The key takeaways from sharing session hosted in BLOCK71 Jakarta. Fave (formerly KFit) co-founder shared about pivoting business and scaling operation. He also shared about his entrepreneurship journey as well as managing the team. Kopi Chat is a series of talks organized by BLOCK71 Jakarta that brings in speakers from all around the world to connect with the community of entrepreneurs and developers. To attend events, just hit up the website: www.block71.co/jakarta

1. Kopi Chat Da Bao @BLOCK Jakarta
Finding the Right Pivot
and Scaling Your
Operation
Yeoh Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave 31st May 2017

2. Sharing session by Fave co-founder, Chen Chow. Moderated by Michael Salam from
CashShield.

3. The Beginnings
“Some of my project mates formed the current
regional managers of Fave.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

4. The Beginnings
“In 2015, I decided YOLO. That moment
came in, I wanted to quit and do something.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

5. The Beginnings
“The first day after quitting, there’s no more
emails in the mailbox. That moment was
weird.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

6. The Beginnings
"Don't know what stuff does, don't know what
it is, we just did it."
“Initially it was all trial and error.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

7. The Beginnings
“A lot of people from Groupon joined us when
we left.”
“30 people burn rate was quite crazy.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

8. The Beginnings
“Before you quit, apply to as many credit
cards and max out your credit limit.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

9. The Beginnings
“Joel (co-founder), he was driving a ferrari
and lamborghini, sold both and used grab car
and UberX.”
“We were eating Maggi Mie for quite a lot of
days.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

10. The Beginnings
“Based on whoever we hired, we launched in
their countries.”
“Good: exposure. Bad: we eventually had to
scale back and make some tough decisions.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

11. The Beginnings
“We received a Linkedin message to meet
with a VC. We thought that we weren’t ready;
if we meet and screw up, the chance is gone.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

12. The Beginnings
“We met the VC for a ‘chat’. We went there
with no slides. A ‘chat’ for them means a
pitch.”
“Joel started drawing on the whiteboard for an
hour, and we got the term sheet that night.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

13. The Beginnings
“Getting fundraising is not a trophy, it’s a
responsibility. It’s an obligation.”
“Even though it’s the equity round, you
actually owe people.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

14. The Beginnings
“Negotiations were pure blind trial and error.
We’ve never done anything like this before.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

15. The Beginnings
“We knew that Indonesia was the largest
market. We wanted to be in Indonesia.”
“We had no money to hire a financier, it was
literally trial and error.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

16. The Beginnings
“We negotiated like it was a night market, just
with more zeroes behind. It’s a lot of gut
feeling.”
“Buying is just us standing up, talking about it.
Okay it sounds good, let’s buy.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

17. The Beginnings
“The decision you make at that time is a best
decision you made with the information you
had. No matter if it’s the right choice or wrong
choice.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

18. The Beginnings
“Reversible and irreversible decisions. Don’t
worry too much about reversible decisions.
Spend time thinking about irreversible
decisions.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

19. Pivoting
“After acquiring Groupon, we cleared out the
previous inventory in one to two hours. We
asked what our employees wanted and gave
them away.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

20. Pivoting
“Pivoting isn’t just about product, it’s the team
as well.”
“A lot of it is understanding. The first thing the
team did after arriving to Jakarta is attending
a Bahasa Indonesia class.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

21. Pivoting
“Even though they can’t speak Indonesian,
knowing a few words will boost the
confidence in the local team.”
“People don’t care about you until they know
you care about them.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

22. Pivoting
“The important thing is caring.”
“Human bonding is what connects.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

23. Pivoting
“During our annual team dinner in KL, we
invited every single person from every single
office to KL. We insisted that everyone from
the office boy and intern got to go.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

24. Pivoting
“Twelve people from Indonesia made the first
passport of their life.”
“Think about how you impact people.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

25. Pivoting
“Every team has a different culture. How do
you make sure that they see eye to eye, work
together and trust each other.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

26. Pivoting
“We base pivoting from the people we hire,
not the market.”
“We rebranded as fave, and all four previous
cultures had to join the fave culture.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

27. Pivoting
“We migrated from a fitness app to an all-in-
one app.”
“When we added a beauty and wellness app,
our head of customer satisfaction argued with
us saying that we betrayed our customers.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

28. Pivoting
“We made the decision after to build an app
from the bottom up, and it became fave.”
“Make sure to tell the team that it’s perfectly
fine to speak up and fight.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

29. Pivoting
“People pivot when things don’t work. At the
time, we were growing and things were doing
good.”
“However, we realized that there was a
ceiling.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

30. Pivoting
“It was easier to convince the investors than it
was to convince the team.”
“The best time to pivot is when you have
cash, because the pressure is least at that
time.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

31. Pivoting
“Our teams were asking very tough
questions. One of our team leads said that if
he asked those questions in another
company, he would get fired.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

32. Pivoting
“What’s our direction?”
“What is our identity?”
“How do you get people who have been
working hard for 9 months recharged,
refreshed and ready to move forward?”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

33. The Team
“One thing we tell our team is: One Percent
Done.”
“Another culture of our team is transparency.
Everyone on our team including interns know
our P&L.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

34. The Team
“If I can’t trust the team, there’s no way we
can go forward.”
“If I can’t trust the team, I might as well fire
the team.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

35. The Team
“A lot of the times, we go back to the
mentality of trust.”
“Being transparent helps the team understand
why we do certain things.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

36. The Mindset
“If 2% of your customers are unsatisfied,
that’s a lot of people cursing you everyday.”
“If our average response time in chat is 16
seconds, which is good for industry
standards, imagine standing in front of a shop
for 16 seconds.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

37. The Mindset
“Previously, refunds were made in 14 days.
We pushed the team to reduce it to two days.
Now every refund is real-time.”
“Go back to fundamentals and just do it.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

38. The Mindset
“Go back to principle, are we doing good
things for our customers.”
“If the restaurants don’t grow, they won’t work
with us, no matter what we do.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

39. Scaling Operations
“Go back to the people. How to let people
understand why we do certain things.”
“How do you make people say: ‘Thank God
it’s Monday’?”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

40. Scaling Operations
“How do you build into the team that they live,
breathe and think the vision and objective?”
“How do you ingrain this mindset one by
one?”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

41. Scaling Operations
“When the team knows the reason why they
do what they do, they’ll go above and
beyond.”
“The job of building the team is every
person’s responsibility. If you don’t live and
breathe it, it wouldn’t work.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

42. Scaling Operations
“Our company is very unstructured, there’s no
job orientation for the first two weeks, and no
career trajectory.
We just promise a journey of learning
together.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

43. Scaling Operations
“No job is too low for you.”
“If they don’t appreciate the vision, it’s our
fault and not their fault. Understand what
motivates them and what they care about.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

44. Scaling Operations
“We made so many mistakes along the way.”
“I did my nineteen bows to the nineteen
people in the korean team when we shut it
down.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

45. Scaling Operations
“A lot of time when you don’t know, ask your
heart if it’s the right thing to do.”
Chen Chow
Co-Founder of Fave

46. Kopi Chat Da Bao
@Block71 Jakarta
A special thanks to everyone who attended
Kopi Chat @BLOCK Jakarta and made the
event possible!
31st May 2017