Sometimes you have to go the extra mile, literally

Golden Gate Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm headquartered in Singapore.

The fund invests in consumer-focused internet startups across Southeast Asia. Since 2011 Golden Gate Ventures raised three early-stage venture funds and invested in more than 40 companies.

Michael Lints is a partner at Golden Gate Ventures and focuses on strategic partnerships and fundraising. He has spent the last 5 to 6 years fundraising for Golden Gate Ventures early stage funds and its portfolio companies in Southeast Asia.

This article is a representation of my (Michael’s) personal experience and views.

Experiences from Southeast Asia

There are numerous great articles published about fundraising. I am not here to rehash all the tips about investment decks and fundraising strategies.

This article is meant to give you some insights into my fundraising experience.

Fundraising has something magical.

The ones that are good at fundraising frequently are praised for raking in stellar investors and grabbing Techcrunch headlines.

Luckily fundraising is not magic. It’s a skill you can acquire as a founder. Like everything else, it requires focus, dedication, execution, and grit. Tons of grit. Fundraising can turn into desperation fast.

So how do you master fundraising and where do you start?

Build a pipeline

I’ll start by sharing my personal experience. The very first thing I learned the hard way is that fundraising is the equivalent of doing sales.

Fundraising is a fancier word, but in practice, the activities are incredibly similar.

In one of my first jobs as a counter salesman in a PC hardware store I experienced that numbers count, a lot. I was still a teenager, so I didn’t pay much attention to my boss.

I do vividly remember that he was always worried about making sure the store had enough foot traffic, and that the sales team would convert that foot traffic into actual sales of motherboards, gaming computers, and other hardware.

It was all about converting leads and making sure there was a large enough number of leads to convert.

When I started fundraising, I didn’t take those sales lessons to heart immediately. I assumed I could just hit up a few strong leads (investors in my network) and I would be able to convert them.

Why create a large pipeline when you have strong leads? These investors know me, and with their commitment, I should be home safe.

Wrong! You have to assume that even your best leads will delay or pass on the investment (sometimes even last minute). If you rely on them to come in or be your anchor, you’ll find yourself in a tight spot if they don’t come through.

Building a large enough pipeline of potential investors is crucial. It’s so much better to eventually turn away investors because there is no more room in the round than to be left short of funds.

Your fundraising strategy

Make sure you set up a fundraising strategy before you go out. The first thing we tend to do is make a long list of investors we’re going to send our pitch deck. Take a step back.

Also Read: AI startup 6Estates closes Series B funding round from GDP Venture

The first thing you want to do is discuss the fundraising strategy with your partners/team. Try to answer the following questions:

• Why are we fundraising? How will the fundraise impact our business and team? Do we want to explore market-appetite for our fundraise first, or do we start our official fundraise now?
• Which investors do we want on board and why? What is our A-list, what does it take to convince them and whom do we add to our long list?
• Does our pitch answer the essential questions investors have (Product, Traction, Team, Market Dynamics and Opportunity)?
• Do we have enough bandwidth and data to reply to questions from investors quickly? One of the worst things that can happen during fundraising is making investors wait for a reply.
• What is our fundraising timeline? When do we need to get nervous or when do we run out of money?
• Are we raising internationally and what does that mean time and travel-wise?

Use the answers to these questions to build your fundraising roadmap.

Make that trip

Fundraising means you will need to start building relationships with investors of different backgrounds.

Whether you’re talking to venture capital firms, corporates, high net worth individuals, family offices or institutions, you have to be prepared to be open to a lot of different cultures and make tons of trips.

Since I moved to Southeast Asia, I have learned to make that trip to meet potential investors. Do not try to fundraise from behind your desk.

Why is making that trip necessary? I made strong connections over the years after deciding to make a trip to meet an investor, even though my work schedule couldn’t get any busier.

These serendipitous investor meetings only happen when and if you put yourself out there.

Making the trip also helps you meet other investors in that city/country or region. Actively ask investors who else you should meet.

A meeting is a 100x better than a phone call. Bear in mind that only a small percentage of these trips will lead to actual conversion.

A small tip. Before you go book your flight. Ask the potential investor a few simple questions for pre-qualification:

• Have they invested in a strategy or company like yours before?
• What are some of the previous investment they have made?
• What attracts them in a strategy or company like yours?

A pass is fine. It’s part of the journey

Don’t be scared to get passed on.

Whether it’s sales, dating, fundraising, competing in sports or life in general, you will get disappointed. Please deal with it. Get to a point where you can ask the investor to confirm the commitment.

There are several ways to get an investor to commit (assuming they liked the pitch).

• Ask them for their timeline. Which steps do they need to cover before they can commit?
• Provide significant business updates during the fundraising.
• Prioritize answering questions from investors.
• Discuss the terms for the investment.
• Ask investors for feedback. Why are they considering the investment and what are their
• concerns. If you ask for feedback, use it!
• If applicable, provide industry updates that are useful to potential investors (for instance regional macros, regulatory changes, etc.)

After doing all this, you work towards asking them for a yes or a no. If the investor ends up passing, make sure you stay in touch.

Also Read: How many .com domain names are unused?

Realize that investors will follow your progress. Send updates, add them to your non-confidential newsletters, etc.

For some investors, the timing isn’t right so investors that pass now might become your investor in the next round.

Investors have options, so do you!

At times you’ll feel that you’re pitching away, but not getting anywhere.

I can still recall in the first few years of fundraising that I didn’t even get the chance to pitch our fund. We were pitching Southeast Asia and why investors should be interested in that market. When we got over that hurdle, we finally got a chance to pitch the fund.

Why did we have to pitch Southeast Asia first? Investors were comparing our fund thesis and opportunity to other funds in other regions such as China and India.

We weren’t the only one fundraising and investors look at every investable dollar.

How does it come back, does it bring strategic value, does it give me access to more deals, how does it fit in my asset mix, etc?

When you go out fundraising, you have to realize that you’re not the only one.

Investors have options. Always keep that in the back of your mind when you’re pitching investors. The way you pitch, behave, respond to questions, present yourself and your team, everything will get benchmarked against other opportunities investors have on the table.

A few more things to take into considering while you’re fundraising:

• No one will pitch investors saying their business will slow down or will generate negative returns. Realize your competitors will likely pitch a similar story to yours. Find your unique angle and anchor your pitch around it. The way you fundraise tells the investor a lot about how you run your business. Strive for excellence in execution across all aspects of your business.
• Under promise and over deliver. If you tell investors you’ll respond within a week, make it four days. You have to remain on point during the entire fundraising process. Don’t slow down.
• Provide a clear response when investors want to understand what the effect is of their investment on your business. How much more can you do with their capital, which opportunities are you able to proceed, how different will the company’s trajectory be after the investment?

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Image Credit: chekman

This article first appeared on Medium.

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RecyGlo hopes to help Myanmar companies recycle by making the process for convenient for businesses

RecyGlo, a Myanmar startup that has built a recycling pick-up service, has been accepted into the Katapult Ocean Accelerator Program from Norway and will receive a US$150,000 investment as part of the programme.

RecyGlo is trying to help Burmese companies improve their recycling habits by helping them schedule and arrange the delivery process. Essentially, if a company organises their recycling, RecyGlo will make sure it gets to the correct location.

Co-founder and CEO Shwe Yamin Oo explains as such,

“The current waste management in Myanmar is frangemented, inefficient and problematic. Our biggest concern is that waste is not properly managed and eventually going to rivers and ocean thus creating massive environmental problem. We make sure waste management and recycling easy, affordable, systematic and minimal impact on the environment.”

RecyGlo also has alternative products like waste awareness training, a corporate social responsibility programme and a waste auditing service.

It boasts clients like the International Finance Corporation, H&M and Panasonic.

Also Read: Meet 7 more top-notch investors who will be judging TOP100!

The startup is entering Katapult in an effort to secure later stage funding with the goal of expanding into other cities in Myanmar.

As for Katapult, they were attracted to RecyGlo as a company that fights ocean plastic at the source. A significant chunk of ocean waste starts on land before being transported to the ocean via rivers. If plastic in developing nations like Myanmar can be transported to recycling centers, it may help decrease the amount of waste in our oceans.

RecyGlo had previously come out of the Phandeeyar accelerator programme where it received its first injection of financing.

Also Read: How many .com domain names are unused?

 

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Why tell them when you can sell them?

Sometime in 2013, I started a Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) business.

I put my all in it and watched it grow. I loved my business, and I loved how quickly it was growing.

But then tragedy struck…

Fire engulfed the business one year later in the middle of the night, and by the time I came the following morning, the premises were in ruins.

Thousands of dollars gone, just like that. It was heart-wrenching.

It was at that point that I realised that I hadn’t insured my business…

The story above is my true-life story. But notice how I could have easily started talking about an insurance plan that would have worked for me. Something, that my readers would then easily buy into.

Why?

I employed the ancient art of storytelling to sell. That is what I call the Art of Story Selling.

If you are a marketer, you would have noticed that selling things outrightly would not likely resonate well with your audience.

They want something they can relate with. That way, they get sold without having the feeling of being sold to.

How do you that? How do you write in such a way that your target audience would be sold without knowing what hit them?

Here are some tips to help you become a better story seller.

1. Talk to your audience like they are your friends

Just like I did in the story above, when you write, tell your stories in a natural form.

If it will work better for you, start your writing with the heading, “Dear X”. In this case, “X” should be your closest friend. Then write your story.

In this article on My Startupceo on managing emails, for instance, the author began his story in a conversational tone.

Reading it was seamless for me because it sounded like he was chatting with a friend. This means you can apply this no matter the topic you are writing on.

Also, after writing, make out time and read out what you wrote to your own hearing. Make all necessary edits until it starts sounding like a story your best friend would love to read.

2. Create suspense

Let’s face it, you may not really be an author.

This means that you are not likely writing for the sake of writing.

You have a goal. And your goal is for your targeted audience to become your customers or clients.

To do that, make sure that your story takes them on a journey.

Don’t tell them everything within the first two lines. Let the story unfold. Make them curious. Use words and sentences that would get your readers to ask themselves, “what happened next?”.

This way, they will keep reading without even knowing that they had gotten sold.

3. Talk about the problem you want to solve

Like the instance I used in my story, the problem was a fire accident.

My job as a story seller was to paint the picture of this problem in a way that my readers would be able to relate to it. At that point, they would be nodding in their minds because this could have been them.

I could also make it worse by backing up my story with statistics.

For instance, I could say that according to US Fire statistics, there were 1,317,500 fire incidents in the United States in 2017. And according to this data in this article on Forbes, 40 per cent of businesses never open after a disaster.

Worse still, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says that only 29 per cent out of those that do would still be operating after two years.

Facts like these will help make the problem look scary, and get my readers to start asking for the possible solution to this problem. Use this to your advantage no matter the line of business you do.

Also Read: Found. and Collision8 merge in major co-working consolidation

This was exactly what Summer Hirst did in this article on Virtual Private Network (VPN) Base. The article was supposed to talk about hackers.

But to drive home her point, she focused on the recent hack that occurred on Quora, which affected more than 100 million users.

As a Quora user, immediately I came across that article, the only question on my mind was, “What do I do to protect myself from these hackers in the future?”.

Doing this effectively will make it very easy for you to sell your solution.

4. Sell your solution like a boss.

You know how sales-y marketers sound, right? It can be annoying. Don’t do that. Don’t sound desperate.

And no matter what you do, don’t ever beg them to buy. Bosses don’t beg. If you sound like you are begging, people won’t want to buy from you.

Why? The simple reason is that people want to buy the best products out there. And the logic is that if what you are selling is so good, you wouldn’t have to beg people to buy it.

5. End your story by asking for the sale.

It is not enough to talk about the solution you provide, go ahead and ask for the sale. You can do this indirectly through a creative CTA (call to action).

It could be to sign up to your newsletter or to click on a link that leads to a check out centre. Or it could be that you gave them a phone number to call for your services.

But don’t ever make the mistake of story-selling without actually asking for the sales.

Also Read: LOGIVAN raises US$5.5M, the largest funding round it has raised to date

And as a bonus, make sure you add a wonderful and relatable picture to the story you are selling your audience.

Remember that saying about a picture speaking more than a thousand words? It is true.

By the way, you should not be caught dead using Google images for this.

Make the extra effort of going to picture sites like Unsplash, or Pixabay and downloading high-quality images that can be used to show in pictures the story you are trying to tell with words.

Or you could use your own personal pictures. These would work better especially if your platform is a social media site.

This will go a long way to boost your engagement.

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Photo by Chris Benson on Unsplash

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Blockchain is inherently secure, but there are a lot of vulnerabilities in services and products currently in place. Here are some community- and business-backed trends that will ensure better security in transactions and data

  

One of the hallmark features of blockchain is that it is supposedly much more secure, adding remarkable levels of transparency that can quickly identify and mitigate cyber threats. But, at a time when we’re approaching 2,000 blockchain projects in development worldwide, watching thousands of crypto miners do their thing each day, and seeing billions of investment dollars pouring in each year, are we taking threats seriously? Has the greater community taken aspects of blockchain’s security for granted? The hard truths reveal affirmatives to both questions.

There are multiple ways that users can contribute to their favorite blockchain projects — whether that’s mining, staking or operating nodes (which can include masternodes, full nodes or lightweight nodes). Regardless of what they’re doing, these private deployments require an investment of time, money and effort to set up, so the last thing anyone wants is to fall victim to hackers. Unfortunately, people often don’t invest as much energy in securing their blockchain deployments as they do in getting their different features to work and scale, making the hacker threat very real.

Various attacks have already been seen on mining software, and there have been multiple high-profile thefts that were worth a lot of money. Tokens in staking wallets make very attractive targets. Malicious actors have successfully infected enterprise infrastructures with sneaky mining malware, called cryptojacking; and in 2016, Hong Kong-based exchange platform Bitfinex was hacked, resulting in more than $60 million (at the time) of crypto losses. The fact is that a victim may not even realize they’ve been hacked until it’s too late. Savvy hackers are careful to cover their tracks and siphon only a portion of tokens at a time.

Another emerging security hole in the crypto community is the potential for sensitive metadata to be exposed through common actions like checking balances, initiating transactions or just receiving block updates. This was recently called out by Ethereum Core Developer Peter Szilagyi. While metadata may seem harmless, it can lead to exposing the physical location of a blockchain deployment, which is something most would prefer to avoid. Why is it important to call out some of these threats?

The Difficulty of Securing Blockchain Projects with Traditional Security Applications

Addressing these and other threats today can lead you down the proverbial rabbit hole. Some of the chatter on BitcoinTalk forums reveals sage advice — often learned the hard way — about using virtual private networks (VPNs) and firewalls to secure deployments. However, these discussions are often light on details, especially on adequately configuring protective applications. As you dig deeper, you can get lost in threads upon threads detailing which ports need to be opened for each blockchain and which should be locked down. The point is that solutions like traditional VPNs and firewalls for protecting blockchain networks are possible solutions, but it’s difficult, messy and surprisingly fragile. I’m not saying fragile in the sense of penetrable, but more so in that one misstep or misconfiguration could open the door to vulnerabilities. What you’re left with is a security fig leaf: a false sense of safety actually covering for a gaping hole.

Also read: Blockchain companies need to strengthen brand credibility for sake of ecosystem

Then there is the centralised nature of network traffic management itself, as it is largely managed by a few centralised internet service providers (ISPs), which are vulnerable to threats like routing attacks. In fact, research previously suggested that just 13 ISPs host 30 percent of the Bitcoin network, while just three ISPs route 60 percent of the transaction traffic.

Making Blockchain Work for Blockchain

So how can we make sure that the networks blockchain developers and crypto miners use are secure? One possible solution is to build on the Marconi Protocol. This way for example, secure channels for data transport via packet-level encryption are enabled by default for any deployment. This is in contrast to using a separate solution such as a VPN, which not only requires specialised knowledge to set up and maintain, but also introduces a central authority and central point of failure into an otherwise decentralised system.

It’s essential that peers establish these secure connections between all nodes in a network so that traffic is safely transported. And with features like network layer virtualisation and traffic proxying built-in, protecting traffic becomes much easier.

Essentially a blockchain protecting the blockchain, this enables management of routing and packet processing with rules stored in blockchain-based smart contracts. This simplifies deployment and maintenance of what often become complex rule sets. Furthermore, with this setup you can allow developers to define their own network traffic rules, such as conditioning on packet-level features to spot a common phishing strategy where a misleading website, similar to a trusted one, is sent to lure in a user. And these framework ideas are just the beginning, especially with an enthusiastic blockchain developer community. Developers can now take the initiative to build their own decentralised security applications for anti-phishing, anti-malware, intrusion detection and distributed VPNs to deploy on the global blockchain.

Trust and Transparency

The bottom line is that it’s not enough to just trust in blockchain security because there is usually more transparency than other technological data security and privacy methods. Developers, miners and even enterprises need to look at the entire digital ecosystem when considering security, as every single point provides savvy hackers with a weak leak to exploit.

Also read: Blockchain security and the cryptocurrency boom, in theory and practice

As blockchain investment continues to skyrocket and the crypto markets continue to diversify — even with the recent slowdown — we will see more unique and sophisticated examples of cyber criminals penetrating blockchain’s security veneer. That’s the paradoxical ratio of technology: for as many positive innovations that tech brings up, there almost is an equal amount of sinister efforts to match it. The trick is to keep discussing the threats to blockchain while also inspiring and enabling the community to secure it.

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How similar are you to Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs?

If we had a magic crystal ball to predict future outcomes, everyone would be an entrepreneur and have a flourishing business.

Fortunately, there’s no such thing and as the saying goes:

“Your future is whatever you make it.”
– Doc Brown from Back to the Future Day

However, there are traits – pre-cursors of successful startups and ventures.

In this article, we’ll be covering seven traits of highly successful startups.

1. Led by the great leadership

Have you read the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey?

Being an effective person is the foundation of building a successful startup.

In addition, beginning with self-improvement is essential in building great leadership qualities that every business requires.

Great leadership is not a matter of experience or age. A person who has been using one traditional solution isn’t a great leader by any means.

A great leader possesses personal traits and success-driven principles and characteristics.

2. Have a clear vision

The first highly successful person who perfectly brings this point across would be Steve Jobs.

He was the only candidate who could get Rob Campbell, CEO of Voalte, a wireless software provider for hospitals and point-of-care facilities, interested enough to buy into his vision.

Although it is important to have business financial goals and realistic desires, that’s not what a vision is all about.

A vision is something that is seemingly unattainable in the next year or so but is possible in the long-run.

Having realistic goals can make us reach greatness, but a scary yet clear vision would leave a legacy.

Dream big for your startup, you’ll be surprised how the gap between present and future can spur you to achieve success and more.

3. Great sales and marketing

In the case of every startup, the best salesperson and marketer has to be you – the owner of the business.

Who else cares more about your business than you? Who can compete with you in terms of understanding your business?

Grow your sales and marketing skills first then outsource it to a marketing team when you already understand what works for your business.

This can save you a sum of money, plus maximize every dollar you spend on outsourcing.

Getting sales is the lifeblood of every business; you can’t survive without sales and you can very well do with more of it.

The third trait of highly successful startups is having great sales and marketing.

4. Valuable offering (product/service)

You can’t polish a turd.

Providing something that helps people avoid something unpleasable or painful is valuable.

Offering something to serves joy and pleasure is valuable. And when served on a silver plate, it could double in value.

One statement that Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview with Sam Altman, president of Y Combinations, is this:

“I always think that you should start with the problem that you’re trying to solve in the world and not start with deciding that you want to build a company. And the best companies that get built are things that are trying to drive some kind of social change, even if it’s just local in one place, more than starting out because you want to make a bunch of money or have a lot of people working for you or build some company in some way.”

Solve a problem, enhance a solution – provide a valuable offering.

5. Have short and long term goals

Earlier in trait number two, we touched on having a clear vision and about realistic goals.

Now, before you start throwing shade that I’m contradicting myself, allow me to clarify.

Having realistic goals, both short and long term helps in the practical steps to work towards the vision. Pinning up detailed objective helps to track the progress which is crucial for a highly successful startup too.

Also Read: Focus on productivity, not efficiency

The point of a vision is to ensure that you always stay hungry, and never get complacent. Whereas, short term and long term goals are more about the mission, strategies, tactics, and action plan.

Thus, having these goals are important in seeing success for your startup.

6. Open to changes

In the past three decades, the growth of technology supersedes human growth.

It’s exponential – meaning it is extrapolated to only get faster and time goes by.

Can you keep up? Can your business keep up?

In our world where everything is going digital, and socializing has new normality, it is paramount to be ahead and stay competitive.

Nowadays, consumers can instantly sniff out an advertisement and nobody likes to get sold.

Thus, we have to connect to people first and offer something that is risk-free yet ultra-valuable.

Content marketing has been shown to do this extremely well, with proven reasons why one should focus on content marketing in 2019.

Be open to changes and ready to include them in your startup.

7. Fail Fast, learn fast

As a startup, things start off pretty lean and on a tight-belted budget.

Decisions can be made within a few seconds and implemented quickly. That’s the beauty of a small startup.

You have the agility to change, cut your losses, etc. almost instantly.

Also Read: Our idea of a good Valentine: Free Echelon Asia Summit 2019 tickets

Gary Vaynerchuk has preached about the benefits of running a small business or a lean startup that is remembered in 4 simple words: “Macro patience, micro speed”.

He stresses the importance of speed in business. But not in the way that most people would think which what he wrote in the following really explains what I mean perfectly.

“To me, it’s all about speed. I actually don’t care about anything else. Speed, both in people skills and hard work will trump anything.

When you’re not spending any time worrying, you’re spending time on executing. That’s what a great culture is, it’s speed. You’re not spending the 15 minutes a day bickering. You’re not spending the four hours a day wondering if that person’s trying to ruin you…

It’s just hustle. Input and output. It’s very binary. You can’t expect 30 years of results from 30 minutes of work.”

—
Image Credits: blocberry

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Work smart, not hard

12 hours.

That’s how long it took to build a car before 1913.

Over the next several years, Henry Ford reduced the time-consuming process to an impressive 2.5 hours.

His goal was simple — make automobile ownership possible for every American by lowering the cost of production.

What wasn’t so simple?

Figuring out exactly how to do more with less.

As a child, Ford stayed awake at night on his family’s farm, taking watches apart and putting them back together again. His father didn’t support his ambitions, so young Ford ran away to train as an apprentice at a machine shop when he was 16 years old.

Nearing the age of 40, Ford was often looked upon as a daydreamer by acquaintances; they criticized him for preferring to “tinker with odd machines” than work a steady job.

Lucky for us, some of Ford’s friends did believe in him. The future icon started his company with an initial investment of US$28,000 and never looked back.

Ford studied the continuous-flow manufacturing processes of breweries, flour-mills and meat-packing plants, before borrowing their ideas to increase efficiency in his factories.

One of his earliest moves? Breaking the company’s Model T automobile assembly into 84 distinct steps. Each worker was trained in one step and was only responsible for completing that individual task.

While this enhanced efficiency to a degree, it wasn’t until Ford implemented power-driven machinery that production really skyrocketed.

The man went on to develop the industry’s first moving assembly line, manufacture more than 29 million automobiles and amass a net worth of $200 billion.

Doing more with less vs. doing more with the same

While Ford’s story is inspiring, his accomplishments weren’t entirely unique.

The modern machinery spawned by the Industrial Revolution ushered an era of unprecedented wealth and success for several of his contemporaries.

Interestingly, the “efficiency mindset” embraced by Ford dominated the marketplace all the way into the early 2000s.

Industry leaders like General Electric, Honeywell and HP have all showcased their efficiency programs and associated bottom-line results.

As reported by Harvard Business Review, earnings growth for the S&P 500 ran at nearly three times the rate of inflation during this time period, despite several years of mild growth.

However, the tide began to change in 2015:

“S&P 500 earnings began falling, and earnings growth has remained negative ever since,” said HBR contributor Michael Mankins, “Without top-line growth, continuing to wring out greater profits through efficiency has become the managerial equivalent of attempting to squeeze blood from a stone.”

Mankin argued that today’s business environment requires a different worldview — one focused on productivity over efficiency.

And I mostly agree.

While efficiency is about doing more with less, productivity is about doing more with the same.

As suggested by a recent survey of more than 300 senior executives — conducted by Bain & Company and the Economist Intelligence Unit:

Today’s most successful organizations are the ones who nurture productivity in the workplace.
Over the last 12 years, focusing on productivity (not efficiency) has helped me significantly to grow JotForm to over four million users.

I wanted to share some of the productivity practices we have found success utilizing, as well as some of the ones we hope to embrace in the future:

1. Team productivity > individual efficiency

We could get all our designers to sit in one room and developers in another.

Similar to how Ford did it, we could ask each person to take on one job at a time and move on to the next right after.

This way, we could get them to work 100 per cent of the time and become a super efficient organization.

But we don’t.

At JotForm, our 120 employees work in cross-functional groups of 5–6 people instead.

Each team includes a lead designer, who works side-by-side with UI and CSS developers, full stack developers, plus UX specialists, data scientists, and any other necessary functions.

Instead of getting each person to work on one task at a time, our cross-functional teams work on one project at a time.

Each team operates like a little company.

They are independent and empowered to make their own decisions. They come up with great ideas, execute and test them quickly, and constantly build new ideas on top of others.

The system works beautifully. No one tries to solve a problem in isolation, so each project benefits from a variety of voices, skills, backgrounds and strategies.

In our offices, each cross-functional team has its own room, with whiteboards, big desks, space to stretch out, and doors that close.

It’s amazing how much these rooms have increased their productivity.

Do we utilize our resources more efficiently? No.

But we do utilize them more productively. We boost creativity.

And we would have lost that team dynamic, product ownership and all the ideas generated from the discussion of people from different fields.

2. Get out of the way

During the early days of scaling a business, “bureaucratic red tape” rarely exists.

An amazing amount of progress can be achieved in a short amount of time with the right combination of team members.

It’s the steady creep of complexity — coinciding with business growth — that slowly hampers productivity, progress and revenue.

Interestingly, most employees want to be productive.

However, the larger their organizations become the less productive they often feel.

According to research conducted by Bain & Company, the average company loses more than 20 per cent of its productive capacity to something called organizational drag.

The term refers to unnecessary workplace activities, requirements and regulations pushed by upper-management.

As managers or founders, our job is to question how we can get out of the way and reduce organizational drag.

Take meetings. As Mankins told Sarah Green Carmichael of HBR IdeaCast, the biggest opportunity for enhancing organizational productivity is reducing the number of unnecessary meetings and meeting participants.

I explained in “Should you walk out of that bad meeting, even if it’s rude?” that not all meetings are created equal. They’re not necessarily a “scourge” on your company.

But it doesn’t mean we should:

• Stop interrupting the workflow of team members with meetings that don’t necessarily require their presence.
• And ask ourselves: Do we need a meeting at all? Does this issue warrant taking up someone else’s precious time?

Because the old maxim that “time is money” simply isn’t true.

One can always earn more money, but time itself? That is irreplaceable.

Also Read: Five trends in crowdfunding to watch in 2019

Meetings are part of our lives. Ultimately, every founder needs to set their own boundaries and create a meeting strategy that fits their organization.

3. Maximize your MVPs

Most companies have a handful of what I would call all-star MVPs.

You can find them in sales departments, IT departments, customer service departments and sitting behind admin desks.

They come from all backgrounds, educational credentials and job descriptions. And, for whatever reason, they have a disproportionate impact on company success.

Unfortunately, these talented individuals are often placed in organizational roles that limit their effectiveness.
“Despite the countless millions that have been spent fighting ‘the war for talent,’ our research suggests that relatively little has been devoted to safeguarding the spoils,” said Mankins,

“Fifteen per cent of most companies’ workforce are star players, employees with exceptional performance and the potential to have an outsize effect on strategy execution.”

The truth is every hire can be an MVP given the right circumstances, training and support. Which is why I prioritize getting to know each and every new hire at JotForm.

Besides wanting everyone to feel welcome, I want to know what makes each person unique.

I accomplish this objective by asking questions like:

• What kind of impact do you want to make?
• Is there anything you would change if you were in charge?
• Is there anything you think you would excel at doing, but have never gotten the opportunity to try?

The more employees I have working in their “sweet spot,” the more naturally productive the organization will be as a whole.

From what I’ve seen across 12 years of building JotForm, there is NO such thing as an unproductive person.

Also Read:  How NOT following my dreams enabled me to build a startup with 3.2 million users

More often than not, there is a person who feels unchallenged, underutilized or unfulfilled.

A recent study referenced in HBR supports this observation:

Inspired employees are 125 per cent more productive than employees who are “merely satisfied.”

Translation: The output of one inspired employee is more than double that of a satisfied employee.

4. Lose the “more is better” mentality

We’ve grown to subconsciously measure a person’s worth based off how many hours they work, how much is on their plate and put simply — whether or not they are running around like a chicken with their head cut off.

But, sooner or later, all of us have to ask ourselves what our mission is — is it to be the busiest or is it to make the most impact?

The 40-hour work week became standard in 1940.

The U.S. Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to include the number after a long period of back-and-forth negotiations.

Considering how much the nature of work has since evolved, we must ask ourselves: Why are we enforcing work practices that were developed nearly 78 years ago?

Countries like New Zealand are now experimenting with 4-day work weeks after several studies have suggested zero correlation between productivity gains and hours logged.

As reported by the Guardian, Luxembourg is the most productive country in the world, despite its workers averaging 29 hours a week.

While JotForm has yet to experiment with shorter workweeks, we have experienced significant boosts in productivity due to flexible work hours.

As I highlighted in “Why waking up at 6 am won’t make you successful”, every person has different peak hours of performance.

Those who prefer to sleep in are welcome to start their day a little later. And those who prefer a traditional schedule can come in early.

Additionally, we encourage team members to take frequent breaks to recharge their batteries.

Studies indicate that the average person cannot engage in critical thinking for longer than four hours at a time; anything after that is wasted effort.

And it makes sense — the more mentally refreshed employees feel, the more high-quality work they are likely to achieve.

I try to practice what I preach as well. Every year, I take at least a full week off from my company and head back to my hometown to help my parents with the olive harvest.

All thoughts of startup growth or conversion rates slip away when you’re picking olives. It’s meditative and calming.

I know that olive picking won’t land me at the top of TechCrunch, but it’s a personal measure of success. And somehow, some of my best ideas come to me during this period.

–

Switching from an efficiency mindset to a productivity mindset hasn’t happened overnight, but it’s been worth it.

Each change has produced significant gains in terms of happier employees, higher performance and increased profits.

And, isn’t that what we all want?

—

This post first appeared on www.jotform.com

Image Credit: ramcreative

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 currently standalone app will be joined as one with Grab’s “super app”

Albeit doing well with separate apps, Grab announced today that it will integrate its standalone GrabFood into its Grab’s main app in a bid to become a super app; a term that has been repeatedly coined by the unicorn company. It will be done in the first half of this year, according to The Business Times.

Also Read: Indogen Capital reveals plan to make 10 investments for 2019

The Head of Grab Singapore, Lim Kell Jay, highlighted the advantages of having the two joined. Grab said that it targets to become the leader in order volume for food delivery app in Singapore, leveraging on its wide selection of merchants and short delivery time.

“We have been working hard to build a customer base that’s actively transacting on our main app, which is an advantage for our merchants. By our own estimates, an average user transacts 100 times a month, and the top two use cases are transport and food. This is something that the other players aren’t able to do,” Jay said.

Aside from integrating into one app, GrabFood is looking into the possibility of opening a central kitchen in the country, following rivals Foodpanda’s central kitchens in Woodlands and Mandai as well as Deliveroo’s kitchens in Katong and Lavender. Currently, the company has a kitchen in Jakarta, Indonesia, facilitating popular food merchants from outside of Jakarta.

Also Read: Blockchain-based e-KYC platform claims the throne at Binar Academy and Tokopedia’s Hack of Thrones

Currently, Grab offers free delivery on 30 orders for just S$7.99 (US$5.88) a month under the newly launched GrabClub subscription packages.

GrabFood currently has over 4,000 merchants compared to Deliveroo’s 4,500 merchants and Foodpanda’s 6,000 merchants.
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The e-commerce startup plans to expand into key markets including the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia in 2019

Singapore-headquartered Zilingo, an online marketplace that connects online sellers/retailers in Southeast Asia with fashion lovers across Asia, has secured a massive US$226 million in Series D round of funding from a host of investors, including Temasek, Sequoia Capital India, Singapore-based Burda Principal Investments, Sofina (Belgium) and EDBI.

This brings the total funds raised by the three-and-half-year-old startup to US$308 million. This includes a US$54 million Series C in April 2018,  US$17 million in Series B in 2017, US$8 million in late 2016 and US$2 million in November 2015.

Zilingo will use the fresh capital infusion to invest in the infrastructure and technology needed to further integrate and digitise the fashion and beauty supply chain. It also plans to expand into key markets including the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia in 2019.

Established in October 2015 by Ankiti Bose (CEO) and Dhruv Kapoor (CTO), Zilingo lets merchants upload and manage their inventory in any language using any currency. Sellers get facilities such as free shipping, free packaging, doorstep pickup and free and secure payment options.

In addition, it also helps sellers maximise their reach through various tools and strategies. This is important because Zilingo’s marketplace focusses on the long tail of merchants, also known as merchants who deal with niche products.

Also Read: We’ve learnt the hard way that the entire Southeast Asia can’t be painted with the same brush: Zilingo CEO Ankiti Bose

Last year, Zilingo claims it grew 4 times in the past 12 months after investing in building up its B2B and supply chain capabilities and delivering them through the Zilingo AsiaMall and Z-Seller platform.

According to CEO Bose: “The role of technology should be to create inclusive growth. In the fashion industry, core supply chain inefficiencies hinder small and medium merchants from unlocking their full potential as compared to the big brands. We are building a level-playing field by providing the best-in-class services and products to each merchant — irrespective of their size. We think this approach can unlock immense growth for Southeast Asian suppliers.”

As per an estimate, of the US$3 trillion of global fashion manufacturing, US$1.4 trillion comes from Asia alone. If this supply is optimised further, billions of dollars’ worth of value can be unlocked.

“Fashion and beauty merchants are hungry for tools that can help them scale. At the same time, the ecosystem is marred by outdated tech. So it’s imperative for us to build products that introduce machine learning and data science effectively to SMEs while also being easy to use, get adopted and scale quickly. We’re re-wiring the entire supply chain with that lens so that we can add most value,” says CTO Kapoor.

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Also, Huawei sales soar in China and GrabFood Singapore merges with main app

Vietnam logistics company LOGIVAN raises US$5.5 million from Alpha JWC Ventures – [e27]

LOGIVAN, a Vietnamese company that specialises in cargo transportation between Northern and Southern Vietnam, announced today it has raised US$5.5 million from Alpha JWC Ventures and Matrix Partners China Founding Partner David Su (through his family office)

Today’s news brings the company’s total funding to US$7.9 million. The money will be used to finance data analysis and cross-platform integration.

LOGIVAN was founded in November 2017 and at the end of 2018 had 22,000 transportation partners with “every major commercial truck type” and 10,000 shippers registered on its system.

Co-working spaces Found. and Collision8 merge to form new co-working space — [e27]

Two of Singapore’s most prominent co-working spaces, Found. and Collision8, announced today a merger that will rebrand the company into Found8.

The merger will combine the two company’s investment war chest and give Found8 US$20 million of financing.

The first major event post-merger will be the impending opening of a new 22,000 square feet space in Kuala Lumpur. The Kuala Lumpur project is part of a drive to build a large startup ecosystem in the heart of Sentral Station, a strategy that is being borrowed from Station F in Paris.

Also Read: Our idea of a good Valentine: Free Echelon Asia Summit 2019 tickets

Found8 will pursue further regional expansion.

Grab Singapore to merge food and transport in same app in H1 2019 — [Business Times]

Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Grab told the Business Times today that the company plans on integrating its food app with the rest of what it is calling its ‘super app’.

As of now, Grab and GrabFood had been separate apps, a legacy from the acquisition of Uber from last year.

The company is also looking into opening a centralised kitchen in Singapore, a strategy used by other food delivery companies.

HAK wins hackathon hosted by Tokopedia and Indonesian coding school Binar Academy — [e27]

On Sunday, February 10, in South Jakarta, team HAK was named as the first prize winner of Hack of Thrones, a hackathon hosted by Indonesian coding school Binar Academy and e-commerce giant Tokopedia, in partnership with Proud Media Group.

Consisted of three members Ahmad, Aulia Hakiem Noersedya, and Khalil Ambiya, the team built a platform called KYCepat, a blockchain-based peer-to-peer (P2P) network for banks, financial institutions, and other businesses to perform know-your-customer (KYC) tasks.

The team beat 30 other participants in the competition and won a IDR25 million (US$1,782) cash prize.

In addition to the cash prize, they also won the opportunity to join a Golang and Swift training with Tokopedia’s engineering team.

They will also be put on a fast-track to the last stage of Tokopedia’s employee recruitment process.

Huawei phone sales jump in China, Apple slides — [South China Morning Post]

Huawei registered a 23.3 per cent gain in China shipments in Q4 2018, a signal that consumers are working to support the company amidst its battle with the US, according to the South China Morning Post.

Apple shipments dropped by 19.9 per cent — a number the company had warned about in Q4 that led to a stock tumble. It will be worth watching the US trading day to see if that number is considered high or low by investors.

Also Read: Found. and Collision8 merge in major co-working consolidation

Xiaomi also got killed by the Chinese market, seeing a 34.9 per cent drop in shipments.

Based on these shipment numbers, Huawei is the most popular phone company in China, followed by Oppo and Vivo. Apple comes in fourth and Xiaomi is fifth.

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These companies will compete for country glory before heading to Echelon to try to be the

Just got your pitch deck ready? Drop it here and register for TOP100! https://goo.gl/forms/kEm7nG0If6nr6AbH3

TOP100 APAC 2019 is right around the corner! The best pitching competition hopes to travel to 17 countries and find Asia’s best startups.

We will be visiting countries like Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia and Malaysia to make sure no startup is missed.

The programme is organised by e27 with the mission of empowering startups with insights, connections, talent, and funding opportunities. This year, the programme has shifted to a private pitching competition to better facilitate quality pitching.

But hurry!!! Applications will close on 28 February 2019. To give you a teaser of the competition, these 15 awesome startups who will be taking their first step to TOP100 APAC 2019 and get a chance to pitch at Echelon Asia Summit 2019:

Meet the 15 startups!

Muzaara Pty Ltd – Australia

Muzaara’s intelligent marketing platform has been developed by industry experts who saw a need to offer small to medium advertisers an advanced but simple platform to create and manage their online advertising on Google Shopping and Facebook.

Alice Labs Pte Ltd. – Bangladesh

ALICE provides multiple platforms (automated or manual) to gather user data and transform those to actionable insights. In ALICE, customer experience can be enhanced through auto responses (i.e. chatbots) or manual agents. Also the organisation receives insights on customer behaviour and patterns.

Yunfengsu – China

Yunfengsu provides an accelerated big data pipeline and augment intelligence for business intelligence through something they call ZHIS.AI . They aim to create a cohesive environment for all isolated and silo’d data into a unified avenue for data utilization across all platforms

Pricekart – India

Pricekart is a leading product search, price comparison and discovery engine that helps users find the latest and most trendy products. It uses tools, reviews and rich content to better understand which product suits their needs while ‘choosing the best, but paying the least.’

Pollen Tech Pte Ltd – Malaysia

Pollen leverages sellers existing communities to make it easier for people to earn a side income.

The Community Commerce Network aim is to “Spread Commerce – Sell Anywhere, Earn More”

DDIY – Myanmar

DDIY is a trusted online home concierge platform that combines technology with top-rated home managers to provide and manage a suite of in-home services and deliver retail products and experiences right to your door.

Also Read: Why TOP100 made the decision to host a private pitching competition

From grocery shopping to housekeeping to house party planning, DDIY completes your to-do lists so that you can spend more time living life.

TripZeeker, Inc. – Philippines

TripZeeker is an online bazaar of travel experiences that connects travelers with multiple tour operators across the globe.

ELXR – Singapore

ELXR is a all-in-one scientifically driven fitness mobile App that analyses your genetics analysis and fitness assessment to customise your best training programme. ELXR is also a community for meeting like-minded people who enjoy the same workouts.

QLC (NewCampus) – Singapore

QLC is a global co-learning school delivering bite-sized learnings and strong takeaways in inspiring 21st-century classrooms. NewCampus is a different type of school, for curious people who never want to stop growing. Attend daily small-group classes hosted by global instructors about big topics in the world today.

Whether you’re looking to gain specific new skills, or window-shopping different topics to get inspired, they’ll help you get where you want to be. They’ll be running an event on 23rd February do check it out!

Seekster -Thailand

Seekster serves as a platform for home services whose main foucs is on household helpers and technicians. Seekster curates the service provider and sets the standard for the fragmented service market.

They are currently entrusted with over 100,000 jobs done and have distributed jobs to over 7,000 service providers

Getdone Pte. Ltd – Vietnam

Getdone is a platform for Hiring trusted Blockchain talents and freelancers across the world for your project while assuring 100% successful hiring by their Data and AI driven reviewing system.  

Erxes Inc – Mongolia

Erxes is an open-source growth marketing platform. They provide a marketing, sales, and customer service platform designed to help your business attract more engaged customers.

Semut – Malaysia

Semut is a recruitment company that offers the industry low-fees, chargeable to the hiring company, only upon successful hire. What’s even better, people involved in the process, be it referrer, nominator and domain experts will be incentivised with commission.With the help of domain experts and artificial intelligence in the matching process, we have our best bet in achieving our vision – right talents to the right opportunities.

Zigway – Myanmar

We are building a sustainable, scalable social enterprise that will lift 20 million people out of poverty by 2030 through building a mobile technology platform to help low-income families access NanoLoans, quick, cheap and flexible loans to cover their daily needs.

Noodle Factory – Singapore

At Noodle Factory, they believe that learning is essential throughout our lives, but there isn’t always time or money for classes or workshops, and sometimes, we just want something more engaging.

Online learning has evolved rapidly over the years, and while it can be effective, it often is a time-consuming process for content owners to digitalise their content. As tech junkies, they are always striving to leverage technology to make things better.

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So what are you waiting for? These guys didn’t!

Calling all startups to sign up: https://e27.co/echelon/asia/top100

Not a startup but keen to meet the e27 team while we tour Asia Pacific? We’re running a series of Echelon Roadshows (Founders Confession content session, networking opportunities and F&B provided), RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.sg/o/e27-61600204

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