How Bukalapak’s new growth hacker COO plans to bring the startup through winter

Indonesian ecommerce startups are facing a chillier climate these days. Image credit: HBO.

When I caught up with Willix Halim last week, he’d just settled into his new office.

“I flew into Jakarta on Saturday, started work Monday,” he said, looking a little pale.

Willix is the new COO of Bukalapak, Indonesia’s second largest online marketplace. He’s also one of the many Indonesians who chose to migrate to Australia for better education and career prospects. He’d been there for 14 years.

Now, the tables have turned. Opportunities in Southeast Asia are luring the Indonesian diaspora back home.

Willix doesn’t have a typical COO profile, but he could be exactly the person Bukalapak needs right now. The roughly six-year old startup, notorious second behind dominant competitor Tokopedia, needs a success story.

Growth mindset

Willix Halim, new COO at Bukalapak. Photo credit: Bukalapak.

Willix earned his chops at Australian startup Freelancer. Having joined the startup five years ago, he saw it go through an impressive international expansion. It listed on the ASX in 2013.

Willix’s title at Freelancer was VP of Growth. It put him second in command at the company.

“The CEO gave me so much trust,” Willix says. “I had more functions than growth, for example product and talent management. It means everything in the company supports growth. The responsibility I have at Bukalapak now is roughly the same.”

I don’t like the smell of money burning.

“Growth” and the related term “growth hacking” is one of those words startup folk like to repeat like a mantra.

What it really means is this: Spend money where it matters.

Growth experts will help a company optimize everything, starting from the product, to marketing, to customer service, so that it’s geared toward most efficient performance. They will make sure all processes are data-driven, which means that tweaks will have measurable outcomes.

It sounds so simple. Common sense suggests every company ought to be run like this. But the reality is different, Willix says. “Everyone is aware of it, but the next step is to really pull it off”.

Applying a “growth mindset” to all aspects of a startup’s operations requires discipline.

Shifting away from paid ads

Photo credit: Mike Poresky.

At Freelancer, Willix thinks he’s learned how to deliver that. “The growth team there is perceived really well globally, and we are trying to bring that to [Bukalapak],” he says.

Some concrete changes he has in mind are product-side tweaks. “We want to make things simpler, including the search and discovery and purchase features, and install tools to track data better.”

Our challenge is to test much faster on all channels.

Another is to shift Bukalapak away from paid advertising to free or almost free channels.

“A lot of startups [in Indonesia] rely on paid advertising to grow their user base, the other channels haven’t been explored yet,” Willix says.

New avenues he wants to explore are advanced search engine optimization techniques, email marketing, coupons, or classic “hacks” that piggyback on a third party platform to win new users, like PayPal did with eBay.

“The question is not which ones should we try. It’s not one way or the other, but our challenge is: how can we test much faster for those channels,” Willix explains.

Getting through winter

Indonesian startups’ marketing spend saw astronomical growth last year, both in digital and classic media like print and TV.

These days it’s different. Venture capital firms are less willing to put millions into companies that end up blowing most of it on ineffective marketing campaigns.

Some ecommerce players in Indonesia are already starting to feel the consequences.

Unlike hibernating animals who put on a lot of fat before winter arrives, startups tend to slim down when the funding climate cools off.

Bukalapak, whose main chunk of funding comes from Indonesian media conglomerate Emtek, isn’t laying off staff at a large scale. However, if it plans to continue to grow and invest in its product, it could be facing the tough task of fundraising in a chilly season.

The appointment of Willix is clearly meant to send the signal that Bukalapak is putting extra care into making all of its expenditures defensible.

“I believe in self-sustaining companies. I don’t like the smell of money burning,” he asserts.

This post How Bukalapak’s new growth hacker COO plans to bring the startup through winter appeared first on Tech in Asia.

from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/bukalapaks-growth-hacker-coo-plans-bring-startup-winter
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