Business

Is Bitcoin A Ponzi Scheme?

April 6, 2013 by Remco | 0 comments

Is Bitcoin a Ponzi Scheme? Sometimes I’m too hasty with my conclusions. This morning I tweeted: “so bitcoin is a (slow) ponzi scheme, well surprise surprise!”. This based on the article BitCoin, Pyramid Schemes and Alternate Currencies on The Refined Geek. After my tweet I immediately got comments from nzBTC.com claiming my conclusion is wrong.

Truth being told, I think I know quite a lot about Ponzi Schemes and can spot a scam from quite far but I’m no expert on Bitcoin so I guess had to do some research to learn more to see if I would stick to my initial conclusion.
For those of you who don’t know what a Bitcoin is, in short it’s a digital (crypto-)currency created by Satoshi Nakamoto, which is actually not his real name. Some say it’s not even one person, others say it’s these guys based on a patent registration: Continue Reading →

Danger Looming Large In Indonesia’s New E-commerce Law?

March 23, 2013 by Remco | 4 Comments

ecommerce-law-indonesia UPDATE:
There has been a discussion about the definition of a “Public Service”. In the context now most agree with my definition of “a service that’s accessible for the public”. But I gotta agree that usually “Public Service” is defined as a government service such as gas, electricity and public transport. So probably they should change it to “Public Accessible Digital Service”.

For people who still disagree with this interpretation please read art 1 par 4:

Penyelenggara Sistem Elektronik adalah setiap Orang, penyelenggara negara, Badan Usaha, dan masyarakat yang menyediakan, mengelola, dan/atau mengoperasikan Sistem Elektronik secara sendiri-sendiri maupun bersamasama kepada Pengguna Sistem Elektronik untuk keperluan dirinya dan/atau keperluan pihak lain.

Translation:

Electronic System Operator is any person, state officials, business entities, and community provider, manage and / or operate Electronic systems individually or together to Users for Electronic Systems her needs and / or needs of others.

Pretty clear in my opinion.

ORIGINAL POST

This week the long awaited and probably feared Indonesian E-commerce law PP 82 became public and even though I’m no longer (directly) involved in any e-commerce business I thought I would take some time to read it. Mind you, this law is just the beginning and will be followed by 10 government regulations which will provide more details.

My friends from Dailysocial already reported on this law yesterday highlighting the part that requires any e-commerce company doing business in Indonesia to register in Indonesia as well as running their platform on a .ID domain name. Already excisting e-commerce companies are excused from the last clause, for now they are allowed to continue running their service on a .com or any other top level domain name.

Though I agree that the need for a .ID domain name is weird to say the least, it seems that the law poses bigger worries for new and existing e-commerce players in Indonesia. I won’t be discussing the whole law but just highlight some things that attracted my attention.

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Business In Indonesia – The Case Of The Chicken And The Egg

February 9, 2013 by Remco | 0 comments

The coming time I want to share a bit about doing business in Indonesia, mostly aimed at foreign investors and entrepreneurs. Because, my fellow foreigners, things are indeed different in Indonesia. Applying the same strategies, approach, culture etc in Indonesia as you’re used to abroad might very well lead to unexpected surprises. But more on that in a later post.

This post is about a simple example of some of the frustrations you will encounter when doing business in Indonesia. Mind you, I love Indonesia and I believe there are great opportunities here. However, I also see Indonesia as a graveyard for foreign entrepreneurs and investors who think they know it all and for sure know better than the Indonesians themselves. If you don’t learn about the culture and the way thinks work in Indonesia, if you’re not extremely patient you might be in for a surprise.

Anyway, when setting up a business you will encounter a lot of bureaucracy and crazy long forms to fill out. It is what it is so just do it. Once you’ve got approval from the Ministry of Justice for your business you need to obtain two documents: SIUP (Business License) and TDP (Company Registration). Easy, just fill out the forms and wait for it… Just one thing, you need a bank account.

Ok, easy lah. You just go to the bank and open account, right? Just one tiny problem. Due to new legislation to fight money laundering the banks now request your SIUP and TDP, without it no bank account. Uuuuuuhhh……

Good luck with that and till the next “Business In Indonesia”.

5 #Startup Rules I Will Follow In 2013

December 30, 2012 by Remco | 1 Comment

After leaving Tokobagus in 2012 I’m basically back to square one where I want to start new companies myself and invest in young promising startups. Around me there seems to be the expectation that whatever I will do it will become successful, just because I’ve had my share of success with Tokobagus. Obviously things are a bit more favorable for me than 7 years ago, but also for me goes Wall Street’s favorite disclaimer:

Past Performance is No Guarantee of Future Results

I think I mentioned it before, a large part of success is luck. I’ve seen a lot of once successful entrepreneurs loose a lot if not all their money because they actually started to believe that everything they touch turns into gold. My resolutions is to not fall into the trap of overestimating myself so I’m binding myself to some basic startup “rules”.
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Going Bankrupt? This Is My Story And Some Tips.

December 1, 2012 by Remco | 2 Comments

Around 4-5 years ago one of my working companies went bankrupt and around the same time my (ex-)wife decided to divorce me. I think that was the hardest period in my life so far and obviously the bankruptcy had less of an impact on my life than being separated from my daughter. Yep, it was a tough period in which I felt like a total and utter failure but not so much because of my company going bankrupt.

Obviously I’m not gonna write about my divorce but I do know that a bankruptcy by itself can have a big impact on someones life and can be really hard by itself. It was actually today that I realised I never shared anything about my experiences with going bankrupt. While in the US it’s mostly considered part of becoming a mature entrepreneur, in Holland people rather don’t talk about it out of shame. Well, let me tell you that if you’re an entrepreneur chances are you will go bankrupt once and there’s no shame in that, at all. You’ve tried and failed, NEXT!

This is all easy said in retrospect, but if you’re in the middle of a bankruptcy things can get really nasty and if you’re doing the wrong things it can have a severe impact on the rest of you’re life. So I would like to share my experience and hope you will never need them but if you go bankrupt I hope this will help a bit.

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No You Can’t! [Just means they don't get it] #startuplife

December 1, 2012 by Remco | 0 comments

I come from a lower-middle class family in which every month my parents had the challenge to make it to the end of the month financially. We weren’t rich but we had a good life, food was on the table, we lived in a nice neighborhood and I enjoyed a decent education. My father was an army guy for basically his whole life and he was proud of that, even though his long life dream was to be a farmer. To make/save some extra money he worked his ass of in his ridiculously large garden he rented from a farmer, but he loved it. Every now and then when there was a lack of rain the kids had to help out in the garden and to be honest, we both hated that. I had nothing with gardening and thought I could spend my time better than carrying around 15 liter water cans. But it learned me the concept of working.

When you’re born as a nickel you will never become a dime

My father used to tell me “When you’re born as as nickel you can never become a dime” and he advised me to choose for certainty by following his footsteps in joining the army. I guess this was a fundamental difference inopinion. I refused to believe what he said was true, I refused to believe that my life path was already roughly set. Looking at the era in which my father grew up I can understand why he said that, but I lived in a different world where I saw opportunities all around me.

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An Outlook On The Opportunities In The Indonesian E-commerce Market

November 28, 2012 by Remco | 8 Comments

It’s now been almost 4 months since Arno and I parted from Tokobagus and truth being said, I miss it a lot. After 7 years working so close with a great team and becoming friends I guess that’s normal. But the upside is that I had some time to put things in perspective and analyse things from the outside.

In the first month I left Tokobagus I was contacted by a reputable e-commerce company for a prestigious job which after some short consideration I declined for several reasons. I find that everybody assumes that my next venture will be e-commerce related, everybody but me. Yep, I love the e-commerce business, or more correct, I love the Internet industry.

Indonesia is in theory one of the countries with the most potential in the world when it comes to Internet and e-commerce. Every investor you meet will tell you the same based on the reasoning that every country in the world works the same. A very simple and defendable argument but without any notice of some fundamental differences in the Indonesian retail supply chain.

This week a remembered Rama from Dailysocial asking me about a year ago the question: “So what do you think about the Indonesian e-commerce market, is it gonna grow?” Back then I actually didn’t even understand the reason for asking and my answer was over confidently YES. But after 2 years in Jakarta and learning a lot how things work in Indonesia I totally understand why he asked me this and I’m not sure if my answer would be as confident as then. Probably now I would say it still needs a long time to really live up to it’s promise, 5 years perhaps.

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Why Tokobagus Is Changing – Big Time

May 6, 2012 by Remco | 0 comments

Little did we know when Arno (co-founder) and me started the Tokobagus adventure 6 years ago. At the time I was (and probably still am) an opportunist and somewhat of a cowboy. Great qualities when starting a company but when the company grows it also requires the same or even more growth from the founders.

The first years we were focussing mostly on volume, getting as much content as possible and getting as much visitors and page views as possible. And I’ll be honost, we enjoyed and still enjoy growth in terms of quantity. Growing >100% every year is a great feeling and one of the “programs” I watch most is “Google Analytics Real-time”.

Our strategy and aggressive approach has brought us where we are right now, undisputed e-commerce market leader in Indonesia and top 5 local site overall. This has made us Rockstars and one of the most sexy tech-company in Indonesia. But there’s a danger to that, it’s so easy to enter a “sit-back-and-relax” mode thinking we’re done. But luckily there are a lot of internal and external factors that tell us we’re not there yet and we need to do some growing up ourselves to get to the next level.

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Willis Wee vs. William Henley aka Dr. Doom – The Verdict

April 4, 2012 by Remco | 14 Comments

Bashes, rants and banters, up untill today the almost exclusive territory of Sangatpedas when it comes to the Asian part of the world. Until this morning when my sleepy eyes opened in a flash when I saw on Twitter Willis Wee calling William Henley “delusional“. For the not insiders, Willis Wee is the founder of TechInAsia blog, formerly known as Penn-Olson.com. William Henley is a respected corporate guy who recently made a move to investing and entrepreneurship and started as a writer on E27. Both are guys that I respect for expressing their opinion and both I know, to some extend, personally. So immediately I looked into the source of this battle that was looking more grim by the minute. It seemed William was the topic of a quite HEFTY BASH (mirror) on TechInAsia written by Willis Wee.

Time for an unbiased verdict from the unchallenged expert source #1 in the world, Sangatpedas. Check it!

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Startups And Obsession Over Competition

March 25, 2012 by Remco | 0 comments

Let’s talk about competition, in business or anywhere else. First intelligent thing that pops to my mind: there will ALWAYS be competition in any space where there’s money, power or status to gain. You might think DUUUHHH! but in emerging markets first movers tend to forget or not realize that. For a period of time some company is the only significant player in a certain space and then someone will show up and seriously challenge them.

Right now in Indonesia we see someone seriously challenging Tokobagus for the first time. After a long period in which Tokobagus dominated the market 701Search decided it’s enough and increased the marketing efforts to an unprecedented level for Berniaga. Rocket Internet is another player that’s basically challenging the whole e-commerce Industry striving for world-domination. And obviously the media portals are already much longer in a brutal fight for domination.

Continue Reading →