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After his first dream-job fell through, Howes found himself broke and without a college degree. Now he is a successful entrepreneur. So how did he do it?

Not many people think a broken wrist is the key to starting a million-dollar business career, but for Lewis Howes, that was the case.

After his career as a professional American Football player was sidetracked by the injury, Howes was forced into entrepreneurship almost as a necessity. With no college degree, no money and living with his sister, Howes decided starting his own thing was the best way forward.

Fast forward a few years and Howes is the author of School of Greatness and was honored by former US President Barack Obama as one of the Top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 in America.

Click below for a listen. The show notes are below.

Links from Today’s Episode

• Reach out to Lewis on Twitter or LinkedIn
• Get your copy of Lewis’s book, The School of Greatness
• Listen to Lewis’s own podcast and learn more from Lewis on his website
• Unlock your greatness at Lewis’s Summit of Greatness

Detailed Show Notes

• (2:10) How necessity led Lewis to the path of entrepreneurship
• (6:08) On the power of putting yourself out there and the importance of building offline personal relationships
• (8:00) How Lewis grew his business early on
• (9:18) Why Lewis is excited about recent changes to LinkedIn
• (11:17) How to sort the good online entrepreneurs from the bad
• (14:00) Lewis on his book, The School of Greatness
• (18:17) How Lewis uses vision to overcome challenges and achieve goals
• (19:38) On overcoming burnout and overwhelm
• (21:49) Lewis’s vision for 2017
• (22:25) Advice for those looking to grow their personal or business lives in 2017
• (24:06) “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”

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Sports have been an inspirational source of business lessons, and we can gain key insights to apply to the workplace

Among all sports, tennis stands apart due to its unique nature, as it combines multiple components including fitness, mental strength, focus, strategy, footwork, and technique. In many ways, this perfectly relates to skills necessary to start and manage a successful business venture.

Here are three lessons we can learn about entrepreneurship, leadership and management from tennis.

1. Fitness

Fitness includes strength, stamina, speed, flexibility, and hand-eye coordination. Tennis requires strength to navigate the court, which is 78 feet long and 27 feet wide (around 23.77 x 8.23 metres) for single matches. Such dimensions require enough stamina to last for long durations, along with speed and flexibility during movements. All these skills combined with good hand-eye coordination lead to good results on the tennis court.

On similar lines, an entrepreneur needs the strength to launch and scale up a business from the scratch. Following ground up approach, ideas are converted into prototypes (MVP), which requires fitness skills similar to those required for tennis, including strength and stamina to be consistent, speed to adapt quickly, and flexibility to test new ideas.

As tennis requires hand-eye coordination, business leadership and management requires control over execution of plans to ensure that there are no deviations.

For example, financial projections of business may look good while writing business plan, but finding first 10 users who would be ready to use a product is crucial to validate the business model.

Similarly, to find the perfect product market fit (being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market), it is a good strategy to ask technical questions from experts and publish white-papers to share new solutions with the potential customers. Based on their response, potential customers can be consulted to validate business model during early stages of the startup.

2. Strokes

The fundamentals of tennis include proper execution of the main strokes, such as, forehand groundstroke, backhand groundstroke, serve, volleys, and the spins. While playing important strokes like forehand and backhand, a relaxed arm with a loose wrist works way better than a stiff posture.

Similarly, successful leaders remain relaxed and calm while managing business to ensure proper execution of plans and to achieve the desired results. In addition, average leaders become good leaders and good leaders become great leaders by managing people smoothly like humans and not abruptly like machines. This is akin to hitting the tennis ball firmly with a comfortable and smooth swing, which is a result of having a relaxed arm.

For example, understanding what motivates the team members beyond compensation helps in leading the team in right direction by driving them towards a mission. Some employees get motivated by personal brand building around values and skills they bring on table, which helps them ensure future marketability. Hence, reducing fears of job security among employees increases productivity and efficiency of the employees.

3. Footwork

Surviving on the tennis court requires maintaining proper balance while executing different types of strokes. While taking up shots, adjustment of few steps helps greatly. Not planting your feet too firmly on the ground provides better court movement.

Similarly, while leading a team or growing a business, maintaining a proper balance and staying focused form a key element of entrepreneurship. For example, one way to ensure that an early stage business remains focused in right direction is to perform routine audits regarding technicality, revenue model, marketing strategy, etc. This can be done by working backwards, i.e. by first mapping down the goals and then reverse engineering from there to determine what all steps are required to be executed to achieve such goals. While performing such analysis, if it is revealed that the business is not on right track, the required changes can be made by staying balanced and not making decisions in haste.

When feet are planted firmly in ground, it is difficult to be flexible and adjust few steps (pivot) before taking any decision. Therefore, having an adaptable approach during various stages of business can boost the success ratio and provide highly beneficial results to individual entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Conclusion

Sports have been an inspirational source of business lessons, and we can gain key insights to apply to the workplace. Learning such valuable lessons generally acts as the catalyst to help business owners stay ahead of the pack and scale the business to greater heights.

Hope you found this useful. I would be sharing more such experiences in coming weeks. Thank you.

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Rahul Dev is a Patent Attorney & International Business Lawyer practicing Technology, Intellectual Property & Corporate Laws. He is reachable at info (at) techcorplegal (dot) com & @rdpatentlawyer on Twitter

Originally published here.

Also read: Journey of my blog from LinkedIn to 30+ news portals

The views expressed here are of the author’s, and e27 may not necessarily subscribe to them. e27 invites members from Asia’s tech industry and startup community to share their honest opinions and expert knowledge with our readers. If you are interested in sharing your point of view, submit your post here.

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Bots in financial services do have tremendous potential, but that potential will be dictated in part by the quality of data they are built upon

Bots are going ballistic. Transparency Market Research predicts the global chatbot market to be worth US$7.9 billion by 2024. This year, financial services bots will increasingly service banking, trading and insurance.  According to bot specialist Personetics, there will be a surge in chatbot companies considering entry to the conversational financial bot space in the next 12 months, with over three quarters of surveyed financial institutions viewing chatbots as a commercial solution within the next two years.

But can bots be truly effective? Can they can enable Personal Financial Management to transform into intuitive personalised digital assistantship? Jake Tyler, CEO of Finn.ai, which develops white-label personal banking chatbots for financial institutions, has argued that bots provide intuitive advice, enabling banks to deliver services to key customers in the smartphone era. “If banks want to attract Millennials, they will need to be where they are, on instant messaging platforms. Equally as important, chatbots are a way for banks to communicate with this generation in a way they are familiar with, by texting,” he stated.

Millennial tastes might also explain Facebook’s bot appeal. Facebook Messenger has over a billion monthly active users and more than 30,000 chatbots. Facebook beneficiaries include MasterCard, which will use artificial intelligence to communicate with customers through text messaging and speech, enabling account holders to check accounts, track spending, and review purchases.

Also Read: From chatbots to intelligent things: Here are 5 exciting industries startups can focus on this year

Bots manage simple interactions between the bank and its customers, reducing the bank’s staffing costs and creating cross-selling opportunities through social media. The technology must give the end-user a range of means to interact with the bot, from buttons, speech, text, and state-of-the-art AI. Above all, the bot needs to access and understand each end-user’s total financial position and make predictive assessments.

A crucial underlying data source for financial bots is based on account aggregation technology, and not every bot uses this. It’s this technology that allows the personal finance bot to access all of an end-user’s financial accounts and return a comprehensive picture of his or her finances.

Arguably the best bots are only as good as the aggregation technology supporting them. Without data aggregation able to collate the different elements of an end-user’s financial footprint, all the bot will interrogate is one data-set — something you or I could do by reading a printed bank statement. In this way, the limits of personal financial management (PFM) was exposed when legacy banks were initially reluctant to share their customers’ data with each other, only allowing the PFM tools to operate on their own internal data set.

Using multiple bank-connectors, we are able to aggregate from multiple banks, if needed in multiple countries, securely aggregating a plethora of data sources. However, not every technology provider has this capability. Without the aggregation technology in place, bots will fall short in supplying the intuitive, flexible Personal Assistant service now demanded by end-users.

In addition, bots will also fail to deliver accurate complete results and advice to customers without quality categorisation technology to enhance the raw transactional data to turn it into actionable and meaningful data. This creates the personalised end-user data on which the bot depends. This technology relies on end-users reporting in-accuracies in the transaction data, so the AI can learn from its mistakes and create the personalised data needed to supply intelligent Personal Assistantship for end-users, enabling predictive behavioural services for Financial Institutions and FinTechs.

Also Read: 25 best fintech events you must attend in 2017

Bots in financial services do have tremendous potential, but that potential will be dictated in part by the quality of data they are built upon. Categorisation and aggregation technology needs to be fully supported to give bots the foundation they need to personally benefit each and every end-user.

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Article by Dean Young, Head of Product Management at eWise. With over twenty years’ experience in the financial industry, Dean is an expert commentator on customer management strategies based on his extensive work with retail banks across the world in helping them to optimise customer relationships. Dean’s experience covers online and mobile banking strategies, and how banks must adapt to changes in customer behaviour.

The views expressed here are of the author’s, and e27 may not necessarily subscribe to them. e27 invites members from Asia’s tech industry and startup community to share their honest opinions and expert knowledge with our readers. If you are interested in sharing your point of view, submit your post here.

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Trishneet Arora’s startup offers cyber security solutions to India’s premier investigative agencies, including the CBI

Trishneet Arora

The US we see today would not have been “great” without the hard-work of Indian techies. President Donald Trump should actually thank Indian parents of yore for discouraging their children from dropping out of schools/colleges, forcing them to secure a Degree or MS from IIT/IIM or any other premier educational institutions, and sending them away to the US to take up a high-paying job at MNCs. They are, after all, making America great.

Dropping out of schools/colleges was an anathema in India until a few years ago. Parents never encouraged their children to quit schooling to follow their passion or dreams. Even if you were an extraordinary singer, you could not have thought of pursuing a career in music until you finished schooling/college education. Education first, passion second. Needless to day, India did not produce a Google or Facebook of its own, in spite of having a huge talent pool.

Also Read: At the age of 3, he made combustion engine model. He’s now 7 and has already built a cleaning robot and a remote-controlled vehicle

Certainly, the scenario has changed drastically. Todays’s parents have given total freedom to their children, and as a result, numerous startups have cropped up and the ecosystem benefitted tremendously, boosting the economy of the country. India now has an answer to Amazon and Uber, and it is now home to many startup unicorns.

But when Trishneet Arora was a child in the mid 2000s, India was still under the influence of this typical “MNC” mindset. But he didn’t want to maintain the status quo. He was dreaming of something big in life.

As he moved higher up in the educational ladder, his interests in schooling waned. This apathy towards formal education became strong when he got a computer when he was just 11 year old. He soon started experimenting with it and learned all aspects of the technology. He gradually learnt to hack, and within a short period, he mastered his newly-found passion. As a result of his computer fanaticism, Arora failed in class VIII examination and soon dropped out of school. He completed his class X through open learning.

But that was the breakthrough in his life. Arora, based in Ludhiana, went on to build his own security startup. It is now a highly sought-after cyber security startup in India.

“When hacking become a craze for me, I could not focus on studies. As a result, I failed in two subjects and consequently failed in the annual exam,” Arora told e27. “When I decided to take up hacking as a career option, many people frowned at me and said I was a nerd. But when I noticed that that many MNCs are victims of hacking, it prompted to me to start a company in cyber security.”

The startup, TAC Security Solutions, has now grown beyond India and provides protection to corporations against network vulnerabilities and data theft. It also provides cyber security training. Its clientele include the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s premier investigative agency, in addition to the Punjab Police, Gujarat Police, Reliance Industries Limited, Amul, Ralson (India), and Avon Cycles. Outside of India, it now also has clients in Dubai and the UK.

His company recently launched a new solution called TAC-CERT, which is aimed at helping those whose websites, emails, cloud data, and other digital assets, from getting hacked.

Arora is not just an entrepreneur now. He is a veritable wizard of technology, a cyber security expert, ethical hacker, and avid speaker on security solutions. At the age of 23, he has already accomplished a whole lot things that his peers could not even dream of.

Trishneet Arora addressing top police officials at an event

Until now, Arora had been securing client websites from cyber threats. However, he now believes there is a bigger market for his company in case of a cyber attack, wherein clients stand to lose all online data, which he can help secure.

Arora has also written three books, all on hacking: The Hacking Era, Hacking Talk, and Hacking With Smart Phones.

There are umpteen child prodigies in India, but what makes Arora different from them is that he fought all adverse situations in life. Even when “startup” was still a strange word, he went on to build something that caught the interest of clients as big as national investigation agencies and enterprises in India and beyond.

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In November 2015, CarTrade acquired rival CarWale, and the combined entity has about 15M unique customers per month, and partners with 8,000 dealers

CarTrade, a leading online automobile classifieds platform in India, has raised US$55 million, led by existing investor Singapore-based Temasek Holdings, with participation from a large family office in the US.

This capital injection will be used to support CarTrade’s growth plans through acquisitions, expansion into new areas, such as auto finance, and to further sharpen its services to consumers, dealers and OEMs.

Vinay Sanghi, Founder and CEO, CarTrade, said: “The funds raised will be used to drive growth through continued focus on strengthening our dealer and customer services and evaluating potential acquisitions. CarTrade is aggressively looking at the market for used car finance with less than 8 per cent of used cars sold being financed through an organised financier. To address this opportunity, CarTrade Finance was recently launched with the aim of financing the inventory for car dealers and to consumers who wish to buy used cars.”

This funding comes exactly a year after it raised US$145 million Temasek Holdings and global VC fund March Capital. Previously, it has secured US$30 million from Warburg Pincus, and existing investors Canaan Partners and Tiger Global in October 2014.

In November 2015, CarTrade acquired rival CarWale from German media conglomerate Axel Springer. The combined entity has about 15 million unique customers per month, and partnered with approximately 8,000 new and used car dealer partners, it said in a press release. The platforms list more than 200,000 used cars for sale and auction over 200,000 vehicles to the wholesale market every year.

CarTrade.com helps consumers to buy and sell new and used cars. For new car buyers, there are a host of features such as reviews, on-road prices, car comparisons and latest news. The site has new and used car dealers from all over the country who list their cars for sale.

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Government, educational institutions, investors and intelligentsia have to join hands and find out ways to nurture the startup culture in the country

Asia is rising among the community of nations as the financial and business hub of the world. After centuries of enduring political and economic instability, Asian countries are now set to dominate the technology market, especially the telecommunications industry.

Southeast Asia is also trying to become an integral part of the global IT industry, moreso in terms of the global startup industry. But Pakistan seems to be lagging behind in the race to reap the maximum benefits from the startup revolution in Asia, the reasons for which are many. Nevertheless, concrete steps can set the country on the path to become a startup utopia.

Asia’s rise as a new global startup player

Asia is the world’s most populous continent and also the largest. It is not surprising, then, that almost one-third of the world’s private Unicorn companies have their headquarters in Asia. The continent has so far produced 52 unicorn companies in total. Among Asian countries, China has the highest number of Unicorn startups — that equates to over two-thirds (71 per cent, to be precise) of the continent’s billion-dollar startups.

Unicorn status eludes Pakistani startups

Pakistan has the third highest GDP growth in the region and seventh in the world. Other than this, the country is also blessed with the best geographical and strategic importance to support a thriving telecommunications culture.

Further, Pakistan also has over 35 million 3G/4G users, which is expected to further grow to 110 million by 2019. Add to that the fact that a large portion of Pakistan’s population, almost 60 per cent, is composed of people between ages 15-45 — and you have the most fertile grounds for an IT revolution.

Apart from this, the country also has a thriving startup culture that is at least trying to make a mark on the global startup map.

Pakistani startups managed to raise to US$30 million in 2015, an improvement from US$6 million in 2014. Important to note, however, is that out of the US$30 million raised in 2015, US$20 million was raised by one single company – Zameen.com – a realty portal that has revolutionised the real estate market in the country.

Moreover, since its inception, the company raised US$29 million in total — the highest capital ever raised by a native startup in Pakistan. Thus, most analysts place the organisation as a clear frontrunner in the race of the Unicorn club.

Why has Pakistan not produced any Unicorn company?

Fault in our curriculum: The startup revolution came to Pakistan almost five years ago, but so far no academic value has been associated with this culture. Institutional investment in this regard has been minimal, and most of the time one gets the impression that a visible disconnect exists between education and the startup industry. The curriculum taught in educational institutes of the country are also to blame, since these do not include research and science relevant to the demands of modern time.

It has also been observed that Pakistani universities are more inclined towards grooming entrepreneurs rather than engage students in research and development courses in specification to the global technology market.

Telecommunication companies unsupportive of startups: From the highest seats of authority in Pakistan’s IT ministry all the way down to Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA), the understanding regarding startups is close to non-existent.

Due to lack of empathy for startups from the departments concerned, an efficient micro transaction platform charging low rates is absent in Pakistan. Therefore, if you’re dependent on money transaction through a telecom company, it is essential that you are able to support your business for at least 9 months minimum owing to irregular cash flow.

The curious case of missing mentors and angel investors: In Pakistan, the culture of mentorship is not promoted in schools, colleges, universities, and all the way to professional work environment. It has been usually seen that most startups that complete their incubation period are ditched by angel investors and mentors, thus resulting in the death of an otherwise budding idea.

Non-conducive banking system: As of now, most banks are clueless about the mechanism to deal with startups other than opening a company account for these new businesses. Banks also do not provide credit or debit cards linked to a startup’s company account.

Apart from this, the rules of Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) are designed specifically for big businesses rather than startups. Due to this the process, new businesses that are created eventually hit a dead end.

Pakistan has a lot of potential to produce startups that can hit the billion-dollar mark in the foreseeable future. But for that to happen, the government, educational institutions, investors and intelligentsia have to join hands and find out ways to nurture startup culture in the country. The stakeholders concerned have to move fast or face the risk of exclusion from the startup revolution that has taken Asia by storm.

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The views expressed here are of the author’s, and e27 may not necessarily subscribe to them. e27 invites members from Asia’s tech industry and startup community to share their honest opinions and expert knowledge with our readers. If you are interested in sharing your point of view, submit your post here.

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While fintech won the battle for mindshare in 2016, our internal data shows that young companies are entering the e-commerce space

When we look back at Southeast Asia’s startup economy in ten years, 2016 may very well be marked as a year of transition.

The reason is because, prior to last year, startups and investors played in pool of Seed and Series A investments. News of any startup that successfully raised single-digit USD was considered a big deal.

One reason is because a few years ago most investors — particularly VCs — were on their first fund. These firms were placing their Seed investments in startups and travelling around Asia looking for companies with the highest potential for growth over the coming years.

Naturally, it is a few years later and those firms, companies and investors have matured.

Fast forward to 2016/2017 and two clear trends have emerged.

Consolidation

First, successful startups (the ones that have either raised, or have an eye towards, Series B funding) are consolidating business assets.

Singapore’s m-commerce startup Carousell might be the most famous example of this trend. After raising a US$35 million Series B in August, the company acqui-hired three companies (Watch Over Me, Caarly, Duriana) to bolster its engineering and business talent.

The dating app Paktor raised US$32.5 million and has since gone on a major spending spree — acquiring smaller companies across the world with the goal of building the world’s best dating-service portfolio.

Also Read: Singapore set to boost self-driving vehicle testing after law amendment

In cities like Singapore, there is high-quality talent, but it is spread across the multitude of startups in the ecosystem — making acquisition one of the best ways to bring the top talent under one roof.

Winter did arrive

The other trend is a tightening of capital funds, especially on the Seed and pre-Series A rounds. Here at e27, we have seen a very clear downward trend in the amount of deals that were closed in 2016 as compared to 2015.

Our internal data counted 400 deals in 2015 as compared with 216 last year.

Less deals in 2016 were predictably accompanied by a drop in overall funding. If we take away the outliers of major rounds by Grab and Go-jek — Grab raised US$750 million and Go-jek nabbed over US$550 million — startups raised US$2.2 billion less than they did in 2015.

It is important to recognise that many companies choose not to disclose how much funding they have raised, which we have filtered out of our data analysis.

E-commerce is king among Seed stage companies

An interesting statistic from 2016 is, despite the explosion of fintech as an industry talking point, e-commerce is still the most important sector for very young companies.

According to our internal data, Seed-stage startups in the e-commerce space were fundraising USD$39Mil as compared to USD$10Mil in the ‘finance’ space. The mobile-industry (which, admittedly can include both e-commerce and finance) were seeking USD$23Mil in 2016.

This suggests that while it gave up ‘mind-share’ in 2016, e-commerce is still the most important sector for Southeast Asia’s newest companies.

For awhile now, e-commerce has been a clear driver in basic innovation and has been the business-model most consistently fuelled by external investment.

Also Read: In Photos: Flamingo, chandeliers, and some artistic touches at Kumparan HQ

Additionally, the sector has a unique ability to include traditional SMEs into the ecosystem by pushing old-school shops to integrate tech products. The learning curve for a conventional retail store to blend technology into its business model is not as steep as with other industries.

Government policies — like Indonesia’s e-commerce roadmap — are also in place to support the industry, and community stakeholders should continue to push for progressive policies.

With regards to the broader spectrum of seed stage startups, companies are still actively seeking funding — the total reported ‘funds requested’ increased by  63 per cent between 2015 and 2016 — but the average amount companies sought remained stagnant.

Overall, there were less deals inked between 2015 and 2016, a trend which we believe will continue into 2017. However, the amount of money raised remained relatively stagnant; meaning getting money may be harder, but the cheque size should be larger.

To get access to more charts and statistics to for these reports, you can either create and/or claim your investor profile on e27.co or email us if you already have an active account on e27.co.

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The MBK shopping center in Bangkok. Photo credit: wihtgod / 123RF.

Samsung Pay, the Korean mobile giant’s cashless payment service, has officially landed in Thailand, the company announced today. The service has been running in the country in an “early access” fashion for a limited number of users since October last year.

Samsung Pay works with MasterCard, Visa, KCC, Bangkok Bank, Citibank, KasikornBank, KTC, and Siam Commercial Bank. Samsung says that department stores and shops in the country will also accept payments through Samsung Pay.

Online chatter in Thailand during the early access phase suggested that users couldn’t find too many outlets to use the service. International chains like 7-Eleven were more likely to have the contactless payment terminals required for Samsung Pay to work.

Samsung has to go up against several alternative providers of cashless payments.

To accommodate Thailand’s low credit card usage (still under 10 percent), the service will also work with a prepaid card called Galaxy Gift, issued by MasterCard. Other membership cards can also be added.

Samsung Pay has a head start on competing services Apple Pay and Android Pay, none of which are available in Thailand yet. But much like its China launch last year, it enters a space that’s decidedly different than markets like Singapore or the US. The company still has the interesting challenge of going up against several alternative providers of cashless payments, who have stepped in to fill the credit card void.

For example, Line Pay, the messaging app’s payment function, is one of the most popular in the country, with 33 million users in 2015. Thailand is Line Pay’s second largest market after Japan.

Meanwhile, companies like 2C2P and Ant Financial-backed Ascend Money provide various payment options for people who don’t have access to credit cards or even bank accounts.

Besides Thailand, Samsung Pay is also available in South Korea, China, Singapore, and Australia in the Asia-Pacific region. Overall, the service operates in 10 countries worldwide.

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The results are hardly surprising since Singapore has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates

You are on a date and your partner pulls out their smartphone right when you are about to tell them about the new job promotion you received.

Sounds familiar? For Singapore, this is a pandemic problem — which is hardly surprising, when you consider Singapore has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world.

According to an Intel Security survey conducted among 1,000 individuals in Singapore ages 18 to 55+, half of the respondents felt their partners paid more attention to their online device when they were together one-on-one, essentially becoming a sort of “third-party” in their relationship.

Even when on a first date, where potential partners usually have to work extra hard to make a good impression, at least 1 in 3 respondents reported having to compete with their date’s device for attention. Very sad!

However, even though smartphone addiction may cause potential friction in the relationship, only 36 per cent of respondents said they do not set rules regarding the usage of online devices when in bed.

And only 31 per cent said they set device rules while outside.

Also Read: Singapore’s dating app Paktor relaunches in South Korea as ‘ Swipe’

However, 14 per cent of respondents said they have gotten into an argument with their partner over using of online devices during an intimate/romantic moment.

Regarding another thorny issue – password sharing, about a third of Singaporeans are comfortable with that; the rest are, thankfully, of sounder mind (I’m just kidding).

28 per cent of couples share passwords to social media accounts, and 24 per cent share passwords to personal email accounts. 18 per cent of respondents also said they share their work specific devices and accounts with their partners.

So, for lovebirds in Singapore, the best gift you could give your partner this Valentine Day would be to kick that chronic smartphone obsession. Don’t make the country’s declining birth rate any worse.

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The swimming pool at Kumparan HQ’s backyard plays important role in maintaining employee’s performance and work-and-life balance. Guess how

It was a bright beautiful day when e27 walks into a housing complex in South Jakarta where Indonesian media startup Kumparan headquarter is.

Instead of having their office in a coworking space or a typical office building, Kumparan chooses a big old house as their office. The startup also shares the ground with an art college, separated only with a garden. As one walks on its premise, it is easy to mistake a startup employee for one of the students.

As we walked closer into the direction of Kumparan’s area, we were greeted by the sight of some construction workers building some kind of a pavilion in front of the office.

Coming soon

We learned from Kumparan CMO Andrias Ekoyuono that the company, which just launched its online news portal in late January, had just moved into the office very recently.

“We just did the on-boarding in late December,” he said.

He then took us on a tour around the facilities, which took over all two levels of the house.

Also Read: In Photos: Drone-making at Global Inovasi Informasi Indonesia factory

“It was quite a challenge to design this place, as the original design of the house is already beautiful,” he said.

But Seniman Ruang, a Jakarta and Bandung-based interior design company that the startup appointed to do the works, seemed to be doing an excellent job in combining the house’s intricate and slightly archaic style –completed with gigantic chandeliers hanging on the ceiling of its main room, which now houses the editorial team– with the colourful youthfulness of a typical startup office.

The massive chandeliers at the editorial team room

The interior designer also included a special touch of its own, coming in form of a decoration that resembles a colourful spider web in almost every corner of the building. Upon closer inspection, the “spider web” was made of strings, intertwining with each other to form a complex structure.

“This is really unexpected of them,” Ekoyuono said.

Where meetings and brainstorming sessions are held. Check out the structure of artwork that surrounds it

While the first floor was dominated by the editorial room and the executives room, the second floor was also filled with different meeting rooms and working desks.

Another sighting of the “spider web” structure

Also Read: In Photos: Meet Toong, the Vietnamese coworking space with the entire country on the lock

“We are implementing the hot-seat system, basically. So everyone is free to pick their favourite seat,” Ekoyuono said.

Though most of the parts in the second floor are still under construction, there is also a bed for those who wish to take a quick shut-eye.

Zzzz.

Making a splash

We then walked out of the house the backyard where a refeshing sight of a swimming pool immediately greeted our tired eye.

A flamingo-shaped inflatable was bobbing along inside the pool while a worker tries to clean it.

Just keep swimming.

“There’s another one shaped like a unicorn,” Ekoyuono said, though the unicorn decided not to make an appearance that day.

The swimming pool was more than just a pretty decoration. Recently, a boat was capsized in the Indonesian water, leading to many casualties. Apart from writing a coverage about the incident, Kumparan also published a feature on how to prevent oneself from drowning in the sea.

As part of the writing process, the editorial team used the pool as a tool to experiment. Two writers –one is an avid swimmer while the other is not– plunge into the pool to try out the uitemate technique as recommended by experts.

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“Because at the end of the day, our readers expect more than just being given information. They also want to master something,” Ekoyuono explained why they chose to go all the way with experiments and tutorial.

The swimming pool also helps employees to maintain work-and-life balance.

“If we have to work on weekends, some employees actually bring their children to swim and play while the parents can focus on work. The office becomes some sort of a holiday destination for the kids,” Ekoyuono adds.

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