I finally had time to settle down and pen down my thoughts on last Friday’s East Ventures’s Jakarta night. In one word, the event was simply ‘amazing’. I thoroughly enjoyed live blogging at the event.
Well… there were several start-ups that didn’t manage to communicate their business idea smoothly. But hey, we should still give them full credits and pat on the back. I understand how tough it is to give a pitch to over 100 people. The stress and anxiety affect performance, but some founders were still able to pitch with confidence and humor. That takes a lot of preparation and courage. The pitches were a level harder than usual because the founders were required to pitch in English. After all, English isn’t their first language. If you’re a founder reading this, you may want to check out Adeo Ressi’s advice on the one sentence introduction pitch.
Most of the ideas pitched were either clones or mashups of different web services. The founders were clear about this and weren’t shy to admit. Putting innovation aside, what really matters is the result. I was particularly impressed with Disdus’s statistics (Indonesia’s largest Groupon clone). Jason, founder of Disdus, said that his site grew from 1,500 unique visits in August to 140,000 unique visits this month. On Facebook, Disdus has attracted over 80,000 likes so far. It is a great result achieved in 6 months.
Besides the founders’ pitches, I thought Mr Mahendra Siregar’s speech was really motivating, especially for the Indonesians. He highlighted that the prime time to be an entrepreneur in Indonesia is now and applauded East Ventures for creating a healthy ecosystem in the country. “Most of you are young and you don’t need to be a millionaire immediately… So take risk and try!” he said.
That night, East Ventures also announced its investment of two new start-ups – Nightspade and Teknoup (congrats!). I didn’t manage to cover both in the live blog because Hyatt’s wi-fi went down. Stay tuned, though. We will feature Nightspade soon. You can read Teknoup’s story here.
A great event attracts great people. That night was also a great learning experience. We don’t have much opportunity to speak with start-up founders and investors because most of them are usually buried with work. It was a perfect opportunity meeting people with experience and wide network. I look forward to attend the next East Ventures event. Below are some images to give you an inkling how the event went about.
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