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I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup

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Re: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup

#71

Post by aherlambang »

skewart wrote: post #34

Thanks for sharing your experience. It sounds like you were facing a really tough competitive landscape. Throwing in the towel sounds like a wise thing to have done. One thing I didn't totally get from the post is what exactly you were trying to improve about the shopping experience? It seems like there is a lot of room for improvement for both buyers and sellers. Could you have vetted sellers and/or tried to answer…

Thanks man!

From the buyer perspective we have made a special one-on-on online coaching session, where they can ask us anything for feedbacks on how to improve their shops. We gave a lot of suggestions to them but most just didn't take any action afterwards.

We do have a reputation service. We verified each and every store by taking in their personal government ID. We show case their customer testimonials in their own shop page.

Two crucial thing that we can't play with, price and quality of product :) Which is two of the most important thing needed for someone to make a purchase.

Re: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup

#73

Post by samirunni »

aherlambang wrote: post #70
james-watson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sense a lot of naive optimism in your approach. You understand the goal of any business, especially an internet business, is to become a monopoly right? Look at Amazon, Google, FB, etc. They only became profitable once they became monopolies, and thus could set their own prices based on whatever metrics they chose. The reason startups take outside funding is so that they can become a monopoly in a given market, and…

I would have to disagree with the goal of any business is to be a monopoly. There are lots of examples of successful business out there who did not monopoly the market. I'd also have to disagree that startups sell mostly crap they don't need or want. Uber & AirBnB definitely provides something valuable that most humans would appreciate of. If you're talking about products such as Snapchat or Instagram, that's a diffe…

> I would have to disagree with the goal of any business is to be a monopoly.

> There are lots of examples of successful business out there who did not monopoly the market.

Such as? If you cannot eliminate competition within your given market, marginal profit will eventually be driven to zero. The internet amplifies this challenge because it is not geographically constrained (minimal transaction costs) and software amplifies this challenge because of zero marginal cost (creating massive economies of scale).

You can find more on this in the works of Michael Porter (http://amzn.com/0684841487, http://amzn.com/0684841460) and Peter Thiel (http://amzn.com/0804139296). Zero to One discusses how many seemingly successful non-monopolies are actually either monopolies pretending not to be one or non-monopolies that are not as successful as they portray themselves to be.

Re: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup

#74

Post by studentrob »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #58
studentrob wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they hire their own couriers who go out, deliver and take cash at the door Yeah, that's what people in the US did before everyone had credit cards. Cash on delivery. Growing up, I remember hearing ads on TV that said "no COD" when that service was being phased out. More and more people were using credit cards. You're right, many countries could use trusted couriers in order to spur local markets and economic growth…

> You're right, many countries could use trusted > couriers in order to spur local markets and > economic growth. Ok, so that seems like the next startup right? You don't really want couriers that are carrying boxes of cash back to headquarters but it sounds like reducing friction in payment would achieve good results. Where is the SMS payment system equivalent? Have the courier bring the item, send the SMS payment,…

> Ok, so that seems like the next startup right?

Sure. Any country that doesn't have the supporting infrastructure can be considered the next startup.

Cambodia doesn't have any public postal delivery workers, for example, so I think couriers or a system like Taiwan's with trusted shops could work well there and get more of an e-commerce market going.

There are some other hurdles there but I don't think it's insurmountable.

> Where is the SMS payment system equivalent? Have the courier bring the item, send the SMS payment, and when that is received the courier hands over the item.

Was that rhetorical? You seem to have answered your own question. Anyway, yeah, SMS systems exist, and a little more legwork is required to make them successful. WING is one I remember seeing advertised there. I'm not sure how much it was used but I don't remember hearing about people buying things online too often. Technology doesn't do its own PR, unfortunately =)

One of the annoying things about Cambodia is delivery of packages from outside the country is so expensive. I think only DHL and UPS deliver there, and for a small box it can be $100+ from the US. If a more competitive local delivery system were implemented first within Cambodia, then I imagine that cost could come down, marking more wins for the purchasing power of locals there.

Re: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup

#75

Post by ChuckMcM »

sysreader2016 wrote: post #66
ChuckMcM wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're right, many countries could use trusted > couriers in order to spur local markets and > economic growth. Ok, so that seems like the next startup right? You don't really want couriers that are carrying boxes of cash back to headquarters but it sounds like reducing friction in payment would achieve good results. Where is the SMS payment system equivalent? Have the courier bring the item, send the SMS payment,…

An SMS payment system doesn't seem possible. Just end-to-end encryption for SMS will be much be bigger than a Facebook app. Without encryption consumers will be conducting wire transfers over cleartext to the merchant.

Here is a good summary of SMS payments : http://www.mobiletransaction.org/what-are-sms-payments/

They are used a lot in countries with dysfunctional banking systems. They aren't encrypted, they use the fact that you're sending a text from your phone to validate that it's you.

Re: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup

#76

Post by ChuckMcM »

studentrob wrote: post #74
ChuckMcM wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're right, many countries could use trusted > couriers in order to spur local markets and > economic growth. Ok, so that seems like the next startup right? You don't really want couriers that are carrying boxes of cash back to headquarters but it sounds like reducing friction in payment would achieve good results. Where is the SMS payment system equivalent? Have the courier bring the item, send the SMS payment,…

> Ok, so that seems like the next startup right? Sure. Any country that doesn't have the supporting infrastructure can be considered the next startup. Cambodia doesn't have any public postal delivery workers, for example, so I think couriers or a system like Taiwan's with trusted shops could work well there and get more of an e-commerce market going. There are some other hurdles there but I don't think it's insurmoun…

Every place is different, the GP was talking about Indonesia where the folks were in fact shopping online and the challenge was the payments system. In Cambodia with poor package delivery then that might be the place to start. What I was alluding too is that one of the things that makes startups successful is that they seem to be "right place, right time" but sometimes it is simply that they are designed to mesh well with an existing infrastructure.

The trick here is to take something which is is known to work and try to think about what changes would make that thing work where you are. In a country where everyone has a smartphone, you can look at things that you can do with a smartphone you couldn't do with a 'dumb' phone. In a country where there are extremely inefficient transport, mail, or payment systems, then working within what you can there can be a winner.

Re: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup

#77

Post by studentrob »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #76
studentrob wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok, so that seems like the next startup right? Sure. Any country that doesn't have the supporting infrastructure can be considered the next startup. Cambodia doesn't have any public postal delivery workers, for example, so I think couriers or a system like Taiwan's with trusted shops could work well there and get more of an e-commerce market going. There are some other hurdles there but I don't think it's insurmoun…

Every place is different, the GP was talking about Indonesia where the folks were in fact shopping online and the challenge was the payments system. In Cambodia with poor package delivery then that might be the place to start. What I was alluding too is that one of the things that makes startups successful is that they seem to be "right place, right time" but sometimes it is simply that they are designed to mesh well…

> Every place is different

Totally.

> they seem to be "right place, right time" but sometimes it is simply that they are designed to mesh well with an existing infrastructure

Mmm there can be other elements such as "right person" and "right way to solve the problem". Sometimes the keys to success aren't easily condensed into soundbytes, so they aren't widely known. Air B&B wasn't the first home sharing website, but there were probably some ingredients in their secret sauce that fall under the HN definition of "execution". We don't know all of those ingredients, but they differentiated Air B&B from the pack.

So, I'd argue there is a right solution for Cambodia's e-commerce, and any problem really. It may not become a billion dollar company, but there is a way to make it profitable. There simply is not a model that's easily copyable from the US. Conditions are very different. There are definitely people working on this problem. Adoption rates appear slow to me. Time will tell when they're successful.

> The trick here is to take something which is is known to work and try to think about what changes would make that thing work where you are

Yeah we are in agreement.

Re: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup

#78

Post by aherlambang »

calcsam wrote: post #39

Well done. It is better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all. If you want to have better odds next time, I'd advise you to read Zero to One. Think about what your secret is. What are you trying to do, what do you know about, that no one else knows? Then do that. When you see lots of competitors, it's a pretty good bet you haven't found a secret.

Always wanted to get a held of that book! Will definitely read it

Re: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup

#79

Post by gexla »

hartpuff wrote: post #68
gexla wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not far off if you throw lunch in there as well. It's growing fast though. The area I'm living in went from relatively quiet with few cars on the road to serious traffic problems in probably 5 years (pulling from memory). Some of that might be increased shopping options in the city pulling in regional shoppers who previously didn't have as much of a need to be in the city. It's hard to say without real numbers though…

If you're living in an area where having a fridge and TV is rare or unusual, if I understand you correctly, then I'd say you're living in a very poor area, not a 'typical' or even average place.

I'm not saying it's rare or unusual. Just that it's on the short list of what people own. People here aren't big consumers. Not the typical household like in the US where people have houses overflowing with crap (and much of that crap being things you can't even get in the Philippines.)

Re: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup

#80

Post by gexla »

redrummr wrote: post #62
AznHisoka wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know about these "stats" online, but would love to hear what someone living in the actual country says.

As somebody who previously was in charge of a large (tens of thousands of staff) finance company's Asia Pacific IT workforce, I looked at dozens of Filipino CVs for new remote hires (we were moving away from India). The salary the worker was expecting was often written in the resume directly ("Expecting no less than 40,000 peso a month"). All of the figures were higher than what they would net, because of the overhea…

Right, as you might expect, programming salaries would be all over the map. Somebody rock solid could get up to $2K and probably more. For many others, there isn't a floor and not much in expectations. You could land someone to be an "ass in seat" for whatever you could get way with in negotiating. The difference might be that the guy making $2K might be creating more than that in value while the others might just be costing you.

I had a buddy who was trying to build a start-up here running on the .Net stack. He was willing to pay $2K for the right person, but couldn't find anyone. The devs he did find he was paying around $1K for and he ended up letting them go through turnover and not replacing them (something would always come up where they would shoot themselves in the foot or just had to quit for whatever reason).

Blue collar labor jobs which may pay decent in the U.S. don't pay anything here. People expect labor and services to be super cheap.

All anecdotal though.

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