It’s been roughly two weeks after Arno and I said goodbye to Tokobagus and the show must go on. I’ve received a lot of nice support from the community and a lot of people can’t wait for my next adventure, my next startup. “For sure it will be bigger than Tokobagus” some said. Well I seriously doubt that will happen, Tokobagus is huge and set for getting even much bigger. Besides that, I don’t think “big” is my target neither has it been so in the past.
Tokobagus started almost as a coincidence, both Arno and me so the opportunity and thought we could make something cool that people would actually use. “Big” comes with the territory of classifieds, in the end there will be only one so it was about outgrowing the market and competitors and becoming the clear #1 that people can rely on. But the motivation has always been doing something we like, with a team we love. Sure we thought about fortune and fame sometimes but it never was what got us out of bed every morning.
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The word is out by now, Arno and I, the founders, have left Tokobagus. I’ve been involved in some other exciting startups before but by far this has been the best ride ever.
The journey started in Bali in a small house in Tukad Balian in the middle of the sawa’s, where we started out developing e-commerce platforms for clients in Europe. We were struggling to build something sustainable but it paid for the bills and it was an exciting time exploring new things.
Then we decided to start Tokobagus.com and somehow we never doubted it would become as successful as it is. This might sound arrogant but I sure didn’t have that feeling with all startups I was involved in. From the start we felt we were in the right place at the right time and knew what we had to do. Even though very few took us serious at that time, our small team believed in what we were doing and that was more than enough for us.
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Some things are hard to get used to when living in Jakarta. On one hand there’s the glitter and glamour of the malls, the porche restaurants and rich people competing for who has the most over-the-top car. In shrining contrast with that there’s so much poverty and suffering which is so apparent when you just pay a little bit of attention. One of the most shrining street sites are the Jakarta street children begging for money at crossings and traffic lights.
I’m a realist and always to tell my wife “honey, you can’t save the whole world”, she’s actually always trying to do that. But some things you just can’t ignore and for me that’s the children and even babies “working” in the streets of Jakarta. Babies are often used by women beggars to create more empathie and children are working late in the streets in the hazardous environment of the Jakarta streets.
Every time I see these children or women with babies it hurts a bit, I guess most human beings have an instinct for protecting kids. Being a father myself I can not imagine my daughter in such a hopeless situation without the prospect of any future. Normally I shake it off and accept it as part of living in Jakarta.
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I used to be a semi-pro DJ for 18 years or so. Even when you don’t look like Brad Pitt, being a DJ in the popular clubs and the big parties makes you really popular. Luckily I’ve always had the strong feeling that my “popularity” was linked to being a DJ and not so much to who I am. So at one moment I was fed up with and getting too old for 2-3 times a week arriving home at a time other “normal” people start the day. Some of my colleague DJ’s told me I was crazy just giving up my well paid gigs which allowed me already from early age a pretty decent life style. For me it was clear I needed to focus on other things like family and my business. It was also the moment to see if I was right, was my popularity about to crumble? Well, YES! INSTANTLY! BOOM! WHO ARE YOU? I mean this took no more than 3 weeks. People who used to pretend being mates, friends and always took the opportunity to chat completely ignored me. It made me smile though because life became a lot easier, spotting the real friends never been so easy.
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I’ve been living in Indonesia now for nearly 3 years but never have I written a post about life in Indonesia. Even though I have an even longer relationship of a bit more than 6 years with Indonesia I guess I had the feeling I hadn’t quite figured out life in Indonesia yet. Frankly, I’m quite sure I still haven’t figured it out but that makes it all the more fun to write about it.
The reason I moved to Indonesia is obviously because 6 years ago Arno and me started a website called Tokobagus.com and at one point it became too successful to manage from abroad. Anyway, this story tells about the start of my life in Indonesia and why from the start I made some unusual decisions.
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