How this 23-year-old CEO battled rain, skeptical suppliers, and sarcastic friends

The team at Runningman.my. (L-R) Hao Ting Lee, Khai Siang Cham, Andrew Chee, and Wei Yong Tan. Photo credit: Runningman.my.

This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with 米雷牛 Millennials where we publish the revised transcripts from their interviews with millennial entrepreneurs. This is heavily revised from the original transcripts of three interviews. For the full interviews, go here, here, and here.

Andrew Chee is the 23-year-old CEO and co-founder behind food delivery service Runningman.my. The company’s promise: deliver your food within an hour.

Chee created the startup with his co-founder Wei Yong Tan when he was only 21 years old and still in university. In our conversation with him, he talks about the difficulties of starting up so young and how he copes with the pressure.

What is Runningman.my?

Runningman.my is a platform where you can order food in your area, and we will deliver it to you within an hour.

We chose the name because of what we did on day one. We literally ran to different shops on foot to deliver food to our customers. Now, most of our delivery teams use motorcycles to deliver goods.

Who is Andrew Chee?

I studied psychology at Tunku Abdul Rahman University College (TAR UC).

At first, the idea behind building this startup was to save money. I used to have many part-time jobs—from being a promoter to working at an office.

My co-founder and I knew each other through a community event in university. After the event ended, we got bored and wanted to work on something. We noticed that a lot of students were living around the university (they live in houses in groups of seven to eight people). The interesting thing was that, in these groups, there was always one “representative” who would be chosen to go and buy dinner. Boys or girls, it’s the same phenomenon.

So we thought, “Why not we try to become their runners, help them get takeaways, and see if they will be willing to pay for such services?” We started running our service by charging US$0.12 in the beginning.

Initially, we didn’t think about profits or business models because we just enjoyed making some pocket money while providing services to others. We operated at night on a part-time basis, as we needed to attend school in the day. This was when we were only in our second year at university.

What has been the most memorable moment?

Exams were around the corner, and the demand for our service had spiked because more students were holed up at home preparing. There were a lot of orders.

One evening, it was raining heavily. The two of us had to hand-carry the food and run around delivering them. We didn’t carry an umbrella with us because we needed the other hand to use our phones to take orders. We were soaked in the rain, but we thought it was all worth it. The moment when customers expressed their gratitude to us (e.g. when they asked us to wear raincoats or when they gave us tips) made us immensely happy.

Looking back at this moment, it reminds me of how challenging the journey has been.

What were some of your biggest challenges?

How do you hire and manage young people?

How about managing employees who are older?