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Hello there,
Fresh out of college after completing my degree in mass media, I wanted to become a copywriter and enter the glamorous world of advertising. It was the creativity that attracted me to the field and my limited knowledge of the job told me it would be fun.
But when I joined an ad agency, I found it daunting to write about products I wasn’t familiar with. The copy I thought was interesting would be thrown out the window by the client, which meant I had to go back to the drawing board numerous times.
Within a year, I loathed writing descriptions of products and I wasn’t doing well at the role, so I quit. I’m glad that I failed at that job as it led me to find a career in journalism.
Similarly, in this week’s Big Story, my colleague writes about Michael Luhukay, a serial entrepreneur in Indonesia. He opens up about the startup failures he has gone through and what he learned from them.
Luhukay has built multiple companies, including two startups he was running at the same time in 2010. While some of his ventures are still standing, like luxury-car community Speed Creed, two of them – Gobann and Kartoo – were forced to shut down.
He doesn’t see these closures as a bad thing. In fact, investors are now looking for founders who have previously failed, he says.
Speaking about investors, Y Combinator – one of the top global accelerators – has seen a drop in the number of startups from Southeast Asia and India in its cohorts recently. We explore to see if there is more to these figures and if it is steering clear of the region.
Meanwhile, Adobe has launched its own generative AI model, Firefly, which is trained on the company’s own data sets. Unlike other models, Adobe looks to put ethics at the center of its product. More on this in AI Odyssey.
— Collin
PS: Wishing you a Happy Easter in advance. We’ll be taking a short break next week and be back in your inbox on April 18.
THE BIG STORY
Why this serial entrepreneur keeps going after 2 failed startups
Image credit: Timmy Loen
MAKING WAVES
AI ODYSSEY
NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW
FYI
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