🙌 Welcome back to Startup Wednesdays, featuring #VC, #founder & #operators here in South-East Asia. For this week, we have Yann Schuermans, Founder & CEO at Baskit
💭 What were you like as a child? How did it shape you today to start Baskit?
Always looking to make money - at 7 I imported candy from Europe to Brazil & sold to school kids on credit & collected dues, until the cafeteria owner shut me down for taking his customers.
At 16, I helped event owners sell tickets to our student base.
At 19, in university, I became one of the biggest ticket brokers on campus by using student-run restaurant managers as my reps. It paid for a huge chunk of my tuition.
This taught me to be resourceful, probably the skill that I praise the most & that has helped us get Baskit up & running with minimal resources.
💭 What has been the biggest challenge in building Baskit?
We entered a market that had received substantial local & global funding & things weren’t swell for all players.
In many ways, Baskit carries a huge burden on its shoulders: convincing partners, customers & future employees that there is a country-defining opportunity within supply chains & that a start-up can take that position without subsidised tailspins.
This makes the barrier to entry higher & forces us to be extra focused on experience & product. To solve this, we have to spend time with customers. Day & night - Finance, HR, ops & product.
💭 After founding Baskit, what were the biggest lessons?
Our biggest lessons have been about pressure testing assumptions and not believing something is a “first principle” before we have enough data to back it up.
Several times we assumed something is as is & embedded it into our business model, only to realize later that we built a series of limiting beliefs & biases on the back of a flawed assumption or core pillar.
The biggest lesson is to challenge everything, revisit even the most basic assumptions & treat every day as day 0. Looking back, we would have paired this with hiring a stronger mid-management (not top & bottom heavy) to get the right mix of thinkers, challengers & doers.
💭 Where do you see Baskit in the next 3-5 years?
We’re building a full fledged offline distribution infrastructure enabler in Indonesia. In many ways, doing what Amazon did in the US & Alibaba did in China.
This takes time, depth, mixture of business models. I’d like our Indonesia business unit to solidify itself as such, and in the process develop stellar vertical ERP, payments and data modules that we get to export globally (not just in emerging markets). Our very own Amazon at home, AWS abroad.
💭 What are some tips to founders if your partner is your co-founder?
I’d say that, again, dogma is your enemy. Some investors will care, some won’t. Some employees will care, some won’t. In any case, let the numbers speak for them selves & people will shut up.