Founders give advice on turning uncertainty into innovation

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Steve Feiner founded A Better Florist, which delivers fresh flowers. Anuj Srivastava co-founded Livspace, a startup that designs, sells, and installs home furniture and interiors. Jeremy Chau, David Ko, and Ben Luk set up Jide Tech and created three state-of-the-art and affordable gadgets. What do they have in common?

They’re all ex-Googlers.

Google and Facebook are dream companies for many people, offering employees perks like free food. All over the world, Googlers like the founders of those three startups take their interest in tech and innovation further by starting their own companies.

Major life transitions and entrepreneurship

Steve Feiner tells Tech in Asia he was going through a turning point in his life before quitting his job and starting his business.

“Honestly, I got dumped. I became upset with everything around me. I felt something was missing. A lot of purpose was missing. I went on a sabbatical, trying to fill in that missing piece,” said Steve. It was during that time he came up with the idea of A Better Florist.

Albert Lee Kai Chung, assistant professor in psychology at Nanyang Technological University, explains what causes these thoughts during important junctures.

“Time is continuous, but at the same time we create mental boundaries that separate what was then, what is now, and what will be in the future,” said Albert. “What was valued before may be different from what is valued or will be valued down the road. So if goals and priorities are any index of the purposes of life, then it follows that some people may experience quarter-life crisis or mid-life crisis when they progress to a new chunk of life.”

Albert believes that the way we view and organise our experience can be affected by two things: calendar events – such graduation, marriage, and other milestones – and meaningful numbers. “Some numbers are inherently more meaningful than others and, consequently, they are more likely to become temporal landmarks. This is why the age of, let’s say, 25, 30, or 40 are the more common in triggering the experience of life crisis than 26 or 34.”

At these junctures, we face new life goals, responsibilities, and priorities. “These are major factors that breed a sense of uncertainty, and maybe this was the reason for the term ‘crisis’ to find its place in many industrialized societies.”

Here’s some advice from Steve and other founders that could help your route from crisis to innovation.

1. Reflect on your motivations

Steve suggests that people going through this conflict should step back from expectations to reflect on what motivates them. For him, the lack of motivation was the tipping point that eventually led to his new startup.

“If you’re willing to be honest with yourself, you can start to take the necessary action. Only you know in your heart if this is something you want to be doing,” said Steve. “You notice a passion, obsession, and excitement, and you just follow it.”

2. Aim to solve life’s problems

Other people may not have ventured into entrepreneurship due to a crisis but rather out of a desire to grab life’s problems by the horns – such as Steve’s desire to make sending flowers less terrifying for suitors.

Gary Low was inspired to set up Krib by his co-founder, who spent years paying hefty commissions to agents when renting. The duo felt it wasn’t worth the money, especially when the process requires only straightforward paperwork. The app helps match landlords and tenants, removing the hefty agent fees and significantly reducing the cost for users.

Sam Chang Tat Ho, founder of Flide, came into entrepreneurship from a similar angle.

“The ability to create value and realise solutions to problems that were hard to solve before provide tremendous satisfaction, especially knowing how my idea could potentially benefit others,” he told Tech in Asia.

3. It’s never too late to start

Gary and his co-founder met as schoolmates at National University of Singapore’s faculty of engineering. It’s been 9 years since, and both had 7 years of professional experience under their belt by the time the startup took shape.

They took the plunge with Krib, building the platform from scratch. In the process, Gary had to relearn coding and grapple with new technologies that came out after his student days.

Despite not being the wide-eyed fresh graduate that Mark Zuckerberg was, Gary says that his experience in local bank DBS helped him grow his business. He spent five years in the company’s IT team, which gave him the background to build full-fledged platforms. An internal transfer opportunity to the marketing team gave him the background needed to manage Krib’s digital marketing efforts.

4. Get the support you need for innovation

If you’re unsure about how to begin turning your idea into reality, a number of communities are springing up to support entrepreneurs in their drive to create. Communities like Tech in Asia and e27 aim to support and grow Asia’s startup and tech ecosystem. Other community initiatives include informal gatherings at Meetup.

Corporates like DBS also play an active role in contributing to the startup ecosystem. The bank encourages not just startups but its own employees to participate in initiatives like DBS Hotspot, which gives early-stage startups the mentorship and support they need. Winning DBS Hotspot helped Flide gain S$25,000 in funding, which gave it the runway needed to launch the product. “Without DBS Hotspot, we would have progressed at a much slower pace,” said Sam, said Sam, an employee at DBS’s Innovation Group.

“This was a platform available to us to pursue our ideas. We had workshops that taught us everything about running a startup, from human-centered design, delivering a great pitch, UI/UX, content marketing, to navigating the legal scene. We met a lot of people and forged new friendships along the way. It has been stressful, but it definitely motivated us to work really hard.”

Gary credited his startup’s start to Ideasinc, an accelerator program by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), where the founders validated their business.

5. Expect struggle

That said, entrepreneurship poses a new set of challenges and unknowns. It’s not a panacea for life’s problems.

Gary is still trying to figure out Krib’s place in the industry, while Steve believes that being a founder isn’t a silver bullet, despite the initial catalyst for starting A Better Florist. Aspiring founders need a great deal of resilience and guts to survive the hard times and excel.

“You’re going to get crushed, and beaten, and so much could go wrong. Be very honest with yourself if this is something you can take,” said Steve. “If you’re becoming a founder for the right reasons, do it. If you’re not doing it for the right reasons, you’re going to find out.”

This post Founders give advice on turning uncertainty into innovation appeared first on Tech in Asia.

from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/founders-uncertainty-innovation
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