Helping you run a successful startup

This is part 3 of a 3 part series on how to build a recruiting machine. This last part will wrap up the series with how to think through compensation and negotiations to close candidates as well as onboard them effectively.

As the government pours more money into deep tech startups, it'll be more challenging for deep tech startups to rise above the rest. In this article we'll provide 4 essential tips to make any deep tech startup pitch more attractive to investors.

This is part 2 of a 3 part series on how to build a recruiting machine. It covers the motivations for why it's important to get really good at hiring plus writing your first job description, this part will address specific tactics on sourcing and interview loops, and part 3 will dig into how to close your candidates.

This is part 1 of a 3 part series on how to build a recruiting machine. This first part will dig into the motivations for why it's important to get really good at hiring plus writing your first job description, part 2 will address specific tactics on sourcing and interview loops, and part 3 will dig in how to close your candidates.

Today it’s easier than ever to get creative and build a functional experiment with a shoestring budget. Remember, you should consider your MVP to be an experiment, not a product (I know the naming is confusing). Think of it as a throwaway thing that will end up in the trash later, not the first version of your actual product.

Working with outsourced engineers can either be a cost-effective, time-saving solution or a nightmare of communications and an expensive source of bugs/technical debt. To increase the probability of having a successful engagement, I've compiled a three step guide below.

By far, the biggest takeaway for me is: Founders are ready for primetime. A prime time founder is someone who's ready to take venture capital, grow at ungodly speeds, has the knowledge and capacity to control the organized chaos of a a startup company, and are ambitious and thinking big.

Southeast Asia is growing incredibly fast. After founding, helping, and just generally being around startups for the past 15 years of my life, I now know that growth rates are the signals you should follow. High growth rates lead to large TAMs very quickly. But why is this region growing so fast?

Founders in the Bay Area have all spent the past couple weeks putting together contingency plans for their tech startups. We want to help export some of that knowledge to SE Asia companies to make sure you're thinking about the same things for your company.

Founders of Decide.com (acquired by eBay) are starting a YC-style accelerator in Southeast Asia and investing USD $150K into every startup that's accepted.

Partner at AC Ventures, oversees the SE Asia Mobility Fund. Was the co-founder of Rukita, where he scaled the company to its first $3M revenue. He's also the Visiting Parter for Iterative's W23 batch.

Chinmay Chauhan is the co-founder of BukuWarung (YC S20). He raised $80M in funding and grew the organisation to 400 people. He's also a Visiting Partner for Iterative's W23 batch.

Tessa Wijaya is the Co-Founder and COO of Xendit, a leading payment gateway in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. Xendit became a unicorn in 2021, making Tessa the only female unicorn founder in Indonesia.

How do you get to 100 *paying* customers? We asked three of our Iterative founders, and here were their answers.

Sia is the co-founder of Tranglo in 2008, a payment processing company that powers the last-mile cross-border payout for various banks and fintechs globally. In 2021, Ripple purchased a 40% stake in Tranglo for an undisclosed amount.

Before Iterative, Sylvia was the co-founder of Omnilytics, a retail insights platform. At Omnilytics, Sylvia led Customer Success, growing NRR to >100% and serving global clients like Uniqlo, Lenzing, and Lidl.

We've asked some of our portfolio founders on their experiences doing office hours during their time in the batch - and what they've learned.

Kum Hong is a business leader, GM and angel investor. He spent 10 years at Airbnb, starting as the APAC General Counsel before transitioning to run business and operations as the APAC Regional Director in 2017. Three years later, he was appointed as COO for Airbnb China.

There are a number of ideas or trends we’re particularly interested in. We thought it'd be helpful to be public about them in the hopes that it would (1) encourage founders working on these ideas to apply and (2) help people get started on ideas we think are interesting.

We pick 10 startups, share them with over 200+ investors and connect you with the investors that are interested.

In the past 3 months, we've met with over 220 companies from all over Southeast Asia and are excited to announce our Winter 2021 batch.

We started a podcast! Most of the time, we will be interviewing people who start, operate, and invest in startups, on how they got started and what their experience is like. Once in a while, like in the first episode, we'll be giving practical advice around a specific topic.

We're excited to host open online office hours for startup founders every Friday throughout the month of October. Office hours are 20-minute sessions between you and one of our partners, where they try to help you with your startup as much as they can. This is very similar to the partner meetings we hold with companies during the batch.

In three short months we met with 200 founders from all over Southeast Asia and narrowed it down to the eight startups you see here. We've also included a short blurb on why we're thrilled to have them as a part of our program.

For a startup to be successful, it needs to be solving an important problem.

What do we look for when deciding to invest in startups?

The most important thing for a startup, and by extension the engineers at the startup, is iteration speed.

Here are the 3 questions I ask myself when trying to answer this question and what to do about it.

Fundraising is slow right now. My hunch is fundraising both will pick up in the second half of this year. Here's why.

Interestingly enough, 'product market fit' is a term often used by founders starting out but almost never by more experienced founders. Why?

A year ago, I wrote our first Request for Startups - and I'm revisiting the themes again to see what I got right or wrong.

A common question we get is: “Which is more important in fundraising: a strong story or strong traction?” But what is a strong story and strong traction — and why are they important?