It isn’t just about putting in the hours, but also doing it smartly

We’re faster, smarter, stronger, more emotionally-intelligent and artistically-gifted than ever before.

Take a look at any profession in the world today.

From music to maths to track running, the previously-impossible is being achieved every day.

Where does this continuous, steep upswing in the standards of excellence come from?

No, there hasn’t been a surge of extraordinarily talented people being born.

The myths of mastery

How long does it take to become a master of your craft? 

Is talent something you’re born with, or something you acquire through learning? 

And what do highly-skilled people do differently from the rest of us mortals?

Researchers have been searching for answers to these questions for decades. And recently, they made a surprising discovery.

The crème de la crème — or ‘expert performers’, as they’re officially known — all have something in common.

(And it’s not 10,000 hours.)

Debunking 10,000 hours

In Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book, Outliers: The Story of Success, he pinpoints 10,000 as the ‘magic number’ of hours a person needs to devote to their craft to become an expert.

He cites people like Bill Gates and the Beatles, who famously invested vast amounts of time to sharpen their skill-set.

His theory is based on the research of Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, a professor of psychology who has pioneered the study and science of peak performance.

But Ericsson does not entirely agree with Gladwell’s conclusions. In fact, he calls them:

“… a popularised but simplistic view of our work … which suggests that anyone who has accumulated a sufficient number of hours of practice in a given domain will automatically become an expert and a champion.”

Also Read: This is how we scaled up the Bukalapak engineering team

According to Ericsson, becoming an expert in something isn’t just a matter of clocking up thousands of hours. What distinguishes a virtuoso violinist or an Olympic athlete from the rest of us is how they spend these hours.

Enter deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice is focused, consistent, goal-oriented training. It favours quality over quantity. It knows not all practice is created equal.

Natural talent is overrated

There’s a common assumption that talent is something we are, or aren’t, born with.

But Ericsson believes that genetics play less of a role than we think.

Take Mozart. Almost anyone would consider him to be a musical genius. But according to Ericsson,

“If you compare the kind of music pieces that Mozart play at various ages to today’s Suzuki-trained children, he is not exceptional. If anything, he’s relatively average.”

He claims that Mozart achieved mastery, not due to inherited talent, but because he practiced long and hard from a very young age.

“The belief that one’s abilities are limited by one’s genetically prescribed characteristics….manifests itself in all sorts of ‘I can’t’ or ‘I’m not’ statements.”

So is a conviction that we lack the necessary talent the only factor holding us back from being the next Steve Jobs?

Not quite.

There is significant evidence to show that working memory is heritable, and that cognitive ability as a child plays a role in adult achievement.

But no matter a person’s genetics, expertise can’t be built without working hard — and smart — over many years.

Why regular practice isn’t enough

Typically, repeated practice takes us up to a medium level of success. After an initial spike, progress stalls, plateaus — then grinds to a halt.

Because when you reach an average level of competence, your ability stops being a work-in-progress and starts being a reflex.

That’s why repeating a skill regularly over many years alone — cooking, driving, exercising — doesn’t lead to expertise.

Also Read: How to best adopt successful macromanagement practices

You’re maintaining a skill, not building on it.

And for most areas in our lives, a baseline level of skill is enough. But if we want to truly excel, we have to push past this complacency and out of our comfort zone.

People who continually improve never slump into auto-pilot.

Instead, they keep taking apart the pieces of their skill and putting them back together to create something better.

Rather than treading water, they take their practice to the edge of their ability, and then step (or leap) beyond it.

The five-hour rule

Author and entrepreneur Michael Simmons discovered a common denominator that ties in with Ericsson’s research.

Simmons refers to this as the ‘five-hour rule’: one hour, each weekday, devoted to highly-concentrated learning.

And it’s these consistent, intense bursts of effort that sets them — and other highly-accomplished people throughout history — apart.

Benjamin Franklin kept a strict daily schedule and set aside time for focused learning, reflection and reading. He tracked his progress and set small goals.

Theodore Roosevelt devoted a couple of hours each day to intense study, a habit he started at university and continued into his US presidency.

Elon Musk is known for his deep commitment to learning and self-improvement, and often reads two books a day.

Sounds a bit more manageable than the 10,000-hour rule, doesn’t it?

But it’s not always easy.

Deliberate practice makes perfect

Performing skills you already know is satisfying — but this won’t enhance your skill level.

So, deliberate practice isn’t just about continued repetition.

It’s structured. It’s thoughtful. It’s strategic.

You aren’t just mindlessly practicing. You’re intensely engaged. You’re teetering on the edge of what you are and aren’t capable of doing.

It shouldn’t feel comfortable.

Like a rubber band, you’re constantly stretching yourself to your outer limits. There needs to be constant pressure and impetus for change.

And if you aren’t clearly moving forward with one technique, you go back to the drawing board.

In other words, if you achieved something yesterday, you must do more than achieve it again today.

There’s no standstill.

That’s how growth happens.

Deliberate practice in 4 steps

Developing proficiency in any skill is not always fun, or even enjoyable.

I’ve learned this firsthand over the 12 years (and counting) it took me to build my company, JotForm.

I’ve been with my product, fed up with myself and fed up with grappling with yet another issue.

Also Read: 5 winning practices to lead the business/life you want

What’s made me hang in is visualizing where the time I spend developing a new or greater understanding will take me.

And by listening to my resistance instead of fighting it, I was able to grow JotForm to almost 4 million users without any outside funding.

Still, to push through these feelings, day in, day out, you’re going to need to build smart systems to support you.

Here’s how to get the ball rolling.

1. Set small goals

You need to keep your eyes firmly on the prize to keep up momentum.

That’s why wishy-washy goals like ‘getting better’ won’t be compelling enough to propel you past your current abilities — on their own, at least.

And as I’ve written before, lofty goals will intimidate — and throw you off track.

The alternative? Bite-sized, clearly-defined, achievable steps in the right direction.

Small goals are the foundation of deliberate practice. They should take into account your current knowledge and push your limits, little by little, towards meaningful change.

This means distilling your general, long-term goal — improvement — into a series of concrete building blocks.

Long-term goal: become an expert runner

Medium goal: run the 2019 marathon

Small steps to get there: reduce your running time by 5 minutes every week.

Identify the main areas for change. Write them down. Make a checklist. Rooting goals in specificity will encourage action. Once you have a clear system in place, everything else will slot into place.

2. Be consistent

Prolonged, sustained effort is often uncomfortable or frustrating. And that’s the whole point.

Deliberate practice isn’t necessarily enjoyable: you’ll need to sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term success.

This dilemma applies to most things in everyday life. Take me as an example.

When people ask me how I was able to grow JotForm to a company of 110 employees without any investment, many of them want me to talk about passion or tell inspiring stories.

The truth is, I’ve never been super passionate about building forms. I didn’t follow my dreams.

I just showed up and put in the boring work every single day over the last 12 years while I watched countless competitors enter & leave our market.

It wasn’t always fun, especially when you try to build your startup in one of the most competitive industries around – online forms. Even Google Forms stepped into the ring and remains one of our toughest competitors.

Also Read: 7 ways to increase productivity at work

But it’s pushing through this frustration that leads to significant improvement. It’s getting on with it especially when you’re too tired and can’t be bothered.

Deliberate practice is only effective because of its regularity.

So commit to your hour per day, and protect it at all costs. Soon, action will become a habit and there will be no decision left to make. That’s where the magic happens.

3. Track and measure

To progress in any area, you need to pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses to identify problems and solutions.

How many stories are you publishing per week?

How many miles are you running?

Be methodical, and keep track of your progress every day.

It’s also crucial to seek out regular feedback: from existing experts and peers as well as through self-assessment. An honest perspective is essential for gaining a realistic view of your progress.

Write it down. Record it. Measure it. Repeat.

4. Recharge

Deliberate practice requires your full, undivided, 1000 per cent attention. That’s why it can only be sustained for short periods.

Experts have capped optimal practice time at one hour per day, three-to-five days a week, with reduced benefits after two hours.

So keep it short and sweet, however tempting it might be to push on when you feel like you’re nailing it. Set an alarm, and be strict with yourself to duck out when the hour is up.

Why? You need to recharge.

Extreme focus is a tough mental workout, and you’ll only feel its benefits if you give yourself time to recover. Counteract the intensity of deliberate practice by doing nothing at all.

Your body, and your brain will thank you.

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Originally published on JotForm.com

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Using cryptocurrency provides a high level of encryption and drastically reduces the chances of fraud

The popularity of cryptocurrencies has never been higher, as more and more people across the globe look to invest in these markets and capitalize on their growth. At the same time, it’s important to remember that cryptocurrencies also function as a wallet utility that can be used in day-to-day transactions.

Bitcoin and Ether remain two of the most common cryptocurrencies used today, but the market continues to expand as more digital options are made available. Anyone looking to get started with crypto investing or transaction management has the option of buying from literally hundreds of choices.

But you also need a way to store it and spend it.

New companies that allow you to easily do both are popping up like flowers in the spring. One such service, CoinPayments, allows you to group all of your currency balances into a single account and use it on different online shopping platforms. Here are some key reasons to use cryptocurrency.

Blockchain security

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether are fundamentally different than how most average consumers use cash, checks, or credit cards today. These new currencies are built on a purely digital technology called blockchain, which boasts robust security features through encryption.

All cryptocurrencies rely on a financial ledger system, similar to how a checkbook or online bank account works. Each transaction is recorded in the ledger in order to track which entities own which parts of the blockchain. However, unlike checking accounts, cryptocurrencies do not have any central bank or authority to manage these transactions.

Also Read: ‘The Age of Cryptocurrency’ is a must read for anyone who wants to go from zero to one in blockchain

Because the blockchain ledger is distributed across the world through a number of computer networks, there is a very low risk of fraud or transaction interference. All of the systems on the network run computational algorithms to maintain the integrity of the blockchain and process new transactions. This type of infrastructure is known as a peer-to-peer network.

When you first open an account, you can register for a digital wallet of Bitcoin, Ether, or one of the many other publicly available currencies. By doing so, your wallet will be assigned both a public and a private encryption key. These work together to keep all transactions secure, similar to how a virtual private network (VPN) uses encryption to maintain your online privacy.

And like a VPN encrypts your internet connection and reroutes your IP address to keep hostile entities like hackers from finding you online, blockchain works to protect your cryptocurrency from the same bad guys. Each time you initiate a new crypto transaction, a new block is added to the global blockchain with the transaction details encrypted by your private key.

The desired recipient must be able to use your public key in order to accept the request and process the rest of the transaction. While this happens, all of the nodes on the blockchain network use their algorithms to validate the exchange.

Conversion to international currencies

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether don’t care where you are physically located. A share of the blockchain is worth the same whether you live in the United States or in Africa. In this way, cryptocurrencies act as global financial solutions that require minimal overhead or account requirements.

Though there is a growing list of major retailers who accept crypto payments, it’s not exactly easy to operate your entire financial life around blockchain technology yet, so you will likely need to maintain an investment in traditional cash and credit systems. Fortunately, there are crypto management solutions that let you manage deposits and withdrawals with external accounts.

Also Read: Implementing cryptocurrency and blockchain in the cybersecurity space

In order to add credit to a digital wallet for use with Bitcoin or Ether, you’ll first need to fund the wallet through a normal checking or savings account. After that, you can choose to begin making crypto transactions or else simply keep the credit in your account as a financial investment.

At any time in the future, you have the ability to sell your stake in the digital currencies and withdraw the money into a bank account with US dollars or a number of other international currencies.

Minimal transaction fees

When considering making an investment into Bitcoin, Ether, or one of the other cryptocurrencies on the market today, ponder more than just the exchange rate with your traditional currency. You need to keep in mind all of the benefits that come with blockchain technology, including the low transaction and account fees.

In the traditional financial world, large companies that manage your money are constantly charging you for their services. Some of these are obvious, like the account fees that brokerages and mutual funds require, while others are less transparent, like the credit card transaction fees that are factored into many merchants’ prices. These sorts of charges may feel like a requirement in today’s economy, but thanks to the cryptocurrency boom they don’t have to be.

Because of its peer-to-peer infrastructure design, the blockchain has no central authority that takes a cut from investments and transactions. You are only responsible for paying fees to the company that you use for exchanging money between cryptocurrencies and external accounts. If you shop around, you can find rates as low as 0.5 per cent.

Web and app integrations

Considering that the blockchain is a completely digital-based technology, it makes sense for it to have a wide range of integrations across the internet. Customers have the ability to pay with crypto wallets through platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento.

Also Read: What’s in store for blockchain and cryptocurrency?

Another key advantage of cryptocurrencies is that online transactions are settled immediately, compared to credit card purchases which can take days to complete.

Final thoughts

If you are a small business owner who wants to jump onto the blockchain bandwagon, you can add support for cryptocurrencies to your existing website or mobile application. Services like CoinPayments offer a full application programming interface (API) and shopping cart plugins to make Bitcoin, Ether, and others available to your customers. Shoppers can either log into an existing account or else use their own blockchain wallet to complete a transaction.

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The startup aims to open more than 30 franchises in the Asian country by the end of 2019

Mr Jeff, an on-demand laundry startup headquartered in Valencia, Spain, has announced its expansion into Singapore.

The startup aims to open more than 30 franchises in the Asian country by the end of 2019.

According to the company, the laundry services market in Singapore is primarily made up of small, local shop owners, with a limited customer reach and, consequently, limited opportunity for business growth.

Also Read: A refugee in Germany in the 80’s, this entrepreneur is now back in Southeast Asia to achieve his dreams

“With our digital approach and our subscriptions plans, we intend to change the traditional function of the dry cleaning sector. Singapore is one of the countries in which maximum revenue is expected,” said Julio Suero, Mr Jeff’s Head of Expansion Asia.

The venture was founded in 2015 by three Spanish entrepreneurs Eloi Gómez, Adrián Lorenzo and Rubén Muñoz. It provides laundry and dry cleaning services to its customers, who can choose the exact location, time and day of pickup. A driver visits the user’s house and collects the garments and later on delivers them back, cleaned and ironed.

The app is available on Android and iOS platforms and works through a monthly subscription system and one-off orders in stores, called Mr Jeff Hubs, that are distributed across different cities, forming a network of franchises that completely change the traditional laundry model.

Mr Jeff is currently operating in more than 10 countries, including Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica and Panama. It is also undertaking an international expansion process with more than 370 Mr Jeff Hubs, including franchise opportunities in Singapore.

Also Read: eziPOD’s smart laundry locker doubles as your courier delivery point and personal storage

The company has more than 300 direct employees and more than 1,100 indirect employees.

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Here is how the company scaled its culture and product and engineering teams

Funding Societies supports SME owners in starting or expanding their businesses by providing access to funding from individuals or institutional investors.

Founded in 2015, the company has grown into a 300-people organization with over S$500 million (US$370 million) in funding. During this process, Funding Societies penetrated a few Southeast Asian markets and faced different challenges: growing a unique and positive culture while iterating its products a few times. I had the opportunity to speak with Ishan Agrawal, VP Engineering at Funding Societies, to learn more about the lessons extracted from this hyper-growth journey.

What has been Funding Societies engineering journey so far?

Funding Societies was started in 2015 by two Harvard grads out of their dorm rooms. Being fascinated by the success of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending in the Western world but having no technical background, our co-founders engaged a consulting firm in Indonesia to build the first version of the product and launched the company with that.

Four years on, we have grown to a 300+ people company, funded over S$500 million (US$370 million) in business loans, and become the largest P2P lending platform in Southeast Asia with licensed/registered operations in Singapore. Indonesia (we are called Modalku there) and Malaysia.

To drive this growth from the engineering side, we built an in-house team spread across the three countries. We have built a best-in-class investing experience (in Southeast Asia) on our apps and website. Our borrowers receive highly customized financing solutions seamlessly and fast.

Internally all this is powered by humans and algorithms working together to achieve speed, precision and a delightful experience for our users, with application to approval time is as low as two hours. Lastly but most importantly, we have created an excellent working culture that we are very proud of.

This, of course, hasn’t been easy. It has involved many late nights and weekends, some tough decisions, and tons of learnings.

What started as a .NET shop, is now a Nodejs, Golang and Angular backed product. We have rewritten our systems multiple times in the process, moving from a monolith to a microservices architecture, from manually configured infrastructure to infrastructure-as-code in Terraform.

The evolution of the business from a single-country company offering term loan products, to a multi-country company offering an ever-growing suite of customized loan products has prompted several re-writes of our components. Even currently, we are in the process of an architectural upgrade to support the ever-growing scale.

Personally, I feel it’s been a journey of tremendous personal growth, one that’s humbling and rewarding in more ways than I can describe. It’s very fulfilling to wake up every day knowing that my work enables businesses to grow, creates more jobs and contributes to the GDP of nations.

What are the biggest challenges you face as a growing team?

Most engineering leaders in Southeast Asia would agree that hiring is the biggest challenge any fast-growing engineering team faces here. The pool of local talent is limited with plenty of fast-growing startups in Southeast Asia vying for the same talent. Few engineering teams in Southeast Asia have seen the kind of scale where you really need to build high scale distributed systems.

Hence, finding such senior talent in the region is hard. The best products have the best people behind them, so we spend quite a bit of time and resources in making sure we hire the best. Hiring in itself can be hours of discussion so let me also turn to some other challenges.

Also Read: Traveloka reveals the greatest challenges engineers face

Training existing engineers to keep improving technically is really really important and something that companies often miss out on. One of our core values is to “Grow Relentlessly“, and we believe that everyone can achieve his/her fullest potential if he/she learns continuously. We encourage our team members to:

1) Read furiously;
2) Share knowledge and learnings in bi-weekly sessions;
3) Reflect every week on how we can do things better;
4) Pursue higher education and online courses parallelly.

As the team expands, there is a need to add processes and policies to keep a smooth ship sailing. There are many ways to do this. We realised that while it’s important to look at how other companies do it, it’s also equally essential to build our own unique set of policies based on our product offering and the needs of the company. Processes and policies should also be revised periodically to meet the changing needs of the company.

Another challenge is the gap between formulating policies and implementing them as there is always an inertia to change human behaviour. You need to rationalize, inspire, find champions and finally incentivize to drive some bigger policy changes.

Hiring is one of the top challenges that engineering leaders face. What is your approach to hiring?

Southeast Asia faces the challenges of a lack of experienced engineering talent and many fast-growing startups are competing for the same talent. So we don’t just limit hiring to Southeast Asia, but hire across the world. We work with recruiters (external and internal) and post on job portals. But we find that we get our best talent via referrals. What works for us is the culture we have created, where engineers are excited to bring their friends because they find it a good place to work and of course generous referral bonuses don’t hurt as well.

We never look for ‘Engineers who know X’, but for people with the strong fundamental knowledge and a track record of delivering great work. As a fast-growing company our requirements change all the time, so people who enjoy learning and can learn fast are a better fit for us.

Also Read: We analysed the hiring trends of Southeast Asia’s top e-commerce players, and here’s what we found

We offer candidates a speedy process and a positive interviewing experience no matter the outcome. For us, interviews are always two-way and never just one side asking questions with the other side answering. We are a data-driven company in whatever we do, so measure our hiring funnels, analyses drop-offs and iterate the process to maximize for an optimal two-way decision and a wonderful candidate experience.

I believe hiring doesn’t stop at closing a candidate. That’s just one-third of the work. The next third comes in the form of good onboarding. We have an intense structured onboarding programme to give an insight to the various teams, products and familiarize our new colleagues with the codebase.

The final third lies in retention by providing a great working culture and psychological safety in our team. We ensure our engineers get challenging work and have the autonomy to make decisions. We also actively weed out political chatter to let the team stay focused building out towards shared goals.

We are still a young fintech startup and a small engineering team, evolving and growing every day. Each engineer plays a key role and creates a direct and material impact on the success of the company, thereby the success of many SMEs and investors in Southeast Asia.

What are your tips for ensuring strong communication within your team?

Good communication within a team is directly reflected in its performance. In fast-growing teams, forms of communication keep evolving as the team grows and increases in complexity. Since we are a geographically distributed team where facetime is limited, strong communication becomes even more important.

Documentation is the single most effective form of communication for engineering teams. We copiously document the decision-making process for all big decisions, technical architecture and assumptions made.

I conduct weekly one to ones with my direct team to serve three main purposes:

1)  Have a two-way timely and actionable feedback;
2)  Talk about career progression;
3)  Drive changes across the team.

It is a highly effective way to align their personal goals towards a shared goal. Taking a tip from Reid Hoffman from Greylock partners, we try to make ‘everyone a hero of their own life’s story’.

You cannot talk about communication without talking about meetings. They can easily suck the time out of your day without any real productive value, so we limit meetings only to discussions and decision making with pre-done research, documentation and asynchronous discussions over Slack and Confluence.

Effective and authentic communication is a big part of working together so we give it a strong weight age in performance reviews for the team.

Is there something that you’ve learned through the process of growing that you wish you knew before?

There have been countless lessons learned over the past three years at Funding Societies|Modalku as we grew from just a few people in a room to a 300+ strong team.

Remember that you are not alone in this. The problems I face as an engineering leader are not far from what my peers face at other companies. Over the past few years, I have started connecting with other engineering leaders in the region over cups of tea to share and learn about the challenges we face and different approaches to solving those problems.

Also Read: How startups can defeat challenges in customer satisfaction

Rewrites always take longer than planned, and migrations (especially database migrations) are the most complicated part of a rewrite. If you are in a fast-growing company, rewrites will be the norm. But always spend more upfront time in the planning and coding the migration, than the rewrite itself. A smooth migration will save you a lot of trouble from doing damage control later.

Cliched as it may be, you are only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. Don’t hire too fast, and spend time training and upskilling the team. Tailor the tasks to be challenging and impactful, with the right match to the individual’s skills.

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If you found this interview interesting, follow more of the ScaleUp Valley content for further discussions on how others have scaled their companies. For example, the ScaleUp Valley podcast – where we speak with successful scale-ups about their growing process – is a fountain of valuable learnings brought to you directly by the source.

Mike Dias is the CEO at ScaleUp Valley – a business that provides scaleup off-site sessions, leadership programs and relevant content about the scaleup process to help companies overcome the ScaleUp Valley!

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5G will ramp up digitisation efforts in many areas of society

Across the Asia Pacific region, the economy is undergoing unprecedented change as a result of digitisation, hyper-connectivity, 5G and big data convergence. The cost of rolling out and implementing 5G across all sectors of the economy globally is expected to reach at least US$2.7 trillion by the end of 2020, according to research from finance house Greensill. The telecommunication sector alone is investing an estimated US$1 trillion by 2020 to implement infrastructure upgrades.

In this new operating environment, where the speed and low latency of 5G will trigger a wave of innovative applications and services, organisations need to rethink their business and operating models to drive revenue.

Digitisation and the rise of Industry 4.0

The enabler for the new wave of globalisation is digitisation and, to a greater extent, the emerging phenomenon known as Industry 4.0. We’re now in an era where mass connectivity will give rise to intelligence and capability never before experienced, and to survive in Industry 4.0 companies need to fundamentally transform their mindset and culture as well as their existing operator models along with the underpinning strategy and structure.

Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) used to take decades to grow in new markets. With digitisation, new entrants can launch in multiple markets within months. Digitisation also enables closer links with consumers, eliminating many parts of the traditional supply chain at a stroke, while data analysis gives organisations instant insights into consumers’ preferences and desires.

Operators recognise that 5G is not a new network; it is another layer on top of a secure 4G network. The challenges of legacy and the introduction of new technologies to compete more effectively are focus areas for all operators.

Also Read: Why the traditional story arc is obsolete for brands

Telstra is investing more than US$300 million in building Australia’s first 5G network and a further US$1 billion in digitisation capability to connect more people through a greater number of services available on a variety of devices. The rise of 5G has given the opportunity to diverge traditional business models.

However, operators face the constant challenge of significant capital investment to build on top of 4G as well as prepare their networks for the arrival of 5G. The ROI in capital invested in most telecommunications companies is in the 4-5 per cent range across the APAC region. Telcos need to consider opportunities to become differentiated rather than continuing to invest in a deflationary economic model. The line between free and paid services are becoming a greater area of concern for MNOs.

Big data

Big data will power every decision organisations make and the way they interact with consumers. Today, consumers are wanting control of their data. Data portability should and will continue to add value to the daily lives of consumers.

5G will open the gates to enable richer and immersive entertainment, breakthroughs in health, and improvements in education. IOT will make our cities smarter by allowing driverless cars to connect to smart streets, smart shops, and more. Outside smart cities, in more remote areas, 5G will enable the 1.7 billion people without a mobile phone who are significantly underserved to finally have access to services that 3G and 4G could not provide, including access to education.

Also Read: What role does big data play in the insurance industry?

Singtel is doubling down its efforts to take advantage of hyperconnectivity and big data. Speaking at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company shared its plans to focus its business on three key areas: creating intelligent connectivity through analytics and automation; building stand-alone, cloud-native digital business applications that enable richer engagement opportunities with customers; and building regional digital ecosystems across payments, IOT and analytics to create additional sources of revenue and engagement opportunities for operators and their partner ecosystem.

Mobility

Mobile revenue growth is stagnating. The average revenue per user is declining across most operators. Mobile data traffic will be 4x higher than it is today as the world now works with data. Telecommunications companies across the globe are at the core of this and are sitting on a gold mine of data about consumer behaviours. However, traditional mobile revenue growth is expected to shrink from 5 per cent to 1 per cent. The commoditisation of connecting is becoming a huge issue as we move from transactional connectivity to intelligent connectivity.

The value creation which needs to be provided is taking place through significant investment in cloud-native applications, platforms and services. In the era of data, intelligent connectivity will be key to stopping commoditisation. It will be a new way of differentiating.

Also Read: Success through planning — a wakeup call for “startup snobs”

The ability to monetise the platform at speed and scale will be key. Providers will need to build new applications using cloud-native principles, so that these use cases can be taken to the customers, leveraging a common framework.

The network should be virtualised and be in containers. The purpose behind cloud-native is scale, reuse and the ability to run in any environment. To accommodate these, MNOs are dealing with flexible business models to stay ahead of the competition.

MNOs need to build software using cloud-native principles and agile methodologies. This together with an open source PaaS platform, such as Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF), will enable MNOs to build rich cloud-native services as well as help deal with legacy software through industry-leading containerisation capabilities.

This will ultimately bring services closer to the edge, all enabled by 5G.

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The startup battle by Unilever’s global corporate innovation pillar was held at the recent Innovfest Unbound 

Unilever Foundry, the FMCG giant’s global corporate innovation pillar that focusses on partnering and accelerating innovations across the company’s 400+ brands and functions, has announced the startups Kora and Rytle as the joint winners of Unilever Foundry Startups Battle 2019.

The startup battle was held at Innovfest Unbound from June 27 – 28, 2019.

“The variety of startups that competed in this year’s battle under the banner of Smart Retail demonstrated that we need to look at innovation through the lens of an ecosystem of technologies that goes beyond buying and selling,” said Barbara Guerpillon, Director, Unilever Foundry Asia.

Guerpillon further added that Unilever Foundry is looking at the integration of the latest technologies in the retail industry, as well as how they are transforming the rules of consumer engagement and opening up new opportunities.

Kora is an Indonesia-based startup that distributes over 500 different consumer products through a network of 2,800 individuals called Poskora.

Rytle is a Singapore-based startup that combines technology and environmental protection for maximum flexibility in city logistics.

The other finalists in the competition that went head-to-head with the joint winners included Fairbanc, Perx Technologies, and Fabulyst.

Also Read: Insurtech Singapore Life raises US$90M funding from Sumitomo Life

Unilever Foundry Startup Battle was launched in 2015 and has been joined by 500 startups from across the region, piloting more than 159 startups with Unilever brands and functions. Unilever Foundry focusses on areas such as marketing tech and adtech, enterprise tech, products and ingredients, new business model innovation, and social impact.

This year, the battle focussed on smart retail with startups covering categories such as smart vending, supply chain, retail experience, product loyalty, and shopper analysis.

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Image Credit: Unilever Foundry

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The Vietnam-based company said it has received an undisclosed amount for its fifth funding round

Base.vn, a Vietnamese Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Nextrans, a Korean venture capitalist.

Previously, Base had raised US$1.7 million in a pre-Series A round by four other VCs: Beenext, Alpha JWC Ventures, VIISA, and 500Startups.

Nextrans has more than US$400 million in fund, investing in around 60 companies that are mostly based in the US and Korea. In Vietnam, Nextrans was the investor in Luxstay, Jamja or EcoTruck.

Regarding its decision to invest in Base.vn, Nextrans said that it has reviewed 600 companies in different sectors for two years and found 10 more “enterprise-based solutions.”

Also Read: Spanish on-demand laundry startup Mr Jeff expands to Singapore

Base was founded in 2016 by Stanford University alumni Pham Kim Hung.

It claims to be the first SaaS platform in the region that helps enterprise streamline activities with features such as Base E-hiring (an applicant tracking system), Base Wework (a task and project management platform), and Base Request (internal request management).

“Our ultimate goal is to bring quality products that have great impact and values in enterprises’ growth. With the funding, the more important things are the values that we can generate towards our customers,” said Base Co-founder and CEO Hung Pham.

Base said it aims for international investment funds with extensive experience in SaaS to work with the company to become the leading SaaS platform in the region.

Its applications have been used daily by more than 1,000 customers in Vietnam in different industries including banking-finance, e-commerce, F&B, and education.

The company plans to raise its next round of funding in late 2019.

 

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Strategic capital is essential for startups to achieve sustainable long-term growth

Smart capital, simply put, refers to the investment that brings along additional value such as knowledge, relationships, potential partnerships in addition to cash. In an economy where connectivity is becoming increasingly important and prevalent, smart capital is becoming more and more crucial for businesses to flourish.

Specifically in Southeast Asia, relationships are the backbone of business partnerships and dealings. Connections that investors may have can be equally or even more important than the cash they can deliver. For the growing number of startups, getting plugged into the ecosystem is imperative for their growth – to connect with suppliers, customers as well as forming strategic partnerships with other companies.

On the other hand, investors are also seeking investment opportunities where they can provide more than just cash. Ultimately, they want to be confident of getting the highest return possible.

Also Read: 10 reasons why businesses need to get involved with their communities

Many funds such as VCs focus in certain spaces, allowing them to gain expertise and build connections among their investments. The rise of Corporate VCs (CVC) also points to the importance of providing smart capital, where large corporates buy smaller companies to improve their businesses.

PE firms buy companies that fit into their investment portfolio intending to restructure them to prepare them for more significant exits such as IPO and M&A.

Understanding the Southeast Asia investment market

While the global investment community has been eyeing the Southeast market for some time, the business landscape is still generally considered risky with political instability and underdeveloped infrastructure to support startups, except for countries like Singapore. As such, the majority of investments still come from PE firms that deal with companies that have already established some market success.

The number of VC and CVC investments have also increased in recent years with the booming technology industry providing an array of diverse solutions. However, in 2018, most of the funding in Southeast Asia is to later stage companies such as Grab, Lazada, Go-Jek, Tokopedia and Sea Group.

Smaller VC firms still face strong headwinds in finding capital for riskier start-ups. Investors are in high demand in Southeast Asia. Companies and funds face difficulty in raising capital due to the risky nature of investments in Southeast Asia despite the high growth potential.

Investors in developed countries such as the United States and China tend to behave differently from those in Southeast Asia.

Due to the significantly larger pool of investors and the size of the domestic markets, it is common for startups, especially those with proven track records, to be selective when it comes to receiving investments. As the investment landscape in Southeast Asia is still considered relatively new, it will be the startups who are chasing for funds rather than the other way round.

Understanding investors

As shown in the above image, investors of different types of funds do have different goals for their investments. Even angel investors have different goals such as retirement, partnerships with the existing portfolio and personal financial goals. Having aligned expectations as investors is important to avoid being pressed by the investors for quick financial returns when the business is premature for its intended exit.

Smart capital can also be disruptive when investors have different strategies from the management. This could result in conflict, wrong decisions and could even lead to failure. Discussing strategy must be on the agenda when seeking smart capital to align the vision so that stakeholders can support one another to execute the business plan effectively.

Also Read: What you need to know before taking Venture (or Vulture?) Capital

Another way to understand investors is through the way they conduct their due diligence. It reflects the attitude and culture of the investors. For example, if you are raising your first round of investment and was hammered with questions on detailed five-year financial projections, you will know that the investor may not be comfortable with the early-stage investment.

Managing expectations

Discussing what parties want out of the investment is important to lay out duties and timelines to obligations. This ensures that investors do deliver on what they promise to provide for the business, providing clarity for the investors to carry out specific action plans. It also assures investors on when and how the company intends to fulfill its financial obligations (e.g. expected to start distributing dividends in Year 3.. Do not just ask for investors’ help without telling them what you can provide them. 

Providing alternatives

Risk is a huge concern in Southeat Asia for any investor. Creating alternatives and other options may pose a higher level of risk for the business, but it increases the chances of securing investments in this underdeveloped economy.

Structured finance can be used to compensate investors when certain key objectives are not met by the stipulated timeline. Royalties can also be used as sweeteners to pay investors based on business performance rather than fixed amounts like dividends.

As the bond market in Southeast Asia develops, companies can also consider convertible notes. This allows investors to invest through debt, which is less risky, with the option to switch to equity to capitalise on higher returns – should the business succeed.

There are many different ways that investment deals can be structured to reduce the risk of investors. The business should consider how they can meet the interests of investors by reducing risk to gain funding. While this may not be optimal for businesses, it is necessary for the near future as investors continue to remain wary in the region.

Conclusion

The Southeast Asia economy remains a difficult but a blooming space for businesses to grow as competition is stiff while capital is sparse. Yet capital remains a crucial aspect for businesses to operate and grow, with strategic partners being necessary for acceleration into complex markets. To compete for smart capital, businesses must do better than simply boasting large returns, but learn how to manage risk for investors.
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The National University of Singapore’s entrepreneurial arm, NUS Enterprise, and Singapore Airlines (SIA)’s joint initiative is called the SIA Accelerator Programme

SIA Accelerator Programme, the accelerator programme initiated by NUS Enterprise and Singapore Airlines (SIA), has announced five startups graduates from its inaugural batch.

The accelerator is a joint effort to boost the travel sector and its customer experience as well as open up new business opportunities for aspiring startups.

The 10-week initiative took place in an incubation space at NUS Enterprise’s The Hangar and SIA’s KrisLab in January this year.

Participants were tasked with presenting solutions for tech and airlines problems identified by SIA. These problems include onboard food wastage, offline and online integration in-flight shopping, revenue maximisation, to seat capacity optimisation.

NUS Enterprise coached the participants to identify their target customers, the right tech solutions, and product-market fit, as well as business model viability.

Some of the programme’s participants include the winners of Singapore Airlines’ annual AppChallenge. AppChallenge is a digital hackathon for aviation innovation run by SIA in conjunction with NUS Enterprise which was launched in June this year.

All solutions will be presented during the Innovfest Unbound 2019 that kicks off on June 27. Innovfest Unbound is an innovation festival organised by NUS Enterprise and Unbound, held in Singapore.

Also Read: Event tech platform PouchNATION raises Series B round from Traveloka and SPH Ventures

The five startups graduates from the accelerator programme are:

• airfree, an in-flight shopping marketplace that allows online shopping mid-flight and items collection upon landing with 50 times less bandwidth than regular e-commerce websites allowing faster browsing. Last month, the startup raised US$2.9 million in funding from Shiseido, Starbucks accelerator, and angel investors.
• F5Shift, a digitised data-tracking on in-flight food wastage by capturing images of F&B wastage via cameras processed by its cloud-based, machine learning models that can detect the food item and the source of meal that results in the wastage, presented in web dashboard to help airlines optimise meal plans and reduces waste.
• Migacore, a data science startup that uses contextual data to improve demand forecasting for travel by capturing online signals from news portals and social media to gauge travel intents. This will help airlines to respond with better flight schedules and overall revenue management.
• Travelsel, a smart destination platform that facilitates the distribution of in-market products through airlines, hotel, and other retail channels, providing retailers with a platform to publish, build, sell ticket product and product bundles, all in media-rich content.
• Volantio, a startup that seeks to optimise seat capacity to help airlines increase revenue and avoid overbooking flights, using a cloud-based capacity optimisation platform called Yana. Yana automatically makes these passengers offers to switch to other flights in an overbooking situation with offers include vouchers for future travel, loyalty points, or upgrades.

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Neuron will operate its patented commercial N3 scooters, which have 12-inch tyres and a 21 centimetre-wide floorboard to provide more stability and comfort 

Singapore startup Neuron Mobility has announced that it has been selected by Brisbane City Council to operate a majority of its 600 e-scooters in the capital city of Queensland.

The company said in a press release that it beat nine other global and local operators, including California-based Lime Scooters (which will operate the remaining 400 devices in the city) to win this partnership.

The e-scooter addition is a part of the Brisbane Clean, Green, Sustainable 2017-2031 initiative, the city’s efforts to improve its sustainability.

Neuron Mobility said that it will operate its patented commercial N3 scooters, making Brisbane the first city to experience the commercial-grade version of the vehicle — along with Darwin City which has partnered with Neuron for a 12-month trial programme.

The N3 scooter is developed with 12-inch tyres and a 21 centimetre-wide floorboard to provide more stability and comfort to riders, claims the company. It also features a GPS-enabled parking indicator on the handlebar display to help guide riders to designated parking zones.

Also Read: NUS Enterprise, Singapore Airlines introduce five startups from SIA Accelerator

Neuron has a dedicated operations team on-ground that handles daily maintenance, hourly demand rebalancing, and battery swapping of the scooters so they will have a consistent supply and to allow responsible parking.

“We believe that there’s an ongoing paradigm shift in urban transportation that will shape the future of mobility. This partnership with Brisbane City Council is in line with our goal to bring the best micromobility services to the Asia Pacific region,” said Zachary Wang, CEO of Neuron Mobility.

Recently, the company also tied up with Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand to promote the use of clean energy mobility solutions.

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