Breaking My Habit, Day+6 +7 +8: Jakarta Startup Weekend July 2013

Jakarta Startup Weekend July 2013 is finally over!

I mentioned about this event several weeks ago, but if you haven't read it, here's the summary:

The concept for the event is quite simple. In 54 hours, participants are required to form teams and develop an IT-related startup idea. They will need to refine those ideas, validate it with potential customers, find the business model, and most importantly, make the simple prototype for it (either a mobile app or website). At the end of the 3rd day, each team will need to present their ideas in front of several judges, who will then select top 3 teams based on their business model, customer validation, and execution (technical and design-wise). 

I have no idea what are those judging criterias...

Anyway, the participants are categorized into 3 types: a designer, developer, and non-technical. A designer designs, developer writes the codes, and non-technical person is usually the businessman type, the ones with the most experience when dealing with business aspects of a product. I picked the non-technical role, as I am not a designer nor developer. Well, I'm not really a businessman, but I think that's the closest thing I can manage to be.

The event took place in @america, Pacific Place (1st day) and Prasetiya Mulya Business School Cilandak (2nd and 3rd day). 

Prasetiya Mulya Business School

The class where the event took place

Nice spot for hanging around

A lot of cool ideas were pitched in the event. After carefully selecting the ideas, I decided to join 'Sekolah Pengembangan Diri' team. Our team's idea is to create a platform where trainers (motivational trainers, etc) could post their content and the viewers (people who needs access to those content) can get it for free. The leader of our team was actually a trainer himself, and he showed his crowd-grabbing skills in his final pitch!

He really looks like Ryan Higa 

Too bad our team did not win the game, but winning was never on my check list in the first place (the winner definitely deserve their winning). My intention was to have fun, meet new people, and learn new stuffs. In those aspects, I have no complaints.

Some of the things that I learned in these past 3 days:

- How a startup company is made. Start with your idea, 'match' it with what the customer needs (validation), refine the idea when needed, find the appropriate business model and revenue stream, create the financial model, then execute the plan and see what happens. Check out these series of video if you wanted to know more.

- Idea is not everything. A good idea does not guarantee a successful company. A normal idea with good execution is better than good idea with poor execution.

- Release early, release often. The kind of strategy that was used by Natali Ardianto, CTO of Tiket.com, when developing his booking company. The idea is not to spend too much time polishing the product (long development time) and instead release it early, polishing the product along the way using customers' feedback.

- Monetization is important for all kinds of businesses. You're creating a company, not a charity foundation. 

- Be not afraid of failures. It's part of being successful. They even say that "Your first startup is going to fail" to emphasize that it is perfectly fine to fail on your attempts, as long as you get back right on your feet. 

In all, meeting a lot of great people from different background and listening to the coaches criticizing your ideas are really humbling experience. It puts your mind in the right perspective, that there are still soo many things each of us could learn, potentials we haven't tapped.

Thanks Grupara for holding this event, I'll see you with my own idea next time!

Got this book from good guy Amazon Web Services. Thanks guys!

Pandji Pragiwaksono: Book Review

"What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere."

- Inception, 2010

The quote is appropriate when we're reviewing these three books:

NASIONAL.IS.ME, Merdeka Dalam Bercanda, Berani Mengubah.

Although each book is unique in itself, all three of them are filled with one basic idea:  that every person is responsible to make the change that he wants to see in the society. To fully appreciate the beauty of these three books, it's important that we grasp this basic idea first. 

NASIONAL.IS.ME is where everything begins, the prima causa for the rest of our story. In this almost autobiographic book, Pandji invited us to his own world. He shared his reasons for being optimistic in our nation's future. By following his journey from childhood throughout college, his experience travelling across Indonesia, and even his not-so-mainstream hip hop career *wink wink*, we will learn so much about our diverse country, and even more about the author. 

His optimism in Indonesia is not a blind one, he just sees what most of us cannot. For someone who lives in Jakarta through his whole life and rarely travels to other parts of Indonesia (like me), the book is an eye-opener. It presents a new feeling of restlessness: I'm now infected with his idea that the future of our nation lies in our hands, not in some people we called 'governments'. 

Pandji's second book, Merdeka Dalam Bercanda, is a documentary on the stand up comedy movement in Indonesia. Not everybody is fond of stand up comedy, but I think his arguments on why Indonesia needs this type of comedy is valid. As a country that has plethora of problems, we all could use some good laugh. And some critical thinking won't hurt, either.

The reason why stand up got its hype right now is because the passion of the people who introduced it, and Pandji was one of them. If you don't understand why people from stand up community reveres Pandji so much even though he bombs a lot (kidding!), you might want to check out this book.

The third and the final book, Berani Mengubah, is a call to arms from Pandji to all of his readers. If NASIONAL.IS.ME was meant to trigger our passion, this book provides guidelines for us to translate this newly-found passion into actions. 

The book provides list of things that everyone can take to help our struggling nation, one small step at a time. The list is quite exhaustive, but the point is clear. If we want to improve Indonesia, we can first start by improving ourselves. 

By upgrading our knowledge in economics, politics, and even history, we will be better equipped for making choices. Choices that might affect our future, and the future of our nation. Knowledge is power, and its importance cannot be more stressed enough in this era of information.

I hope the review doesn't bore you. I realize it might sound too good to be true. Perhaps I'm just having a low standards in literature, that's true. But even then, I can still feel the passion and the honesty in all of Pandji's books, something that's quite rare to find these days.

Pandji, if you're reading this, I'd like to say happy birthday to you! Keep infecting our youngsters with your passion. Long live!