How Topica overcame early struggles to become Southeast Asia’s biggest edtech firm

Tuan Pham is the CEO and founder of Topica Edtech Group, quite likely the biggest education tech firm in Southeast Asia. Topica, which provides online English-speaking classes and a marketplace of over 2,000 short skill courses, has recently raised US$50 million in series D funding from Singapore-based private equity firm Northstar Group.

Photo credit: Topica

In an interview with Tech in Asia, he recounts the company’s rise to the top.

Congratulations on your latest funding. Several years ago, you wrote a hugely popular Facebook post about how running a startup is like racing an Ironman triathlon. What’s a key lesson you’ve learned in running a startup and growing it to 1,700 employees?

One of the lessons was that “grit matters, not appearances.” I had always pictured a triathlete as someone who is perfectly muscular, sun-tanned, often adorned with fancy goggles and gear. It turned out that the competition included participants who weigh well over 100 kilograms and even fragile-looking ladies. They all finished the race in spectacular times. People have also told me, “I would not have expected you to be an Ironman finisher, from the way you look.” For me, that is a sweet compliment.

An investor once told me that they bet on startup teams, not because of their qualifications, awards, or other items on their resumes, but because the team proved that they would never quit even if they had to crawl on the road.

What else have you learned?

The phrase I dread the most to hear from a team member is “I have no issues.” There are always issues and problems, but if they are downplaying them, they won’t face them and find solutions. I learned so much from reading [former chairman and CEO of General Electric] Jack Welch and applying his principles.

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, or Jack Ma also have lots of wisdom to offer, but they have had success in only a few industries and have built large teams in only a few countries. Jack Welch succeeded in a dozen industries, in more than 50 countries. And he has had more time to write down his wisdom.

How did Topica attract investors in the past when it was not as big as it is now?

Our series A round went relatively smoothly, but subsequent rounds were much harder. We often mused that it was way easier to show the team’s caliber and a nice-looking PowerPoint presentation to win early investors than to report real traction and numbers to secure later rounds.

I guess our persistence helped convince the investors. Before raising each round, we got to know the investors for years. They witnessed us going through ups and downs and saw how we kept together, stuck to the same vision, and eventually delivered the numbers.

What were some of the toughest moments you faced? Did you ever feel like giving up?

In the early days, we set up booths at an exhibition center and made appointments for a few hundred potential students to come in over the weekend to see our demo product. It was a scary time during a global financial crisis, and our nascent startup had zero revenue. In the next couple months, several other attempts failed to bring in revenue, we were running out of our bootstrapped money, the landlord wanted to raise the office rent, one of our servers broke down, and some staff quit.