For the first time, we issued bonuses to our team

Dear Readers,

2019 was Tech in Asia‘s first year of being profitable – with a pretty healthy margin, to boot – and it was wonderful. As a result, we were able to give bonuses to everyone in the team, and that felt great. We even had a company retreat at Bandung, Indonesia, after the Tech in Asia conference:

For the first time, we have control over our own fate, which means that the company can survive without outside capital. If we were to raise money, it would be because we genuinely want to grow faster. We wouldn’t have to do it purely for survival and to lengthen our runway.

To be clear, the bonus isn’t huge – just a couple of hundreds of dollars on average. 🤗 But it tasted so sweet, because it felt like a hard-won feat in our quest towards profitability.

I felt particularly proud when one of our key shareholders called earlier this week to congratulate our team for a fruitful 2019. I immediately shared the feels with Maria Li, our chief operating officer, who has been instrumental to our success last year. That’s her, striking a pose at a hike the team took during our company retreat.

So yes, we did it. But truth be told, we aren’t done yet, and we cannot afford to rest on our laurels. It’s just the beginning of a long climb and we’re currently at the foot of the mountain. The next step is to answer a big question: What will we do with our profits?

Because we spent the last 10 years building the startup community, we’re confident that Tech in Asia is now the leader in the English-language coverage of tech and startups in the region.

In this decade, we’re looking to bring even more in-depth insights into Asia’s tech ecosystem. As startups grow more significant and with billions of capital involved, we believe the community is hungry for credible data and incisive intelligence to make informed decisions.

Read:

• The most connected VCs in Asia
• What Southeast Asia can learn from China’s VC-startup network
• SEA startup funding ends decade on a high, but warning signs emerge

In short, we have to continuously innovate to remain true to our mission and to stay relevant to the community. You’ll see us investing heavily into our newsroom, experimenting with data-driven journalism, and producing even more original content. We’ll be balancing these goals with the challenge of staying profitable for many years to come.