Brands need to think differently if they want to successfully shape their narrative in the age of social media

In this era of hyper-connectivity and intense social scrutiny, many brands are turning to storytelling as a way to gain more eyeballs.

But gone are the days where people naively believe anything companies tell them.

So what does storytelling really mean, and why does the traditional story arc not work for brands?

Endings don’t feel real

Our first counter with a traditional story arc is when we were young, when grandparents told us life stories, or when we read Enid Blyton books.

As we grew up, we consumed novels and movies — most of which used the same story arc.

Here’s how a traditional story arc goes: there’s a beginning (exposition), middle (rising action, climax) and ending (falling action, resolution).

But does the story really end there?

If you think back carefully, you’ll realise that these stories always take on a fairytale-like quality.

Why?

Because endings don’t feel real. I believe that as humans, we are hardwired to seek patterns and answers, but not necessarily endings.

We intuitively seek continuity.

Boy meets girl. Boy likes girl but there’s an obstacle. Problem is overcome and they live happily ever after, galloping off on a shiny white horse into the beautiful sunset. Cue credits.

What does this mean for brands?

In Marty Neumier’s book The Brand Flip, he writes about how the rise of social media has placed customers in a position of power to shape brands and ‘draw meaning from it’.

In other words: ‘Your brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.’

Source

Stories are ways to frame our perspective of the world and how others see us.

So how can companies create a narrative framework that continuously engages people?

The new story arc model

Often, companies approach brand stories as a linear, closed narrative — with a beginning, middle, and ending — about how the company was founded, its journey to success, blah blah blah.

But the irony is, the traditional story arc doesn’t create conversations with people.

And in this new world where customers take charge, such company-centric narratives are a big fail for engagement.

The best brand stories are open-ended, tributaries of ideas and aspirations that continue from the source.

Here’s how a brand story arc could potentially look like:

Pardon the terrible sketch

How the new story arc translates into a brand story (Case study: Patagonia)

It’s no longer about your company, but your customers.

Here are a couple of ways to kick start the brand story ideation:

1. What is your company’s Big Idea?

Is there a purpose that your company exists for, beyond making money?

In this new world of gluten-free food, environmental consciousness, hipster-ness, and ethical values, people buy into big ideas and aspirations.

Like what Marty Neumier wrote: “They [people] no longer buy brands. They join brands.”

For example, outdoor brand Patagonia is known for their commitment to providing solutions to environmental crises, while running a sustainable business.

But most importantly, their mission isn’t just idle chatter. They walk the talk with their company policies. That’s what makes it so inspiring.

People want to tell great stories about themselves. They want to be heard, seen, and understood.

Patagonia has created a strong brand which resonates with not just with hardcore nature lovers looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint, but also people who aspire and look up to these ideas.

Source

When someone buys a product or uses a service, they are creating a story about themselves.

However, companies need to understand that at this point, their brand is out of their hands, and completely within the control of customers.

This is where sincerity and good, honest company practices come in.

Because at the end of the day, all people want to be is the hero of their stories.

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Photo by Raj Eiamworakul on Unsplash

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

This article was first published on e27 on April 27, 2018

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Kopi Kenangan wants to fill in the gap between high-priced coffee served at international coffee chains and the instant coffee sold at street stalls

Startup of the Month returned this month with Kopi Kenangan as its winner!

Kopi Kenangan is a tech-enabled coffee chain founded to “fill the gap between the high-priced coffee served at international coffee chains and the instant coffee sold at many street stalls.”

The company has recently made headline with its US$20 million funding round from Sequoia India, following a US$8 million funding round it announced in October last year.

It has also grown from just 16 stores in October 2018 to 80 stores in eight cities today.

Claiming itself to be a profitable business, Kopi Kenangan has plans to open 150 outlets by the end of this year and expand to 1,000 stores throughout Indonesia by 2021. It even mentioned a plan to expand to other Southeast Asian markets.

As a runner up, e27 readers have voted for BrideStory, an Indonesian wedding marketplace platform.

Together with sister company ParentStory, a children activity marketplace, the company has recently been acquired by Indonesian e-commerce and fintech giant Tokopedia.

Congratulations to both companies, and thank you for your participation in the poll!

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Image Credit: Kopi Kenangan

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Warburg Pincus China-SEA II will focus on investing across consumer and services, healthcare, real estate, financial services, and TMT

Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity firm focused on growth investing, has made the final close of its second fund targeting Southeast Asia and China.

A US$4.25 billion companion fund,Warburg Pincus China-SEA II will invest in its portfolio companies in these regions alongside Warburg Pincus Global Growth — a US$14.8 billion global, growth-focused private equity fund that closed in late 2018.

Warburg Pincus China-SEA II is also the successor to Warburg Pincus China, a US$2.2 billion companion fund that closed in December 2016. Within China, Warburg Pincus is known as Hua Ping.

The Warburg Pincus China-SEA II fund was launched in January 2019, targeting a fund size of US$3.5 billion, and received commitments in excess of the US$4.25 billion.

Also Read: How to get smart capital in Southeast Asia

Warburg Pincus China-Southeast Asia’s Limited Partners include existing investors in Warburg Pincus’s current funds as well as new investors to the firm. The investors represent a diversified mix of leading public and private pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, endowments, foundations, fund of funds, family offices and high-net-worth individuals.

This new fund will continue Warburg Pincus’ thesis-driven, sector-focused approach to growth investing in China and Southeast Asia, partnering with entrepreneurs and management teams to build companies of scale and sustainable value. It will focus on investing across five sectors — consumer and services, healthcare, real estate, financial services, and technology, media and telecommunications (TMT).

Charles R. Kaye and Joseph P. Landy, Co-CEOs of Warburg Pincus, said in a joint statement: “We have now invested more than US$11 billion into more than 120 companies in China and Southeast Asia, generating significant returns and distributions for our investors. The strong demand for Warburg Pincus China-Southeast Asia II reflects our established track record, our talented investment team, and the opportunities our Limited Partners see for growth investing in China and Southeast Asia.”

Also Read: 5 Singapore startups that could be the next industry darling

Warburg Pincus’s select current investments in China and Southeast Asia include Amcare, ANE Logistics, Ant Financial, ARA, China Kidswant, D&J China, ESR Group, Go-Jek, Hygeia, Jinxin Fertility, Liepin, Mofang, NIO, Vincom Retail, Yuanfudao, and ZTO Express.

Jeff Perlman, Managing Director and Head of Southeast Asia, added: “In recent years, from our Singapore base, Warburg Pincus has become one of the largest and most active investors in Southeast Asia, with a particular emphasis on Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore. Southeast Asia is a large and growing market for us, exhibiting many of the strong investment themes and trends which have driven our China business over the last 25 years. This new fund, along with our growing team in Singapore and our recent successes in the region, will allow us to build our franchise further in Southeast Asia.”

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Compared to other players in the market, we have an atypical strategy for achieving our significant growth and scale-up

Since its founding seven years ago, Bukalapak has scaled up more than 6,000x in the past five years alone, rapidly outpacing various established players in the Indonesian market and becoming one of the largest e-commerce in Southeast Asia with over US$1 billion in annual transactions and  over 2 billion monthly views from nearly 70 million visitors.

Compared to other players in the market, we have an atypical strategy for achieving our significant growth and scale-up. Rather than spending senseless amounts of promotions or massive subsidies to acquire unsustainable traffic/activations, we focus on doing hundreds of growth hack experiments and countless incremental improvements to increase the quality and experience of using our product and service.

This strategy relies heavily on having a robust top-class engineering team that can scale up rapidly to keep up with the rapid growth. As we scale up, we found out that scaling up an engineering team is not just about adding more engineers to the team, but also about building the right kind of culture and organization that is capable of supporting productive collaboration and knowledge-sharing between hundreds of engineers.

This focus on scaling up our engineering team begun 18 months ago when Bukalapak asked me to join the management team as VP of Engineering. At that time, we had started to experience growing pains and bottlenecks as we scale beyond our first couple dozen engineers. In this post, I am going to share my personal experience in leading and transforming the engineering team at Bukalapak to achieve its current scalability.

Metrics for engineering scalability

One of the first things I established during my first month at Bukalapak is finding the set of metrics that we can use to objectively measure the overall productivity of our engineering team as we transform our development process. After thorough engagement with dozens of engineers and stakeholders, our consensus converged towards the following set of metrics: team size, development velocity, and engineering quality. We believe any strategy toward achieving excellent engineering scalability will need to track, focus, and maintain a healthy balance between these three metrics.

Team Size Metric

This metric is probably the easiest to track and measure. We simply define this metric as the number of engineers within our engineering team. Scaling up this metric requires us to identify bottlenecks in our recruiting pipeline while keeping a careful balance between hiring the right talent and our growth demands.

Development Velocity Metric

We chose this metric so that we can have visibility regarding whether our development output is slowing down due to numerous bottleneck or not. Since we use Scrum, we can define this metric as the total number of stories (including bug-fix stories) deployed to production during a specific period. The complexity for each story may vary, but we found out that when sampling across the entire group of teams, individual or seasonal variance tends to smooth out and we got a pretty reliable metric for the total velocity for the engineering team.

Engineering Quality Metric

Sole focus on velocity will be detrimental if we do not also take into account the quality of the output that we deliver to production. We define this metric as the number of emergency-level incidents or bugs occurring in production. Concurrently, we also devise a strategy to triage and estimate the impact of each production incidents and map them into several existing severity levels. Due to the wealth of data that we collect in production, in most cases, we can use those data to estimate the impact of each incident with a reasonable accuracy and within minutes from being aware of the issue.

One year’s worth of data

We meticulously log and track the above metrics on a weekly basis, making it easy for us to see the progression of our engineering team and compare the data from time to time. The following chart shows one year worth of said data, aggregated by month and using first month’s data as the general baseline.

In the first few months of our transformation, we can see the rapid growth in total velocity as we address the lowest hanging fruits in our laundry list of productivity bottlenecks. We are also delighted to know that can maintain our productivity afterward, even as the size of our team more than doubled.

Perhaps the most satisfying data in the chart is the emergency incidents, where we manage to bring it lower than before even as our total velocity nearly tripled. There is a genuine truth to the adage that the more complex a system is, the more bugs it has.

We had quite a concern in the second month when we observed that as our total velocity grows, the number of emergency incidents caused by our bugs also increased linearly. Fortunately, we were able to deploy various quality improvements and painstakingly beat this number down month by month. After twelve months, from the ratio of incidents per story, we manage to increase our engineering quality by 10x.

What did we do?

There is no silver bullet behind our scale up. It was a continuous process and teamwork over the span of more than one year where we execute dozens of action plans to eliminate productivity bottlenecks, streamline our development process, and empower people more in giving them the necessary support and trust for them to work efficiently.

That being said, there are several action plans that stand out above the rest and have more significant impact compared to the rest:

Foster a healthy sharing, helping, and learning culture. This was something already prominent in our culture when I joined Bukalapak, all we need to do was to provide a framework that can nurture this culture. For example, we built a chat bot and created a Telegram group where people can give virtual points — called high-fives — to each other as a measure of thanks for helping them out at work.

We also encouraged various knowledge & learning guilds to form and self-organize. Guilds are internal communities centered on a particular work-related domain that anyone can join to learn together and took turns to present exciting topics with each other. Anyone can initiate any guild, provided that there is enough level of interest for the subject. So far we have dozens of guilds already popping up by itself, covering topics ranging from Artificial Intelligence to Agile Methodologies to Software Craftsmanship.

Daily release trains. Since early on, we already have the capability to deploy or rollback our services to production on a moment’s notice and with zero downtime, and we sometimes do so more than a hundred times per day across all of our services. Switching to fixed release trains, thrice a day, is actually putting the brakes on our deployment frequency, but at the benefit of having more stable release checks and easier rollback in case that release went haywire.

Canary release. For each daily release, we first deploy the release to a small subset of users, less than one per cent out of the overall user base, and observe whether there are any spikes in resource usage or errors caused by that release. If the release is problematic, we can rollback that release within minutes. Our services are entirely stateless, so we had to devise a way to emulate sticky sessions in our load balancer. The adoption of canary releases is the primary cause of the significant drop of emergency incidents at M9 in the chart above.

More real-time monitoring and alerting. We already have various technical-level instrumentation and monitoring in place, but those monitoring cannot capture mistakes in our logic or presentation layer. For example, if we can gather and monitor transaction data in real-time, we will know within minutes if there is a bug in our checkout system if the number of transactions dropped precipitously. Over the past year, we have worked together with the data science team to collect billions of data points per day and build thousands of high-level data visualizations that can give us glanceable insight into the health of our system.

Use consistent development methodology. When we started our transformation, all of the product teams do not have any agreed upon development methodology, every one of them is free to define their own, or even decide not to adopt any methodology at all. The result was, predictably, quite chaotic, and it is especially hard to align any plans that require cross-team collaborations.

We decided to adopt Scrum as our methodology, mainly for the sake of better planning, predictability, cross-team alignment, and task organization, but we alter several of its practices since we deem Scrum as is to be too rigid for the rapidly changing competitive landscape of e-commerce. These alterations are inspired by the eight years of Scrum practice at bol.com, my previous place of work, which also happens to be the largest e-commerce in Benelux region.

So what’s next for Bukalapak Engineering?

Development process improvement is a continuously ongoing challenge, and we will undoubtedly keep a close eye on our engineering scalability metrics to project our scale up capacity and capture emerging bottlenecks early on.

Right now we are adopting the model of independent cross-functional teams that are empowered to a significant degree and given an enormous amount of trust and freedom to execute their vision.

This model works well even at our current size of nearly 300 engineers, but we foresee a scalability horizon looming within a couple of years as we yet again double the size of our engineering team. There are other possible models that we can explore and experiment with, and we will share an update about this in the future.

One more thing …

We are still scaling up the team and continue to hire top tech talents that can help us connect and empower the economy of millions of Indonesians. Our tech talents are a diverse mix of talents from all over Indonesia and dozens of former Indonesian diaspora overseas, many returning home for good to join us here at Bukalapak due to our purpose and culture.

Part of the reason why we can provide an exciting home for our talents, and for our diaspora to return home to, is our strong focus in building healthy tech culture by amalgamating various cultures and best practices from all over the world, gained through our ex-diaspora talents.

Interested in joining and helping us improve the economic prosperity for millions of Indonesians? Take a look at our StackOverflow page and send us your CV. 🙂

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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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The hacker got through by exploiting a vulnerability in its risk control team’s second review process to access the personal funds of about 90 users

Bitrue, Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, on Thursday revealed that it lost about US$4.5 million worth of XRP (valued at US$0.488) and US$237,500 in ADA (valued at $0.095) coins following a major hacking attack.

The time of the breach was at 1 am GMT+8, as reported by Cointelegraph.

The company explained in its official Twitter account that the hacker got through by “exploiting a vulnerability in our Risk Control team’s 2nd review process to access the personal funds of about 90 Bitrue users”. Bitrue claimed that the breach was immediately noticed and the hacker’s activity was swiftly suspended.

Bitrue then proceeded to notify Huobi, Bittrex, and ChangeNOW (the receiving exchanges of the incoming ill-gotten funds), and credited them with helping freeze the relevant transactions and accounts, before releasing a statement to assure users that their personal funds are insured. Bitrue said that “those affected by this breach will have their funds replaced by us as soon as possible”.

Despite the hack, the crypto exchange said it will still go ahead with its plans to go live with its service functionality as soon as possible. The log-in and trading support are expected to relaunch soon, but the withdrawal function will remain offline for now.

To maintain transparency, Bitrue has provided a link to trace the flow of funds on the XRP block explorer for the public. The Singaporean authorities have also been notified to help to identify the hacker.

Also Read: Go-Jek investor Warburg Pincus sets up new US$4.25B fund for China, Southeast Asia

In 2019 alone, there have been a total of seven hackings into crypto exchanges prior to Bitrue.

The post Singapore’s crypto exchange Bitrue loses nearly US$5M to hacking attack appeared first on e27.

Crypto tokens can be fungible and non-fungible and understanding the difference is crucial to navigating the blockchain

(Editor’s note: This is an article from our archives which we think is still relevant)

Cryptocurrencies and crypto tokens (simply tokens) have now become household names.

Although these two digital products have gained a lot of popularity lately, few people understand the difference between the two, and they mistakenly use them interchangeably.

For the record, cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency designed to work as a medium of exchange. It uses cryptography to secure and verify transactions as well as to control the creation of new units of a particular cryptocurrency.

Tokens, on the other hand, are a special kind of virtual currency tokens that reside on their own blockchains and represent an asset or utility, according to Investopedia. Tokens are usually defined for use on top of a particular blockchain like Ethereum.

Tokens are what we talk about nowadays in the context of ICOs, and the idea is that the platform itself provides the launchpad for all these tokens, without needing them to create their own individual blockchains.

Tokens can provide certain utility, as if they were the “currency” inside that particular platform or economy, and these are called “utility tokens”. In any such case, tokens are the fuel (the “gas”) or the price to access the protocols or perform an action.

They can also in some way be equity-linked or even debt-linked. Most tokens today are built on top of the Ethereum blockchain and comply with what’s called the ERC20 standard. Owning a token is equal to holding something which could potentially be very valuable over time in that ecosystem.

The era of tokenisation

We are experiencing the movement of #TokenizeEverything and finding digital twins for any item that exists in the real world. In the real world, not all things are commodities that have fungibility (interchangeability). Although all items belong to a category, they are not homogeneous and can be very different.

Non-fungibility and the uniqueness of each token then has an impact on its desirability — perceived or real valued. Therefore it’s a logical consequence that the blockchain space started with fungible assets, and it now is extending into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or tokens that are not interchangeable/replaceable.

To understand the concept of NFTs, we need to first understand the difference between the words ‘fungible’ and ‘non-fungible’.

“Fungibility” in a traditional sense means that any asset or item is equal and exchangeable to any other item or asset. The classic case is fiat currencies, wherein any denomination of, suppose USD, is exchangeable to any other denomination of USD. In the case of blockchain tokens, the classic ERC20 tokens are considered to be fungible, i.e. they can be exchanged with each other freely.

‘Non-fungible’, on the other hand, means ‘that cannot be replaced’ or ‘not interchangeable’. Two items may look identical, but each has its own unique information or attributes that make them irreplaceable or impossible to swap.

Also Read: National University of Singapore is partnering with Microsoft to boost AI capability in the region

A real-life example is a flight ticket. While two plane tickets look identical, they cannot be exchanged with another similar ticket. Each has different passenger names, destinations, departure times and seat numbers. Interchanging them will have serious consequences.

Both the ERC20 and ERC721 tokens represent different use cases and hence one of them cannot replace the other, in fact, they will complement each other in the long term.

Importance and relevance of NFTs

NFTs are an important development in the blockchain space. As mentioned above, NFTs are markers or tokens for unique assets that can’t be duplicated. The control is in the hands of the owner and not the software developer when NFTs are used.

Their applications are endless. As we’ve entered a hyper digital age, blockchain-based NFTs offer a solution for cryptographically creating a unique digital item, e.g. a football card of Cristiano Ronaldo with only 100 of them being produced. The NFT guarantees that the “card” can’t be copied and shared unless the NFT itself is traded. It enables the verification of authenticity and ownership of an asset without requiring a central authority. They can be used to move ownership of diamonds, gemstone, limited edition gold coin or bar, art pieces, instantly on the blockchain network.

NFTs are also transformational in the gaming world. Imagine games like Pokemon Go, that took the world by storm. In a non-fungible token sense, each Pokemon would have a unique ID to it, and would be stored on the blockchain.

The most popular use case is CryptoKitties. It is a game centred around ‘breedable’ and collectible creatures, called CryptoKitties. Each cat is one-of-a-kind and 100 per cent owned by you; it cannot be replicated, taken away, or destroyed.

Decentraland is another success story in the NFT space. Decentraland is a virtual platform owned by users, who can grab a VR headset or use their web browser and become completely immersed in a 3D, interactive world. Here, the user can purchase land through the Ethereum blockchain, creating an immutable record of ownership. With full control over their land, users can create unique experiences; they can go to a casino, watch live music, attend a workshop, shop with friends, start a business, test drive a car, visit an underwater resort — all within a 360-degree, virtual world.

Non-fungible tokens potentially have a lot more applications. For example, they could  store the authenticity of real world assets like art. A non-fungible token could be created and tied to a real-world asset, such as a priceless piece of art.

In this way, the authenticity of the artwork would be immutable and infinitely more secure. There would be no way for forgers to counterfeit the art. In the same way, non-fungible tokens could be used to store birth certificates, identities and other unique information.

Manufacturing and supply chain are the other important industry verticals where NFTs can be used. If products are assigned an NFT at the point of manufacturing, their tracking and ownership can be easily carried out, during the supply-chain cycle and beyond.

Incorporating NFTs in some identity management solutions can also be quite useful. For instance, issuing tokens for entrance into sensitive facilities/institutions can be facilitated with NFTs.

All in all, the issuance, tracking, and storing of securities can be very easily managed using NFTs. Presently, large and highly ‘available’ databases are used to track issued securities that are connected to a number of other institutions like banks that need that information. Even the process of data collation and auditing of these assets can be made more efficient by using NFTs.

Having said that, NFTs are not meant to replace fungible cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Fungible tokens will continue to stay and people will continue to use them as a transaction token. However, what will drive a NFT in the coming years is the fact that real world assets and its unique digital representation and identity can now be on the blockchain.

How NFTs will impact various industries

Although NTFs will simply be a different digital asset class category, its impact on the application infrastructure will be wide reaching. NFTs have already taken the crypto world by storm. Several ICOs have already considered, or are considering to use NFTs, to supplement their tradeable ERC20 tokens.

Similarly to how security tokens are impacting change, NFTs will have an impact on the workflow and value assessments across the industry — from exchanges to wallets to marketplaces.

As usability improves, the idea of a deed to a real-estate property could become passé. The deed will be the NFT.

Of course, losing the private keys to access that NFT is a problem, so workarounds still need to be figured out, but the opportunities for bringing offline verification into the blockchain realm opens up endless possibilities, e.g. vehicle sales via NFTs, real-estate, rare pieces of digital art (paintings, photographs, music), etc.

NFTs will also open up the realm of asset tokenisation even further.

There is a nascent but growing field of activity around NFTs in financing. In the case of raising funds (via security tokens or utility tokens) for ICOs where the underlying assets have some uniqueness, NFTs make sense.

There is also talk about Initial Debt Offerings (IDOs), whereby the projects can crowdfund via unique debt-contracts represented by NFTs. Each layer of debt or each slug of equity in a stack may be better traded and recorded with NFTs.

Limitations of NFTs

NFTs are still a nascent technology standard, and the adoption is not widespread. In addition, the ability to “marry” an NFT to a physical object —  for example a QR code sticker or a wrapper like a smart container — is still too simple and prone to failure. Until better solutions are mature, the NFT market will be limited to more digitally native assets.

Another key challenge is the extra effort and understanding needed to create its adoption. However, one good news is also the emergence of platforms like 0xcert which allow for plug-and-play creation of NFTs, making experimentation easier.

Moving Forward

Last two years have seen the fungible token standards raise billions of dollars of capital and trade these tokens are crypto currencies.

The way the crypto markets are questioned right now and dropped in value will demand crypto assets that represent tangible value to keep the market interested and prove the blockchain applications.

Also Read: Singapore’s facial recognition, video analytics startup XRVision gets investment from Boundary Holding

This will be the next wave in crypto markets as people see NFTs as something of unique and tangible value which can be brought onto, and traded in, the blockchain. There will definitely be a lot more ICOs adapting NFT standards vs fungible tokens standards.

NFTs need the right environment to be deployed. While gaming is a different industry altogether, real world assets often function in mission critical environment and cannot compromise on security, scalability and immutability.

NFTs are an extension of the token economy that has the potential not only to achieve mass adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency, but also significantly expand the market from utility tokens and payment tokens to object oriented.
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[e27 talked to many cryptocurrency and blockchain experts, including Pankaj Jain (formerly with 500 Startups), Shaun Djie (Co-founder of Digix), Gaurang Torvekar (Co-founder and CEO of Indorse), Philipp Pieper (Partner at Swarm Fund), Atul Khekade (Co-founder of XinFin), Karan Bharadwaj (former CTO at XinFin), Jehan Chu (Co-founder of Kenetic Capital), Nitin Sharma (angel investor), and Sandeep Phogat (Founder and CEO of Panaesha Capital) for this article. We would like to thank them for their expertise.]

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As an Intelligence Analyst at the FBI, I learned some valuable lessons that I took with me through the startup and tech world

From 2010 to 2012, I worked as an Intelligence Analyst at the FBI’s New York field office. This was my first job out of college and sidetracked me from an early career in tech. When I arrived I was assigned to the white collar division, investigating securities fraud crimes.

As a 21-year old, I was the youngest of 15 team members on my squad. There were former Wall Street brokers, accountants, and lawyers on my team. Needless to say, as this was my first real job, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing when I first arrived.

Thankfully, I walked away with some valuable lessons that I took with me through the startup and tech world. Here are a few:

1. Most things can be taught

I arrived at the FBI without knowing a thing about the intelligence community or the intricate nature of working with classified information. The role involved 30 databases and had a heavy analytical component. Thankfully, I had over 12 weeks of training and got to follow the most seasoned and talented analyst for months. I literally stood behind him for weeks, learning everything I could.

This is something I see heavily lacking in startup culture in general. They often throw you into the deep end without proper guidance. The result can be positive and negative. The positive is that you fail many times and develop a thick skin to perservere (see #2). The negative is that is this sink and swim mentality can lead to a carnivorous environment that can hurt productivity.

My opinion is that the ability to listen, learn, and digest information outweighs “talent”. Most capable people can be taught the majority of any role or task. A sales rep can be a product manager and vice versa, for example. This is exactly how FBI Agents cross divisions and go from cyber to counterterrorism and back multiple times in a given career. Good startups will know this and offer a chance to learn, try new positions, and grow within a company.

2. Improvise, Adapt, Overcome

This is probably my favorite saying and one I learned while with the FBI. In all fairness, the saying originated within the Navy SEALS, but an be applied to any kind of organization. Going back to the last point, this approach takes ambiguity, lack of direction, and adversity and gives you a blueprint to succeed. Chaos and uncertainty can breed experience that creates amazing leaders and companies.

I am not saying organizations should be unorganized, but this is often a natural result of a company operating at full-speed in a growth stage. When you find yourself in an ambiguous place, improvise and adapt. With time, most things can be accomplished and chalked as a great experience. In this model, luck becomes design. Discipline trumps motivation. Routine becomes scary. Chaos becomes organized chaos. Teams thrive and goals are met.

Also read: What I learned from living in and working out of a van

3. A sense of collaborative purpose outweighs incentives

The FBI is known for having a rigorous screening and hiring process. Mine was roughly six months and included a polygraph investigation. What this does is help hire people with a similar level of integrity and passion for the FBI’s mission. This bond, when fostered, helps create cohesive teams or “squads” that can tackle the biggest of missions and investigations.

The original blueprint of joining a startup involved gaining an equity share and ideally growing and profiting as a company grows and eventually exits. This has largely been replaced by “soft” incentives including casual dress codes and free snacks. Like many incentives, these can grow old after time. Without a sense of purpose, motivation can be impacted.

Purpose allows people to fight through repetitive tasks, take a long-term perspective, and feel invested in a company on a deeper level. Purpose is shared internally from the top down. Great managers and leaders can inspire and create purpose within a team. When both purpose and monetary incentives are lacking, startups face an uphill battle with long-term retention.

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Featured Image Copyright: piotrkt / 123RF Stock Photo

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In a Q&A with Dr. Lewis Chen, we learn how Taiwan Tech Arena is growing the ecosystem by giving startups a voice

Taking the perspective of the overall tech ecosystem into mind, Taiwan can be considered an early adopter, particularly compared to other countries in Asia. In the 1980s to the 1990s, the nation was able to establish itself as a hardware manufacturing hub, and many of the big names in semiconductor and computer manufacturing have headquartered in Taiwan.

Today, hardware is still one of Taiwan’s key strengths, in terms of manufacturing in the technology sector. With recent developments in artificial intelligence, the internet-of-things, fintech, decentralised technologies, and other emerging trends, Taiwan seeks to maintain an advantage by nurturing its startup and technology ecosystem.

e27 recently sought insights from Dr. Lewis Chen, Managing Director at Taiwan Tech Arena, where he discussed the TTA’s vision and how it intends to accomplish its mission by championing Taiwan’s startup ecosystem in terms of resource management, talent, and representation. Below are edited excerpts of our interview.

What are the thrusts of Taiwan Tech Arena, and how do these relate to the state of the startup ecosystem in Taiwan and the rest of Asia?

First of all, I consider people here in Taiwan to be keen in starting up a business – mostly the younger generation. It is what you can call an innovation economy. Now before we start any discussion, consider that Taiwan has a lot of manufacturing power. Since the 1990s, we had been a leader in semiconductor manufacturing and development, as well as advanced manufacturing processes. Now, given these resources, the key is how to better contribute to the international ecosystem.

The main vision and motivation behind TTA is to establish Taiwan as a startup nation. Toward this goal, we have three major missions:

First is to engage Taiwan’s deep tech and science resources. The key is to effectively administer science and technology management in Taiwan. We have at least 13 science parks with 100 to 200 companies in each. Managing can involve helping startups access these companies as customers or investors. We have universities and R&D institutions like ITRI, and we have a big network of angel investors and seasoned entrepreneurs from established startups.

There is need to integrate these resources in order to support startups in Taiwan.

Second is to establish Taiwan as an international hub that fuses both local and global cultures together. Taipei is an international city, for one. We are in a good position to recruit both domestic and international talent – every year we systematically produce around 5,000 AI talents in the country.

An open environment encourages discussion and getting to know each other’s concepts, thus helping entrepreneurs adapt their solutions to each other’s markets.

The third mission – which is actually the original goal of TTA – is to leverage these resources in establishing partnerships with other stakeholders in the global startup ecosystem. In essence, we expect ourselves at TTA to be the voice of startups from Taiwan. At TTA, we engage a lot of international teams, and this helps us gain much-needed visibility in the global arena.

To this end, we are actively trying to inject government resources into recruiting international accelerators to have a presence in Taiwan through TTA. As an example, we have partnered with tier-1 international accelerators, including 500 Startups, Techstars, and SOSV-MOX, who recruit and mentor startup teams based on their own criteria. We also hold regular events – some co-hosted with these accelerators – wherein startups can network and get to know other teams.

We also go to trade shows, such as CES, and we also participate in communities hosted by other accelerators globally, including French Tech in Paris, CTA in Canada, Skytech in Berkeley, and Blk71 in Singapore, among others. The key is cooperating with strategic partners, in order to achieve our goals.

Since our launch in June 2018, we have supported teams by subsidising their soft launch in Silicon Valley to learn from the communities there and engage. TTA has supported at least 99 startups with government resources, with a fundraise size reaching $90 million. Fifty-five of these startups are already funded.

Taiwan is a powerhouse in hardware development. What are current trends that Taiwan’s startup ecosystem needs to leverage to keep this advantage?

I can see the age of AI and internet-of-things dominating. We actually have such technologies in our production lines, and we can see a big amount of talent and manufacturing resources being invested into these technologies.

TTA counts more than 500 manufacturing companies as partners – these include system integrators, production partners, and mass-production companies. Our advantage here is in hardware manufacturing prowess.

We are currently in the AIoT era (or Artificial Intelligence of Things), which brings together technologies like AI, IoT, VR, AR, and other sorts of immersive technologies. If you consider AR and VR, you tend to think of algorithms and content. The same goes with AI, IoT, and the cloud. But consider that even as you deliver content in the cloud, there are the underlying devices, without which the networks and algorithms will not run.

There is a good opportunity for us to establish the capability of AIoT devices in Taiwan, especially when you consider data collection and accumulation from sensors and devices in different locations like the production line. Other opportunities lie in how we can integrate hardware, systems, software, and applications – particularly in identifying problems and in directing resources toward finding solutions.

Is this why your highlight technologies at the recently-held CES in Las Vegas were mostly in AI, smart devices, immersive tech, healthtech, and green tech?

In 2018, we brought 32 teams to CES, of which four won the innovation award. This year, we brought 44 teams, eight of whom won the innovation award. In terms of the difference between these two delegations, I can say that this year’s startups mostly showcased how to use deep tech in solving real-world problems.

For example, one of the startups we sponsored utilised lasers in analyzing pH value and other chemical compositions in water in real-time. In the past, such tests required mixing in different chemical reagents, and this would require at least seven days before results can be read. With real-time applications, such a technology can be used for practical applications in fisheries, industrial use, and environmental management. It goes beyond that, however. With the data being collected, companies can now correlate how chemicals present in water can result in diseases in other places.

Once you have identified a problem, startups can use our strong capability in AI, manufacturing, software development, and hardware systems – all integrated to solve a problem.

You mentioned your involvement in industry events like CES. How important is institutional support (from government, accelerators, incubators) in contributing to the success of a startup?

TTA is an ecosystem. As an analogy, I can describe it very much like a shopping mall that features different stores and brands. Our partner accelerators are much like these different brands, which market their own products by their own rules and capabilities. In this analogy, the startups are the products that these accelerators carry.

TTA is focusing on the ecosystem play, wherein we try to support our partner accelerators in building upon vertical ecosystems. For instance, we count at least 100 companies as partners, and this includes investors and startups, as well as universities and R&D institutions. Accelerators can recruit teams and talent in order to mentor and educate them according to spec, with the aim of creating products and value for their end-customers.

What is the prevailing culture in the Taiwan startup community, and how does this affect performance, competitiveness, and cooperation?

In my observation, the startup culture here in Taiwan is very much different from that in the US, for example. It is common observation that founders in the US – take Steve Jobs for example – usually get started in entrepreneurship outside the confines of their university or undergrad studies.

In Taiwan, it is not the same. The family culture here is that young people are encouraged to finish their studies. After graduating, not everyone is a “tiger” yet. People get immersed in industry for a few years. And if they have good entrepreneurial DNA, that’s the time they get started with their business.

Many of the startups in Taiwan have founders that are around 30, 40 years of age. It is quite important to stress work experience here. Many of these startups address pain points from the founders’ previous companies and industries. The advantage here is that with their working experience and tech knowledge, looking for support and funding at seed stage will be less difficult.

The disadvantage is that with very particular and local pain points being addressed, there is sometimes difficulty in scaling up or finding channels to address bigger markets – after all, the international setting might have different needs.

This is why I always stress the need to make a product marketable: know the market size, identify selling channels, and address problems and not just pain points.

What are your thoughts on the recent trends in funding and fundraising for startups, particularly ICOs and tokenization?

When you look at reports in 2018, you will see that token-based crowdfunding has already decreased dramatically, compared with angel fund investment. Before that, everyone had money – it’s easy to invest in good ideas.

Now, you have to prove that your product is actually market-feasible and workable. Not only do you have to prove your tech, but you also have to prove your business and build your customer base. If you can prove that your prototype can get significant revenue, and that your innovation is real, I will invest in you.

ICOs can be easily linked to being a “bubble” and perhaps 80 to 90 percent of ICOs are traps. There are of course other barriers, including the supposedly borderless nature of ICOs, which can hurt authentication. If the tokens deal with the service part of the business, then that’s probably ok. But if tokens are considered as securities or currencies, then there needs to be involvement by financial regulators.

Now, Blockchain is a different thing altogether, and applied in industry, I can see that it has very significant economic impact especially in fintech, particularly in auditing, proof, smart contracts, and such applications. The problem is that it is difficult to see the implications in other industries.

However, I can see the value in how Blockchain can significantly impact the way businesses manage and keep track of data – for instance coupled with IoT in the manufacturing chain.

There is a need to discuss more on the “killer application” of Blockchain.

What is the future for TTA and Taiwan’s startup ecosystem?

Currently, TTA represents startups and does everything we can do to help them, including injecting startup resources, manufacturing power, contributing to pilot production and helping with fundraising. We also help with scaling up, but the challenge is in you have to discuss mass production, cost reduction, international expansion, logistics, distribution, etc.

Our vision is in scaling up Taiwan as a startup nation, and this involves gathering resources and improving visibility. We hope to carry startups from zero to valuations of $1 million, 10 million, 100 million, 1 billion and perhaps produce a startup Unicorn from Taiwan.

 

Image credit: 123rf.com / ID 22460568

 

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Gigacover recently announced a partnership with Go-Jek to offer earnings protection to driver-partners

Gigacover, a Singapore-headquartered insurtech startup, has said it has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from led by Vectr Fintech Partners (Hong Kong), with participation from Quest Venture Partners (US) and Alto Partners (Singapore).

The startup will utilise the funds to expand into other Southeast Asian markets. Its vision is to distribute, administer and manage risk for more flexible coverage targeted at underserved and growing economies.

“We believe that, together with angel investor Wong Toon King (FarSight Capital), these investors’ collective expertise and networks in the region will be invaluable in helping Gigacover bring new distribution models and insurance solutions to Southeast Asia,” said Amerson Lin, Co-founder of Gigacover.

Meet the VC: Quest Ventures on why Chinese founders are tougher than Singaporean entrepreneurs

Established in 2017, Gigacover is a digital insurance company which aims to keep expense and loss ratios low using Machine Learning and analytics technologies. With an aim to meet the needs of the gig economy, it has launched a prolonged medical leave income protection product, as well as a suite of general insurance products backed by Etiqa and AXA.

Gigacover recently announced a partnership with Go-Jek to offer earnings protection to driver-partners.

Mark Munoz of Vectr Fintech Partners said: “In Southeast Asia, 60 per cent of employment is in informal employment and growing. The gig economy has governments and companies rethinking pay structures, health insurance and other incentives for their people. Given the trend we believe Gigacover bridges the gaps that currently exist in freelance worker protection, and will help avoid a systemic risk to these countries’ economies.”

Also Read: Singapore’s crypto exchange Bitrue loses nearly US$5M to hacking attack

“As more workers make their income from less formal employment; financial solutions need to provide these new informal workers with similar financial benefits to that of full-time workers. Gigacover’s platform allows for financial solutions to adapt and be offered to these informal workers,” added Maarten ‘t Hooft of Quest Venture Partners.

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In addition to Love, Bonito, we also have updates from Wizcounsel, Flipkart, and Goldman Sachs

Love, Bonito launches third physical store – Press Release

Singapore-based omnichannel fashion brand Love, Bonito today launched its third physical store in Funan, which the company said to be its biggest to date.

The store included facilities such as an Augmented Reality (AR) walkway, on-demand personal stylist, and infinity mirror room, and a community space that is meant for fashion, beauty, and eventually health and wellness events.

“Love, Bonito has always been about building a community for women and our physical stores present the biggest opportunity for us to do this. Beyond developing our omni-channel retail offering, we want to meaningfully connect our shoppers with our brand and with other like-minded women around them,” said Love, Bonito Co-Founder Rachel Lim in a press statement.

“In a world that has become increasingly dominated by convenience, consumers are looking for retail experiences that go beyond mere transactions. Community is the future of retail and the bedrock of our retail strategy,” she added.

India’s Wizcounsel raises seed funding round – Press Release

Wizcounsel, an India-based online marketplace to hire and manage freelance legal, tax, and accounting experts, announced that it has raised an INR1 crore (US$145,000) funding round led by Kapil Dev (Former Indian Cricket Team Captain), Sunil Kumar Gupta (Founder & Chairman, SARC Associates), and Manas Fuloria, (Founder & CEO, Nagarro).

The company plans to use the funding for marketing, sales, and to strengthen current operations.

“People still look for professional services the way they used to 15 years back and Professionals still develop a business the same way. This is a perfect ‘that’s how it has always been opportunity.’ It is a big industry that is outdated and badly in need of improvement for speed, convenience, affordability, and quality,” said Wizcounsel Founder & CEO Ranu Gupta.

Also Read: Be authentic in crowded industries says Love, Bonito Co-founder Rachel Lim

Flipkart to replace 40 per cent of delivery vans with EVs – Reuters

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart announced that it plans to replace nearly 40 per cent of its current fleet of delivery vans with electric vehicles by March 2020, Reuters reported.

The company plans to start by deploying 160 vans by end of 2019, with some of these vans already plying in New Delhi.

The move was part of the company’s effort to cut down its carbon footprint.

Flipkart is said to be the first among “big online firms” in India to make the move.

Goldman Sachs explores creating a digital coin – Bloomberg

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told Les Echos that the company is exploring the creation of digital currencies and is conducting “extensive research” on tokenisation, Bloomberg reported.

The statement followed a recent move by JPMorgan Chase & Co, who announced in February that it is developing its own stable coin for its clients to use in cross-border payments.

Facebook has also announced plans to launch its own cryptocurrency Libra.

Solomon declined to comment on whether his firm has had discussions with Facebook, though he commented that stable coins tied to real currencies are “the direction in which the payment system will go.’’

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