What we learnt at the MaGIC Accelerator Program

I’m writing this blog at the end of the MaGIC Accelerator Program (MAP) with our team, Eggbun. I am hoping to share our experience in MaGIC and to facilitate your decision in applying for the excellent program.

Before I proceed, here’s what we got out of the program:

• Monthly active users before MaGIC 40,000/ End of MaGIC 100,000
• Monthly net revenue before MaGIC US$3600/ End of MaGIC US$11,000
• Number of investment deals closed: 2

We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves and say that we are absolutely going to succeed, because we are still young and I still feel nervous watching our corporate data go up and down everyday, even though the graph goes upwards month on month.

I would rather focus on “paying-it-forward”.

In March 2016, we enjoyed our initial outpouring of love coming from our Indonesian customers (we call them “Bunners”).

We wanted to to get to know the Southeast Asia market better, given the exciting potential of tapping into this customer base. This was how we decided to join the MaGIC Accelerator Program.

Besides the amazing perks of the program, we also felt that Malaysia was not only a great place to focus on our product development, but was also a good place to foster team spirit with our decision to stay in the same location, together, for a period of time.

Moving to another country altogether was also out of the question due to financial limitations, but which we were able to do with the MaGIC program. Here’s more about our first week at MaGIC.

Having been bootstrapping for several months, we decided to enter an accelerator program to boost our team’s performance.

We had concrete reasons for setting up camp in Malaysia (thanks to the MAP team for selecting us). Yet at the end of program, I came to realize that things were a bit different from my expectations. I’ll name a few.

First and foremost, the Southeast Asian market is really complicated.

I literally tried to meet every market expert here, but no one can explain what causes what. It’s just too dynamic a market.

I’m still learning the ins and outs of starting up day by day, and although now I have some hypotheses to test out, we’re still a long way from that “Aha! moment”.

Secondly, nobody will do your homework for you.

Lastly, and most importantly, you can’t succeed in your company alone.

To wrap up, let me briefly list the pros and cons of applying for the MaGIC Accelerator Program.