Rama Mamuaya

The Startup Love Circle

24 Jun 2010
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Founders blame investors;

Investors blame CEOs;

CEOs blaming the R&D people;

R&D people say the product is fine, the market just doesn't get it;

and Marketing people blaming it all on the recession.

source:http://www.quora.com/Why-do-you-think-startups-fail

Where The Hell Have You Been, Google?!

22 Jun 2010
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Photo (left-right) : Andrew McGlinchey(Google), Hugo Diba (Detik), Desmarita Murni (WWF), moi (Bubu) and Derek Callow (Google).

Most of you were already aware about yesterday's event. Yes, Google launched their browser, Chrome, in Jakarta yesterday. That was the first time for Google having a consumer event for one of their product. So, i sat down with Andrew McGlinchey Google SEA's Lead Product Manager and talk about it.

The 20 minutes discussion came up with a pretty interesting conclusion, from my side. So i asked Andrew, why Google decided to do something in Indonesia? Google have been operating in Singapore for quite a while, and until now they practically ignore Indonesia. And my second question was, why Chrome? Why not Android, or Google Maps?

Andrew's answer for both question is very interesting. He said that Google wanted to do something in Indonesia. They didn't know what to do, or which product to launch, but they have to be here in Indonesia soon. Indonesia is definitely an enormous consumer market for internet companies like Google, and they realized that they have ignored Indonesia for too long. It's about time for Google to make a move. It could've been Android, it could've been Maps, but they have to come up with something to launch in Indonesia.

So apparently it has nothing to with Yahoo's acquisition, or Mozilla's campaign in Indonesia. They just want to make a statement, that they're here and ready to do something with you Indonesians.

Another question crossed my mind, WHAT TOOK YOU GUYS SO LONG?! And i know there's a lot of people asking about the same thing.

My guess is, Google SEA is not focusing on consumer market. If you look at some of Google SEA's activity, they launched Google Maps and Street Views, and other Google corporate solutions for Asian market. It's not exactly a consumer market for them, they're going after corporates who's willing to pay to use their corporate solutions. While back in Indonesia, that corporate market was not really in to Google's technology.

Now that everyone's aiming at Indonesia's huge consumer market, it's only normal that Google made the jump. Besides, Yahoo! already open the path for these soon-to-come big internet giants. Right? ;)

photo:kompas.com

It's Finally Here. Retaliate!

21 Jun 2010
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Finally, the ultimate event for us (Indonesians) to retaliate after failed to win the Thomas/Uber Cup two months ago, finally arrived. It's an event where Indonesian athletes will give their best effort to defeat all enemies to win the prestigious Indonesian Open 2010 trophy. For god's sake, how can't we win a competition named INDONESIA OPEN!? It's even named after our damn country, of course we should win this thing!

But, this video reveals a dark statistics throughout the Indonesia Open competition from time to time. Check it out and let me know what you think.

If Yahoo! Didn't Acquire Koprol

15 Jun 2010
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A simple discussion on Twitter i had with Mr. Arief Budiman, a best selling book writer, the managing director of an award winning creative agency PetakUmpet. We discussed about the possibility of Koprol that could've become a global brand as big as Yahoo! if only it hadn't got acquired. Arief said they could've. I respectfully disagree.

First of all, i was there with Koprol since the very beginning. I was one of the early people to try Koprol before anyone else knows about it. I was one of the first blogger to write about Koprol, i actively spread private invitations for early users and i must admit that i love Koprol. The first time i use it, i knew this is going to be something big. No doubt about my love to Koprol.

Foursquare? Back then, i've never heard about it.

When Satya invited me to come to an event at FX a few weeks back, i was curious because it's an unusual thing for Koprol to held such big scale event. When he announced that they're fully acquired by Yahoo! i was shocked. It was a good shock though. Since then, Koprol received enormous amount of publications from Techrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, and basically all the geeks in the world knows about then. They were also the rock star of Echelon 2010 that was held a week after the acquisition announcement. They're officially a role model for most Indonesian startups and also foreign investors.

Now, one of the big question is : If Yahoo hadn't acquired Koprol, could Koprol still grow to be a huge independent company? Let's scroll back the story a little bit.

Since 2009, Koprol was blasting their marketing and promotion effort and gained strong traction by being featured on magazines, newspapers, and even national TV. It was an awesome year for Koprol, people started to recognize and use their service, a close-knit community took shape. But the technical development was a nightmare for Koprol, it was too slow to develop their website and try to catch up with their increasing amount of new users. Their servers went down again and again, the features were pretty much halted and it took them so long to add new minor features. They couldn't catch up.

In a way, it's totally understandable. SkyEight, the company behind Koprol was an application development company. It was the mothership of Koprol, the money maker. SkyEight develop applications for clients and make money to "fund" Koprol. Koprol was a side project for SkyEight, a fun side project.

Since it's very hard for Koprol/SkyEight to develop their service, it's even harder for them to focus on selling their platform to advertisers. A few months before the acquisition, Koprol was on a mission to develop a Business Account where business owners can login and manage their so-called "Location Based Advertising". This is a brilliant business model, but again it's hard for the Koprol team to dedicate a special team for selling the ads to business owners due to human resource problems and maybe funding etc.

It's not that they suck at what they do, Satya, Fajar, Daniel and the rest of the Koprol team were awesome! They're really good at what they do, and they're solid as hell too. But it's just too hard for them to keep up with the requirements and requests from their audience without expanding their team. And for some reason, they didn't expand their team. Go figure.

With this kind of situation, can they be as big as Yahoo in the next 5 years? 10 years? 15 years? Who knows.

All I'm saying is that when it comes to reality with Koprol, it's a bit naive to say they could be as big as, say, Yahoo!. Acquisition is the best path for Koprol, and I'm glad they got acquired. It's just a pity they got acquired NOT by an Indonesian company. And i think they sold out too fast. If they had stayed independent for another year, maybe they could double (or even tripled) their value, or maybe (just maybe) they'd be stuck with a difficult position between Koprol and SkyEight's main projects for a long long time.

But to become as big as Yahoo!, i hardly think so. But then again, who knows. Right? ;)

Indonesia Open 2010

13 Jun 2010
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Last month, Indonesia lost to China on one of the most prestigious badminton competition in the world. It was a sad sad day. Indonesian athletes did their best, and for me they're already a winner. NOT!

In the 80-90s Indonesia is feared by the badminton athletes from all over the world, we were notorious. People mention us with fear, because we were really-really good. Our athletes nowadays are good, hats off. But apparently skill is not the only factor that determines a winner. I'm not going any deeper to that since I'm not an expert, but as i stumble upon these YouTube videos, I'm beginning to think about it.

Indonesia Open 2010 is coming, and it's one event where we HAVE to win. Imagine the irony of some other country winning an award called INDONESIA Open 2010.

We can win, i know. We have to win, i know. We will win, i know.

The Startup Love Circle

Where The Hell Have You Been, Google?!

It's Finally Here. Retaliate!

If Yahoo! Didn't Acquire Koprol

Indonesia Open 2010

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