Coffee Chat: A Foreigner Building a Startup in Indonesia

Building a startup is never a smooth-sailing journey, let alone building a startup in a foreign land. It takes a lot of understanding, localization of mindsets, and a whole lot of guts. Our very own Tech in Asia editor, Charlie Custer, speaks with Remco Lupker and Arnold Sebastian Egg, co-founders of Tokobagus.com sharing their journey building a startup in Indonesia.

#15:08: Remco: Tokobagus.com is an online classifieds site, started seven years ago.

#15:11: Charlie: Differences in doing startups in Europe and in Indonesia?

Remco: Here in Indonesia, everyone supports each other, whereas in Europe you’re all alone. You have to be independent. It’s more motivating over here.

Arnold: In Indonesia you can start small and grow it eventually.

#15:13: Charlie: What brought you both to Indonesia?

Arnold: It was just luck. I was in Indonesia for holiday and discovered the presence of internet cafes. There’s a potential here.

#15:15: Arnold: It helped a lot when it was easy to talk to the government. There was no proper infrastructure when we first entered Indonesia. We basically introduced our services, worked directly with the government. It was a blessing that we could speak their language in order to facilitate things.

Remco: If you want to start anything here, you need to learn their language here. You need to adjust your mindset, and not carry a “this is how we do it back home” mindset. I came with this mindset, but eventually realised I need to adapt to situations here as well.

#15:18: Arnold: I was a beach person, and I was walking around talking to local people, understanding the culture. If you want to learn the language, you must talk the language. It was lucky I was very young so I could pick things up fast.

Remco: I’m a little older. When I first moved here, nobody around me was speaking english. It forced me to learn the language.

#15:19: Arnold: Business landscape here is really friendly. If you can connect to people, be humble, and don’t be high up and mighty.

Remco: We’re dutch. And we’re known to be really straightforward and harsh. Difference here in Indonesia is that they’re all really polite, and a little more nice than we are. But the basis of doing business here is pretty much the same.