5 reasons why Rocket Internet graduates make good entrepreneurs

We’ve seen our share of ex-Rocket Internet employees rocking the startup scene in Asia lately. They helped build companies like Zalora, Lazada, FoodPanda, and OfficeFab from the ground up. But they parted ways and went on to build their own startups. And boy, do they have a good success rate in attracting investors and making waves in the industry.

We talked to five Rocket Internet “graduates” based in Indonesia to find out more about this phenomenon. We found five underlying reasons Rocket Internet helped them in their startup journey so far:

1. Falling into entrepreneurship

Adrian Li, former managing director of Rocket Internet GmbH is now running social dining directory Qraved. He believes that Rocket Internet indirectly enabled non-entrepreneurs to become entrepreneurs.

The salary for those working at Rocket Internet portfolio companies is not too bad. This reduces the relative risk of people who come from their high paying jobs but want to have experience in starting a company.

There are some drawbacks, of course. You don’t really have full control over the company and when it comes to equity, yours is quite marginal. But the benefits are good enough to motivate and get people to take a leap to entrepreneur life. Kevin Aluwi, current Zalora Indonesia head of business intelligence who is now preparing to launch his dating site Setipe, says:

I can’t speak for everyone, but one thing you realize from working at a Rocket company, from the beginning, is that the prospect of starting a company is less intimidating than it might seem.

All the lessons above are relevant to the core members – the ones who took part during the early days of each Rocket Internet company. Mario Suntanu, a former vice president of Rocket Internet GmbH Indonesia and current co-founder of luxury e-commerce site Bobobobo, says that Rocket Internet recruits those with entrepreneurial traits for the initial development phase of its companies. They are the ones most likely to benefit from the learning process.

2. Executing things, Samwer style

Credit: Wired

Ken Leaver, a former CEO of Groupon Ukraine, wrote an article about why Rocket Internet operates so well under the leadership of the Samwer brothers (pictured above). They have an excellent management system and employees can learn from it.

Li seconds that by saying (via PandoDaily) “there’s a lot any entrepreneur can learn from Oliver Samwer, who is incredibly focused and knows the right questions to ask. He’s also very numbers and data driven, which is key to Rocket’s scary efficiency.”

Christian Sutardi, former FoodPanda Indonesia manager who is now running beauty box startup Lolabox with another ex-Rocket Internet employee Cynthia Chaerunnisa, explains the three most important things he learned from the German-based company:

3. Learning how to (or how not to) build company culture

4. Valuable networks

5. Bigger credibility to investors