Asia Startup Lessons

  A lot of factors will determine your startup’s success. Product innovation, consumer adoption, and competition are of course critical factors but get too much ink in the startup press. What is often only given lip service, but is in my opinion the most fundamental determinant of success, is the people you hire today. I have been very vocal in conveying the challenges that startups in Asia face, particularly in building teams beyond the founding members. People, not your product, will be your greatest long-term asset. As you build your team my plea is that you build your startup for what you want it to be and not for what it is today . When you are a small team of founding members you are full of enthusiasm for your product and the opportunity ahead of you (as you should be). Hopefully your idea will gain traction and you will be in a position to raise money or reinvest positive cash flow to drive growth. One of your first investments will likely be in hiring your first non-found...

  The Money Runs Out on Tuesday I have come within two weeks of not making payroll twice. The first time I told nobody. The second time I told everybody. I will get to which one was the mistake. Nobody writes about this part honestly, and I understand why. It does not photograph well. The startup press wants the round announcement, the logo wall, the founder in a hoodie explaining how he saw the opportunity that everybody else missed. What it does not want is a man in his forties refreshing a corporate banking portal at 6am on a Sunday to see whether a wire from Singapore has cleared. There is a particular flavour of insomnia reserved for the founder who knows the exact balance of the company account to two decimal places, and I have never seen it in a pitch deck. Let me say up front that running out of money is not automatically a failure of the business. Sometimes it is — sometimes the market told you no and you did not listen. But plenty of good companies have come very close to...