Introducing Winter 2023 Batch
+ Applications are open, Why fundraising will pick up in the second half of the year, How to grow from 0-100 customers
Meet the Iterative Winter 2023 Batch
If you've been following us on LinkedIn, you'll know that we started announcing acceptances for the Winter 2023 batch before the program even began (we invest on a rolling basis!). Now that the program has officially started, we're excited to announce the full list.
For this batch alone, we received over 750+ applications - that's a 70% increase from the last batch. With the help of our Venture and Visiting Partners, we spent hours interviewing companies and finally selected these 18 companies.
Iterative Winter 2023
Amay (Myanmar) - Making credit accessible for everyday financial well-being
Blink (Indonesia) - 1-click checkout for eCommerce in Indonesia
Boost Capital (Singapore) - Enables loan and financial services through smartphones
BuildBear (Singapore) - Platform for testing dApps at scale
CareNow (Indonesia) - Making healthcare more affordable and accessible for everyone
Civils.ai (Singapore) - Google Maps for the underground
Eten Tech (Indonesia) - Supply chain management system that helps F&B optimise costs
Eubrics (India) - Improves employee performance at enterprises using AI
Inflow (Vietnam) - B2B fashion marketplace that helps suppliers manage operations
Issa (Thailand) - Creating the first digital ecosystem that unites migrants and businesses
Lunara (Pakistan) - Business banking built for startups and SMEs in Pakistan & MENA
Nuport (Bangladesh) - Full-stack supply chain automation platform for manufacturers & distributors
PriyoShop (Bangladesh) - B2B marketplace Bangladesh's neighbourhood merchants
Scarlett Panda (Singapore) - AI-powered solution to make children the heroes of their own story
Sellde (Vietnam) - One-stop cosmetics wholesale platform
Supa (Malaysia) - Data-labeling platform
Z-waka (Myanmar) - Digital platform providing doctors localised education content
A fintech company operating in stealth mode.
To the founders, thank you for having us onboard your journey. We're already in our fourth year of running Iterative, and it still feels just as exciting when companies bet on us - they bet on Iterative just as much as we bet on them.
There will be a virtual Demo Day in early May. Until then, our founders are already hard at work with our General and Visiting Partners.
With that said, even though the current batch of W23 is ongoing, it doesn't mean applications are closed.
Applications Are Now Open
You can now apply for our next batch, which is scheduled to start around July this year.
We encourage founders to apply early as we accept on a rolling basis - and we invest upon admission. That means you don't need to wait for the batch to start to receive the funding. Iterative invests up to $500K and we're eager to meet more founders.
Ideas from Iterative
Hsu Ken's Column: Why Fundraising Will Pick Up in the 2nd Half of This Year
Is fundraising as difficult as everyone says right now? When do you think it will pick back up again?
Hsu Ken Ooi: Unfortunately, yes, fundraising is difficult right now. We are seeing fewer deals, at lower valuations that take twice as long. I know that sounds bad but remember this is all part of the cycle. We’ve been here before. It’s expected and fine. We want a fundraising environment that properly values companies.
My hunch is things will pick up in the second half of this year for a few reasons.
Investors Need to Deploy – VCs are measured by their ability to generate returns over a period of time. Obviously the higher the returns and the shorter the time period, the happier their investors will be. Last year, VCs in Southeast Asia raised billions (here, here, etc.), but deployed very little of it. Their investors will tolerate deploying slowly in the 1st year but not the 2nd, and definitely not the 3rd because it'll start to look like you can’t find good companies.
Comfortability with New Environment – As an investor, if you don't know what's going to happen with the macro environment and startup valuations are being repriced, you generally take things slow to see what happens. That’s basically what everyone did last year. Now, although there’s still some uncertainty, there’s more visibility and people are feeling more comfortable.
Good Companies, Lower Valuations – Iterative has invested in 86 companies in Southeast Asia and we haven't seen a significant slowing in actual business growth. Fundraising is definitely taking longer and valuations are coming down, but growth (what actually matters) is strong. That means investors have the opportunity to invest in good companies at lower valuations. At some point, that's going to entice people to be more active.
With that being said, if you’re a founder, you should mostly ignore all of that. Your job is still the same. Make something that people want. If you have that, there are always investors who will be interested in investing.
What Are Office Hours with Iterative Like?
Something founders are surprised by is that the Iterative Program has no curriculum.
What we do instead is work closely with the founders on their startup's biggest problem, and come up with growth levers and strategies to unblock growth. There are multiple ways we help founders do so, with partner office hours being the primary.
Partner office hours are weekly 1:1s between the founder(s) and a lead partner (it could be Brian, Hsu Ken or any of our Visiting Partners). This is where you'll give an update on your progress, discuss challenges, priorities, and next steps. At Iterative, we expect and help startups to grow 5% to 7% every week, so you can think of partner office hours as one-week sprints for your company's growth.
To better illustrate, we've asked some of our portfolio founders about their favourite memory of going through Office Hours.
Iterate, Iterate, Iterate
My favourite memory of office hours was having Brian go through our product onboarding and provide us with pointed advice that improve conversions drastically. That day I learned that small deliberate changes and understanding the moving parts that move metrics add up and create the desired impact over time.
It was this mindset of iterating and experimenting together which hold true to Iterative’s name.
- Nirali Zaveri, co-founder of Friz
Grow Faster
Basically, I was trying to 2x a particular metric. Hsu Ken and Brian suggested that we 10x it, and even while suggesting 10x, they were both yawning.
I was scared. I thought my team would revolt, even at the 2x, but my heroes were yawning. So we went for it and wound up 5x'ing it. Not quite the 10x, but I'm pretty sure we would've 1.2x'ed it at best under my original plan. Thanks, guys for not stifling your yawns of disappointment.
- Charles Lee, founder of CoderSchool
Empathy is Key
Midway through the batch, there was one particular office hour when I was super stressed about not hitting our metrics. I was beating myself up about it and was almost intimidated to come to the session. But when I got there, Hsu Ken had a supportive attitude. I could tell he was genuinely trying to help. So instead of digging deeper into the progress, we actively troubleshot ways to fix the problem. I could tell that he understood where I was coming from.
After the batch was over, I had dinner with Hsu Ken. And he told me he could tell I was beating myself up. That interaction left a lasting impression on me. It taught me that failure and struggle are natural aspects of being a founder — and instead of lingering on it, it’s much better to be objective about the problem and work on it head-on.
- Javier Lorenzana, founder of WorkWith
Read the rest of the article here.
Spotlight on Founders
How to Get to 100 Paying Customers
Where do you find early users? How do you get to 100 customers? How do you get to 100 paying customers?
Every startup founder has to go through the early days of convincing someone else to use their product or service, and we think it's important to shed some light on the process. We asked three of our Iterative founders how they went from 0 to 100 paying customers, and the key lessons distilled.
Here's Liyen Tan from Hawkr, who shared with us how they got their initial customers.
Liyen Tan: At the time, we had about 20 merchants on Hawkr, but barely any customers. But, half of our merchants already have a small existing customer base. So we asked them to direct their customers to order through our janky Google Form, and in return, we gave a discount. For each order, we sent receipts and order confirmations straight to the customer's WhatsApp because we know Malaysians love being on WhatsApp. That was how we had direct access to talk to people who were already buying homemade food before Hawkr. If we simply went online to look for customers, we wouldn't have been successful because we learned that our initial customers were barely on social media. They were mostly hanging out on WhatsApp or very niche Facebook groups to buy homemade food.
From then on, that was the one thing that kept us grounded. We joined Iterative's program around then, and together with Hsu Ken, we tried a bunch of different bets: taking better photos for merchants, launching referral programs, doing group buying, running A/B Facebook ads tests, posting videos of merchants cooking, etc. These may sound random, but it worked in our case because we stayed extremely close to our customers and made sure we ask for feedback from them firsthand. That was how we got to 100 paying customers.
Read the rest of the stories here.
In the Loop
Hsu Ken on One More Scoop
Hsu Ken Ooi was recently on One More Scoop, a podcast from the good people at BackScoop - and it's his most personal one yet.
In the podcast, he shares with Amanda Cua on…
Starting a startup at a time when no one really knew what a startup was - not even him
What it really feels like to exit his startup, Decide.com
Being just "Hsu Ken", not "Hsu Ken who sold his company to eBay" or "Hsu Ken from Iterative”
Listen to the podcast on Spotify here. If you use Apple Podcasts, go here.