Build a minimum viable product, then test it at a coffee shop

Cheryl Yeoh is the co-founder and CEO at CityPockets, a digital wallet and secondary marketplace for daily deals. Her New York City based startup allows users to automagically import all their daily deal vouchers from various deal sites so they can keep track of them in one spot.  They can also sell them if they can’t use the voucher before they expire.

We caught up with Cheryl, who hailed from Malaysia, to get some insights from her trip here as mentor to the current batch of Founders Institute Singapore participants.

In Spring of 2010, she noticed that she’d bought so many vouchers from various deal sites that she lost track of them. The risk of losing money from expiring vouchers made her realise that daily deal vouchers were fast becoming a new form of currency and that led to the inspiration for CityPockets.

“I’ve always believed that the best products are created when you’re trying to solve a real problem that you experience every day, since you can truly understand the pain points and you’re familiar with it. Don’t try to solve a problem that you don’t have or that is not within your domain expertise,” she said.

Hire people who can embrace your company culture

Filled with zest, Cheryl started getting more involved in the tech scene and talking to people about her idea. She had previously met her co-founder, Jhony, at Cornell University but only figured to start CityPockets together when they were re-introduced by her mentor, Ray Lau.

“It just took one cafe meeting, a mutual desire to become entrepreneurs and to work on a “side project” together (we both still had full time jobs),” she revealed.

In Fall 2010, she quit her job as a management consultant and started working on CityPockets full time.

Although raising funds was a challenge at the beginning, people problems became more pressing as her startup matured.

After CityPockets got funded, recruiting and retaining the core members of the company became more crucial. “For an early stage startup, it’s really tough to find the right team member who possesses the appropriate skills at the right salary range and is equally passionate about the product and space that you’re in,” she said.

What she learnt was that hiring for the right personality and culture is more important than pure skill sets.

“Hiring the wrong person into a small team can be very detrimental to the company so it would be wise to wait until you find the right person. It’s like marriage; you don’t want to settle and you certainly don’t want to compromise on your values.”