Southeast Asia in 2010 started to experience an ecommerce boom with the likes of Ensogo, Rocket Internet’s Lazada and Zalora, Groupon, etc. It seemed to be at the height of its peak with money pouring in, mergers and acquisitions happening every day, and Amazon finally moving in to capture the region’s potential but amid these buzzworthy headlines, down rounds plagued startups such as Lazada, were sold for scraps like Zalora Thailand, or shut down completely, such as Ensogo. What happened? Smaller startups began venturing into other fields providing human resources (Getlinks), car wash services (Wash Mobile), recruitment (JB Hired), agriculture (EverGrow), hardware (DriveBot), and more. It s
Every entrepreneur has to face a ton of problems in order to pivot in the right direction. Hear from the experts what they have to say about their journey to reach where they are today. “One of my biggest lessons as an entrepreneur is to keep always keep an eye on the big picture. A lot of young entrepreneurs get bogged down with operations and getting tiny things right. This causes them to lose focus on what the actual importance is and what is going to drive up their company towards success. What I like to do is work backwards from the master plan of where I need to get to. At every level you can ask yourself what you need to do to achieve this. That way you are always confident that all t
