Fortune favors the bold at Bukalapak

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Hello reader,

Would you rather be lucky or good?

OK, the answer is probably both. But if someone puts a gun to your head (talk about bad luck), I think you might choose lucky. After all, so much of life is out of our immediate control, so a dose of good fortune is always welcome.

I was lucky enough last week to catch part of Bukalapak president Teddy Oetomo’s session at the Tech in Asia conference. I found what he had to say about good fortune in business pretty refreshing.

Oetomo admitted that the Indonesian ecommerce firm was lucky to list for its IPO when it did. Kudos to him for the honesty: Some executives would rather give the impression that their company’s successes are down to smarts and hard work.

Of course, Bukalapak needed to be prepared to take advantage of the auspicious timing. My colleague Simon has the full story on Oetomo’s talk and what the former academic has learned from his five years at Bukalapak.

Today we look at:

• Nuggets of wisdom on going public, magic metrics, and people management from Bukalapak’s president
• Protos Labs’ goal of bringing cybercrime insurance tech to Vietnam
• Other newsy highlights such as Singaporean healthtech startup WhiteCoat hitting breakeven and an Indian AI startup getting backing from Nexus Venture Partners and Y Combinator.

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Leader of the pack

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Teddy Oetomo joined Bukalapak as chief strategy officer in 2018 and became its president just two years later.

He’s learned a lot in that short span of time, and he shared some insights on stage at the Tech in Asia Conference in Jakarta last week.

• Right place, right time: Oetomo called Bukalapak listing months before the Federal Reserve turned hawkish on interest rates “sheer luck.” However, he helped put the infrastructure in place so the Indonesian ecommerce platform could pounce on this opportunity. For example, there was no virtual data room – a must for an IPO – when he joined the company.
• Marathon, not a sprint: There’s a big difference between heading up a startup and a large, publicly traded company – a fact some founders ignore. He noted that in its early days, a startup can’t hire the best talent but must rely on those the founder can persuade to join instead. As a company transitions to the next stage of growth, bringing the right people in and saying goodbye to some early hires is the “biggest challenge,” he explained.
• Metric mania: Gross merchandise value (GMV) is regularly used by ecommerce platforms as a measure of success, but Oetomo and Bukalapak aren’t as convinced of its power. Instead, the company stresses the importance of keeping an eye on revenue as “not all GMV is created equal.”

Crime doesn’t pay, but cybercrime insurance might

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