Tips For Developing A Startup During The COVID-19 Pandemic

JAKARTA - In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, many business actors, especially startups, are struggling to stay alive. Not a few of them faltered because of situations and strategies that were inadequate.

However, there are three startups that are still surviving and growing quite rapidly despite the pandemic, namely Kata.ai, Hacktiv8 and Riliv.

The three of them also shared tips for developing startup companies in Indonesia that were obtained when participating in the Google for Startups Accelerator (GFSA) program.

Kata.ai started its business in 2016, starting from customer engagement problems through manual social media applications or messaging (chat) applications, on the other hand customers want to get optimal and fast responses using social media applications or messaging applications.

Kata.ai CEO & Co-Founder, Irzan Raditya, shared tips on how to grow his business, which, according to him, they can learn directly from the best talents on Google and its network.

"Start looking for a niche first. Always prioritize targeting a large market. And find big problems to solve, then focus on finding product-market-fit, through user validation," said Irzan during a virtual press conference, Thursday, November 12. .

"This is very helpful in opening a way of thinking, knowing best practices, and certain strategies or techniques in related fields that want to be studied more deeply," he added.

Meanwhile, Hacktiv8 CEO Ronald Ishak received personal guidance on his business in the Google program. He managed to find a blindspot on Hacktiv8 and get perspectives and techniques to build his business, to strategies to raise funds even in the midst of a pandemic.

"Start managing a business at various scales, preparing funds to develop a startup into a big business, and using technology to make decisions," said Ronald.

Apart from that, Ronald also said to start with the right people. Startups also need to know what kind of product or service consumers want. However, the important thing to do is to make expenses as small as possible.

"Most startups fail because they are unable to do something of the three things," said Ronald.