The world’s most successful and innovative tech startups hail from Asia. Tencent, Alibaba, Taiwan Semiconductor and Grab are just a handful of examples.
However, hidden in the shadows thrown by these brilliant successes is a far larger group of Asian tech startups: those that fail.
What are the 3 reasons that Asian tech startups fail?
Not solving a real problem
Failure to solve a real problem for other people is also known as a “lack of product-market fit.” That is startup jargon for “no one wants to buy what you are trying to sell.” You don’t need an MBA to understand that your business can only succeed when people are willing to pay you real money.
In Asia, too many technology entrepreneurs rely on imported business models or overemphasis the use of technology. It’s natural to look at other markets such as China or the Western World for inspiration.
Obsolescence before launch
As risky as it is to import a business model from another place, it can be just as dangerous to adopt one whose time has passed. Although startup founders are supposed to be the most forward-looking of business people, they regularly create online businesses that are already out of date before they even launch.
In most of Asia today, any new business that depends on reaching users via the web —rather than through social media or super-apps — is probably obsolete.
Tech startups failing to be sustainable
The next failing that leads many Asian tech startups to crash and burn is a failure to build a sustainable enterprise. Your solution must be profitable —or at least offer the potential of attaining profitability at scale. Otherwise, you are solving a problem but not creating a business.
At Juwai IQI, for example, we discovered that there is no common and established platform that enables real estate agents to do their business in Asia’s developing markets.
This kind of enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management software is easy to find in nearby Australia and New Zealand or the US. Still, we decided not to import a solution developed elsewhere.
Instead, we have created a proprietary platform for our more than 21,000 agents. Each of them literally carries an entire real estate office in their mobile phone.
Read more: e27
Source: e27
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