Episodes

  • Replacing toothbrushes and recycling food waste, he helps sustainable products go to market

    Replacing toothbrushes and recycling food waste, he helps sustainable products go to market
    Jun 22 2020
    Brice started his career helping football (soccer) clubs find sponsorships in Asia, then got into sustainability. He's running BizSu, where he helps sustainable products go-to-market and helps companies find sustainable solutions.https://bizsu.co/Learn:- how he managed to get leading hotels to give him B2B deals on sustainable bottles- how he plans to transition to B2C distribution with COVID-19BooksSubtle art of not giving a fuckAlvin:  [00:00:00] Hey guys, welcome to Abyss Gazing where I interview entrepreneurs on how they are building their companies in a post COVID world. If you like the topic, but you can't stand the length, check out the website, abyssgazing.com that's a, B, Y, S, S, G, a, Z, I N, g.com where I post show notes and full transcripts of all the episodes.welcome to Abyss Gazing the podcast where we interview entrepreneurs about how they're navigating the current turbulent times. Joining me today is Brice Degeyter  of BizSU where he helps companies be more sustainable and do good for the environment while developing business opportunities.Brice, are you ready to begin? Brice: Hi. thank you, having me before. thank you for having me here. I'm all good. Thank you. Yeah, Alvin: no problem. Yeah, thanks for joining us today, Brice: my, [00:01:00] yeah. Alvin: So can you tell, I saw that you started off your career in sports in a few different roles, and then you went on to this company called central group in Thailand where there was more sustainable to you later.Can you tell us a bit about how you made this transition from like sports to a sustainability related business?Brice: yeah. I actually, I didn't, study, sustainability myself. I studied math, thanks to refinance. so it wasn't really, my, my, my, my field originally and, and I started a business when I was in Thailand five years ago. And so we were helping, basically football clubs to find sponsorship in Asia.And. Well after, [00:02:00] after, more than a year, almost two years, the company found, we suddenly like really, in a motto of, of ours. we just lost our appliance and. Or, and all suppliers, because the King in Thailand guide died, at the time. And, so basically we, we, we lost the bid everything in the end.Basically. What I realized at this moment, is that what I was doing was working in football. It was, it was good. I do this for, we, we had the feeling to helping a lot of people enjoying football more. however, I wanted to do something better for the community. I wanted to do something which is.More important than this, which is more valuable. And so at that time, I, I, sorry. That's okay. [00:03:00] At that time, I, I, I then started to, to think about having my own business in sustainability. so I started with, No. With cameras. I started, to have a roll our window miner when it position with the minor room in sustainability.and, so at the time I was, you got on the big sports store. And so it was still related to sports and somehow, and we were the first, the first of in Thailand to stop plastic bags. so that was a pretty, pretty good achievement. And, and then I wanted to do more than this. so then I moved to central group and I go to a major room.In sustainability. and we stopped the plastic bags in, 10% of our stores. so knowing that the group, it's huge in Thailand, I was, there was actually [00:04:00] a pretty big thing for the country. and just a matter of days, all the competitors, did similar things. And a few weeks later, the government.Fast alone to stop completely, plastic bags in, installs in time. And, so I was, it was pretty, pretty interesting to do, to do this. It was amazing actually. Alvin: wait, before you carry on, like I think w what you said early on about the football sponsorship thing is very interesting. Like that was your first try at entrepreneurship.And it didn't go well. But, like now thinking back, can you think of like the reasons why it didn't go so well and like how you do it differently now? Is it because you said the King, the King died then, it had an impact and they don't how, how, how did the King Steph affect the business directly?[00:05:00] Brice: Well for one year, pretty much the business was down in, in Thailand at that time. It was really big thing. It was a really big thing. however, a lot of businesses, still. Still went down after the, during and after, after this period, after this morning. So, what it means is that we were not resilient enough at that time, because we just couldn't figure out how to, how to survive at this moment.so it was also our mistake in a, in a certain way. we were now really easy to resilient enough. And basically, I think at this, at this moment myself, I wasn't, much prepared, you know, from many people. I would say most entrepreneurs, the first experience is never perfect. maybe for  [00:06:00] maybe with it was perfect, but, most of them it's now.and for me it was the case. I wasn't prepared at all. I, yeah, a lot of things that I ...
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    45 mins
  • How Biotech Startups Are Creating COVID-19 Vaccines

    How Biotech Startups Are Creating COVID-19 Vaccines
    Jun 22 2020
    Akshaya Bansal finished a PhD studying how to use light to destroy cancer, joined Entrepreneur First to try her hand at entrepreneurship before joining Esco Ventures as an Associate. Learn about Esco Venture's venture programme for biotech experts, the biotech system in Southeast Asia, and about biotech approaches to developing COVID vaccines.https://www.escoventures.com/CompanyCarmine Therapeutics (https://www.carminetherapeutics.com/)BookAge of StagnationToolsAirtable[00:00:00] Alvin: Hey guys, welcome to Abyss Gazing where I interview entrepreneurs on how they are building their companies in a post COVID world. If you like the topic, but you can't stand the length, check out the website, abyssgazing.com that's a, B, Y, S, S, G, a, Z, I N, g.com where I post show notes and full transcripts of all the episodes.   Okay. Three, two, one. Welcome to Abyss Gazing.Joining us today is actually Akshaya Bansal, a venture fellow ESCO ventures, where she does technology scouting and venture building. For biotech startups in Singapore and Southeast Asia. So, uh, actually, can we start off, like, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you got into biotech investments?Akshaya Bansal: Sure. Thanks Alvin. So, um, I did my PhD from NUS in biomedical engineering and nano medicine. And then I did a two, two and a half years of a [00:01:00] postdoc work as well, which is basically research. And then I got into, um, entrepreneur first where I had my first taste of entrepreneurship and it was a completely different world.Now she got me really interested in the venture capital space itself. And then I also realized how different software and biting investing is, which is why I wanted to see for myself how biotech investing works. And that's how I landed up at Esther ventures and their amorphous program. I can tell you more about it later.So. Oh, yeah. That's how I landed up. So it was, I'm a part of the Marcus's program, a venture fellow at Esquire ventures. And we are when you build up and the focus on biotech companies only, um, yeah, and we work with BIS from the very beginning and help them start a company. Alvin: So there's been a lot of attention on biotech recently because a lot of VC's on Twitter and so on, they are saying that.There's going to be a Renaissance in the biotech investment field. You [00:02:00] do like attention from COVID and so on. So it can tell us a bit about the differences between biotech ventures and software ventures, which is a more common form of startups that you see on there. Akshaya Bansal: Sure. So, um, biotech actually has been a very hot space for investment in the last five or six years, I would say, um, more so in the U S where like billions of dollars of funding, um, Go into it every year in Asia, it is catching up.It is inherently very different from how software companies work. Um, in a software company, you would have a minimum viable product, which you can deploy easily. You can do several rounds of testing and you can have a product out there and reading the new in a fairly short period of time. Um, but in biotech, it's very different.Um, product life cycles can be very long. Many many years to develop something. So when you first put in money into an idea, you don't, you might not actually have a product. You might not have bought it for years to come, but you [00:03:00] bet on the science and you bet on the people doing the science and that's where the difference lies.So you identify a problem and then we move to the solution. And if it's good enough, you spend a lot of time and effort and energy into developing that. So essentially the defense would be itself at companies. You could see a product. In a fairly short period of time. But, um, for, by the companies, the investments are, are very long term and you might never get a product.Um, and the two have to be from the science and also the regulatory approvals around biotech products are very different from those in a software company. So for biomedical products, especially drugs are, you have to go to drinking, testing, um, Phase one phase two and phase three, you have Googles to deal with.And that can take a long time and the drug can get killed at any stage of that process. So it is a risky business, but it's very rewarding because in the end you will end up helping millions of people at your product success. Yeah. Well, [00:04:00] Alvin: there's one thing you mentioned, uh, in your description of the differences that they struck out to me.So you said you still start from the problem and then you develop solutions. From like the biotech investment point of view, you still see, like there has to be the problem first before you come in and build solution for that. So let's say your PhD is on a new property of these kinds of enzymes, but it's just something, some interesting discovery.You, uh, what a startup being possible to be possible, make a start of that or the. Like from an investment point of view,...
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    53 mins
  • How Pakistan's Largest Telemedicine Platform did 10x more consultations during COVID-19

    How Pakistan's Largest Telemedicine Platform did 10x more consultations during COVID-19
    Jun 22 2020
    Sara Khurrum is the founder of Sehat Kahani, Pakistan's leading telemedicine platform. She started the company after experiencing first-hand the problem of married female doctors in Pakistan having limited opportunities to leverage their skills in full time jobs. https://sehatkahani.com/Learn:- she started out Sehat Kahani by partnering with rural clinics- how she gets more and more female medical talent on board- how she created the mobile app in a few weeks in partnership with a software studio- her plans for shifting from a free model to a paid model for her mobile appFavourite BookThe Blue SweaterMost important lesson1. Never sign a document before reading it2. Always believe in yourself, impostor syndrome is bullshitAlvin:  [00:00:00] three, two, one. Welcome to Abyss Gazing in today's episode, joining me today is Sarah off. Uh . Am I pronouncing that right?Sara: Yes. Yes, you are. It's called. Alvin: See I Connie. So Sarah actually graduated as a doctor and also proceeded on to get a master's in public health. She's the founder of , which is a telemedicine startup based in Pakistan. So are you ready? Are you ready to begin Sarah? Sara: Yes, I am really excited. Thank you for having me here.Alvin: Thanks for joining us today. So. Like just does start off when you were a medical student where you were, were you already planning to start a business? Sara: No, never. I, uh, I I've been brought up in a very traditional Pakistani family and, uh, and I belong to the mini class [00:01:00] and. From the time I was five years old, I think my parents decided that I had to become a doctor because it's a matter of grief, grief, privilege, and the ability for a female in Pakistan to become a doctor and a lawyer, uh, barons from the middle income background who save up to educate their daughters.One that orders to become doctors at the end of the day. Because it is very prestigious. They're very respected and they get the best hand in marriage. So my parents had the same idea. So all my life, I was just told that you have to become a doctor. You have to have a doctor in front of your knee, and then you have to obviously help patients, but doing the business.I don't think anyone in my family before me has ever done business, uh, let alone move myself. So, no, I never thought that I would drop business. Alvin: So, so what was the initial spark of the idea which led to your current startup? Sara: So I think it just evolved in a series of events. I, um, I got married right after my graduation.I, it was an arranged marriage. [00:02:00] Uh, there's a base. There's a very, um, interesting concept in the sign. It's called dr. Bright. Um, so Pakistan has a total medical workforce of 170,000 doctors and announced 70% of this number is female doctors. Again, because of the same issue. That's very prestigious, very noble for women to become doctors in Pakistan, because then they become the real eligible bachelors.They get the best hand in marriage. Um, so because of this dr. Breast phenomena out of that, 70%, only 23% woman book. Okay. The myths around 80 to 85,000 doctors, female doctors from the ecosystem today. Um, so following the same route, when I got my medical degree, my parents said that now you have to get married because you're getting older.So I was mad at, but in three months, uh, through an arranged marriage to my husband and almost going when I applied for the residency, um, program, uh, both my masters and it was doing all it right until I found out that I was pregnant. Um, I left the program. And, um, just to, you know, [00:03:00] just to kill time, I joined another organization to work as a medical doctor, um, in, um, one of the clinics in a low income community in my city.Um, my husband shifted to another city for his word. So I had to shift right after my baby with him. And I went to a new city with the new baby. Without with very early matters. I was only one year of my marriage and suddenly I fell into severe postpartum depression because I realized I couldn't work anymore.And I had become in fact adopted. Right. Um, so through my conversations with one of my ex partners, I realized that, you know, this happens to a lot of women. In the country, not just me at the same time, the clinic that I used to do prior to my leaving the city, they couldn't find a doctor to replace me. So I started doing on-call consultations for those patients.In that case, the nurse used to call me, we used to talk and she used to consult patients. And then we started doing it on Skype because I have to see the lesions and, and the, and the patient in like through a virtual medium to be knowing what [00:04:00] kind of symptoms they're facing. So I realized that, you know, if I can do it sitting at home.And so I think patients in another city in a low income community who cannot access another doctor right now, how it all female doctors sitting at home and stay consolidations who are not, uh, who do not get the chance to ...
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    46 mins
  • How She Went From Writing Quests For Games to Helping Security Companies Manage Threats

    How She Went From Writing Quests For Games to Helping Security Companies Manage Threats
    Jun 22 2020
    Joining us is Natalie Doran, CEO and co-founder of Lytehouse, which does manages threat detection for security control centres.Learn about Natalie's journey from through the world of startups and social entrepreneurship to her current startup, Lytehouse.She shares her insights and experiences on:- the importance of co-founder fit, in terms of skills as well as alignment- working on startups with a mission driven by social impact- how she tried to validate a few prior startup ideas- her experience meeting her co-founder Jean-Vicente De Carvalho, bonding with him, and having a good skills match- how she validated the idea that morphed into Lytehouse by sitting down with security personnel and observing their workflows- self-care and making time for yourself when building a company.Favourite books:Leaders Eat LastPicture of Dorian GrayFavourite tool:G-SuiteHubSpot CRMhttps://www.lyte-house.com/nterviewed three amazing entrepreneurs on how they are starting and building their companies in this stressful climate. I just wanted to apologize in advance for the audio quality of these first three episodes.I fixed my microphone settings so that starting from episode four onwards, my voice should be much clearer, but for the time being, please bear with me and I hope the content more than pays off for the audio.  thank you.And let's gaze into the Abyss together.welcome to Abyss Gazing. I'm your host Alvin Leong, and joining me today is Natalie Doran, the co founder and CEO of Lytehouse, a security control center for managed threat detection using machine learning.An AI Natalie will tell us about her journey into entrepreneurship and startups  the lessons she learned from her first startups and how she applied them to building Lytehouse. The challenges she's facing, we're going Lytehouse and [00:01:00] where she's going to be. So, Natalie, are you ready to get started? Natalie: Okay.Alvin: So Natalie and I both knew each other from the entrepreneur first program, but before that she's from the UK. She graduated back in 2014 and then since then she has been working in various roles in Singapore. So Natalie , can you tell us a bit about how you moved to Singapore?Like what made you decide to move to Singapore. Natalie: Really the move to Singapore was not as strategic or as calculated as I'd like to pretend it is. Um, actually the idea to move to Singapore really came from. Uh, I was, uh, in the, in the UK, in the West Midlands where I'm from, small village. I came out of university, the English literature degree and creative writing.And sort of ended university hit the ground running. I was like, I'm going to go and change the world and I'm going to do one of these things. And then people basically said, well, with an English [00:02:00] degree you can become a teacher or you can become a journalist. I was like, and then? And they're like, nah, that's good.It's kind of it. You can teach it well, you can be a journalist. I was like, well, okay, well, neither of those things really works for me. And so I was really struggling to find. Like my niche or like the area that I can really get passionate about. And, uh, you know, some, some family members, like family, family of my dad's family, uh, had been in Singapore for over 16 years, I think it is now.Um, and so they say, you know, why don't you try Singapore. It's in need of creatives. It's a need of people with content. And, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a far cry from teeny tiny village in the West Midlands. So pretty much overnight I agree to move. But I honestly, hands in the air, didn't know where Singapore was on a map until I got hit.And I went, I didn't even put them in stories. I was just like, I have to leave. I have to go start a new life. [00:03:00] And so I kind of did that. And, um. Kind of arrived and when, okay, what, what do I, what do I do now? So the idea was never initially I'm going to go be an entrepreneur. It was, I need to find a job in a country that I know nothing about.And I was 23 at the time. And I just went to every networking event I could find every single one. And, uh, ended up meeting a guy who told me he was building a startup. It was a social impact game for kids that would enable them to contribute to real causes in the real world with game play. And, uh, I sort of fell in love with the mission.Volunteering had been a part of my life since I was very little. And so, uh, impact and the human elements of a business really inspired me and they were also looking for someone else. The content side. So a lead to the opportunity. I did six months of interning at various, uh, uh, ad agencies and, uh, some, uh, the American chamber of commerce.So, so did a bit of [00:04:00] interning, but ultimately realized that I really wanted to try my hand at the start of game. So I joined them yet in end of 2015 and fell in love with startups from there. It hasn't been easy. Yeah, really, really not easy. Um, but I think I wouldn't ...
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    1 hr and 13 mins
  • How Rathin Shah Used A Picture of A Monkey to Get into Y-Combinator

    How Rathin Shah Used A Picture of A Monkey to Get into Y-Combinator
    Jun 22 2020
    Rathin Shah is the CEO and Co-founder of Spenny, a FinTech app helping millennials in the Indian market invest their spare change. He started his career at JP Morgan, then launched his first startup creating pallets for shipping, which he exited before entering Entrepreneur First to launch Spenny.https://spennyapp.com/Learn:- What he took away from JP Morgan that helped him on his startup journey- How he validated the idea that became Spenny using a picture of a monkey- his experiences with his first company- What he learnt from Y CombinatorFavourite Book:Netflix Culture Handbook (https://jobs.netflix.com/culture)[00:00:00] Alvin: Welcome to Abyss Gazing, the podcast where we interview entrepreneurs about how they started their businesses, the challenges they overcame while building their companies. Today's guest is Rathin Rathin: ShahAlvin: Rathin is the CEO and founder of Spenny. A FinTech app helps customers in the Indian markets save your spare change Rathin.Graduated as an electronics engineer and was working as an investment banker after graduation. He then started an industrial manufacturing products startup before joining the talent investor Entrepreneur First, he went on to Y Combinator with his idea Spenny. Rathin. Are you ready to Rathin: begin? Yes, absolutely.Very excited to begin. Okay, Alvin: so just to the viewers know, I forgot to press record, so we are repeating about 10 minutes of our conversation.  previously I was asking Rathin: Rathin. Alvin: He graduated as an electronic engineer, but he went Rathin: into Alvin: KPMG and then JP Morgan, even though he had a lot of like Rathin: entrepreneurship related Alvin: activities [00:01:00] back in university, he started, he was a co founder of a Rathin: tech bottle called top talent Alvin: in and the center for Rathin: entrepreneurial leadership.Alvin:  Rathin was telling me earlier about why he decided to do that instead of starting his own startup after graduation. Rathin: Yeah. I mean, you know, way startups. I like this. you know, we started working on something and we realized we forgot to press record. So it's funny. but, no, I mean, the reason my actually, as a part of my university, I was super involved with a lot of stuff. During my first year of university is one, when I had my first brush with entrepreneurship and I fell in love with the idea of,  you know, working on an idea and implementing it, taking it to, you know, taking it to a real. A business. And that is super exciting to me. And so us, for us, what we did was that every year we would sit down and, you know, well, I figured out one idea that we wanted to implement during the course of that year, and that's how we came about. you know, toptalent was one of that the center for entrepreneurial leadership was [00:02:00] another one of that. So on and so forth. But while doing these things, I do realized also that, there are a lot of stuff, there's a lot of stuff that I need to figure out before I can actually run a full pleasure business.in fact, that the things which I want to get trained in the things which I want to get, Jane myself in, specifically by working in. High pressure work environments. and, and in good brand name environments, which can really help me develop as a person. And then that can, that skill set can help me in my businesses later on.So that was the whole idea. And so that's why after university, I was, I was very lucky to be associated with two of the top brands. one escape BMG and the other was JP Morgan. Both of them are of a good high risk. I mean, high intensity work environments. and one of them had me a lot in, in, you know, shaping me to, to do my businesses later.Yeah. Alvin: So tell us a bit about Rathin: how, Alvin: what, what you brought away from the experience at JP Morgan that helped you with startups. Rathin: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, specifically with JP [00:03:00] Morgan, my role was I used to work as an investment banker, with JP Morgan and, working across geographies, in India as well as in London.I was, I was majorly walking on the Europe and geography. for me, I used to walk in the MNA advisory division, which is mergers and acquisitions advisory division, specifically overlooking the AMIA and all the sectors of consumer health ed and reading. so essentially any, any companies, within the consumer, retail and healthcare sector.Which would require modern acquisitions, advise anyone, anything of that sort is something that our team would look at. and for me as such, my personal takeaway during these two years was that I really got to know about that and that business life cycle. From, from a financial standpoint. So, you know, right from the point where a particular company gets their first round of funding as a startup all the way up through, you know, CDs, ABCD funding, and then eventually, sometimes leading up to IPO and eventually getting acquired.So, it really, for me, it was more like a first hand [00:04:...
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Telemedicine for Pets, She Eats Her Own Cat Food! Bootstrapped and growing rapidly

    Telemedicine for Pets, She Eats Her Own Cat Food! Bootstrapped and growing rapidly
    Jun 22 2020
    Athena started her career in banking after graduating from Carnegie Mellon. She got her first taste of entreprenurship helping to organise the Art Basel Art Fair in Hong Kong and got into the event planning industry. After that, she became the third employee at DoctorAnywhere, a telemedicine company based in Singapore, leaving to start her own pet telemedicine company with her friend.https://zumvet.com/Learn her insights on:- bootstrapping the ZumVet app using an external technology agency with her own savings before fundraising- growing her customer base with Facebook groups- the telemedicine industry and different business models within it- eating her own dog-food, She uses ZumVet herself and pays for it!Favourite BookUnbearable Lightness of Being by Milan KunderaFavourite ToolNotion for everything from note-taking to onboarding documentsMost important lessonLearning to work with your co-founder, find your groove where you work well with them.[00:00:00] Alvin: Okay. Three, two, one. Welcome to Abyss Gazing. In this episode, we are joined today with Athena Lee CEO and cofounder of zoom vet, a telemedicine company, which targets the veterinarian medicine market here in Singapore. Um, as he now has a background in finance and enter the world of startups after working in finance.So I think now, are you ready to begin? Yes, Athena: thanks for having me. Alvin: Okay. So like, let's start off just with your background. You you're originally from Hong Kong, you graduated from Carnegie Mellon university. Um, can you tell us a bit about your, uh, Oh, you started out your career at Moody's investors and how that led to the world of startups.Athena: Sure. So, um, I graduated in 2000, um, and at the time finance was still, you know, the way to go. I think [00:01:00] startups were just starting to take off. So when I was graduating, um, I always imagined myself in a corporate setting. Um, and so, you know, immediately after I graduated, I started applying to jobs and, um, opportunity with Moody's came up.Um, and I'd say that. You know, it, it was quite interesting. Um, I started at Moody's. I was there for about two years, and then I moved back to Hong Kong, um, and started at UBS. And so for the first, uh, six or seven years of my career, um, I was mainly focused on finance. Um, and it was really a great experience.And even to this day, uh, when I'm talking to people who were just graduating, um, I always encourage them to look into, uh, starting, starting at a corporate first. You know, one of the most important things I've found is that at, in a corporate setting, you have great mentors there. And so, um, one of the first managers I ever had Jocelyn, um, you know, really had a big influence, uh, on the way that I [00:02:00] worked to this day and the way that I manage my employees as well.Um, you know, being very hands on, but also making sure that I, um, She, you know, I, I took the time to learn important skills. Um, you know, a lot of things like how Excel works, um, how a company works, how teams work together. Um, and a lot of the insight that I have, um, right now and the way that I run my company, the way that I set up my systems and processes, um, is very heavily influenced by how, um, you know, I want to grow the company.So the way that I see my company now is to do that. I think we may have been disconnected, Alvin: but nice. Okay. The audio is fine. Like I seen the video is freezing a bit, but I heard you, uh, all along.Yeah. I heard your story about, uh, Jocelyn and Athena: Excel. Should I just continue now? Alvin: Yeah, just continue.[00:03:00] Okay. Can you hear me?Athena: Sorry, you're cutting Alvin: it. Right. I hear your whole story about your mentor Jocelyn. Yeah. Okay. Athena: All right. Uh, so, uh, just to continue, um, I think that. You know, working in a corporate environment, especially in a bank or at a financial services company, you know, gain a lot of insight into how, um, other companies succeed.Uh, you understand the importance of having strong or robust, uh, processes and systems. And, um, you know, these are the types of things that I want to instill into the company that I have. Um, I've worked at a couple startups previously, right? And things do get very chaotic. Um, and you know, there's a lot going on.You don't have a very big team. Um, and so things start to get messy very quickly. Um, but if you [00:04:00] have the right infrastructure in place, um, you know, things tend to go a bit more smoothly and you're able to control, um, a lot more of, um, your internal processes and ensure that your end customers, um, have the best journey possible.Alvin: Okay, we can go into a bit more detail later on when we talk about zoom vet about how you actually implement that, uh, how you implement those structures and processes in zoom vet. Uh, but for now, can you tell us a bit about mismatch events? You, you started this company back in Hong Kong. Um, what was that like?This was ...
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    50 mins
  • He Buys SaaS Companies Using SBA Loans and Scales Them Up

    He Buys SaaS Companies Using SBA Loans and Scales Them Up
    Jun 22 2020
    Caleb is the founder of Compass Point Opportunity Fund. He has experience with buying and selling businesses from brick & mortar industries to info-marketing and SaaS.https://www.linkedin.com/in/caleb-page-6560142/He shares with us:- Case studies of how he finds and does due diligence on deals ranging from a homeschooling business to forex trading software- Financing options from seller-based financing to SBA loans for acquiring a business- Sources you can use to find SaaS businesses for sale- How he plans to scale his current project, a property information SaaS companyResources and links mentioned:FE InternationalFlippaEmpire FlipperFrank KernFavourite books:Built to LastAntifragileFavourite tool:Google AnalyticsAlvin:  [00:00:00] welcome to Abyss Gazing. I'm your host, Alvin Leon, and joining me today is Caleb page, the managing partner of compass point.Compass point opportunity fund where he buys and operates internet businesses. We've a predisposition for SaaS and API and businesses in real estate and information sectors. So, uh, Jacob, are you ready to be, uh, Kayla? Are you ready to begin? Caleb Page: Yeah, I'm good. Hey, how are you doing? Alvin: Alright. Yeah, so Caleb and I met in entrepreneur first the six.A cohort. I want you to remember us in Singapore, and Caleb is originally from the U S he's currently living in the Malaysia. And, uh, yeah. Let's start off like with what you're doing before and what Compass Point is about. Caleb Page: Sure thing. Yeah. It was fun. Alvin, when we, uh, when we were together together at entrepreneur first cohort, it's just amazing experiences.We've met a [00:01:00] lot of different people. But along the way or the way I got there was I had my background's business bought and sold businesses, started businesses, but they'd all been smaller businesses as well. Brick and mortar things to franchises, property management company. I had a corporate back on the military, back outside, large organization experience, but I'd wanted to do something larger and that's where you and I met was an entrepreneur first.Trying to figure out a way that we might, you know, find a startup or a cofounder. Where we could start a business together. Um, at the same time though, I had just sold off the last business that I had owned. And in the U S we have a way to reinvest the money. If we reinvest money into another business, or we're real estate in a specific way, we can avoid some capital gains tax.Um, it's, it's a kind of a tax issue, but there's good opportunity around it. So I created a fund. Yeah. And if it didn't work out, which it didn't, we, uh, that fun, we go ahead and buy businesses. [00:02:00] So that's fast forwarding through kind of an experience there where we decided maybe they sent us just to go buy some businesses rather than trying to start one from zero.Alvin: I remember before that you were doing, you've joined like a mastermind with Frank Kern and some other stuff, so you were already exploring internet business before, before you joined EF, right? Caleb Page: Yeah. You're right. You're right. So from one of the businesses I bought way back in 2015 was a small one, is an internet site in the homeschooling space cause we were about to start homeschooling our son.I said, well, here's a business for sale. It's an internet marketing. Let me figure it out. This was really spot on. He bought it. He was making $20,000 a year and we bought it for $40,000. And when he was my wife and me, cause she's the one that protects me from bad decisions. But I bought it for $40,000 and that started my real education in internet marketing.And at that time I followed I the [00:03:00] early to rise guys, Craig Valentine and another fitness guy, Bedros Keuilian. And from there I went to following Jeff Walker and his product launch formula. Uh. Yeah. For about a year and work on product launches and that without full site. And then finally, Frank Kern trying to figure out something to do as I was leaving the homeschooling space and following some of the advice he gave as well by the internet marketing.So all along the way, learn how to do launches for Facebook campaigns, uh, information products, uh, some sequencing, email copywriting, just a lot of different things in the internet marketing space. Alvin: So did you end up selling off that homeschooling business in the end? Caleb Page: Well, it did. I sold it in April. Alvin: That was the same business that gave you the fun to stop combo swelling with Caleb Page: it was part of it.The biggest business actually was a franchise cleaning business. My wife and I had owned for about 15 years in Boston and we started that from zero and zero customers. We [00:04:00] sold it with. Gosh, I think I had about 300 customers when we sold it. Uh, and it was, it was a really nice story because we were able to sell it to the person that was working for us, that had been running the business when we were in longer or so, we were able to work...
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    42 mins
  • Largest digital pharma distributor in Russia, She 4Xed sales in first month of COVID

    Largest digital pharma distributor in Russia, She 4Xed sales in first month of COVID
    Jun 22 2020
    Elena Vatutina is the founder and CEO of Pharma Global, Russia's leading digital pharmaceutical distributor and education platform. https://pharma.global/Learn how:- she got started in entrepreneurship from teaching her classmates dancing, - she started Pharma Global as a pharmaceutical education company then transitioned into distribution and logistics.- how she increased her sales 4x during COVIDBooksCreative IncTools SlackiPadEntrepreneursEvgeny ChichvarkinAdviceJust do it, look yourself in the mirror, don't be afraid and just do it.[00:00:00] Alvin: okay, so three, two, one. Welcome to Abyss Gazing in this episode. Joining me today is Elena Vatutina, CEO and founder of pharma global, a pharmaceutical distribution company operating in Russia and the middle East with plans for expansion to Southeast Asia.Hi. Elena, are you ready to begin? Elena: Of course, yeah. Alvin: Yeah. So, Elena, we met last year back when you came to Singapore for a startup festival. And then, can you give us a bit of an idea of the scale of your company now, just so the audience knows how, where you're operating in the scale of the company. Elena: well, our company was founded in, 2016, and I would say it's kind of, started, I D.But, the backgrounds of [00:01:00] mine and the grounds of the team for insulting. Now the company, we are from pharmaceutical market and I started working in pharmaceutical market since 20 zero four. So I'm like a dinosaur right now on this market, and I'm in 2016. So all the Silicon things has changed that I got an idea that I can create a platform to educate healthcare specialists, using digital technologies.And that's how our first products, from global came upon. And, we call it a farm, of course. and we started, we launched it in Russia in 2016. And Oh, it's you, coverage in a number of educational events.it can act, it consists of, educational platform. Well, healthcare specialist, pharma and [00:02:00] digital distribution platform for our market. we are, pharmaceutical manufacturers and pharmacies and healthcare. Retail can get direct contracts between each other, but generally our business started with the educational platform farm, of course, or farms.Naranja like we pull it in Russia and we launch this technology in Russia. And. Scaled it in the MENA region since 2019 but we established our technology in 2016 and later on when I was making a business tour now and met with the healthcare retail, met with the, Pharmacies met with pharmaceutical manufacturers.They were asking me, so are you have connections and you have a digital platform for education? Why don't you make, it further? Why don't you make a connection, where we can make contracts, where we can make a marketing actions, so where we can, [00:03:00] just promote our goods, where we can just find out.All the necessary information about registration process of our goods and different territories. Why don't you make it? And, it happens in 2017. And I was thinking, well, it's a good idea. And, we started testing it. at that year, and later on now, we created a platform, the second platform, which we called, far market.And, we launched it, of course at first in Russia. And now we are scaling it in Russia. It is number one in the coverage of, sales points and number of healthcare retail where we integrated in. And, we are, just, study the first step of scaling in the MENA region. So by now we have, the full of figures, like we have made more than a 200 con truck with the pharmaceutical manufacturers who all of that form.And there are some, he and [00:04:00] multinational companies like Pfizer, like Debra liker call, like, Serbia, like brought home from. France and, also, around 10,000, the pharmacists are already integrated into these, marketplace. Well, around 10,000 pharmacies are already integrated in this, marketplace.And, generally, why we are creating this platform. you know, I can just. Say like, this is a digital distribution platform. This is an educational platform. But the main failure, that's, we bring to, the industry is to decrease costs inside of a supply chain. I normally, when a person goes to the pharmacy, from 45 to 19 four, five to 90% of the cost goes to this supply chain.This means marketing. This means [00:05:00] logistic. This means field force cost. human resource courts and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And, generally if only we could decrease this code. So our eat on the one hand, it could make, the medicine, cheaper for people. But on the other hand, it also can, bring some money for innovation.And, once we faced what's all of us faced here right now in the beginning of 2020, that's, innovation is highly needed, for the society because, only we can make innovation and we can do it fast. So we can fight with the, challenges like Colby 19 and, the same. the same challenges. It challenges, and, I believe that, if this system could be spreads in different regions, in different sectors, in different ...
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    56 mins