April 2, 2022
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Mengubah Kelemahan Bisnis Menjadi Keunggulan

Sebagai founder startup yang masih merintis di fase awal, biasanya kita mudah merasa minder karena banyaknya keterbatasan. Hal ini bukan tanpa alasan, karena jika kita fokus ke keterbatasannya hampir semua aspek dari operasional akan jadi alasan mengapa kita tidak bisa perform optimal. Terbatas modal misalnya, bisa jadi sebab kita ga bisa alokasi uang cukup banyak agar punya tim yang cukup proper dalam mengembangkan produk. Ingin hire talent yang berpengalaman dan ahli juga berbatas keuangan atau reputasi. Mau kerja sama dengan partner besar juga terbatas portfolio yang belum banyak. Mau mendapatkan customer besar juga terbatas track record yang belum ada. Tapi…

March 27, 2022
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Mencegah dan Mengatasi Konflik Co-Founder

Siapa sangka dua orang atau lebih orang yang punya ide dan menjalankan bisnis yang sama sedari awal bisa berujung konflik bahkan hingga saling tuntut di pengadilan? Tapi itulah kenyataan yang terjadi dalam membangun sebuah startup, konflik antar para co-founder sangat mungkin terjadi. Bukan hanya bisa berdampak pada penurunan moral perusahaan, tapi eksistensi atau keberlanjutan perusahaan bahkan bisa terancam. Kita mungkin pernah mendengar konflik yang terjadi antar co-founder Facebook Mark Zuckerberg dengan Eduardo Saverin. Mereka berdua bersama Dustin Moskovitz dan Chris Hughes bersama sama yang membangun Facebook tahun 2004. Konflik bermula saat Zuckerberg dan Saverin memang sudah banyak beda pendapat atas…

February 26, 2022
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Dilema Inovasi, Kanibalisasi Diri untuk Tetap Relevan

Kodak pernah menjadi salah satu perusahaan paling besar dan paling profitable di dunia. Kesuksesan mereka dimotori oleh kemampuan mereka untuk memberikan layanan terintegrasi ke konsumennya, dari pembuatan film, device kamera, hingga teknologi printing fotonya. Namun kejayaan Kodak memudar sejak fotografi digital mulai marak dan mendisrupsi pasar, hingga akhirnya mereka bangkrut di tahun 2012. Prototype kamera digital pertama sebenarnya ditemukan tahun 1975 oleh engineer Kodak sendiri bernama Steven Seasson. Namun Kodak tidak mampu menjadikan teknologi ini sebagai prioritas utama pengembangan bisnis mereka hingga akhirnya mereka kesulitan beradaptasi dengan teknologi fotografi digital saat sudah banyak diadopsi di pasar. Sebuah pertanyaan usil adalah…

February 1, 2022
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Tentang Tidur: Antara Kesehatan dan Produktivitas

Saya sejak kuliah termasuk orang yang banyak membanggakan kebiasaan tidur sedikit. Menjadikan parameter sedikitnya tidur sebagai asosiasi dari produktif. Dulu rata2 di kampus cuma tidur di 4-5 jam sehari. Sekarang agak bertambah sih rata2 di 5-6 jam, tapi tetap saja masih cukup sedikit dibanding ajuran idel 8 jam sehari. Pandangan saya tentang tidur mulai terbuka sejak baca bukunya Matthew Walker berjudul “Why We Sleep”. Buku itu menceritakan dengan detail seluk beluk tentang tidur beserta dasar penelitian yang telah dilakukan oleh ribuan peneliti di seluruh dunia. Kalau mau diringkas, manfaat tidur ini banyak banget. Tidur bisa mencegah penyakit : diabetes, kardiovaskular…

January 5, 2022
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Perlukah CEO yang Baik agar Perusahaan jadi Bagus?

Kebanyakan orang dapat dengan mudah menarik kesimpulan dari kejadian di sekelilingnya. Dasarnya bisa dari pengalaman, data yang diketahui, ataupun pola berulang yang bisa dilihat. Tapi tidak semua kesimpulan yang kita buat dan yakini itu benar. Hal ini karena bahan penyusun kesimpulan itu sendiri terbatas dan bikin kesimpulan kita jadi keliru. Di dalam bukunya berjudul Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman menjelaskan karakteristik manusia yang suka dan mudah mengambil kesimpulan dari data atau sumber yang terbatas. Ini terbawa dari dorongan bagian otak reptil kita yang mengatur tindakan refleks, instingtif, dan reaksional. Maunya mempermudah kita menciptakan kesimpulan atau cerita biarpun bahan penyusunnya…

July 13, 2021
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Selamat Jalan Bang Arief

Suasana malam hari ini terasa kelam di hati, mendapat kabar guru saya, Dr. Arief Munandar meninggal dunia. Beliau adalah sosok yang sangat berpengaruh dalam perjalanan mendewasa saya. Sedari masih mahasiswa saat berkenalan dengan beliau di RK begitu banyak dapat pelajaran, terinspirasi dari value, ilmu, dan teladan beliau. Belum cukup kebersamaan selama setahun lebih di asrama pembinaan RK saat masih mahasiswa, saya ikut berguru lagi bersama beliau sepekan sekali di rumahnya. Saya mungkin termasuk salah satu murid-murid generasi awal beliau buat kelompok pengajian. Beliau punya banyak murid hingga kini, ratusan jumlahnya. Dari founder startup unicorn, petinggi BUMN/BUMD, profesional sukses, politisi baik…

April 13, 2021
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Get Your Hands Dirty in Your Early Days

Every entrepreneur wants to turn their business into a scalable business. It means creating a great product that serves a lot of people’s needs in the world. Hence, it is very challenging to create a scalable business without building a product that people love. We have to get customer’s preferences in order to grow and to scale. One of the best practices in creating a product that sparks love from their customer is doing things that aren’t scalable. It may seem contradictory to our goal to create a scalable product by things that aren’t scalable. That is the reason many…

April 2, 2021
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Finding the Reason Why You are the Best Person to Do This

In one of my trips, I heard a story from podcast about Halodoc founder; Jonathan Sudartha. He talked the story about his life before building Halodoc. He found a problem about lack of access to medical doctors in Indonesia when he started to learn about his family giant business before inherit it. Born in a family that has a giant health and pharmacy business, Jonathan had to learn about how to continue his father’s leadership. He started from the lowest position in the company. He became a salesman that had to sell medicine through doctors. Jonathan had met thousands of…

March 30, 2021
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Learning Experiences from Airbnb : from the Darkest to the Brightest Outstanding Success during Covid Era

Travel industry is one of industries that got the hardest hit during the covid era. Many travel companies reported huge drops in their revenue. Some companies also have to permanently stop their operations. Airbnb is one of the companies in the travel industry that got a big punch in their face because of covid.  They were in rapid growth in early 2020. Then they have to accept the fact that they lost 80% of their revenue started in April 2020. Aribnb got much media attention after releasing the information that they had to lay off quarter of their employees.  Brian…

March 28, 2021
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Unescapable Challange

In your entrepreneur journey have you ever faced a problem that makes you really sad and hopeless? Our chest feels burned and our steps feel wobbled. We experienced many sleepless nights wondering countless problems in our business. We are afraid to get out of our bed and to walk into the office to meet our team. Starting a new business is a stressful job that can create emotional turbulence. According to the Gallup Wellbeing Index, 45% of entrepreneurs report being stressed compared to 42% of “other workers.” Entrepreneurs also report being more likely to have nervous wrecks than most people….

February 16, 2021
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Fight Using the Small Conscience We Believe

Last week I was quite surprised to hear the news about the IPO of Bumble. Bumble is a dating application that puts women to make their first move. Wolfe Herd; the CEO of Bumble, became the youngest self-made woman billionaire in the world after the IPO. She made a warm celebration by carrying her baby in her company’s NASDAQ opening. Bumble started catching my attention when Wolfe Herd was being interviewed in the Master of Scale podcast by Reid Hoffman. She told the story about how she started Bumble. Bumble is not her first dating application, she was a co-founder…

February 14, 2021
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More than Winning

One of the important aspects in business that becomes a big challenge for entrepreneurs is competition. We see competitors as big enemies that have to be defeated. In a talk show Nadiem Makarim told the story of how he saw his competitor; Grab. Nadiem respected his competitor very much because Gojek could not push themselves to the limit without Grab’s existence. Competing with Grab was a wonderful experience for Nadiem personally. Entrepreneurs often notice the competition as the most important war. Therefore, winning is a must for them so they will do everything in order to win. Yet there is…

January 24, 2021
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The Victim vs The Player

Being a leader is not only about structural position, but also about responsibility to build cooperating team along with productive work ethic in it. It needs mutual respect and support for each of the members in the company. Yet that would be rather challenging when we see our team members blaming each other, especially when things go wrong. Blaming usually even stimulates more conflicts to happen and makes its person feels alienated from the team unity. In order to create a productive work ethic we have to stop blaming habit and start to take responsibility. Blaming and declining responsibility are…

January 19, 2021
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Memaknai Setiap Momen

Awal Januari kemarin saya belikan Azima kembang api sparklers (kembang api kecil yang dipegang berbentuk tongkat). Senang bukan kepalang Ia. Dari siang dibelikan, diulang-ulang terus pengingatannya ke ayahnya supaya bisa temani main kembang api malam nanti. Saya baru sadar, ini sepertinya baru pertama Azima main kembang api. Begitu dimainkan tawa riangnya lepas. Ditariknya keluar Bundanya untuk ikut bermain. Dia simpan beberapa bungkus untuk main dengan sepupunya besok-besok. Saya membatin, kok kembang api sederhana yang bagi saya tidak terlalu berkesan tapi buat anak perempuan ini bisa begitu menyenangkan. Saya menerka mungkin karena Ia menikmati penuh momen main kembang api yang menjadikannya…

January 17, 2021
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Navigating Your Current Stage Using Traction Model

In my previous writing we already know that building a big business dream needs certain stages throughout the journey ahead. The stages are going to help us in breaking down particular milestones we have to achieve. Building an IDR 1 trillion Company would be more measurable when we split the target into some smaller targets in a timeline. To help you divide the stages needed for your business you can use the framework introduced by Ash Maurya in his book titled Running Lean. He divided the startup stages; into three important stages which are Problem Solution Fit stage, Product Market…

January 11, 2021
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Menjadi Manajer dengan Output Tinggi

Dulu ketika ada yang bertanya bagaimanakah tipe manajemen saya dalam mengatur organisasi, saya selalu jawab dengan kalimat: Tipe manajerial saya adalah dengan keteladanan. Saya cukup puas dengan jawaban itu, namun nyatanya dalam kondisi riil tidak cukup hanya dengan keteladanan untuk membuat performa tim kita optimal. Saya menemukan jawaban yang memuaskan ketika membaca buku Andrew Grove berjudul High Output Management pekan lalu. Salah satu statement yang Om Grove ulang beberapa kali dalam bukunya adalah : tanggung jawab utama dari seorang manajer itu adalah membawa performa subordinatnya ke level yang paling optimal. Dengan tanggung jawab itu seorang manajer harus memiliki strategi yang…

January 8, 2021
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Setting Up Minimum Success Criteria

Every entrepreneur has their own big dream when they start their business. Either they want their business to be a unicorn (business valuation’s reach more than USD 1 billion) or a Phoenix (a business that can survive for hundred years). Therefore, entrepreneurs have difficulties in breaking down their big dream into certain concrete-measurable targets. Hanging our big dream to be a source of our motivation sometimes is not enough. We can lose our confidence when we see the gap between the end goal and the current reality. Moreover, it can damage our team morale and soon they will start looking…

January 3, 2021
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Membangun Produk Pain Killer atau Sekedar Vitamin?

Ada sebuah pandangan di kalangan founder startup yang dijadikan pedoman ketika ingin mencari sebuah ide bisnis yang potensial: Buatlah sebuah produk Pain-killer, alih-alih hanya vitamin. Pain-killer adalah sebuah produk yang dapat menyelesaikan permasalahan penting serta harus diselesaikan secepatnya. Ketika tidak terselesaikan maka orang tersebut menempatkan dirinya pada resiko. Sedangkan vitamin adalah istilah untuk produk “nice-to-have“. Ketika kita ingat kita menggunakannya. Customer suka, tapi tidak benar-benar sangat membutuhkannya. Sebagai ilustrasi, di kondisi pandemi seperti sekarang ini, vaksin covid-19 adalah salah satu contoh produk pain-killer. Masyarakat dunia punya masalah yang sangat genting dan penting dengan virus covid-19. Dan vaksin bisa menjadi solusi…

January 2, 2021
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The Stages of Business Journey

Tesla’s valuation grew by 740% in 2020. They are now the most valuable automakers company in the world. In the early days of Tesla, Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla) had a dream to build a mainstream-affordable and 100 percent electric car. However, building an affordable and 100% electric car is a really hard problem, even for the top 10 biggest automakers, that is still a big deal. Instead of tackling it all at once, Tesla staged their journey into some particular steps. First, they built a high-performance electric sports car; the Tesla Roadster. It targeted high-end market that can afford…

December 24, 2020
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Slowing Down in Your Early Stage

Many people said that building startup is all about speed and moment. You have to move fast and reach the scaling stage as soon as possible before ruining out your money or outstep by your competitors. This is true when we look at all the unicorns in their place now. They are very fast. They do many things in parallel, and also spend a lot of money more than we can imagine. However, that’s what we see when they are already validated their business model. In my opinion, we have to zoom in on their journey when they are still…