Monthly Archives: June 2018

Asia VC Cast with Alex Shin from Hashed



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This week’s special guest is Alex Shin from Hashed.  Alex is the Chief Business Officer and Partner at Hashed, the largest crypto assets fund, project accelerator and community builder based out in Korea.

Working out of San Francisco, Alex focuses his efforts around cross-border deals and key partnership opportunities as Hashed continues to build footprint overseas. Previously, Alex led the US expansion of Blind and held numerous Enterprise Sales and Partnership roles at companies like Google and DocuSign.

Also Read: The Jay Kim Show talks entrepreneurship with Taro Amornched of Take Me Tour

Together, we discuss how we can leverage the past year’s financial phenomenon in cryptocurrency to keep Korea as the global leader not just for trading, but for blockchain development & advancement.

And Alex also shares his insights on what Hashed looks out for when making investment decisions.


The Jay Kim Show talks entrepreneurship with Taro Amornched of Take Me Tour



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You’re already comfortable booking your own flight and hotel accommodations, and Taro’s Take Me Tour makes planning the touring portion of your vacation just was easy.

Also Read: oBike shuts down in Singapore

Experience-rich, hassle-free, and customizable, Take Me Tour links travelers with local experts who offer single-day travel experiences in Thailand, Cambodia, and Japan. Available tours cover the gamut — visiting temples, exploring markets, fishing, cycling, cooking classes, visiting elephant sanctuaries…

In today’s episode you’ll learn:

  • About Taro and how he came up with the Take Me Tour concept
  • About the Take Me Tour user experience
  • About Take Me Tour’s business model
  • About Taro’s experience with the Alibaba’s e-founders program
  • Taro’s advice for aspiring startup founders

97: Taro Amornched, co-founder and CEO of Take Me Tour

Listen to this episode on iTunes

What was your biggest insight from this week’s episode? Let Jay know in the comments or on Twitter: @jaykimmer.

LINKS FROM TODAY’S EPISODE

Also Read: The Story of You: The intertwining relationship between art and tech

Detailed Show Notes

  • (3:03) Taro’s self introduction
  • (5:22) How Taro came up with the Take Me Tour concept
  • (8:07) Taro gives an overview of Take Me Tour
  • (9:11) The Take Me Tour user experience
  • (11:43) The languages Take Me Tour supports
  • (12:52) Jay and Taros discuss the price of the different tours, tips, etc.
  • (14:49) Take Me Tour offers custom experiences
  • (17:01) Take Me Tour’s business model
  • (18:24) Taro describes the booking and payment process
  • (19:35) Taro describes Take Me Tour’s quality assurance
  • (23:05) Take Me Tour’s growth plan in the coming months
  • (24:43) Awards Taro has won
  • (27:15) Taro’s experience with Alibaba’s e-founders program
  • (29:38) Taro’s advice for aspiring startup founders

Asia VC Cast with Peter Choi from Go-Jek



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This week’s special guest is Peter Choi from Go-Jek. Go-Jek is the massively popular ride-hailing company from Indonesia – its first unicorn and recently announced that they will invest $500 million to expand their services into Southeast Asia.

Peter is the VP, Head of Logistics at Go-Jek, responsible for product & business development, data analytics, and operations. Prior to this role, Peter worked as a Senior Analyst at Salesforce and made the big transition from Silicon Valley to now Jakarta.

Also Read: Want free Echelon tickets? Solve this riddle

Together, we discuss how Peter is tackling one of the biggest pain points in Indonesia, its logistics. And though started as an on-demand ridesharing platform, why it makes sense for Go-Jek to aggressively expand into other consumer businesses such as delivery, payment and even massages!


The Story of You with Jumper.AI Co-founder Nyha Shree



How does Jumper work?

Jumper converts your social media posts into a shopable post so that when customers comment on your post with simple queries like “what’s the price” or “how do I order this”, Jumper will automatically answer them and talk to your customers on your behalf and walk them through the sale right within the platform. They don’t have to go to another website.

How do you ensure it is secure?

All the credit card data or financial data gathered, we don’t store it, neither do the merchants. It’s tokenized with the payment gateways. Tokenisation is an encryption method which is created by companies like VISA. The payment processor stores keep the data to ensure the protection.

How do the recent algorithmic changes in Facebook affect social selling and brands marketing on social media platforms?

One of the things I have seen on Facebook is that if you are engaged with a page, it will give you priority over others. The algorithm is pushing customers towards groups and if there is a positive intent from the customer, it works well.

Tell us about some highlights and challenges over your journey to reach Forbes 30 Under 30.

I started entrepreneurship in college and this is my 6th company and it has been a set of failures. Three failed companies—most of the learning came from the failures. In terms of the learnings, it was how do build a vision for your product and what you need to do in terms of your vision for your product to keep your team more than motivated.

Also Read: I used Go-Pay to buy these magazines and a bubble drink. Here is why I think it’s game-changing

The other is what to assess when you are in the building phase of your product and understand what your consumers want, especially when you are in the initial stage.

Was it hard to educate people about Jumper?

In Asia, people have already moved on to social commerce. Anyone who is already using social media as their major acquisition channel, they get the utility of the platform.

Also Read: Logistics startup Lalamove offers same-day delivery for SMEs in Indonesia

So, for us whether it be enterprise clients or SaaS companies—we do have a set of early adopters who instantly get what the product is and what the value add is.

What are the statistics of people who complete a sale on website vs social selling?

In Asia on the average, 30 per cent of digital sales happen through social media.