Tatler House Dialogue: Dinesh Balasingam, Darius Cheung, and Lai Chang Wen

Hi, I'm Naa and I'm the features editor of Tatler Singapore. With us we have my colleague and my editor-in-chief, Anco, and we also have three of the most successful tech guys in Singapore, who also happen to be our November cover stars. So we have Lai Wen, who is the CEO and co-founder of Ninja Van, and Ninja Van is Southeast Asia's fastest growing logistics solution company. We also have Denes Balas Singa, the chief business officer and founding team member of Chope, a real-time restaurant reservation booking platform. And we also have Darius Matani Chung, group CEO and co-founder of 99 Group, a leading real estate tech company that operates 99.co, the largest property portal in Singapore and Indonesia. To walk everyone through this session today, we're going to do it in two parts. The first one will be about your entrepreneurial struggles, your paths, and why you decided to start your businesses in the first place. And the second part will be about the tech industry as a whole and how recent tech movements have impacted your companies. Maybe we can start with an introduction about each of you. Perhaps Denes, you can tell us what made you want to join Chope in the first place, because I understand that you were pretty young, you were 22 or 23.

Yeah, well, to be honest, I didn't think too much about it back then. In school, I sort of towards the end struggled a little bit with the typical learning styles. And before going to university, I thought I wanted to get hands-on with something. The opportunity presented itself and I was really working with a lot of great individuals, a lot of whom were older than me, a lot of whom had gone to college, had gone to Stanford and Harvard and all these amazing schools. And I thought, what better way than to learn from them? So it was an easy decision at that time. I don't think I thought too much about it, like I said, and just never looked back from there.

Yeah, so a fun fact is that Denes actually kind of gave up his position in uni and he never actually went. And for him to go this far, I think it's really a success story.

Oh, what is them? Brave. Yeah, see, they say brave. The truth is, I was just telling her this, I didn't even think about it back then. You're 22 and I had the opportunity. Look, it is a privilege to be able to say that I can afford to fail on this entrepreneurship journey because I had my parents who I know I could rely on at the end of the day. And it wasn't that I was providing for a family or had all these big responsibilities, so I could afford to take that risk. But again, back then it just didn't seem like a risk. It was like, this feels right, so just going to go for it. Now if you ask me to do it 13 years later, looking back at it, I think yeah, I would do it all again.

So you would advise your younger self to do the same thing again?

100%. Would you let your kids drop out? I sure would. Yeah, I would. That's the real testament. My co-founder did the same. Every year he's looking at MBAs, it's like, I feel a bit in that. I feel like I kind of need to get there, I need something. But I think at that point also, it's just like, at some point you think about it and there were definitely moments where you meet people who are so qualified and so well-studied or learned, and you're just like, am I missing out on something? There's a little bit of that chip on your shoulder, a little bit of a feeling of inadequacy. But then I think I just sort of rode that wave all the way.

It's an interesting question because in Singapore we put so much weight on education. But for you guys who actually did go to uni, did you find yourself using those skills or what you learned in school in the entrepreneurship journey to start companies, or was it something that you learned elsewhere? I think Darius, you started 99.co while you were still in NUS, right?

Yes. So I started my first company while I was still in school, and then we sold that company and then I started 99 some seven years later. So to answer your question, I don't think it's as much about using the specific things we learned in school as it is like going to the gym. It's like training for your mind. You lifting weights is not that you were actually ever carrying stuff for a living, but it trains your muscles, it trains your brain. And I do think that that's useful. This is something I don't tell people, but sometimes I think back on my engineering degree and control systems and how that applies to people and incentive systems and employee incentives and so on. So I do think it is useful, not necessary, but useful.

How about the networking part of that? Did that ever come into play? Like people you met in school who are also successful startup founders or started companies, being able to network with them to sort of grow business?

On that note, I started my first company with my roommate, so that's sort of the biggest thing that came out of it. And I started 99 with my other roommate that I did not start the first company with.

But why though?

Yeah, well, I think it was useful to then have investors who had portfolio companies who were like good investors and willing to introduce you to people who are maybe further along on that journey. And for me, like my founder CEO Arif, he had great connections from when he went to Stanford business school, and these guys were maybe further along on their journey and so were able to advise us on that. And that helped for us, especially. Plus, uni was a blast.

I want to jump on this idea of making mistakes in the early phases of your career. So what were some of the biggest mistakes that you felt you made, and how have you corrected those in the journey so far?

I think it's easy to jump into a startup having a very startup founder mindset, and then you start to drive a very obvious divide between who founded the company and who are the professionals. And it takes a lot of effort to unwind that divide. It takes a lot of effort to professionalize it or making people feel that professionals also have vested interest in a company. And that transition is by no means easy. And I think if you started off with a group of founders or a group of early employees and you drove home that culture too hard, it becomes something which is almost irreparable. It's very difficult to unwind that mistake. And I think we caught that early enough, but it still caused us a lot of problems, and that mindset never fully goes away. So I think it really depends what you're starting a business for. Is it a family business? Is it something which you want to professionalize? And understanding that gives you a very different starting point which allows it to transition in a more organic manner after that.

So you to this day still have to actively and consciously step back away from that mindset?

100%. The mindset of founders versus professionals, professionals feeling that founders are overly entitled, founders believing that professionals do not care. I think these are all wrong mindsets, but it all stems from this initial founder startup hype vibe kind of mentality. I mean, I wish I started a company like WhatsApp, 10 people worth 10 billion, fantastic. But if it's not going to be the case, you have a real organization, and how does organization look? I think that's important.

I think similarly, on the people side of things, when it comes to scaling your business, going from one to 10 employees and 10 to 100 is very different. And I think the idea of what works for your company and the culture that you've built, and like you said, sometimes bringing professionals from the outside can be game-changing in a very positive way. Sometimes pulling someone who's used to running a company that has a thousand employees and bringing them into a company that has 50, there's a lot of clashes, for better or for worse. And so I think knowing when you're ready to really try to professionalize the organization and not trying to get ahead of yourself, so the people and the culture fit, I think was something that over time we've learned what are the right type of people for us and what kind of people maybe they are extremely intelligent, extremely capable, but just maybe not the right fit for where the company was at that time.

I cannot agree more with you on that. You meet too many people out there who have started a business with like 10 people, they come up, they talk a lot, say this is the way you should do things. Just like, you can share what you did and why you did what you did, but don't say that that's the right way to do it because every business is different. And I think the problem I see is that there are too many people out there who are too inexperienced who talk too much and tell people that there's only one way to do something, and I think that's very dangerous.

Okay, talking about that, you guys have run your businesses for what, 10, 20 years between the three of you. Looking back, what are some missed opportunities that you reflect on that might have possibly accelerated your growth but you missed out on?

To be honest, you never really know, right? When I look back at some things and say, would we have taken path A or B, and we took B, and even at that time when we took path B, we expected a certain outcome which didn't happen. So I think it's very difficult to go back or spend too much time on that. For me personally, because I always feel like the outcome that is intended or is the reason why you started down this particular path in the first place may not be what ends up being the case. So I think for me, when I look at missed opportunities, there really isn't much. I think if anything, it's always around people, finding the right fit for people, and maybe seeing what we could do better on that front, but never about opportunities to grow the business specifically.

I love the honesty. Spill it.

But do you think if you went wider and did all those different things, it would be maybe harmful in terms of focus?

My experience is kind of the opposite, which I think comes down to the lesson learned is how do you define your core. What is the core? So for us, we probably tried too many different things and got distracted. And I think every time in our history we have done, look at something that okay, this works, can we do more of it? That has always had a good outcome. And when we say that that looks interesting, let's explore because it's adjacent to what we do, things that are related to property but not necessarily core string, like mortgages and stuff like that, and that never worked out quite well. So I think it really comes back down to, for us, my lesson learned is defining the core. Our core is really how do we build the marketplace that consumers want to look for properties, and what does that entail? Everything that entails is called core, everything that does not is not core. Probably that's my biggest lesson learned or regret. Together it's a plethora of lessons, a bit different, but no single one is correct.

The same point, right? Maybe you could also let us know how your companies have evolved over the past 10 years. Maybe we could start with you, Darius. Massive growth, right, for you guys?

Yeah, we have definitely grown a lot over 10 years. So for one, for example, now Indonesia is a tremendous growth market for us. We're glad that it took, and it took us many years. And it was a lot of touch and go moments, right? Would this ever work? Is this ever going to be a real market? It's only until last year that we looked at it and said that yes, this is a real market and it will continue to thrive for many years to come. So that is for example a big shift. But we went into Indonesia eight years ago, so it took many years of patience to get to this point. A lot of people changes. I've matured a lot myself in terms of how to manage and lead a company, and recognize when you need to do some intentional redesign of organizations. For example, we redesigned our engineering team recently and it's worked out really well. So a lot of changes. I don't think I can simplify into a simple answer.

I feel our mission has always been the same in terms of connecting diners and restaurants, but how we've gone about it, how it's evolved, has changed. We started purely as a reservation platform, we started adding deals like the e-commerce segment to it, we started doing more in terms of marketing. So I think the kind of opportunities has grown. I think the mission is still the same, but how we approach it is very different. I think in terms of markets and what we've learned through that has also changed. When we first went into our second market, which was Hong Kong, we thought, okay, what's best about the Singapore model, sort of copy it and sort of paste it. I think the thinking has evolved a lot in terms of the localization of it all, in terms of being patient like you said. We've also gone into markets like Indonesia. I think it was 2014 we went into Indonesia, we're only seeing the results in these last two or three years. If we had pulled out way before, we might not ever have seen that. So I think being patient about those things. I think the idea also of a little bit of the imposter syndrome, right? For me, I can only speak for myself because I was 22 and a little bit when I started. Everybody around me, I was very excited to learn from, but they all had these amazing pedigrees that I didn't. And I think at the beginning I was like, okay, I'm going to put my head down and work really hard, and that worked out for me. But then feeling like you belong and then making decisions and trusting your instinct and trusting your gut like you guys said, there are so many well-meaning people or people who have achieved so much and you feel like I got to take that advice, I got to do this, trying to marry all those things together to come to one final conclusion. So I think the leaders I've seen of the organization and even my middle management, which is probably the single thing I'm most proud of, to see how they've grown as individuals, how they've grown as people, how they've taken charge and even sometimes when they move away from Chope and go start their own companies or work in different businesses and see them thrive, I think that is a sense of pride for me because I know where they came from, I've seen how they've grown. So I think as a company, a lot of us have evolved as people, and I think it speaks to the way we conduct our business or the way we lead our teams now.

I want to jump on that because you've all mentioned scale and you've all mentioned about growth, managing between one and 10 versus 10 to 100 people and even larger than that. So as you've scaled your businesses, what are some of the most hard-earned learnings that you've had to put into place to manage scaling in the right way?

I think for me, it was codifying the values. I think when you start off and everybody is sort of very aligned to the vision and the mission, and it's easy to hire people that you know, like they believe in the same things or they have the same work ethic. And I think as you grow larger and larger, sometimes people miss what makes the company special because they're not in on day one, they haven't seen both the benefits and the struggle, so they don't feel personally attached to it. And I think for us as an organization, the culture is so important. So by codifying some of the values, what do we believe in? What is our utmost before anything else? What do we consider? I think that has helped to align people back into when they look for people that they're hiring, when people come into the organization and understand what's expected of them. I think that has helped a lot in terms of building the mindset. And then like what you said, there's so many of the nitty-gritty to think about, all the structure around it to make it work well and to make it a fine-tuned machine. But for me, I feel that if people are not aligned in terms of culture and vision, it's hard to get to that point later because the expectations are different of how they operate or how people around them should operate. Because they come in from so many different organizations, and some people come into a startup having worked in a corporate culture for a very long time, some people are serious entrepreneurs or serial startup employees, and so they come in with a very different mindset. So aligning that has been very helpful in terms of the expectations for people coming in.

That's why I think it's so important. If you have that in place, you need to be so strict about this. You need to be decisive about things. And I think that's the one thing where when it comes to that, being decisive and knowing that, and sometimes it hurts, by the way, to let people go because maybe they have a specific technical skill set, but the problems that it brings to the rest of the organization later, it's not worth it.

For me, I think the lesson learned, I would say, is a bit orthogonal. It is that we are now about 600 people, we have maybe about 30,000 customers. I find that individuals still matter. It is still the individual that actually drives outcomes. When we look at whether to go into a new market or new business unit, to acquire a company, it is not strategy, it is not market, it is not synergies, it is not any of this kind of MBA paper you can do. It is, do we have the right guy? That actually is what in the end, when I look back, what made the difference on what worked and what didn't work. So that would be I always underestimated that, I think, coming up because it's like, oh, it makes sense, so it should work. But if you don't have the right person, it doesn't matter how much sense it makes.

So speaking of people, I wanted to ask because one thing I admire about your companies is you're all co-founders, and a lot of companies get derailed because of issues between founders. So for your own experiences, how have you managed to maintain great relationships between your various co-founders, and how do you separate who does what, and how did you come to the sort of happy marriage?

I feel for me specifically, it's about balance and having someone almost like you're very aligned on what the goal is, but you're very different people individually. And I think it's about dividing and conquering. We each have our own space. For me, I focus on the people and a little bit on growing the day-to-day business. A lot of the people decisions come down to me, whereas with my co-founder Arif, he's very focused on strategy, he's very focused on elements of which markets we should go in, the growth side of things. So I think that we both, it's very important decisions for both of us to make together. And I think that even when we disagree, and we disagree on a lot of things at different times, we always say when we walk out of the room, we share a united message. And I think that's important as well because you can have those disagreements and sometimes you can be upset about certain things, like should have listened to me about this. We've all had the 'I told you so' moments in the 13 years we've done business together. 'Told you so.' But at the end of the day, I think presenting that united front is one. But I think it was very helpful that we have different levels of expertise and different areas that we can own.

You don't feel like someone is maybe encroaching on that area a little bit, and I think then it just makes for something that's a little bit more harmonious at the end of the day.

I would say it's amongst many bad decisions, right? Like, I can look at all the bad decisions, I can pick out, 'Oh yeah, this one was actually pretty good.' And it almost always has to do with sticking to your gut and defying what logic sometimes is. Whether it is picking a person, so I think some of the best decisions I've made is picking a person despite what the CV says, despite what the interview round says. Sometimes you can just see that that person has fire, they have something with them. I'd say picking people is probably the best decisions I made amongst many bad ones.

Yeah, well, I feel like the people decision for me is like I can resonate with that a lot. It's hard to think back for 13 years specifically, so when he asked me to narrow it down to the last year, it was very bittersweet. But the truth is, I think the idea of getting acquired was like the best decision we made. And as much as you lose some autonomy from that, as much as culture changes, as much as those things happen and it's maybe no longer your baby in the same way that it was before, I think you have to see where is the business growing, are you the best person to take it to that next level? You look at the market around you, look at consolidation, look at the ability for people to raise money versus you. We have outlived so many companies who are much better funded than us trying to play in the same space, which is great, but at some point someone is going to be able to weigh you down. And does it make sense to keep going the way we are, in a smaller startup, in a smaller environment, when you have people in the US or in other parts of Asia raising 10, 20 times what you are able to do because of the market size? So I think we really thought about it, we took ourselves out of the equation. It's not about our own ambitions or us as leaders anymore, or what is great for our personal gain. We talked about what is great for this company and how we can maintain the value that we've worked so diligently to create for the last 13 years, and that was the outcome. And it was bittersweet, I think, when we finally closed and it was announced, it was great, and at the same time there's a bit of mourning because you have so many memories together. But I would say that was probably, in recent time, that's probably the best decision that I made.

I must admit, I was trying to think of one while we were talking, and truth be told, I think I failed to come up with a very resolute good one. Somehow, it feels like bad decisions stay with you, you remember them, good decisions come and go. It almost feels like in this job you are meant to make good decisions, so you don't really weigh what's good, what's not good. And I think many times good decisions also come quite logically to a large extent. It is the difficult dilemmas where you would then have to choose between them, where you then say, 'Oh, that's a good decision.' But truth be told, as you said just now, you never know what's actually the right way because you did choose one path over the other. Who's to say that the other path would have been wrong? I think it's a lot easier for me to say I've made a wrong decision because I've seen it blow up, as opposed to this is the right decision because I knew that I had another choice there and then but I did not take it. So not sure if I could say that that necessarily was the best choice. But if I had to choose one, I'll just say it's job banding. That's what it all comes down to. One thing you take away from this conversation: it's job banding. I mean, you ask me strategy, finance, everything you can logically go through many different things and you can come to an agreement of sorts. One thing you cannot agree to disagree on is someone's salary. Is the best decision then for you to stay in this business and keep investing your time growing this business?

Yeah, no, that I think is quite clear to me. It's not a good decision, I think it's a natural decision. What is, as I always say, the hardest thing to do is not always natural to some, no. But I think that's about being very self-aware. Like, you know, if I know that at this level the company, I look around and I see others who are able to perform at much higher levels, then I think maybe I should step away because I would rather my shares be worth money than for me to be in a position which is worthless. So I think I have no problem being quite self-aware on what to give up, what not to give up. So I think at the moment still okay, but let's see, let's see. We'll check back in five years.

That's one of the hardest things I think we've seen a lot. I've seen a lot of founders who have clung to that CEO role versus stepping back and taking a chairman role, because they resolutely believe they can do it better than say a professional that they bring in or someone else in the company, and that can be very dangerous.

Yeah, I mean, I don't agree with founders who cling on like you said if they're not the best person for the job, but I understand it because they will not feel like anybody would love this company as much as they do, and they can have the best intention to want to grow this company or feel that they're the best person. And that's where the self-awareness comes in, right? Because I think some people maybe aren't as self-aware that they're the best person for the job, and so they continue doing it because they truly feel that way, and then it may not always end up in the best outcome. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

I completely disagree. We like this, and yeah, and this may be very convenient for me to say, but I actually think the founders are often the best person for the job, more often than not. And I mean, I'm also a bit of an angel investor, I've invested in maybe about 30 companies over a 10-year period. I found that the whole idea, unless the founder is burned out, not motivated, don't really want to do it, or it's really screwing up big time and need to be forced to change, more often than not the founder is always the best person for the job, as far as I can see.

I don't disagree with you, right? At the moment, just give me the right thing for us to say is that maybe somebody's better for the job, so we'll be happy to give up. No, I believe... But you mentioned founder burnout, and one of the topics that comes up a lot, especially in our generation conversations, is mental wellness and mental health for founders.

One, no one has any... What on earth? Mental wellness fallacy? Balance is important, this world... So well, wellness is important to a certain extent. Is this the PR answer? And give us the real juice.

Definitely, clearly CH doesn't want to be cancelled. No, but I'm with him. I think there is a difference between trying to build infrastructure to help you stay well. Like for me, my wife is a big part of it, right? And that's the person I talk to at night about our problems, and that helps a lot. But it's a very different thing to say that, well, you know, I'm burned out, mental wellness is important, take time off and so on, right? Like, I think back in the days, I don't think there was an option at all. I think when we first started, we were never told that mental wellness is an option to be considered or is a factor to be considered. It's like you're in it. Because I think taking time off doesn't necessarily solve the problems that you're dealing with. So I think having a support system, I mean that is a form of mental wellness, right? So making sure that there are people you can talk to who can relate to what you do, so it's divorced from the idea of like, 'Oh, I should work less or I should do this less.' But I think it's more about the idea of, 'Okay, who can I speak to or are there opportunities or tools around me to help me overcome this?' as opposed to trying to divorce those two things from each other.

Yeah, coaches and so on, like I agree with all of those things, yeah. But it's a very different thing to say that wellness is something that you need to build into part of the agenda, don't you think? That's saying that, right? Maybe I'll get cancelled, but would you agree that the founder's journey is sometimes lonely, or is it not because you guys have co-founders, you have the support systems built in?

Yeah, how do you view your own? I mean, I'm fortunate, like I said, I have a founder who's amazing and I can speak to him about anything, and that helps. And I think then, in different circumstances, you just have to know that okay, if no one else can relate to you in this moment, then you just have to be like, okay, but if you think about it, if you truly believe in the decisions that you're making, then you just have to be sort of okay with that. For me, faith is important to me, so that's something that I turn to as well. It helps keep me balanced. So, yeah.

Let's move the conversation to the big picture. I'm sorry, to the big picture of tech in general. What broad macro trends have you each of you seen in the tech landscape, perhaps in the last five years, and how is it impacting your businesses?

The buzzword is AI, I guess, right? That's what everybody talks about. You know, I think the idea of that is exciting, a little bit scary. I think the pace at which you're meant to think of adopting it, and if you don't you're left behind, it's a little bit of a gray area for me. I think all these things are essentially meant to help move things along faster, be more efficient, as opposed to necessarily replacing people. I think that's the big conversation: will it replace this, will it replace that? And I think that in a business like ours, when we're dealing in dining and service industry, and you think about things like bots and self-serve and all of that, I think yes, to some extent it can help move things along faster, but you lose that touch, right? That human touch. You go out to have a social location, you want to be in that sort of environment, you want to have that... A bad service can ruin a great meal, and good service can make you want to come back again and again. And I think the idea of robots doing all this, well-intentioned, but is the outcome the desired outcome the same? So for our business, in terms of thinking about using AI to sort of replace people or like writers, content, you guys are in that space, right? The idea that tomorrow you can teach someone to do something or teach a machine, and yes, I'm sure there are a lot of great things they can do, but then you still need to have someone who's looking over all of that, making sure it's in the right direction of what you want to do. So I think the idea of a lot of these trends, some of them come and go, I think AI is one that's going to stay for a while, and I think because it is useful, it is important, it has a lot of impact, I think we have to look at those things and say, first of all, don't latch on to it because you feel everybody else is latching onto it. I think that's important. But I think it's thinking about it in the context of your business and to see which parts do you feel it's necessary for and can help move things along better and make life better for you, and which parts you're just like, okay, you know what, as much as people are banking on it now and we've seen many trends come and go, maybe it's not the right move for my business. So I think sometimes you have to be brave enough to say that and to see how it fits your business.

Yeah, macro, right? Yeah, he spoke about the macro. Yes, in general, I think most people are thinking that way, not with so much enlightenment, yeah, okay. But I think in a lot of other businesses, I think what's important is a pragmatism towards tech. I think that is also coming up. There is that enthusiasm on AI and what that could hold, yeah, but I think the flip side is a lot more companies are becoming a lot more pragmatic on technology. That technology is not the be-all and end-all. A poorly run business will not get saved by tech. A business with bad customer service will not do better if the website is fancy. So I think people are becoming a lot more pragmatic on how much value tech can add and dialing back to the right amount of tech and the right amount of focus towards the people, towards the customer experience, more than just the technology per se. And I think we are one of them where we understand that technology is important at different aspects, but in some of our initiatives, the people, the strategy, the right person is way more important than any technology you can roll out. And I guess that is the other macro trend we're seeing.

Yeah, the reality is the majority of businesses or tech businesses in Southeast Asia are still tech-enabled, it is not pure tech. You're not like Google or building real tech tools, it's a bit different. So I think we need to temper ourselves and not get too caught up with what we see happening in Silicon Valley and taking all that and just replicating it here, because then you build very bad habits, per se. I believe in different markets, right? Like, I mean, you're in Indonesia as well, I mean, some people try to adopt tech in a big way and then they realize actually, because there's so much labor and opportunity there, actually that is the best cost and it actually works better than some of the tech enablement that they do. So you know, it's really what works best for that market, for that company, as opposed to just thinking, 'Okay, everybody should adopt this.' Okay, great, let's move forward with that.

Yeah, I think if you ask me, the last 10 years, the model of dangling sexy tech and humongous incentives came together to distort the perception of the value tech can bring. I think that is something which a lot of founders are paying for. You see lofty valuations, waste tons of money, killed each other fighting the market, nobody won. The only people who have won are the consumers, yeah, but VCs lost, private equity lost, investors lost, founders lost, employees lost, everyone lost because everyone was overly enamored with the idea of tech. I think that is changing. Yeah, and I think we're very supportive of rationalizing and being a lot more pragmatic on so what is the funding landscape today like? Visa, when you guys were first starting out, do you know it's easier to raise money with a PowerPoint presentation than it is to raise money on a company that's actually working and successful? Just because the idea that, 'Okay, I can only maybe make 2x my money because we see how the business is like, it's supposed to... This is brand new, you've never tested it, but you know, I could make 15x.' So it's a strange... I think people are a little bit more pragmatic now, especially like before where it's all about profitability now a little bit more than just pure growth. There's still a lot of that around. I think that I hear, and I have friends who try to pitch companies, perfectly great companies that are working really well and they're just looking for a little bit of an infusion, and they're like, 'Nah, you know, we want to bet on things that maybe 10, 15, 20x.' Still, it surprises me a little bit. I think there's always an appetite for a good idea, but sometimes, you know, maybe it's the balance of the risk versus to say, 'Hey, this is really working, people really love it, why should it be so difficult to raise money on that?'

Yeah, I'm a little bit older, so I've seen the cycle from when I first started my first company in 2003, there were no VCs, like zero funding available. And then fast forward 10 years, there's way too much money available. What was saying now, I think it's very underinvested. And for those investments that are still actually happening, it's still going for the sexy 10x, 15x thing, like you're saying, right? And not really paying attention to what would not... I think people always like to ask the question, and this is a question I believe Jeff Bezos asked, people like to ask, 'What will change tomorrow?' I think the question to ask is, 'What will not change tomorrow?' That's a more important question. There's a lot of things that will not change. People always, in the e-commerce space, people always want things cheaper, faster, and more variety. That's never going to change. What companies are going to win in that environment? I think that is really worth thinking about. Too many people are looking at AI, what would change, taking bets on that, but humans are the same. We'll say the same 10 years later.

Dar, as you mentioned, you are a seed investor, angel investor in a lot of startups. I wanted to know whether you guys also are investing in small startups and what do you look for when you are identifying a business or a founder to invest in yourselves?

I was an angel investor back in the days, I don't do it anymore. Because I still... My first company, I work for a large corporation, hence I wanted to live vicariously the exciting life through other founders. But I think I didn't have this methodology, but today if you ask me what I would do, I would do two rather unconventional things. One is I will look at where are they, what are they doing on a Friday night at 11 p.m. Right? It's not strategy, it's not market, it's not product, it's nothing. It's what are you doing Friday night 11 p.m.? That's actually what matters. And number two, what is your social media feed or LinkedIn feed consist of? Those two signals are to me the most important. But remember, for me it's usually the first check, pre-product, pre-revenue, you know, first $25,000, $50,000 type of investment. So people and what they are made of really matters the most.

Just so we are clear, Friday night working, not partying. Social media, yeah, more... Not loud, right? Just making sure that... Because you say that, but it depends on the business. A marketing platform, maybe you should be partying, it should be loud, and how your ability to blend those, you use that to assess character, then from there you see if that correctly fits the model. Yeah, yeah. But by and large, I will say that working and not partying is probably the one I'm looking for.

Harsh look. People at the end of the day are the cornerstone of any business. And I think when he talked about founders most of the time being the best person to run the company, then it's important to look at the founders. I agree with that. I haven't had the privilege of investing myself financially, but time-wise definitely. I think the one thing I look for also in the people is that they are pragmatic, they don't have delusions of grandeur. You know, sometimes people look at stuff and they're like, 'We want to raise this money or we want this valuation.' I'm like, 'Okay, what are you going to do with the money?' And they can't answer you. So I think being pragmatic about what you're trying to do and being very clear about the problem you're trying to solve. I think sometimes people go into building companies or starting companies because it's cool or because they see other people do that, but maybe it's not necessarily for them, and that's fine too. So I think understanding the intention behind it, understanding the problem they're trying to solve, understanding what makes them tick, it's about the person. I think that part is there, and then making sure they have the right sort of support system of people around them to enable them to continue. Important.

Yeah, to be fair, I haven't done many investments. The few I've done, I've known them for a long time, so I think there's enough trust out there. You know, business is a lot of luck, but if there are certain character traits which could make you a bit luckier than others, then sure, I think it's worth a bet. And I think I agree with what you said, don't need to repeat that. But sometimes I also worry that I'm putting a mirror to myself and I want to invest in people who are more like me than not. But I think there are many other character traits which could be successful, so I am also a bit uneasy at times because I don't think it's necessarily true that I should invest in people who are like me will be successful. I think there are many other archetypes out there. So because of that, usually no conviction to do anything.

Okay, I want to thank you guys for spending your time with us. This has been a great conversation. Thank you. We're going to end in a few minutes, but before we do, and I'm sure you get asked this all the time, I just want to ask you if you have any parting words for a young founder who will be coming to you and saying, 'Is there any advice? Is there one thing you can tell me to start my journey?'

He's hoping we start talking. Fine, if you ask me, I'll just stick to what I say. I think if you are a young person coming to me for advice on whether you should leave your job and start a new business, my first piece of advice is: is this opportunity going to go away, and are you certain it is really so unique? There are few businesses out there which are that unique. The second would be, if the answers to the first questions are that it's okay, you have time, I would say take another five years. Don't work for money, work for experience. Work under people whom you can learn a lot from. You have another 30 years after that to do your own business, so don't rush it.

Yeah, I largely agree with that. I think you have to be very passionate about the problem you're trying to solve. I think a lot of times people look for problems to solve without feeling that it's something that they really want to, because if you have that level of conviction, then you're going to have, for the most part, what it takes to focus on that. And then I think it's about surrounding yourself with the right people. Like I said, when I started I was young, if I did this alone I don't think I would have been able to do it that way. I had people who had great job experience, had gone to different schools, and all of that came together very nicely. So I think if you're going to start it, then you also have to pick the right people that you're going to start it with. I think it's sometimes hard to do it on your own unless you feel you have the resources or the know-how. I think that is quite rare. So I think it's important to pick the right people around you. So those two things: understanding the problem you're trying to solve, feeling convicted about that, and then picking the right team or the right people to kickstart that journey with.

Thank you guys, thank you so much.