Glints Co-Founder Ying Cong Seah
In a recent LinkedIn Ask Me Anything (AMA) session, Ying Cong Seah, Co-Founder of Glints, an online talent platform in Southeast Asia, provided valuable insights into achieving product-market fit (PMF) in the region. The discussion revolved around the challenges and strategies for founders, the role of resumes in the future of work and education, emerging tech talent pools, pricing strategies, market expansion, and more.
Seah emphasised the importance of considering monetisation strategies from the outset, especially in Southeast Asia’s diverse and fragmented markets. He shared his views on the enduring relevance of resumes in the hiring process and the factors that shape the tech talent pool in emerging markets.
Below are Seah’s detailed responses to the questions from the LinkedIn users:
How do you define PMF?
It’s quite hard to say because it is very situational, but typically, it shows up in higher than benchmark sales conversion and growth rates. In such cases, the bottleneck is not demand but your ability to supply.
How do you assess/test PMF, and at what phase of the startup process do you do it?
I have not found a conclusive test that works for all kinds of products and services, but several cornerstones are based on the sales funnel; instead of thinking of it as one test, it is a series of gated tests where you don’t move on until you have passed the prior tests.
One is the emotional resonance when you describe the value offerings to your customers; you can sense if there is an actual pain point.
Also Read: Non-revenue generating jobs tend to be more affected in the current downturn: Glints CEO
The next is conversion to sign-up and activation, where sufficient customers have proven their willingness to invest time or money into your product to experience the core value offering. Depending on the natural usage frequency of your use case, you would want to compare your retention rates against benchmarks in your field.
All these checks that your core value proposition resonates; what you need subsequently is the validation of a growth channel that you can sustainably scale up for the mid-term. These are all relatively intuitive; the hard part is finding the benchmarks to determine what constitutes pass/fail. Unfortunately, these are very situational and best found by studying comparable products.
How does the concept of early adopters fit into the PMF equation, and how should they be engaged?
There’s a closely related term in go-to-market (GTM) called “ideal customer profile.” Most people know about this concept, but what’s less practised is how rigorous people are about implementation.
An excellent rule of thumb is to have two to three filters on who falls into your early adopter/ICP category (e.g. CIOs in 50-100 people startups that have just raised funding in the fintech space). How it fits into the PMF equation is that once you have hit upon a segment that resonates with your offering, narrow your sales and marketing effort to this crowd relentlessly. It takes longer than most founders think to exhaust that market; most people go too broad.
In terms of engagement, other than going above and beyond to ensure they have a stellar experience, another helpful frame is that the early adopters hold the answers for why your offerings resonate. Your job is to understand that answer as deeply as possible.
How do you factor pricing into PMF for your company’s offerings? How does pricing strategy vs PMF differ across markets?
Pricing is part of the product in PMF. In many cases, we have found Van Westendorp’s pricing model to be a sufficient enough test to get us started. It is important to understand the pricing aspects beyond the number, such as the pricing model (consumption-based, subscription-based, transaction-based), payment frequency, and who owns the budget (in B2B).
Which role(s) in an organisation is responsible for customer development for a new product/business opportunity: Business Analyst (BA), Project Manager (PM), Sales/Business Development (BD) Head, or Founders?
In our case, it is usually a combination of the co-founders and the business lead. At this time, we haven’t reached the size where we are developing new products or businesses regularly. It’s more stage-appropriate for us to deepen our current products. We have made the mistake of entering new markets too quickly and severely underestimating how much our existing markets can be deepened with more robust execution.
Also Read: ‘Global firms are paying closer attention to SEA’s tech talent pool’: Glints CEO
In the end, BD and PMs play a role in validation from frequent direct contact with customers, but the final value offering decision falls to the business lead.
What is the relevance of resumes/CVs in the future of work/education?
People have predicted the end of CVs for a decade, but it’s surprisingly sticky, especially in the SEA markets outside of Singapore.
I remember reading how Reid Hoffman described LinkedIn as the modern CV, but if you observe how hiring is done, CV is still a crucial aspect of the workflow. Of course, this varies from role to role; for executive positions, you place more weight on their reputation and references, and for blue and pink-collar functions, it’s more about availability and proximity.
All other roles still rely on CVs, and I don’t see any trends bucking that yet. CVs still serve as a very easy shorthand for doing a first cut, and it’s more of the interviewing methods that I have seen evolve after that cut.
Where will the world’s next emerging tech talent pool (outside markets Glints is already in) come from? Or will AI take over the world before this next market emerges?
From our experience studying and operating in labour markets, demographics is always the dominant, long-term determinant of its vibrancy. Education policies play a close second. The reason why Vietnam has been in the tech talent pool of SEA for more than a decade now is its young demographic plus a strong emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) education.
As for AI, my bland belief is that reports of the death of tech jobs by AI are greatly exaggerated so far.
How did you assess which markets to expand first, and how has the differentiation between market behaviours informed your decision for further market expansion?
The current market size and growth rates are our primary criteria, followed by competition intensity. All being equal, the growth rate is the most promising factor because it can offset the competitive dynamics in some cases. The market sizing is a simple test, but the devil lies in how rigorously we validate that math over time.
The calculation became more nuanced over time as we layer in additional factors like the internet penetration of that particular service, the average willingness to pay, the average transaction value and frequency, etc.
Also Read: Glints banks US$50M Series D to expand its talent discovery platform to Philippines
So the logic behind market expansion orders hasn’t changed, but the rigour has deepened with a better understanding of our existing markets.
To transition from the Series A to Series B stage, what were the top three challenges you faced as a technical co-founder?
- Adding the first management layer as we scaled the team, my job fundamentally changed from managing ICs to managing managers. It was a big shift in terms of how I spent my time and what counted as valuable work.
- My role became cross-functional, and I had to make technological and product decisions closely intertwined with operations and marketing. Cross-functional alignment and management took up time and space when the company grew.
- The cost of wrong decisions becomes much higher. It’s one thing to revert a decision when the team is ten people; it’s quite another when it is 50. Decisions became more expensive to revert, requiring higher-quality thinking and debate.
What are the future trends and challenges in the talent and HR tech industry in SEA?
Trends
- Demographics and governance are the two huge determinants of economic growth; we see Indonesia and Vietnam still have very long and promising runways.
- The white-collar talent pool will mature, more skilled, more managerial and leadership talent.
Challenges
Education in many countries still has room to strengthen, both in terms of rigour and per cent of the population reached.
Borderless hiring: with the acceleration of digital and the adoption of remote, we will see more employers open to hiring strong talent outside their home base.
At what stage should a company/startup consider hiring HR for their business?
This is a very rough guide. At Glints, we hired our first HR leader with over 100 employees, and it was far too late. We should have started that at ~50. When you are 50 people, you can probably get by with a mid-level HR manager who offloads some of the people processes from the leader. Beyond that, you need a more experienced leader to bring in some structure and processes, such as performance management, promotions, hiring and retention. This all needs full-time attention.
What advice do you have for aspiring founders in Southeast Asia looking to make an impact in the talent and community space?
My advice is to think through your path to monetisation right from the beginning by talking to companies that have successfully done so. This is more of a compensation because, firstly, one of the core challenges of Southeast Asian (SEA) markets is lower average revenue per user (ARPU).
Secondly, founders attracted to the talent sector tend to be quite mission-oriented. Balancing those with a well-researched and thought-through monetisation hypothesis gives your company a far higher fighting chance.
Also, understand that SEA is a combination of diverse and fragmented markets, so get clear on which market you want to start with.
—
The post Reports of the death of tech jobs by AI are greatly exaggerated: Ying Cong Seah of Glints appeared first on e27.