Iterative – Moses from Xendit, W21 Virtual Demo Day and Early Stage Growth Hacks
Batch Speaker: Moses Lo, Co-Founder of Xendit 🎤
Every other week during the batch, we invite a startup founder, investor, or executive from a well-known companies to talk to the batch. To maximize candor, these events are off the record and only for Iterative founders.
Last week we had Moses Lo, Co-Founder of Xendit. Xendit is the leading payment gateway for Indonesia, the Philippines and Southeast Asia and recently raised their $64.6M Series B from Accel.
A few takeaways from the conversation.
Fundraise Engineering – Fundraising successfully isn’t just about being charismatic and having exponential growth, it’s also about having a plan of attack. It starts with doing your homework on investors, being thoughtful of who to reach out to first, how to follow-up, etc. It’s a process and like any process, you can engineer it for better outcomes.
Meeting with Justin Kan – Xendit was originally a bitcoin remittance company when it was accepted into YC in 2015. They struggled for the first 6 weeks before a fateful meeting with Justin Kan, Co-Founder of Twitch, helped them pivot into what Xendit is today.
US vs Southeast Asian Investors – It’s a hot topic among founders in Southeast Asia. Moses is one of the rare founders who has major investors in both regions. His take? Know your audience.
Iterative Winter 21 Virtual Demo Day 🥳
On Wednesday, 14 April at 10am, Iterative will host Demo Day for our Winter 21 batch. Demo Day is for an invite-only audience. If you’re an investor or a member of the press, please apply to attend.
The following companies are presenting.
String Soul – Remote music lessons for kids
Spenmo – Helping companies manage spend
GoZayaan – Travel platform for Bangladesh
Ferne Health – At-home health screening for women
Duoria – Pinduoduo for restaurants and activities
CoderSchool – Lambda School for Southeast Asia
1Export – Helping Philippines suppliers go global
For more information about these companies, read our Iterative Winter 2021 Batch post.
Podcasts 🎧
#6 How to Build a Recruiting Machine, Part 1: Why Founders Underestimate the Importance of Recruiting
In this episode of The Iterative Podcast, Hsu Ken and Brian talk about why hiring is important, why most founders get it wrong, what hiring is like as your startup grows, what to qualities and roles to hire for and more. This is Part 1 of 3 episodes on recruiting.
#5 Yolanda Lee on Finding Her Own Path and Building a Professional Community for Women
In this episode, we have Yolanda Lee, co-founder of Uncommon. Uncommon is a private leadership network for the next generation of female leaders in the nation. Uncommon provides a strong and uplifting network, a personalized development roadmap, tailored courses and workshops, and enriching speaker series, all in one membership.
Growth Multiplier Podcast: Early stage growth hacks with Hsu Ken Ooi (Iterative)
I was on the Growth Multiplier Podcast talking about the early days of Decide.com and Weave. We talk about finding growth hack inspirations from the club scene, why it’s important for founders to love the problem they are solving more than the solutions, fueling personal growth and why I stopped tweeting 😉.
What topics are you interested in? We’re trying different formats and would love to know what you think. Let me know in the comments.
Writing 📖
Invest in Slope
A common question we get from founders and investors is what do we look for in a startup? I find myself gravitating to a simple saying, invest in slope. In this post, I explain what that means, the difference between linear and exponential growth, and what founders can do to grow faster.
The best way to grow non-linearly is to work on growth initiatives that are (1) repeatable, (2) have low marginal cost and (3) compound. Initiatives that compound (ie. their growth generates more growth) generate an order of magnitude more growth than initiatives that don’t.
What do you think? Have you found a growth initiative that fits this criteria? If so, we’d like to invest 😬.
Iterative Companies in the News 👀
Haulio (S20) on CNA938 talking Supply Chain Innovations
Alvin Ea, Co-Founder and CEO of Haulio was recently on CNA938, talking about the pulse of the logistics and supply chain sector. How has the pandemic propped it up and what are the current challenges to be overcome?
Propseller (S20) raises S$1.7M in Seed Funding
A little late to the party but congratulations to Propseller on raising S$1.7 million in seed funding late last year. Investors include Hustle Fund, XA Network, Rapzo Capital, Lazada co-founders Stein Jakob and Ben Neve, the founder of property portal group Dot Property.