Honestbee co-founder speaks up for the first time after leaving the startup

Jonathan Low, one of the three founders of Honestbee, has gone on the record for the first time about his experiences at the embattled startup.

In an exclusive interview for an upcoming episode of Startup Snapshot, Tech in Asia’s podcast, he describes the culture under Honestbee’s previous CEO Joel Sng as well as the indecisions and the lack of focus that all contributed to the company’s predicament.

The startup’s founders (L-R): Isaac Tay, Joel Sng, and Jonathan Low. Photo credit: Honestbee.

Sng “had a very strong way of managing or putting a vision across,” says Low. “It’s a culture that’s very top-down, with a high insistence on just having one way.” As a result, only people who really believed in the idea stayed at Honestbee, with dissenters walking away after working just a short stint at the firm.

Low thinks that Sng’s management style was a big factor in fellow co-founder Isaac Tay’s departure in December 2018.

From Low’s perspective, Tay played the devil’s advocate by bringing up worst-case scenarios, and working on contingency plans as well as alternative ideas. This approach may have rubbed Sng the wrong way, and as a result, Tay was transferred from role to role as a penalty.

In the end, Low sensed that Tay left because he felt that he was no longer valued.

Sng’s leadership style also created a huge management overhead. As Low tells it, he, Tay, and other managers had to shield their teams from micromanagement and impossible goals by limiting direct contact with Sng. However, it was not always possible when it came to priority projects.

The difficult demands resulted in breakdowns and trauma among the staff. “After something bad happens and people are in shock, Isaac would go to the team […] he’d go above and beyond to make sure people [were] all right. He helped to rationalize what things were,” recalls Low.

Ultimately, people worked long hours but were not necessarily productive. While Honestbee launched many services, such as a B2B delivery arm and an e-wallet, it lacked the resources to run them well. In Low’s assessment, the startup was great at launching businesses but not scaling them.

There was a lack of transparency about the finances, too. Even though he was a co-founder, Low was kept in the dark about the company financials until it was too late.

That led to the startup’s unmonitored spending, and going beyond its means resulted in unpaid debts and salaries. While Honestbee eventually downsized, the decision was only made at the eleventh hour. Sng left the company in May this year. Tech in Asia reached out to Sng for comments on this story but did not hear back.

See: The inside story of what went wrong at Honestbee and what’s next

Honestbee is now picking up the pieces, with new CEO Ong Lay Ann steering the company towards a relaunch.