does BI require AI?

AI-powered BI systems transform businesses with their simple data representations, real-time narratives, and reports.

Here are some points on why AI is needed-

• Interactive Dashboards: Normal dashboards are a mess with data coming from all sources in raw form; AI help BI software to convert data into a digestible human form.

• Manage Big Data Overload: Unstructured form of data is getting accumulated at an unprecedented rate, and AI-powered tools can help professionals get insights from such data.

• Shortage of experts: According to McKinsey, there’s a shortage of professionals in analytics and an acute shortage for experts who could make rational and informed decisions from data.

What is the future for business analysts?

AI is expected to herald an upheaval in the global economic and social landscape. These algorithms can self learn patterns and make decisions based on the information that a human prescribed to it.

The work of business analyst, however, does not just only involve reading data and analyzing data. The analysis needs to be applied to the required context to influence decisions. The final phase of analysing and applying the data still requires a human mind. Here’s an interview from founder of Alibaba Group, Jack Ma on how articulately he describes that machines cannot learn the human character of wisdom.

If someone attempted to create an AI-powered system to replace business analysts, they should probably look into the particular set of skills than business analysts’ need to have. Adaptability to changing environment requires real-life experiences and context understanding, which in the foreseeable future looks challenging to achieve.

Also Read: 3 ways banks, fintechs and FIs can harness AI for success

It means that the asset of the human brain is still relevant, though AI and ML  are instrumental in achieving much faster and efficient analysis, algorithms cannot choose individual goals as it requires a certain degree of empathy which AI lacks.

Conclusion

With such advancements in technology and machine learning, process-oriented jobs are on the verge of being automated. However, any work requires contextual decision making, and differentiated goal targets such as business analysts will still be helmed by humans, at least for now.

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Editor’s note: e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

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One BioMed offers an automated sample preparation device for purification and isolation of nucleic acids from a variety of samples, which is required as the first step in many molecular biological and clinical diagnostic technologies

One BioMed, a Singapore-based medical diagnostics company, today announced it has raised US$5 million in Series A round of funding, led by local VC firm Biopath Ventures and US-based ARCH Venture Partners. Participating in the round is Enterprise Singapore’s investment arm SEEDS Capital.

One BioMed said that it will use the fund to commercialise its first product, an automated sample preparation device for purification and isolation of nucleic acids from a variety of samples, which is required as the first step in many molecular biological and clinical diagnostic technologies.

The company is a spin-off of A*STAR, which offers a platform technology for diagnostic testing.

Dr. Joseph Jeong and Dr. Nick Roelofs, founding partners of BioPath Ventures, said in a joint statement, “One BioMed is the first example of our fund’s investment thesis of identifying and enabling world-class tool companies in the healthcare space.”

Both Jeong and Roelofs will join the firm’s board.

Also Read: theAsianparent.com raises “8-figure US dollars” in Series C to expand in Asia, Africa

One BioMed said its sample preparation device is the foundation upon which it will build next platforms, through the integration of molecular diagnostic tools, including its silicon biophotonics sensing technology, for point-of-care infectious disease detection.

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They said the new e-hailing regulations would only affect private car ride-hailing services, such as GrabCar, JustGrab, GrabCar Plus, GrabCar (Premium)

Grab warns of possible increase in fares with new regulations in Malaysia [The Star]

With the possibility of fewer drivers on the road because of new regulations by the government, users may experience an increase in “dynamic” fares, says ride-hailing company Grab.

“As commuters ourselves, we understand the pain passengers feel when fares are higher,” the company said in a statement on their website.

They also said passenger should anticipate longer waiting time for a ride.

Their advice was for passengers to book their rides earlier, especially when catching a flight or going to an important meeting.

Passengers were also advised that getting a ride would be much easier outside the peak hours of 7am-9am and 5pm-8pm.

They said the new e-hailing regulations would only affect private car ride-hailing services, such as GrabCar, JustGrab, GrabCar Plus, GrabCar (Premium).

Rivigo raises US$65M from Warburg Pincus, SAIF Partners [press release]

India-based technology-enabled logistics firm Rivigo has raised US$65 million in the ongoing Series E round of funding, led by existing investors Warburg Pincus and SAIF Partners.

The company plans to utilise the funding to further strengthen its technology and network coverage, a key game changer for the larger logistics market in India. Rivigo has a network coverage with more than 29,000 PIN codes in India

Started in 2014 by Deepak Garg and Gazal Kalra, rivigo is a technology-enabled surface logistics provider headquartered in Gurgaon. The startup claims to provide hassle-free services for companies in the e-commerce, pharmaceuticals, automotive, cold chain, FMCG and white goods sectors.

Rivigo claims it has improved its financial metrics across all businesses and aims to be profitable by the end of this financial year. Continuing the positive momentum, Rivigo recently launched National Freight Index (NFI) to bring transparency to the largely unorganised logistics sector.

India’s B2B commerce startup Moglix raises US$60M Series D [press release]

Moglix, a B2B commerce company in India, toady announced it has closed US$60 million in Series D round of funding, led by Tiger Global. The round also saw participation by Sequoia India and Composite Capital.

The company’s current investors include Accel Partners, Jungle Ventures, IFC, Venture Highway and Tata Sons’ Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata.

The funds will be deployed to create industrial distribution centers across India to cover all 25+ major hubs for manufacturing by May 2020.

TRB Ventures nears its crowdfunding target on ECF [press release]

Malaysian proptech company TRB Ventures has said its equity crowdfunding deal on pitchIN has seen significant uptakes since its launch, with RM2.5 million invested in eight days by 156 investors.

TRB Ventures will use the funds on marketing, team growth and working capital.

Since going live on pitchIN at the start of July, TRB Ventures ECF campaign has seen 156 investors investing  RM2.5 million into the campaign, with the largest investor to date committing RM500,000. This leaves just RM500,000 available for investors.

TRB Ventures is a proptech company focused on the digitalisation of the real estate ecosystem to speed and simplify up end to end transactions. The company developed MHub, a suite of apps to achieve this goal. Since its launch two years ago, MHub has transacted close to RM8 billion worth of properties and currently has RM 50 billion worth of properties in platform.

Capital Match announce management change post its merger with SESAMi [press release]

Capital Match, an invoice financing platform for SMEs, today announced leadership change, following its equity merger with SESAMi Holding, a leading e-procurement platform in Singapore.

Ong Teck Soon will continue to drive group leadership in his role as Executive Chairman. Konrad Tomaszewski will take a leadership role on the Capital Match Platform with the support of Enoch Tan who recently joined as Chief Investment Officer and head of CM Advisers. ​

Pawel Kuznicki is stepping down as the CEO of Capital Match. Kuznicki has developed Capital Match from its inception in 2014 to become a leading platform in Singapore and to the successful merger in 2018.

Capital Match joined hands with SESAMi in November 2018 to create an integrated supply chain financing (SCF) platform to offer B2B businesses financing in Singapore and Southeast Asia.

 

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Learn how to leverage either platform to boost the visibility of your business

For your digital marketing strategy, which social media platform do you prefer in the first — Facebook or Instagram? If your answer is neither of the two, perhaps you are deprived of millions of organic viewership.

According to research, Instagram now has more than 1 billion active users around the globe. On the other hand, Facebook now has 1.5 billion active users. This figure is round about 20 per cent of the world’s population.

To build or grow a business, you need to have a digital presence on all social media platforms. Predominantly, two mediums are in the race to plan out marketing campaigns. These mediums are known as Facebook and Instagram.

Also Read: 7 tips for using Instagram to maximise your business

So let’s examine which is more effective for marketing your business — Facebook and Instagram?

Algorithms

For firms which provide Instagram marketing services, they need to get the science behind the algorithms. Although algorithms cannot be predicted with 100 per cent accuracy, there are guidelines you can follow regarding each platform’s algorithms.

Instagram’s algorithms

Interest

Your followers will see the content of similar types that they have liked previously on their Instagram account’s feed.

Aptness

The length of time you recently shared the post last time. Your latest post will be prioritized over your older posts.

Time spent

How much time your followers spent time on your post. Here time spent means actual time seeing the posts.

Direct number of shares

Your posts will rank higher if your followers share the positions directly from their account with others.

Your Instagram profile’s popularity

Your posts will rank higher if your Instagram profile is searched constantly or regularly by users.

Facebook’s algorithm

Click bait

Make sure your posts are not pushy. Do not beg for likes, shares and comments; otherwise, your posts will automatically rank lower by Facebook.

Videos and pictures

Posts that are text driven are ranked lower as compared to posts that are rich with images.

Engagement

Posts that get more likes, shares or comments are ranked higher. Also, if your posts are answer-seeking, then there are bright chances that they get a higher ranking.

Instagram is certainly not lagging behind!

With a conservative analysis, around 400 million Instagram followers watch and share stories. According to a study, around one-third of the Instagram stories are posted by businesses.

Facebook still has its charm!

In spite of the existence of other social media platforms, Facebook has not lost its strength and charisma. According to research, adults aged between 25 years till 34 years see the ads run on Facebook.

Which platform is more beneficial to the businesses?

It is quite evident that Instagram is more about photos or images as well as videos. In addition, we saw earlier that people are tending towards seeing more photos rather than reading the text.

Therefore, Instagram comes very handy when selling products through images. A staggering number (62 per cent) shows that Instagram provides help to people in finding new products.

Also, it has been seen that customer’s pictures on the Instagram feed give up thrust to the sales order. Further, 200 million Instagram users see one profile related to a business every day.

On the other hand, digital marketers take Facebook very seriously in terms of digital ad’s Return on Investment (ROI) A study shows some noticeable results in favor of Facebook. The study revealed that 30 per cent of the marketers think that Facebook provides them with the highest digital ROI on their ad campaigns.

What type of target audience do both platforms have?

This is also an undeniable fact that Instagram is more adult oriented. According to a study, 90 per cent of the Instagram accounts belong to people aged 35 or below.

Moreover, we see a flood of accounts that cater to the need for beauty, fitness, food and apparels because the above niches belong to the adult population.

On the flip side, Facebook is equally popular among millennial and adults. But Facebook stretches its range till the age of 65 or more. Facebook helps to write your mind. We often see businesses provide much more details on Facebook as compared to Instagram. Facebook also aids in long-form discussions.

What about the engagement rate?

Without a shadow doubt, Facebook comparatively is the biggest platform as far as number of followers is concerned. But audience engagement is a crucial requirement which Facebook lacks.

Despite various options that Facebook provides for example groups, pages, Facebook stories, etc. it never comes close to the engagement rate of Instagram.

According to a study, the average time spent on an Instagram post is 192.04 seconds, while users spend 164.02 seconds on a Facebook post. The figures show a significant difference.

Besides, brands with significant popularity gain more likes on Instagram as compared to Facebook.

Which platform has a more user-friendly layout?

When we talk about Facebook, we do not see much of a difference regarding layout. Whether you use Facebook via PC, laptop or smartphone, the platform is optimized for every device.

Also Read: 8 tips for a successful Instagram advertising campaign

While for Instagram, the story is quite different. You encounter several limitations when using through a desktop. Instagram users can’t upload stories or photos via the desktop site. We can easily say that Instagram is specifically developed for smartphone users.

Final words

Any Instagram marketing agency cannot brush aside the relevance and importance of Facebook. Although Instagram has got a slight edge over Facebook, you still can’t ignore the impact of Facebook marketing.

If you are a business planning to obtain Instagram marketing services, you have to utilize Facebook as a secondary marketing tool. Otherwise, you can quickly fall behind in the race.

—

Image Credit: Alexey Malkin

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Ezyhaul’s platform allows clients to make online bookings for domestic and cross-border transportation services

Singapore-headquartered logistics tech startup Ezyhaul today announced that it has raised US$16 million in Series B funding from an undisclosed set of investors.

According to a press release, the startup will use the investment to expand to new markets in South Asia as well as to drive further technological innovation to offer a plug-and-play model for its clients through its online platform.

Founded in Singapore in April 2016 by Mudasar Mohamed (COO), Raymond Gilllon (CEO) and Nicky Lum (Director Sales), Ezyhaul uses advanced technology to connect businesses in need of transportation services with pre-qualified transporters in the highly-fragmented road freight market in South Asia.

Ezyhaul’s platform allows clients to make online bookings for domestic and cross-border transportation services. Transportation companies use its app to accept shipments, maximise their vehicle utilisation and reduce empty backhauls.

Also Read: Venture Capital Book Club: Why I make my VC team read books

The platform also provides real-time track and trace visibility and access to e-documentation, invoicing and e-PODs (proof of delivery). The company has also recently launched an advanced control tower that monitors truck movements, provides intelligent exception alerts and predicts estimated time of arrival for shipments through advanced machine learning algorithms.

In the past 12 months, Ezyhaul claims to have grown more than 900 per cent.

Having a presence in India, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, more than 50 million kg of freight was transported via Ezyhaul’s platform in 2018 alone, the company claims. Its clients include Coca Cola, Reliance Industries, Exide Industries, HIL, DHL and DB Schenker.

COO Mohamed said: “Businesses spend a lot of money and time as a result of unpredictable and unreliable freight movements. The Ezyhaul platforms empowers our clients with choice of carriers, scale and operational intelligence to achieve improved logistics performance and reduced costs.”

Previously, Ezyhaul had secured US$5 million Series A fundraise in 2018. Prior to this, in 2017, the firm raised S$1.2 million (over US$800,000 back then) in seed funding from a group of undisclosed logistics industry leaders.

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Insights from NEXT50 mentors on mentorship

Building a startup has many challenges to overcome. And with so many pitfalls and high failure rates, what can be done to improve the chances of success?

Mentorship is one of many resources which entrepreneurs should get access to. But how important is mentorship and why should entrepreneurs seek out mentors?

I ask three NEXT50 mentors on their insights on the ecosystem and the topic on mentorship for startup founders.

How the startup ecosystem in Singapore and South-East Asia is evolving

To start off, I asked the mentors for their insights on the evolution of the startup ecosystem.

Carmen Yuen, Partner at Vertex Ventures and part of the SEA team, observes that the Singapore startup ecosystem is more developed than it was 10 years ago, where few with super brave souls will dare to venture into. But now, entrepreneurship is now becoming a choice occupation.

She further adds, “Part of the development has to do with the millennial mindset, but also that the government programmes have been somewhat successful in driving more incubators, accelerators and co-investment funds into this space.”

Joelle Pang, Director of Regional Business Development at FastJobs, a Singapore Press Holdings subsidiary which is a mobile recruitment platform for the non-executive workforce, sees “a current trend of AI, fintech, blockchain and crypto-currencies, and this is where investor money rushes in, and startup founders follow suit to launch a startup to capitalise on the opportunities.”

More interestingly, she wants to understand what future consumers and corporates are looking out for.

She continues,

This is an area where I believe China is clearly leading the pack — from the way the startups compete their way to be the best in the field and then go on to dominate across all other sectors, to the way the innovative companies really leverage on Internet and Technology to empower the rural populations and drive inclusive growth.

Even the depth by which the Chinese government is getting involved to drive true scalability is fascinating to me. And they have the most number of unicorns in the world to validate this.

Anu Gupta is Associate Director at Asia PR Werkz, one of the largest Singaporean public relations firms. In her assessment, South-East Asia is a highly fragmented place with difference values, languages and styles of doing business, which makes the growth journey more challenging for startups.

She believes that PR play a key part in the growth of any startup, and her experience shows crafting their PR message is key when entering different markets.

Also read: What you should expect from your startup mentor

The importance of mentorship for startup founders

So why the need for startup mentorship, as one may ask?

Carmen mentions that we are only human and have our blind spots.

We have our ‘if only…’ moments and wished someone could have pointed us on some aspects so as to save us from making a mistake or taking a longer path/ time to solve an issue.

Similarly for founders, they are 150% devoted to their venture and with multiple concurrent issues to address, they can do with some guidance or observation.

At the same time, mentors can serve as companions on entrepreneurs’ times of dark days or tough uphill journeys.

Anu talks about mentoring during her course of work.

For many, PR is what founders have either encountered, often in a corporate or well-established firm where they spent their formative years, or what they perceive from news on established technology companies. Both approaches will never work for a startup.

We meet a lot of founders/startups who are in a rush to get their name out there. They believe PR is the easiest way to do this. [But in actuality], it can only be effective as long it reflects the growth of the business.

We mentor Founders so they can understand when the ‘right’ time for PR should come in and more importantly what kind of messaging needs to be out there at different stages of growth.

Joelle finds mentoring important for startups because it is important to fail fast and learn faster.

Mentors can help startup founders to avoid critical pitfalls, such as getting an ill-fitted co-founder or investor, especially if they have gone through the same challenges themselves and overcame it.

In an environment where many startup founders are sacrificing a lot to pursue their dreams, being able to avoid making one or two mistakes or getting critical feedback to take their startup to the next level makes a big difference.

Mindsets Singapore founders need to break

Joelle finds Singapore founders are not dreaming big enough.

I’ve came across too many Singaporean founders who strive to be the best in their industry in their home market, or to be recognised and celebrated as the top entrepreneurs in Singapore.

If you’re focusing only on being the best in Singapore and competing with other Singaporean founders, instead of thinking how you stack up against other entrepreneurs on the world’s stage, I think you’re missing the plot.

[Singaporeans] are a very fortunate bunch where we are given resources that many others in the world don’t. Most of us didn’t have to fight for basic rights, such as access to good education and personal security.

This may desensitize us and lessen our ability to empathise with the everyman and our effectiveness at coming up with solutions to solve their everyday problems. In today’s context, it may be this thinking: ‘Let me give this a try, apply for a government grant, and if it doesn’t work out, I can always head back to a day job.

Carmen finds that Singapore founders have a ‘crutch mentality’ to apply as many government grants as possible to help in validation and cashflow. But it is in her opinion that founders should not bend backwards to obtain them as these businesses will be hard to scale because their deliverables is whatever that helps check off boxes to enable grant monies to be disbursed.

For Anu, it is not about mindsets needed to break, but more of a new mindset to adopt.

She shares:

Adaptability is key as a company starts to expand overseas. Having the ability to imbibe the business locally, understanding local cultures and mindsets as well as ensuring that there is an able team, are some of the key ingredients that lead to a startup’s success.

Also read: The 4 kinds of mentoring opportunities that are most effective

Inspirational people startup founders should follow

Carmen cites R. G LeTourneau, a classic case of multiple failures yet he preserved. She founds him impressive that with his wealth, LeTourneau has decided to build a school to train and teach entrepreneurs.

She further adds:

All entrepreneurs are inspiring, especially those who have gone through multiple bad patches. The easy way out is to give up, but entrepreneurs who persevere on, and somehow find the cash to sustain the business – they are heroes that need to be remembered. With their grit, they ensured their staff are able to put bread on their families’ tables. These entrepreneurs create jobs for majority of our population.

Joelle finds successful entrepreneurs who started with nothing continually inspires her.

In a way because they serve as a role model for most of us who are truly starting from scratch – no/little networks, and/or no family money to speak of.

WhatsApp founder Jan Koum was born in Ukraine and came from poverty, and we all know now how his story ended. Many of these entrepreneurs didn’t choose to enter an existing market, but rather, they created new ones based on solving real consumer problems creatively and impacted the way current markets eventually evolved.

Entrepreneurs who look to give back to the society and communities also inspire me greatly.

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates show how wealth can be used to drive equality and improve the quality of lives; Sheryl Sandberg leverages her position to empower women around the world to lean in and step up in the workplace; and closer to home, Spacemob founder and now MD for WeWork SEA, Turochas “T” Fuad is one who doesn’t shy away from mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs and providing a platform for new generations of entrepreneurs to shine.

Mentorship advice to startups

Carmen shares fundraising advice as a VC.

Be realistic on valuation but don’t be too punishing on the equity you should have.  This boils down to how much money you should raise. Keep the first cheques to something modest, but watch your expenses so you can stretch the cheques for 18-24 months. In this case, valuation should not be too rich, so you can still keep a decent percentage for the founding team.

There is also no need to ‘must have’ VCs as investors. The key is to do good growing businesses, and also to keep an eye and mindset for the business to eventually be sold.  Build in processes (and have good documentation) so that the company is sale-ready.

Anu adds:

For any founder, be it man or woman, the journey is one of resilience, agility, adaptability. A woman’s situation may sometimes get more complex as we tend to be more emotional and instinctive (especially if the person is a mother). There are several other distractions (even in a day). But the key challenge is to stay focused and think of why one started to do this in the first place and if one is really doing what one set out to do. As an entrepreneur myself, I believe that it’s about never giving up. It’s about being fierce and making sure you build your business the right way. The rest will follow.”

Joelle ends off this article, “Focus on understanding that one problem that you are willing to dedicate your life’s work to solving, instead of blindly chasing trends in hopes of creating the next unicorn and cashing out big time.

You’ll realise that the moment you find your life’s mission statement, the various solutions you have towards solving that problem can all become ideas for your startup, and they will be ideas that you’ll have enough passion and grit to see your startup through.

Also, remember that an idea is free – it is only worth something when you take that first step to start executing on it.

—-

This article was first published on e27 on September 13, 2018.

The NEXT50 mentorship network is a pro-bono community initiative which allows Singaporean startup founders to access to over 80 mentors of various fields and expertise.

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Also, on-demand t-shirt printing platform raises funding, Techstars expands to South Korea, and Yoopies acquires HelpersChoice

Speedoc launches ambulance-booking app in Singapore [Press Release]

Speedoc, house-call doctor app based in Singapore, announces that it has launched ambulance-booking app in collaboration with Comfort Ambulance.

Speedoc adds ambulance-hailing feature to its app in response to rising demand for private ambulances and cessation of non-emergency ambulance services by the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF).

Usually, users who need a private ambulance can now either contact over 20 operators individually or call the 1777 hotline but sometimes have to wait a long time for an ambulance to be confirmed. Speedoc app users can call on Comfort Ambulance’s fleet of 25 ambulances for transport from anywhere in Singapore to more than 100 healthcare institutions island-wide, including hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices.

The launch is a response to the announcement made In April by SCDF, when it said that it would no longer dispatch ambulances to cover non-emergency cases so that it can better focus on the serious and life-threatening cases.

Dr Shravan Verma, chief executive officer of Speedoc said: “With our app, users requiring
a private ambulance can now get an ambulance response typically within minutes. The
app is available round the clock and users will be informed of the charges before they
confirm their bookings.”

T-shirt and merchandise print-on-demand platform raises US$145K

Famsy, the print-on-demand t-shirts and merchandise platform based in Malaysia, announced that it has raised a total of US$145,000 600, in seed funding from Commerce DotAsia Ventures Sdn Bhd. The company plans to use the funding to fulfill all types of customisation needs as well as providing the opportunity to design and market users’ apparel collection through FamsyMall and FamsyStores respectively.

FamsyMall is an online apparel marketplace which allows customers to personalise their own apparel and gifts, while FamsyStores is an A-Z fulfilment platform which helps businesses and entrepreneurs build their own t-shirt and merchandise brand online via Famsy’s web app.

Also Read: Binance Singapore partners with Vertex Ventures to set up fiat-to-crypto gateway

Famsy aims to lead the custom t-shirt printing in Southeast Asia by integrating technology into a traditional t-shirt print process, and equip users the ability to create a t-shirt selling websites within a day. For end users, FamsyMall allows affordable, fully customized prints without any minimum order.

“We differentiate by providing fully integrated systems for better user experience, and you no longer need to buy t-shirts in bulk to get affordable pricing,” said CEO and Founder, Ms. Fong Chai Lee.

Techstars seeks to support Korean startups through expansion [Press Release]

Global entrepreneur network Techstars announced its partnership with startup-dedicated consultancy firm Hillstone Partners to launch accelerator program in Pangyo, Korea.

It will be the first foray to Korea by Techstars, offering a three-month for 10 top performing startups per year. The accelerator will support the Korean startup ecosystem and is open to startups focussed on digital and tech innovation across a variety of business verticals.

The accelerator will be hosted at the Pangyo Techno Valley campus (PTV), a business and innovation hub dedicated for information technology, biotech, cultural tech, and fusion tech. PTV is located in the metropolitan area of Pangyo, Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, also known as the Silicon Valley of Korea, approximately 30 minutes from downtown Seoul.

With the expansion, Techstars will join the ranks of other US-based tech companies such as Google and Facebook that have set up shop in past years.

Applications for Techstars Korea in partnership with Hillstone Partners will open in December of 2019, with the program running from June 2020 through September 2020.

Global domestic job recruitment Yoopies buys HelperChoice [Press Release]

Singapore and Hong Kong-based ethical domestic help services platform HelperChoice announced that it has been acquired by Yoopies. Saying that it seeks to boost ethical domestic help services as well as its presence in Asia.

HelperChoice​ is an online platform connecting foreign domestic workers and families that was launched in Hong Kong in 2012 by two French investment bankers, with the aim of helping foreign domestic workers find jobs without paying extortionate illegal fees to recruitment agencies and loan sharks.

Currently, the company claims to have more than 390,000 foreign domestic workers employed.

HelperChoice facilitated more than 50,000 recruitments and estimates that more than 60 million euros of illegal placement fees were saved. Yoopies​ plans to keep operations in Hong Kong and grow its Asian business from there.

Tinder to release Tinder Lite for APAC market [The Jakarta Post]

Dating app Tinder has introduced a Lite version of the app aimed at emerging markets on Wednesday at the 2019 Rise Tech conference at the Hong Kong Conference and Exhibition, Hong Kong, The Jakarta Post reported.

According to Tinder CEO Elie Seidman, Tinder Lite would be rolled out first in Vietnam in the coming weeks. Seidman mentioned Tinder Lite would run faster, consume less battery, and reduce network usage by about 20 per cent, to adjust with majority slow internet networks and limited space in the smartphone in emerging markets.

Tinder Lite would come with the full features of regular Tinder and available as a separate app for Android users via Google’s Play Store,

KPMG Digital Village, Kuehne + Nagel to launch logistics platform etrucKNow [Press Release]

KPMG Digital Village announced today that it has collaborated with global logistics companies Kuehne + Nagel, to launch etrucKNow, a single platform that’s designed to connect shippers and carriers to facilitate land trade. The partnership, the official statement said, marked a business model innovation for Kuehne + Nagel that changes the way logistics is being carried out by the company.

With the etrucKNow platform, shippers just need to put in their job requirements and the platform will show them an immediate spot rate that can be booked for a shipment.

For carriers, the platform will provide them with access to shippers presenting new business opportunities. The job matching and bidding capabilities on the platform mean that carriers can fill empty or under-utilised trucks to turn space within the trucks into revenue.

Also Read: Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank invests in Go-Jek, says report

On the road, carriers and shippers have real-time visibility of the whereabouts of all shipments and the ability to track successful pick-ups and completed trips. The platform further creates a way to connect, collaborate, and partner with the freight ecosystem players together allowing paper documentation and processing that are easy to upload and download of required documents.

etrucKNow will be piloted in Thailand before deployment in other markets.

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