This founder survived 61 rejections before his $20M fundraise

From a small town in Penang to surviving one of the most devastating business collapses during COVID-19, Chen Chow Yeoh, or better known as CC, entrepreneurial journey is nothing short of remarkable. As the former COO of Fave (previously known as KFIT), CC shares the raw, unfiltered story of building and scaling a tech platform across Southeast Asia.

The conversation reveals extraordinary moments of serendipity - like securing $2.25 million from Sequoia Capital without even having a pitch deck - alongside heartbreaking challenges when their business revenue dropped 90% overnight during lockdowns. CC's candid account includes the acquisition of Groupon's Southeast Asian operations and the brilliant, resourceful strategies they deployed to migrate millions of customers to a brand-new platform with minimal losses.

What truly sets CC's leadership approach apart is his people-first philosophy. From creating emotional connections with employees by interviewing their family members in secret, to establishing transparent salary reduction systems during crisis periods, his humane approach to building Fave demonstrates that successful businesses are fundamentally built on relationships and trust.

As CC reflects on Fave's $45 million acquisition by Pine Labs and his current transition to mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs, he offers profound insights on resilience: "News said we raised $20 million. News didn't say 61 rejections, 1 investment. That's a 98% rejection rate." This conversation is a masterclass for anyone navigating the unpredictable terrain of entrepreneurship, revealing that behind every success story lies countless moments of doubt, persistence, and heart.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Background
• 10:36 Malaysian Startup Ecosystem Overview
• 21:09 From Penang to Cornell: CC's Early Journey
• 32:48 The Groupon Chapter: Scaling Across Asia
• 47:01 Building KFIT: A Fitness Platform Revolution
• 1:07:39 Understanding Product-Market Fit
• 1:15:48 The Acquisition of Groupon Subsidiaries
• 1:27:02 Creating Fave: Migration and Rebranding Strategy
• 1:44:03 Surviving COVID: The Business Impact
• 1:55:58 Leadership Philosophy and People-First Culture
• 2:05:22 Reflections and Future Plans

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:31

and the acoustics are pretty good. Oh, that's good. And I find, uh, whenever we invite anyone to come and have a chat and we say it's gonna be like an hour and a half two hours, they were like so long. What are you gonna talk about? Like about, I'm like you'll see, time just flies. It's almost like an escape, because we're so used to always being distracted with phones or information overload, so this is quite a nice place to just sit and have a conversation. So, yeah, you can just speak normally.

Speaker 2: 0:59

No, that's good there's one that was in Mandarin but it was night time radio, so it's 9pm to 11pm. So I was supposed to speak in a soothing for people to hear before they go to sleep. So it's type of kids, childhood it was kind of journey, but it was was that you were a host? No, I was being interviewed and the host was like okay, the, the theme for that is night time, reflect back your. So it's like think back, reflect back when you start your journey. How is it then you talk?

Speaker 2: 1:34

so it's more that kind of. But that was quite interesting because it's like a completely different style yeah, interesting, I suppose there is.

Speaker 1: 1:42

You have to like, consider where you are in the day with the radio shows, because there's a live show, of course. Of course, I've always wondered, like with radio DJs, they have these like interesting voices and I've always been intrigued by how much it changes when they get home because they, you know, they've got like these strong, powerful voices on radio or soothing voices. I wonder what a contrast it is when they get home if it's completely different.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Good, question not sure, but I think the yeah, I think a lot of them, yeah, because they put the power right, even children. When she press her piano, the power is very different than she is if you just meet her, because two weekends ago we were in KL, right, so that was when I first met her. Then she came and performed and then we spent a weekend together with a bunch of friends.

Speaker 1: 2:28

Yeah, yeah. I think that Chiran, it's just amazing the kind of energy she puts into her performances. She's definitely I think she's still got so much Potential to become quite famous. She's just got the look, the feel, the talent, the raw talent, potential to become quite famous. She's got the look, the feel, the talent, the raw talent and when you watch her live in person it's quite an experience.

Speaker 2: 2:56

I really do enjoy it and multi-talented in a sense that, from art to science, to various things, and I remember one of your questions was on gender dynamics, the music that composed by male, female versus the other way, and how she planned that thing and she's, she's got quite an open mind and modern take on things right.

Speaker 1: 3:19

So she's, she's a purist in in most forms, but she's also experimenting with this fusion of technology and music and obviously we were both at her show last night where she was merging the ar visuals augmented reality. So I think there's something there. You know, she keeps, she keeps chipping away at it and you know, bringing more and more tech fusion into the classical purist music scene. I think she could really carve out a unique space for herself for sure. Yeah, nice. Well, sisi, thank you, you know. Welcome to Sonopo. Thanks a lot, lv Really appreciate it. So you're originally from Malaysia.

Speaker 2: 4:05

Yeah, I'm originally from Penang, a small part town of Nibong Terbal, which is a small sub in Penang state.

Speaker 1: 4:12

Okay, okay, and you visit Singapore often.

Speaker 2: 4:17

Back then when I was working more frequently, then Singapore was at one point was quite frequently, so I came, came, I mean every couple of weeks. I'll be here this year, not that much this year.

Speaker 1: 4:29

This is my third trip to Singapore, okay okay and for those, I recently went to KL and I really like Malaysia. I feel Malaysia's on the up and up. It's definitely got a strong development feeling to it when you're there. I was quite surprised, actually in KL specifically. I've still got to travel a lot of other areas in Malaysia, but love the people. I think they're quite sophisticated, lots of development and growth. You can feel there's lots of growth. So for those that don't know Penang, if you have to paint a picture of what that's about, what would you say? Yeah, interesting.

Speaker 2: 5:11

So think of Penang. Right, it's an island, right? I mean in the name that they branded Pearl of the Orient. So basically for Penang, it has historical site it's a UNESCO heritage area and, at the same time, historical site. It's a UNESCO heritage area and, at the same time, it has a beach within five, ten minutes away. It has one of the largest semiconductor processing place. Right there's Intel and all those AMD and all those things in Penang, so it is one of the largest. A few percent of the global semiconductors are made in Penang. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. That's quite amazing.

Speaker 2: 5:42

That's quite a sensitive issue. So it has hill, it has beach, it has a city, it has the cultural and, of course, food. I mean Penang food. I mean I live in KL and I think if you go to Singapore or KL you see all the food have a little bit Penang, penang, this, penang, that. How?

Speaker 1: 5:59

far is Penang from KL? Three hours, three, four hours drive Okay.

Speaker 2: 6:04

So you're born and bred to Penang, but I'm in a sub-urban, small town in Penang state, so I'm not in the. So Penang has two parts. One is an island, which is where most people know Penang is. I'm on the cross the street on the other side, on the mainland of Malaysia, so I'm in a small town in Bung Tobau, so little, unknown town but yeah. So maybe 45 minutes drive to where the CBD of Penang Island.

Speaker 1: 6:31

What is your take on Malaysia, the future of Malaysia, the technology scene and startup scene, and if you could just provide some broad stroke overviews from you know, your perspective?

Speaker 2: 6:46

Yeah. So I think for Malaysia if maybe I just rewind a bit right back in, I think, 2014, when Grab just became the first unicorn, right? I mean, technically, Anthony Huiling came from Malaysia, right?

Speaker 1: 7:00

For those that don't, that are getting a bit of a shock. Your grab is from Malaysia originally. Originally right People seem to think it's from somewhere else, so it was that.

Speaker 2: 7:14

And then I think that of course they built, singapore played a big part for them to build. And then I think 2015 to 17, 18 that time 17, cheryl Yeoh she was the founding CEO of Magic Malaysia, global Innovation and yeah, maybe my full name may be off, but Magic basically is an innovation and all this startup space. So Obama was there with Najib to launch Government backed it's a government agency to build startups. And I think a few things that she did back then. One of it is that she did, I think, three batches that she did back then. One of it is that she did I think three batches of Malaysian founders sent them to Silicon Valley for two weeks exposure or so and I think that sort of built about 100 founders over the three batches to see Silicon Valley and came back. Actually, a lot of the Malaysian key founders today, many of them actually started trace back where the really inflection point was during that three trips. And then she also brought in quite a lot of speakers. Like there was one time she was like, hey, let me introduce you to someone and I was talking to someone else and she was like, oh, meet Ariel. So I just shake hand with her and then I continue my talking and later she was like oh, do you know that area, right, mark Zuckerberg's sister? So I didn't I didn't hang on and talking because I was talking to someone else, but she was able to bring in bunch of those things. So I think that was at that from then and she went back to the states to build her startup already. But I think after that the, after the initial push and 500 Startups where Kylie was at that time, they ploughed in quite a lot of early stage seed into bunch of companies as well.

Speaker 2: 8:50

And then where we went through is after 2017, 18 onwards Indonesia transformed and, of course, singapore is there. So most of the focus attention went to Indonesia, singapore and maybe Vietnam, and Malaysia became that sort of hidden child right, it's there, but not there. We are not the most that people look at there and I think we. So Malaysia became underfunded in a way vis-a-vis the most other parts and that sort of going through a few years of that where and I think that in the last two years where tech valuation gone down and all those things, the layoff and all the things happening in the region on other tech companies Malaysia is somewhat affected, but not nowhere near the effect of what Indonesia, singapore is, because our ecosystem was not as big and yet, at the same time, is we are not as big and yet, at the same time, we are not as heavily funded. So there's not as much fat to cut, got it?

Speaker 2: 9:48

And a few VCs, right, that I was working to in the last one year or so. They actually look at the VCs, especially in Singapore, and if they're still loss-making, one of the key advice they gave them is move bunch of jobs to Malaysia. So that's sort of been like one of the so operational folks. Malaysia has a lot their back ends and all those kind of things and it's sort of because we don't have those big tech coming in to hire a lot of folks, right. So you think I need Google, meta, tiktok and all those kind of thing. We have some basic role, sales role, whatnot, but the real technology role is not in Malaysia. So the startups don't have this competition to compete against these high-salary folks that are poaching all these people, right. So in a way, it has that ability to move and also a lot of Malaysian startups are actually profitable vis-a-vis the region because of lack of funding. So they had no choice but to build a profitable startup.

Speaker 2: 10:46

But Malaysia if I were to zoom out, of course Malaysia startup has gaps as well and one of the key one that I spoke some bit in a few events and think it has been sort of noticed that we haven't solved it need to be solved is, I think Malaysian founders don't dream big enough. Their risk-taking profile is not as good vis-a-vis the region and, I think, operationally very sound, but not willing to risk it to build much more significant. So we have that sort of where Malaysia is and I think the semiconductor now sort of NVIDIA, so a lot of them, everyone built their data center in Malaysia, right, and so that sort of spur, quite a bit of that movement focus. Intel, infineon, google, the Amazon, everyone is multi-billion dollar plow into Malaysia. So it's an interesting play and I think that Malaysia also sits in an interesting dynamics in the semiconductor chip war as well.

Speaker 2: 11:52

It is the place that the Americans and Chinese trade, because of how the country is, the Americans, the Intels and everything has built a bunch of factories in Malaysia. The Chinese Malaysia has 6 million people that speak Chinese. I go to Chinese school as well, so it has a big presence. So the interesting part of it is, then, the this people are now doing business here in Malaysia because of this, that the trade restrictions and what not across that two parts got it. They have a sort of neutral, trustable third part, third zone that they can operate in, and it's at a very low cost that's fascinating.

Speaker 1: 12:40

Sure, that's quite a lot. Thank you, some rich insights there. A few things were going through my mind while you were busy explaining. It never ceases to amaze me the impact, a well-designed startup program, the oxygen for an economy. If you really want to get your economy booming within a future forward outlook, then you kind of need to have this top-down strategy from a government level down into the private sector to really unlock this ecosystem that enables entrepreneurs and, you know, fascinating. I never knew the story that you just mentioned about the three trips to silicon valley and how those founders came back and that's kind of um, you know, shaped quite a strong momentum in that regard.

Speaker 2: 13:39

So that's pretty interesting I think the bit of the gap of it is, if I will look back, is I wish that got continued, because from three batches it could have been 10 batches and it could have been beyond Silicon Valley, of course. Yeah, so I think that sort of early start, I think when Cheryl moved back to the States I think that sort of Was Was she taking a government position. She was the CEO of these government agencies and she was, if you look at her profile, what is her surname? Cheryl Yo, same surname as me. Oh, okay, so fun fact, she went to Cornell because of me. So as in like, we were in the same preparatory program as one year her senior. I sort of influenced her to go there.

Speaker 2: 14:21

But I think where she was was I think she came here. She was young female Chinese. That's not the typical government agency CEO in Malaysia, interesting. So she was sort of opposite end of that and I think she brought that energy in. But what she focused on is small number going global. But I think where eventually the country sort of moved to different way Doesn't mean it's bad, it's that I think subsequently it became more focused on quantity. We produce a thousand entrepreneurs, five thousands Became number scheme versus this and I think subsequently also that agency also got brought into more rural play and everything. So it became a more national agenda of create many people and a bit more supporting on a certain like more rural, more settings and whatnot. Versus back then was anyone that great want to build something, go out there. Taking Silicon Valley as a model, build through.

Speaker 2: 15:37

I mean no right or wrong, it depends on which side you look at it, but I think that's sort of where she started. That didn't get continued after that.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Well, shout out to Cheryl. I think I'll definitely do more research and try and connect with her after this, because I think it's amazing when someone can move the dial like that for a country. You've had a fascinating journey of your own, uh, and I would like to. I would like to take a few steps back and, uh, I'm interested to hear you know your genesis story, where you started uh with your startup, uh, founder journey okay, where do you want me to start?

Speaker 1: 16:23

When did you have you always had a entrepreneurial flair? No, Okay, so where would that have kicked in? What was the trigger for?

Speaker 2: 16:32

that? Yeah, so I think that maybe I go, maybe a bit of my background first, then I come back here. Yeah, sure, so I came from a small town. My high school, jetson which is country wise is a decent school Chinese school but it is very academic in nature and English is minimally spoken. My teacher mostly teach in Hokkien exam in Malay assembly in Chinese. Wow, so English is not there. We learn if we speak much English. People like showing off. And when I came to Singapore after high school for my is not there, we learn if we speak much English. People like showing off.

Speaker 2: 17:05

And when I came to Singapore after high school for my A level, the, I was quite lost, right? My general paper was mostly D7 and E8, right, what does that mean? That means there's A1, a2, b3, b4. Is this like marks Marks? Yeah, Okay. 3b4 is this like Marks Marks? Yeah, okay, got it. So generally it's D and E, if you think on it. So when I came to Singapore, so I did 7 months of A level here in Singapore at Raffles, didn't survive through, I got a scholarship back in Malaysia. I went back and went to the states on that. And when I went to the states that time for Cornell. That was my first flight of my life. How did you? Was that a government-backed program? Yeah, fully funded government scholarship, or else I would never have gone. My Cornell tuition fee was more than my parents' lifetime income.

Speaker 1: 17:51

This is something I'm just going to pause you there, don't lose the train of thought. But I just want to post-note something that I've picked up that a lot of countries in Southeast Asia have done phenomenally well is by this type of government-backed exchange program for students to go to these universities. I've picked it up in Vietnam. Like, if I look at the teams that I'm working with in Vietnam, they've all gone to amazing universities and it's really like if you look at how some of these countries are booming at the moment, this was obviously now. This is the benefits of such an exchange program.

Speaker 2: 18:25

Yeah, I think Singapore led the way right. Singapore has been doing that and still doing that. Thailand did up to a certain extent.

Speaker 1: 18:30

Yeah, yeah, Okay. So you managed to go to this prestigious university. How was that? That must have been like dropping in the deep end.

Speaker 2: 18:37

Tough, like my week one. They had an English test. Oh, 3,000 new students. Eight students were selected as the worst English of the 3,000 cohort and I was one of them. Okay, that was how I started my uni.

Speaker 1: 18:49

But I mean you can speak three other languages, so that's fine.

Speaker 2: 18:51

Yeah, but I guess I thought I knew English, but I was quite lost, to be honest. Okay, okay, and then, and then fast forward. I graduated, not that well, but I went straight through. What did you study? Electrical Computer Engineering Okay, although one fun fact my best engineering grade is worse than my worst non-engineering grades.

Speaker 1: 19:14

Your best engineering grade is worse than your non-engineering grades.

Speaker 2: 19:19

It's worse that my best engineering grade is worse than the Worst non-engineering grade. Okay, so I basically Used my non-engineering, the business school course, whatever To bum up my grades so that my average Doesn't look too bad. Ah Gotcha. But so I got a place for Stanford, after that For Masters. Unfortunately, my CGPA Didn't meet the Requirement from government. Okay, so I never went there, never got a chance To go stand for the study. Okay so what? You came back To Malaysia. Yeah, so I started Consulting, first In Accenture. Didn't know much I thought that it was just there as intern and I was trying to Appeal for scholarship. I didn't Did that For a couple of years years.

Speaker 1: 20:00

That's a good that's a great landing zone yeah. I mean from a consulting perspective. Ascension's right up there. I've worked with them quite a bit, they, they. I think it's a fantastic landing zone for developing your, your consultative capability and thinking and application.

Speaker 2: 20:18

Yeah, and one fun fact my teammates in the same first projects, a few of them joined Anthony and willing to build what is Grab. Kelje was the first country head for Grab Singapore. He started Grab in Singapore back then. I used to report under him. Okay yeah, so he's now leading Grab Financials. The Adeline, who now lead Grab Malaysia joined essentially the same project on the same day as me, so she sat next to me. And then the Jagen, who now leads Grab Indonesia, was in the same project team as well. Yiling, who used to be the chief of staff for Anthony same thing. So it was quite interesting that they jumped in. I actually was exploring but I never took the dive in right when grab was very not even called grab.

Speaker 1: 21:05

Right, my taxi for those that don't know, that are listening, grab is the equivalent of uber for for the singapore malaysia regions and, broader, even thailand, southeast asia. Basically, yeah, okay, fantastic, and then so ascension from there I went to to Jobstreet.

Speaker 2: 21:22

So in Accenture I think that I thought that I wanted the promotion. Right, I work hard. It's a typical young professionals go there, try to get a promotion. So first round, when they evaluate, I fail. Try harder, even harder.

Speaker 2: 21:38

I got it eventually to promote it for analyst to consultant. Thought that that was what I wanted. But got the increment, got a dollar, salary change and everything. But I was like, hey, sounds like everything the same. So I actually resigned, right, so the maybe to the disappointment of my managers and everyone that who fought for me. But that was like, okay, I thought that was the ideal, right Doing, well, promoted and good bum. But not what I wanted. So I actually took a pay cut to join Jobstrip. And at that time I don't even know what role is.

Speaker 2: 22:16

I went to a dinner MIT alum dinner, when I'm not an MIT alum. It was my friend who was there. They said, okay, why don't you just come by? And then the co-founder of JobStreet, kay, was sitting next to me. We chatted and eventually I was offered to join JobStreet. And when I agreed to join, I don't even know what exactly I'm supposed to do. But I thought, okay, let me just change, let me go in. So I was do. Eventually I went in and do product for a fresh graduate student segment. So I did that for three years.

Speaker 2: 22:48

And then, in job street, my COO at that time was always saying that one day you should pick up sales skill. And then when Groupon at that time, early 2011, they started on the spree of acquiring businesses in Southeast globally, including Southeast Asia, so they acquired Groupsmore in Malaysia. So I sent an SMS to Joel and Kylie and said, hey, congratulations, you sold your company. And Joel basically asked me for a supper. I thought that was a supper. That turned out to be a job interview and he offered me a role called inside sales manager, which is a glorified name of telesales agent. Okay, so that was how I agreed to jump into there. Okay, I served my two-month notice at Job Street and when I walked in two months later, when I agreed to join, the company had eight people. I walked in, the company had 37 people and he was like oh, I can't wait for you someone else doing the work. So for three weeks I was doing random, random things. You know, just try to look and act busy and try to this is like the.

Speaker 1: 23:50

This is Groupon Malaysia.

Speaker 2: 23:52

Groupon Malaysia just being acquired. They haven't technically the platform, everything hasn't rebranded yet just being acquired and this is pre-RPO of Groupon pre 2011. Got it. So the? And three weeks in, joel asked me for lunch. I thought he's gonna fire me or what not. He was like not sure what to do with you. He need a COO. Why don't you become COO? So I have never managed anyone and I didn't ask him for any increment as well. So he got a cheap labor. I got a free title upgrade. So I never actually went through a manager role and everything. So it's from there to COO, right? So the? That's crazy. Yeah, and he took the bet. I jumped in. I think that if I had asked him for a proper COO salary, I would not get it. Yeah, and we just went through. And it was crazy.

Speaker 2: 24:40

Few months that. That time the wave was there by the tailwind. Everyone was like group buying, groupon was doing amazing. They were saying world fastest growing company and what not? I think they valued at like 10 billion at one point somewhere there. So the, and then they turned down to 6 billion dollar Google offer. So the momentum was there and then we I think the break for us was later that year we got a chance to turn around group on taiwan. Okay. So because in malaysia joe my joe, who was the main leader there, he was there running it. I'm sort of supporting whatever needed and when we went to taiwan he agreed to do a turnaround for taiwan. He doesn't speak chinese, or very minimal chinese, and that gave me the break to sort of lead a business and I think that exposure we turned a million dollar loss monthly loss business to an $8,000 profit business.

Speaker 1: 25:30

The Groupon model is such an interesting one because ultimately at its core and you can correct me if I get this wrong, please excuse me, but at its initial core I know they diversified as the market became more saturated, but was to offer existing products at a discounted price, right Like a special kind of loyalty-backed, you know, discounted price for products, services.

Speaker 2: 25:57

Yeah, so it's a significant discount, not really loyalty-backed, but more like promotional-backed back. So think of it like the. The concept in a way is introducing these people and then the shop can convert them. But but one thing is that because Groupon has thousands of offers, so as a consumer I will put my consumer hat today I be. I buy dirt cheap in this restaurant tomorrow, next restaurant, next day, next restaurant, next day next restaurant or next.

Speaker 1: 26:26

So you're just living. You know you're getting the benefit of the aggregated discounts and you can just keep living Going around right.

Speaker 2: 26:33

So from the shop perspective is that the conversion to loyal customers that they can build on is not great, and that was actually later on, we can go on that when we acquired Groupon subsidiaries. I was actually later on, we can go on that when we acquired Groupon subsidiary in Southeast Asia, which is Singapore, indonesia, and that was where we eventually went to fix that right. So maybe just a bit of fast forward from this. From there we did Taiwan, turned around, and after that did Southeast Asia, india, then we got a chance to turn around Japan, korea for Groupon, then APAC till 2015 why did they need turning around what was going wrong in the business model I?

Speaker 2: 27:09

think that those days it was a crazy growth and then basically, I think the fundamentals they had a bit of gap.

Speaker 1: 27:16

Can you share more? I'm just, I'm intrigued because, because it was, it was a unique concept at the time. So are you saying in, you know Taiwan and India and these other countries, groupon had kind of come into the market but wasn't profitable at a regional level.

Speaker 2: 27:33

I think at the time most countries were not profitable, unfortunately, okay, but they were scaling. Growth rate was a. So I think in 2011, those days, 2011-2012 the expectation was 50% month-on-month growth, not year-on-year Of users Of top-line revenue. Top-line revenue, gross merchandise value, transaction value, got it and whatnot right. So it was sort of fast growth and the focus was a lot as long as it grows fast, no one's going to question you as much on the bottom line.

Speaker 1: 28:03

So I mean it's an ecosystem play right, because you had to get a lot of merchants to come on board to give the discounts. So what was the trick to? Did it eventually just sell itself? Or initially, what was the strategy to get companies to come in at such a discounted rate?

Speaker 2: 28:21

So initially it was easier because initially the whole platform you lock in there's one offer, one brand, one offer at a 50%, 60% discount. So that was sort of easy, right, you have a limited 24 hours. Tomorrow this brand will be not there. So initially it was one day, one brand at a time. Then it gradually became two days, three days, then became 2, 3, 4, 5 brands, then became 10 days, 100 brands, and then after a while the scarcity disappeared. After a while you have like, and because the need to grow, it became like more and more brands and more and more offers. But at the per unit, per brand itself, it became less, whereas the growth of the user and everything doesn't grow as fast as adding more offers and it's sort of like a drug right now.

Speaker 2: 29:15

Today I put your offer. One day, let's say first day, I sold 500 vouchers. I keep you on. For the second day, I don't really do anything. Maybe it's 300 vouchers. I keep you on. For next day day, I don't really do anything. Maybe it's 300 vouchers, I keep you on. For next day, I got another 150 vouchers sold Each day. It would drop per day, but it continued to add on for the same work that you had already done earlier Photo shoot, write up and everything. So then after a while, when you started doing hundreds of deals or thousands of deals in all this form. While when you started doing hundreds of deals or thousands of deals in all this form, then the numbers really trickle to double digit, single digit for a lot of the offers. And then that's when the attraction of the model became less For the merchants. Yes, so I think it's sort of the growth of the model also sort of cannibalized.

Speaker 1: 30:00

The merchant's value? Yes, that's interesting. So, in hindsight, you know which is always a's value. Yes, that's interesting. So in hindsight, you know which is always a perfect science. Yeah, what would you? What would you potentially have done different? Because I know that they've now diversified their play and trying to create more, I think, customer-led experiences and all sorts of things. I think customer-led experiences and all sorts of things. What would you give for, you know, as a pull of wisdom or learning from that Groupon experience, or, if there's probably more than one, whatever you've got?

Speaker 2: 30:36

So I think that what we did later on, right? So in 2016-17, we acquired that right After we built our own startup. So maybe I just do a 30 second list. Then we jump in there, right? So 2015, we started Kfit. Okay, right, this is now your own startup, me and Joe. They are our own one. Okay, we can come back later on. Okay, what triggers that starting point? Just go on the story. First, right Kfit we started it. And then, 2016, groupon came and knocked on our door and said hey, they wanted to shut down Groupon Indonesia Are we interested to buy?

Speaker 1: 31:06

You've now left Groupon and you're in Capeford.

Speaker 2: 31:09

Yeah, we left Groupon we're in Capeford, we're building, and then Groupon came and said, hey, they might want to exit Indonesia. Do you want to acquire this company? And us haven't never acquired a company, being still in our that time mid-thirties thought that, oh fun, we can buy a company. So we tried our best to say, and we and to acquire a company and it was interesting, mostly share swap. We did a bit of that and I mean one fun fact and maybe one lesson learned, right is that when you there is withholding tax and all those things, we realized it two weeks after we acquired Groupon Indonesia that you have to pay withholding tax to the government. Right, we didn't even know it. We were just like, okay, and just did it. So we did Indonesia. We put back, go back to our wardrobe, take back Groupon shirt, wear it up. We double the business in two months. Great, why did you leave Groupon? Okay, so early 2015, right, so we had done it for about two years managing APAC at that time. So four years throughout, but two years.

Speaker 2: 32:12

So the leaving at that time was that I got two job offers. One was from a telco in Malaysia Okay, one of the largest telco and to run Postpaid, which is 50-60% of that telco business. So it's a multi-billion ringgit revenue business. Okay, so that was the first offer. The second was from a ride-hailing company to start potentially the bike. They had taxi and car, no buy-in.

Speaker 2: 32:44

So there was opportunity exploring, not yet fully at the final offer, but saying that, hey, this opportunity and that opportunity. So those two came to play and I basically told Joel my direct was Joel was the head of Asia, I run operation day-to-day for Groupon Asia and told him that maybe I should move on to these two. And he called me about two hours later and said why do we start a company together? So that was how we started and we knew that we found a Groupon contract. We can't compete against Groupon. Then we knocked out because Groupon sold so many things. Quite a lot of things are knocked out. So fitness became the thing, because on that day, coincidentally, our friend messaged him a class pass about class pass. So we literally said, okay, let's do the same thing and clone it and create it and just for for myself and the the listeners benefit.

Speaker 1: 33:36

What is the model?

Speaker 2: 33:37

so class pass back then. The first model that we started in. This is under kfix. Yeah, the class was model. Class was not yet in our region, by the way, at that time I don't even know what that is so class was is now in Singapore, where you can go to different fitness studios and everything. So the first model we did was unlimited studio classes. You can do your yoga, you can do your Pilates, your Zumba, your gym and everything.

Speaker 1: 34:03

Across different studios.

Speaker 2: 34:05

So every city we started, 50 After that. We have Few hundred studios In each city and unlimited classes One month 99 Singdol In Singapore, 99 Ringgit In Malaysia. That's quite affordable. Yeah, it's very affordable. Good and bad right. And this was in 2015, when Grab just became the first unicorn. Funding were huge Back then. I still remember the day that we announced we left Groupon Same afternoon. We closed a million US dollar on that afternoon.

Speaker 1: 34:38

Literally On what? On KFIT, kfit, yeah so the investment. So basically, our phone were non-stop ringing and said they saw Grab has become a unicorn On KFIT, kfit, yeah, so the investment.

Speaker 2: 34:43

So basically our phone were non-stop ringing and said they saw, grab has become Unicorn. They got money, they just want to throw. So it was the same time where Carousel, gojek and all those people were all booming up right. So it was a new class of this that and we had that early and luck of capturing that right. And that time Sequoia basically Peter Kempz, who was new staff at Sequoia he was staff number two of Sequoia messaged us on LinkedIn and said, hey, want to chat. And then we were like we had no customer, no revenue, so we were not ready. We told him we were not ready. He said, nevermind, he came to singapore, let's have a chat. So the week after we came singapore to have a coffee chat this never happens, by the way, in the vc world.

Speaker 1: 35:29

Obviously it was back.

Speaker 2: 35:30

I mean time place people at that time right, it was a luck. And I went to ocbc bank to open bank account and joel went to have that coffee chat. We had no deck, by the way. At this point, right, we were one week, one, two weeks old no deck, nothing. And the way at this point, right, we were one, two weeks old, no deck, nothing.

Speaker 2: 35:45

And this was after we took the million dollar already Just starting to try to get a few people to quit their jobs and come in and do it. Right, and Joe went there. An hour later he texted me and said we got a term sheet for $2.25 million. Whoa, I said investment dollar $2.25 million. That's crazy, yeah. And we had nothing. We got a few people and then they said they want to do due diligence checks the next morning. So we literally had to message a few of people who agreed to join us, hasn't joined us emergency leave tomorrow. We borrowed Kylie 500 Startups office and they came and Peter K camps reached our office before any of us reached there. There's like there's no signboard. Okay, fit, there's this place. Luckily, he still went through and we got it. Wow, that's amazing. That's a great story. We were lucky, right place, right time and luck. I think that the it was.

Speaker 1: 36:41

It's a combination of luck and also, I think, your experience. You know from where you came from.

Speaker 2: 36:46

I think that that boded you well, and also the investment committee at that time for Sequoia. So the other two folks inside there was Shalendra and Yinglan, okay. So Yinglan, who is now leading Insignia, he and me used to travel together as a student in China, okay, in a student trip, and over the years we sort of kept in touch. And then Shailen Ra has connected with Joel during his Groupon days Because Joel was leading Asia in Groupon. So they export some stuff there Didn't really work together, but they sort of knew each other. So that sort of went in Right Like that time.

Speaker 2: 37:22

Peter hasn't had any startup that he has invested, so he's new in Sequoia. So Sequoia said okay, you want this one. Okay, let me give you the chance to put your first check. So it was a bunch of all those. And how did Peter knew us was Peter came from AWS. He went to ask his former colleague and his colleague was like, oh, I heard that there's this guy, azumi, who still faith CTO, is moonlighting with this company on an hourly wage at that time. And from there they reached out and that's how we were lucky.

Speaker 1: 37:58

So so that's a pretty unique circumstance great, potentially great. I'm interested to pull at this thread now because you know sometimes money can derail a startup, especially that amount of money, without having product market fit, clients or any of that in place. You know that can go to people's head, I think. Luckily, you know the team that it sounds like that made up KFIT had at least tangible experience in scaling a startup in region. So paint me a picture of those early days. I'm just intrigued with KFIT. And what was your next move to make sure that you turn that money into returns?

Speaker 2: 38:43

Yes or no. I think we made quite a lot of mistakes as well along that way, right? So with that funding, and then a few other people put money as well, so within three months, we raised 4.25 million US dollar, right? So including that 2.25 and 1 million, right? So then we got another million from someone else a bunch of few folks, so we got up that must have been the most epic pitch deck that you guys had like no pitch deck no pitch deck as in we don't have pitch deck at that time stop it no so we had no pitch deck, right.

Speaker 2: 39:13

I still remember one investor. We were like okay, we invest. Then he was like do you have a logo? We don't have logo. Then he was like okay, do you want me to design a logo for you? We sent him an investment agreement. He asked us whether do we need a logo? We didn't even have a logo, so but it the.

Speaker 2: 39:32

We were in a way overzealous in scaling, of course, with that amount of money behind you, yeah and we, because we used to manage Groupon 12 countries Japan, korea, hong Kong, taiwan, australia, new Zealand, india, groupon 12 countries Japan, korea, hong Kong, taiwan, australia, new Zealand, india, singapore, philippines, thailand, indonesia, malaysia so we sort of have a network Of the staff. So quite a lot of them Actually joined us At a senior folks level, head of sales or what not. So quite a lot Of the cities Were led by that and For us it's like If we found A person that's good and then we did a survey as well on their fitness background, so we basically either demand, tell us that, or we have someone that's good, then we'll launch that city right. So we did the 12 cities, 8 countries. So it was In what period of time? Five months, what? So we did Singapore, kl, manila, Hong Kong, taipei, seoul, auckland, sydney, melbourne, perth, brisbane, adelaide I can't wrap my head around that I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: 40:34

And we had 120 people. I still remember those days right. We came, I said daytime, we were working nonstop, but those days we were working 18 hours a day or whatever, nonstop. And at night, 7.30, 8 pm onwards, we were working non-stop, but those days we were working 18 hours a day or whatever, non-stop. And at night, 7.30, 8 pm onwards, we were doing candidate interview. People would walk into the office and we interview the person. Those days we don't have that much choices. People are this sounds decently good At 8 o'clock interview, 8.10,.

Speaker 2: 40:58

Someone will text someone. Behind Offer letter came 8.10, please sign. And behind offer letter came 8th, 10th place sign. And the way we did it at the first model was basically, whatever your previous salary, we will give you that amount, but ask you how many percent you want to take in cash and how much you want to take in stocks. So, which means that the more stocks you take, the more pay card you get, right. So the first 20-30 people were done that way and basically we people were done that way and basically we also had a clause that on that day onwards you can start hourly wage based on divided by number of hours of your salary.

Speaker 2: 41:30

Okay, interesting so think of it 8pm, come for interview. 8.10, offer letter given. 8.15, you sign, 8.17, you start work, create email for you and start work. It was crazy and we were like like by the time the person was like okay, midnight, I think the person before fully processed is like in. So we were sort of like in the drug kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 41:53

it's like non-stop right can I can I pause there for a second. I mean because this, this is great, so this is a fantastic story. So there's two points of interest that I have right now on where we're at in this journey. So the one is that at this stage, have you crystallized your value proposition and your product market fit? Was that clear?

Speaker 2: 42:20

I think that we in a way copied class first, so it was similar, but the uni economics was not ideal. So think of it this time. I said that it's 99. Let's take Singapore market 99 Sing unlimited market. The competition at that time is two types right. One you sign like fitness first and all those kind of places. Maybe it's about 100, 30, 150 Sing, but you had a one two year contract. We don't have a contract. The other one is you go to a studio for yoga or whatever and take 10 class, 4 class or 20 class or whatever those kind of package. So this one is basically can go anywhere, anywhere in region, cross region, within the city, within the city.

Speaker 2: 42:57

So that time there were a couple of company Guava Pass and Passport Asia. So Guava Pass, they focus on the expat market, so they charge 99 US dollar. You can go to all the major cities so you can exercise in Dubai. The same pass works in Bangkok, kl, singapore, hong Kong and everywhere. So they went on the expat markets and their classes in Hong Kong is in English. We went localized, so our class in Hong Kong would be in Cantonese. Our class in Hong Kong would be in Cantonese. Our class in Taiwan would be in Taipei, would be in Mandarin. So we went on that localized mode. But the challenge for Unique Economics is that think of it right, because our customer pays a fixed fee for unlimited. We paid the gym per class that you turn up.

Speaker 1: 43:41

So it's a numbers game. So you hadn't actually worked out. You know exactly what percentage of the entire base is actually going to go to classes and make sure there's some fat in between. Yeah, and in between, right.

Speaker 2: 43:52

And I think that basic and we think from a customer standpoint it's a sweet spot of four to eight classes that we make money and the customer will retain those that go zero. 1, 2 classes, 3 classes we make a lot of money. Most of their money is a high margin but high chance these people will drop off got it. And if you go like 9 to like 60 class Kylie, who is a 500 startup and a costume my young partner, he is our investor. He goes 60 class a month being VC, two class a day, morning, evening that one's costing you money. Yes, so our revenue from him is 99 ringgit. Our cost from him maybe, is 500 ringgit. So every month we lost 400 ringgit on him. But against the base.

Speaker 1: 44:39

you just absorbed that, so you worked out obviously what is the split across the base, um with with those different uh ranges that you provided there.

Speaker 2: 44:48

I think it is, it's sort of, I can't remember exactly roughly but I think zero, and one will have 10, 20 percent.

Speaker 2: 44:55

Okay, right, these people is like someone else convince them to join or they think that they are determined to go and they sign up. Right, that's that group. And then there is a bit of a two-trip and then four to eight I think we're at 40, 50, 60% of mid-zone. But then there's a 10, 20%, 10% of people. 20% of people go more than 10. But at the number of classes standpoint, this 10% that will go significant, will likely take 30, 40, 50% of our costs, even though they are 10% revenue.

Speaker 1: 45:25

What I would have done with that group is offered them a health insurance product, because you know they're going to be super healthy.

Speaker 1: 45:31

You're going to just, you know, save on the premium there over time, but anyway, okay, so that's super interesting. Okay, so the model is pretty clear. Then it brings me back to the second point I wanted to ask you about in this part of the story. Then it brings me back to the second point I wanted to ask you about in this part of the story. I've seen how pear-shaped things can go when you scale too quickly.

Speaker 1: 45:51

Now, this kind of scaling you're talking about it probably has happened. It definitely has happened in other startups that have got this kind of backing and drive Within five months. That amount of countries is insane. That onboarding process is insane. One of the things I've realized is that the risk of that is that you get a whole lot of people flooding in with a lot of I don't want to say confusion, necessarily, but very little structure, very little ability to understand your working culture, company culture or make sure that everyone is at least singing from the same hymn book. So how did you manage that? What are some of the challenges you picked up with that?

Speaker 2: 46:39

Because I think that's a great learning for anyone when we talk about scaling On the part that you talk about operations. I think, luckily, that part was okay for us. There are other gaps, right?

Speaker 1: 46:49

How did you make sure there was a case? Most of them.

Speaker 2: 46:51

We worked with them for a few years before.

Speaker 2: 46:52

Okay so there was a click so we knew each other and hence that part was sort of straightforward. We have good folks, the Rafiq, who at that first year lead that operation. Rafiq, who hasn't turned 40 yet, is now leading the largest media. Think of Media Corp of Malaysia, media Prima. So at the age of 37, 38, he leads the largest media company in Malaysia. So super talented. So he was running operations and it sort of worked very well At that time. He is still maybe about 31 or so, right, but he used to run Groupon Malaysia for us so he made sure that back end. So I think the operation side, the team was gelling and things were working. So that was not our challenge.

Speaker 2: 47:37

I think our challenge is understanding the product market fit at each geographical. So let's take different market. In Singapore people will exercise 7, 8 pm in CBD. In KL it will be 7 pm or so in the area between CBD and your home. In Australia it will be 5, 6 pm near to where they stay, not in CBD. How did you gather that data? I think that was. I pm near to where they stay, not in CBD. How did you gather that data? I think that was. I mean true, and we are very data-driven so we analyze quite a bit. And actually the other one that we also found people that who are we thought that we built a fitness product, but people that who are hardcore fitness will sign up a proper gym, go take the same instructor.

Speaker 2: 48:26

What we found after a bunch of focus group we did a lot of focus group in every city, as we used to travel across all the cities and do every city. We'll do multiple rounds of focus group and everything. And focus group the way we did is like people that will go very frequent, call a bunch of them and do a question. People that will pay and don't turn up will do focus group on that. People who turn up for a couple of times and then stop turn up. What do we do? So we had multiple groups and then keep on just trying to understand as much as possible. Right, got it From those segments and we do group focus group in the sense that five, six, seven, eight of them then come in in the same segment and understand that and market fit was not ideal, right?

Speaker 1: 49:03

I think that's sort of where where that gap is right, because so what we found is that when you sorry, sorry, okay, yeah, finish, finish, because you're going to explain why the product market fit wasn't ideal, right?

Speaker 2: 49:17

yeah, so I think the product market fit works well for actually new couple okay. Or people who just recently break up. So new couples because think of a new couple just got together. What do they want to do? They want to go different places. Excitement. So today I go jurong for this class. Next day I go bugis for this class, next day I go bishan for the other class. I want variety, I want excitement. So new couples works well. People who just break up want to go get in shape and meet people and get in shape and meet people, right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 49:48

So. And back then our targeted ads were very so because those days people still update your relationship status on Facebook. I mean today, no one bothered with that, right? They say your status is still in a relationship, single, whatever, right? So we focus on the change of relationship. So single became in relationship, but then they will start seeing ads that say, hey, go out with the other half and go exercise together and meet people and enjoy all those things. So very targeted advertising and people that, on the other end, became singles, like mingle, go meet new people, people that go engage we say, okay, fit into your wedding gown and whatever. So it was a very targeted ads on this. And that time we also found one other nuggets which may not be applicable today, was that for advertisement to download the app or even actually even sign up is targeting over when people at Wi-Fi save our advertising costs by 50%. How?

Speaker 1: 50:49

can I understand that Versus?

Speaker 2: 50:49

people on 4G. So basically, people those days data package is still not as big. Okay, so people that. So let's say we say, please download this KFIT app. Okay, if we show them the apps when they're on Wi-Fi, they have double the propensity to download versus when we show them the app when they're on their normal mobile telco data plan. Because today this is not a problem, because today data plan package is huge. Gotcha, those days the package plan is very small. People will not waste it to download the app. So I think a lot of that back then was understanding a lot of these nuances in every bit of all this and capitalizing on it and driving.

Speaker 1: 51:31

So that's what's jumping out for me is that you really had strong focus groups and from those focus groups you build out your personas, you prioritize those personas and then you figured out the best way to reach them, which is, you know, what you just mentioned. So that's. That's pretty interesting and a great learning for any any startup or business on. You know that's. Listening to this, I'm interested and I don't want to harbor too much longer on this, but the product market fit was just on the persona side, or also on the ratio to get the numbers right of number of classes versus profits.

Speaker 2: 52:07

I think classes of supply versus demand. Okay, I think profit was not as big at that time, to be honest. Right, I think we were not. We were like okay, let's just, we was fortunate. Unfortunately, at that time I'm just sharing may not be what I think is right today, but at that time, when we had capital and then a few months later we raised another $12 million Wow, so we had capital at that time, right, everything on it. Right. Without sounding arrogant or anything, I think I was just describing what we were at that moment. Right, we had these investments and profitability. I think at that time, vcs don't really talk about it?

Speaker 1: 52:45

No, so it's about just making sure you capture the market.

Speaker 2: 52:49

So I think that was sort of that, but balancing between number of studios and number of people. So there's a lot of analyzing. And then we also focus a lot on lifecycle. If today you subscribe, we will try our best to get you within three days or five days to reserve your first class and go to your first class within seven days, and then, after you go first class, to ensure that you go to the second class within the next few days. Once you go to three class, then your drop rate is actually very low. And the other one we did was referral. Anyone can choose. Not you can get enough credits not to pay for your class if you bring another five paying customers every month.

Speaker 2: 53:27

So then, and what we found is not just that $20, because it's $99, so you give it $20, right, but what it does is that if, let's say, I bring my best friend to sign up, the likelihood of me drop off is actually significantly lower, and this new friend as well, because we now know there's a psychology that you're tapping into there, so that will sort of create that network effect to build through right. So I think that was sort of where we were building it.

Speaker 1: 53:56

Got it, got it. You must have caused a bit of chaos for the studios and the gyms because they have their fee. How did that compare to your fee? And it must have been like. I mean, I'm not sure what the numbers are, but I'm thinking now. For example, my Anytime Fitness monthly bill is about $80 a month. So immediately I'm listening to what you're saying I'm like why do I not know about KFIT and does it still exist? And if it does, I would 100% rather switch over to KFIT, which gives me access to all these other studios. So you must have caused a bit of havoc in the market, surely?

Speaker 2: 54:34

In a way, but I think, the way we did to the market. So think of it at that time we go to the studio. What we did is we go. Let's say, imagine now I'll be at a yoga center, right. So I'll go to you and say, okay, I look at your package, walk in. Let's say it's $20 per time. Your biggest package, 40 class, is $400. So it's $10 per class at the biggest package. So what I would negotiate with you is say now I want to send students to you, the attendees to you. If each month I send less than 50 people, I'll pay you $10, or $11.

Speaker 1: 55:11

It's guaranteed.

Speaker 2: 55:12

No, no guarantee, anything but based on the tiering 50 to 100 people in a month classes, I will pay $9. 100 to 200, I'll pay you $8.

Speaker 1: 55:23

Okay, sliding scale.

Speaker 2: 55:24

Sliding scale right. So to them I don't have any guarantee of how many people Could be zero, okay, but based on this tiering, I will pay a different amount to you. Got it. So for them is, and for studio, if you have a class that can fit nine people to these, six students, turn up the three empty seats. Any extra person come in is bonus 90 plus 100% gross margin for them. Okay, whatever amount we paid them, got it, okay. So okay, got it, okay, so okay, got it. And that was the model and 2016 January, when we raised our 12 million dollar. One significant thing that we actually did. What we did was we decided to change the model from unlimited to 10 class for the same price, okay, and they were. So, basically, 99 dollars instead of unlimited.

Speaker 1: 56:14

changed the model from unlimited to 10 class for the same price. Okay.

Speaker 2: 56:15

And they were so basically $99 instead of unlimited. It's now $99 for 10 class. They were a bit of hoo-ha, sure, but we told them they say, okay, we give you all the chance to cancel. You want to cancel? And what we found is people actually don't cancel.

Speaker 1: 56:28

So what? You eliminated that top tier, that were just abusing the model.

Speaker 2: 56:34

They're technically a lawyer customer.

Speaker 1: 56:36

They're loving the program and getting the most value, but it's costing you, right? So you basically cut that off.

Speaker 2: 56:42

Yeah. So then the, and what we found is that not everyone, but a lot of them actually subscribe two, three, four package.

Speaker 1: 56:50

Ah, so you just increase the quantum?

Speaker 2: 56:52

no-transcript increased the quantum of revenue because for them, if they can't have on their own the same price, to do this anyway, they knew the value they were getting. I mean, that's what they're milking it, so that was but we were only able to do it when we had the funding because we were like, okay, we are prepared for a short term dip, but we actually didn't have a gig at that time. But we were saying that, okay, doing it when we do, we're like maybe a lot of people cancel.

Speaker 1: 57:16

And we told them all of you, if you don't like it, press the button cancel yeah, the other problem I'm wondering how you solved from a logistics perspective is tracking and tracing. How did you manage that across all these brands, to validate the books and the where people went? Did you have a?

Speaker 2: 57:37

Everything in-house built. But basically we knew that every session, how many people sign up and everything, so we had a whole but how did you plug into their systems to understand?

Speaker 1: 57:46

But then how did you manage that?

Speaker 2: 57:47

They use a mobile app to manage, so we didn't go into, we decided not to integrate to their system. So we didn't go into, we decided not to integrate to their system.

Speaker 1: 57:53

Yeah, because that would have been too much. Yeah, so we didn't. So then, through your mobile app, what they geolocate at the class or they book it.

Speaker 2: 58:01

It's just a lock-in password for into. Let's say, for example, you own a studio, you gotta, if you're a sign-on, you gotta this lock-in password every day. You're gonna put in this class spots. This class has five spots, so they will take a subset of their total space and give it to us.

Speaker 1: 58:14

So there was an onus on the studio to push the information into the app and then your users just book via the app and that's how you track everything.

Speaker 2: 58:23

Got it, yeah, and then of course, if some of them don't update how many. So then, data-driven 80-20 rose quite a bit.

Speaker 1: 58:34

Okay, love it. This is fantastic. I'm really stimulated by this journey and story. So what happened with KFIT?

Speaker 2: 58:41

Yeah, so that was 2015,. 2016,. Right, it scaled through. I think that for that model, kfit, which in a way is middle upper class segment, we sort of hit a plateau up to a certain point, and I think that the other one that they came about is, I think, founder product fit.

Speaker 1: 59:05

Let's just put the mic a bit closer to your mouth there, maybe just angle it, okay. Or just turn your chair, maybe more that way, so that the mark is because you're talking to me like this there.

Speaker 2: 59:19

Yeah, okay, yeah so it's a there we go okay. So it's a founder product, fit right, I think that that's sort of where it's sort of get to. I think that me.

Speaker 2: 59:30

I think at that time was even more fatter than today okay so the fitness product and me actually doesn't fully jive the my, the other founder, joel. He is a lot more fitter, but the that time actually internal jokes were they called me K-fat, not even K-fit, okay. So I think that the after a while I still remember, like me and Joel, we were chatting over it and say, okay, let's build this. And then as we hit that plateau and so there are a few things happening right, yeah, we hit that plateau. We also had the one was a plateauing. Second is Groupon came over and said that do you want to acquire Groupon? Indonesia at that time, and and I think Joel and me discussed then I think the recently Joel spoke at a forum and he mentioned this right. He was asking me will you mind with the shift model and whatever? Right, and my response to him was that doesn't matter Any product, I'm just optimizing and building, right.

Speaker 2: 1:00:45

I think for me and Joel so far he has always been the visionary, charismatic, the front person and chart. True, I'm the person that basically say, okay, you decide this thing, let me make it happen. So I'm always that right. So for me, you want to solve fitness, solve fitness. You want to solve food, food, you want to solve whatever. I'm like optimizer and make it happen. Right, you want to acquire this company, I'll make it happen.

Speaker 2: 1:01:10

So, basically what? Even fundraising, acquisition or even eventually being sold and everything. So Joel will be the one that go out there and convince people and say, okay, I give you a million, I give you, I'm going to be sold to you at this price or I'm going to buy you at this price. Right, and he got once he got that, usually that would be passed to me and what I might do is make sure that at that, at that point, the money in the bank or the company is transacted, fully completed and whatnot. So I usually do the back end while he went out dating and make it happen. So we sort of did that play. But the founder product fit, I think in that sense is that we did KFIT for at that time, actively Exclusive KFIT for one and a half years before we got buy the Groupon and got the other part of business coming in right. But so what? You sold K-Fit, we didn't sell K-Fit, we didn't sell. Actually, we never sold K-Fit but for first one and a half years purely K-Fit product okay.

Speaker 2: 1:02:04

I attended a grand total of 10 minutes of K-Fit class as a founder.

Speaker 2: 1:02:08

Okay, right, right, so I don't have the product market fit to that right. And and I think that that as the chance to acquire Groupon, when Groupon came to Indonesia, then after that Groupon came and said, after they bought Indonesia, they said, do you want to buy Malaysia? And then subsequently Singapore, right, and then that sort of get us to shift the model Basically. Basically, kfit we still keep KFIT as a product. We relegate KFIT to become a product, the Groupon product that we bought. We didn't buy the name, brand, name trademark, we didn't buy the technology.

Speaker 2: 1:02:41

We build our own and we brand it Faith okay so that's sort of where Faith was born, right in that, in that manner. So the that sort of take through and manner, so the debt sort of take through, and KFIT became a second child. That was there. It's a product running and the last thing we did before we do it is we actually increase the price of KFIT to make it really profitable, gross margin positive, everything doesn't bother, and then we leave it be. So.

Speaker 2: 1:03:11

Singapore I think we move from 99 sink to 129 sink because investors are like, okay, not great, you need economics, can't scale, you only make because from $99, after you paid everything, you make $8, $10, or whatever, a few dollars per month, right, per customer. So it's quite thin. So we got to burst in, sign up, shift the new price and basically we focus. So sign out, drop a lot. But whenever someone want to click cancel, our CRM team will basically contact them and say, hey, you are cancelling. You still got a legacy $99. Not in market today anymore. If you ever regret and come back, it's $129 already. Do you still want to cancel? And a lot of people actually don't cancel. So our churn rate dropped and our acquisition rate dropped and balanced and neutralised each other. That sort of kept it running, but it was a small business in the sense that small gross profit there, but it was not big.

Speaker 2: 1:04:18

And then we focus on the Groupon business that we acquired, turned to faith and this go back to the earlier model of Groupon. Groupon was a high discount, promotional model, bring new customers and whatnot, but it has a gap. The gap will be that that brings new customers at a big discount, but a lot of times it became a second-class customer In the shop. You are the lower-priced point customers. So what we did was that we actually did two set of trips to China. We didn't know exactly, but we knew that China was more advanced in this space. We basically reached out to 150 people in China and said, hey, we are going to go to China, we are from Malaysia, we have done business in Southeast Asia, we are going to share with you about Southeast Asia. Can you tell us about China? So we basically tell them that we will tell you 45 minutes about Southeast Asia. You give us 15 minutes and we hit 150 people. I think about 30 people agreed to meet us to speak and we focused on C-1 and C-2. Of all the large platforms in China, from Ctrip to Meituan to whatever, all the big brands in China, alipay and whatnot and we said we'll meet their C-1, c-2. And 30 sessions of that happened. We got a crash course on China, understanding how the market, what works, what not work.

Speaker 2: 1:05:37

Our model, in a way, was adapted quite a bit from China Because it's like, okay, that's how it works and let's try so at that time. So if you think on it, most platforms want the benefit to be as large as possible to customers. That means you can whatever want the benefit to be as large as possible to customers, that means you can. Whatever points they accrued, whether Alliance Network, everything, the points can be used everywhere. We went on opposite model, just our Groupon deals was deep discount. So we say everyone pay full price. You got a cashback for that specific restaurant or retailers but can only be used back at the same place.

Speaker 1: 1:06:13

Interesting, let's just pause there. Which means that you're getting. Did you still have the discount negotiated on the back end with the merchants?

Speaker 2: 1:06:23

So there are two models. So one is the deals If you buy a voucher for buffets and whatnot. That still go on. But we knew that this model is not going to last forever. So we continue running it. But that hits certain product and certain package and certain kind of businesses. But there are a lot of businesses that couldn't do 50% this kind of work with us. So then we had this second model, faithpay, where you pay full price but you get a cashback to be used back. So let's say you get it at Subway. It means the next time you go back to Subway you pay, you get a cashback on Subway at Subway, right on a platform. So it's auto-deduct when the next time you came back.

Speaker 1: 1:07:05

Which is solving the problem that you mentioned earlier of making sure that there's repeat customer.

Speaker 2: 1:07:08

But this is a significantly lower margin model versus the first model Got it got it Okay, but it would drive more stickiness with the merchants.

Speaker 2: 1:07:18

Yes. So and it was an internal battle as well right at that time, like, should we do it? Should we not the? I mean? Because if you think of it from Groupon model, it's 30, 40, 50% margin. We go down to 1% or whatnot kind of margin. So it was a very different game. But we sort of have to take the tough decision to move forward or else we don't have a longer term business. Why?

Speaker 1: 1:07:42

did Groupon exit? Where did they go wrong? Was it because of these kinds of mechanics that started eroding at a merchant level? What was the reason that they were extracting? Yeah, so I think this is for me. Are they extracting post IPO? So I think this is from oh, they're extracting post-IPO.

Speaker 2: 1:07:57

So I think there are a few things right. I think one Groupon globally outside of America were mostly through acquisition. The platform was not integrated into one, so which means that whenever they update Grouponcom for a new thing, it so, which means that whenever they update Grouponcom for a new thing, it is not in Groupon Malaysia, japan, singapore and everywhere. Wow. So each of that. And then they combine a few platforms. Malaysia, singapore, hong Kong were in one platform.

Speaker 1: 1:08:24

Japan was on different Because of the acquisition that was fragmented from a platform.

Speaker 2: 1:08:28

Yeah, because they did so many acquisitions and the technology. I think, looking back back, the technology was never integrated back. The process tried to be similar, but then every platform is managed by their own engineers trying to make it as similar as possible, but each has a different legacy. It must be messy, messy, yeah. So I think that was one of the play. And then whatever vision they have in America can't translate into here because the platform were all different. I mean, I don't know how many total platform, but I think more than 10 globally. Right, and let's say, take Indonesia, it's on its own platform. You will never get prioritization of engineers to fix that in the business of 48 countries in the world. So that sort of keep on became the tech debt and everything right. Why?

Speaker 1: 1:09:12

wouldn't they have just replicated their platform in region and migrated? I suppose because users were used to that existing UI, UX in region for the one they acquired?

Speaker 2: 1:09:24

One of it, but also prioritization. They tried to do so. A few of them managed to go through, but most of them not able to right, because each of the migration maybe two, three, four, five months and they listed already by then. There's a quarterly pressure to right, because each of the migration maybe two, three, four, five months and they are listed already by then. There's a quarterly pressure. So do you run a quarterly process and when you migrate, some customers will disappear, of course. So the risk-taking and balancing and all those kind of thing came into play, right, and I think that then subsequently and when we left as well this was 2015, groupon decided that say okay, cost is crucial as well, so they didn't really replace the Asian leadership in Asia. So I think that's another point from my perspective, that could have been.

Speaker 1: 1:10:13

Would they try to manage from leadership overseas to middle lower management in Asia, so let's say head of Latin America has been promoted to head of rest of the world.

Speaker 2: 1:10:23

Oh wow, Living in Brazil, managing Latin America and Asia, I mean he's a smart guy.

Speaker 1: 1:10:30

I mean he's a smart guy, I mean no doubt. But still you and I both know that there's a big gap.

Speaker 2: 1:10:36

Yeah, culture and you know kind of managing everything on the ground and the head of operations from US Seattle is now managing head of operations US and Asia. Living in Seattle, head of marketing, I think was in Chicago managing US and Asia. Was that a cost decision? I think for them it's like not hiring extras and then these are ready and whatnot. So as they shifted those things, that became distance to this part of the world, right, and then I think then it became further understanding and everything. So I think then it became further understanding and everything. So I think one is already the technology platform became a challenge. Two, I think the folks became further, so I think that was.

Speaker 2: 1:11:23

And then the quarterly pressures, because it was always this quarter. How do we hit the quarterly numbers? So I think there are a few of those that I think, from my perspective, were the cumulative reason. Yeah, but blessing in disguise, if Groupon had not go down this way, we would not have been able to acquire it, of course, because the pricing would be exorbitant if I may ask so, from KFIT to purchasing Groupon.

Speaker 1: 1:11:51

How did you raise? There must have. So From KFIT To purchasing Groupon. How did you raise? There must have been A big number to raise.

Speaker 2: 1:11:56

The good is Our number were growing. Their number were declining. They were bigger than us, but it was a declining business. I think for them Is sitting from US. This region Is loss making some bit Not huge number, but it's still loss making, far from there and every action is very difficult to manage. And we were like they.

Speaker 2: 1:12:20

And then we did the first initial deal first right, mostly share swap, just very little cash, mostly share swap and the. We able to prove that we can double the business in a very short while and no transition as in. They didn't even do, because the folks in the US that sold us this business didn't understand the business anywhere near. We do so because we had, while we have, 18 months gap from the moment we left to start KFIT till start acquiring back, we were basically still got quite a lot of people inside that we knew the things, so we were able to basically jump in and tweak and sort of fix and run right and then we started our migration process as well.

Speaker 2: 1:13:03

So initially, when we first bought in august 2016 we haven't migrated malaysia we bought in november 2016. We told ourselves three months, so february 22nd 2017, 2017, malaysia platform fully killed from Groupon and moved to FAIF and then Singapore. We acquired on March 8th 2017. We fully migrated in 60 days, may 8th 2017, two months fully migrated in, and initially we did it in April. So initially it was an eight-month process because we did Malaysia first and then cross in. So and that migration process also is very data-driven we didn't buy the platform, we didn't buy the brand, but we had all the data of which customer buy, what and whatnot. So it was a very targeted. How do we then move this millions of email and phone numbers customers in that sense into a new platform called Faith that they never heard of?

Speaker 1: 1:14:00

With new branding, everything. And so I want to zoom in on this, because this is amazing. When you mentioned, when you surfaced, groupon's strategic decision to keep the Frankenstack versus the risk of migration, I thought immediately I felt like that was quite a big fault. I understand at the time, maybe, why they thought that might be okay, but you know, as someone who's dealt with different platforms, it must have been an absolute nightmare to manage. So you took the opposite approach. You took the risk. You're going to migrate and then do this bridging from old to new Fastly, yeah. And so how did you ensure that you didn't have mass drop-off or rejection, because the brand equity is not there, it's a new brand. So how did you manage that? What are the tricks? Because you clearly have a very interesting playbook when it comes to psychology and keeping people locked in or incentivized. So I'm keen to understand how you bridged this.

Speaker 2: 1:15:04

I think that time to be honest is just craziness, youth, and just say less whack, right? I mean, I would explain a bit more, in a sense that we didn't know how hard it is to be honest. Sure, right. And I think one thing on Groupon I don't think it's there. They wanted to keep all the platform, but it's just that to move all is just too difficult and prioritization and everything. So I don't think they were saying okay, let's keep Globalization and efforts and availability of resources to move platform became the difficult. That's why it's all.

Speaker 1: 1:15:35

But I mean that's a crazy thing for me to comprehend, especially if they've IPO'd and they've got so much money behind them. Just do it. But they got a quarterly pressure. Yeah, but still, any strong leader would push back on the quarterly pressure to ensure survival Because ultimately, in my mind, that decision is probably why they had to pull back from so many regions?

Speaker 2: 1:15:56

Yeah, but at the time, if you think on it, it still generated revenue. It's just that it can't enhance in that sense, right, yeah, but let's move to…. How did you bridge it?

Speaker 1: 1:16:07

Yeah, so then, as we move… I mean, what was the campaign you did to the customers?

Speaker 2: 1:16:11

Multiple bits, I think. First is we studied every customer. So we knew that of the million of customers, it's going to be 80-20 or whatnot, right? So we basically classify and segment the customers. The high value and in what sense, are you the one that just do all the buffets, are you do the high margin massage and everything? Or you are going on a travel trip? So we knew what they have bought and how frequent and how recent and a bunch of those things. So what we did is then we knew that, okay, let's say, take Malaysia migration. We are 90 days, so we actually have a daily plan and that time Daniela was who was with us? That time she was the one. She was ex-McKinsey, brazil, so she wanted to get a Harvard Business School and we said, okay, we'll work with you towards that. Eventually she got into Harvard Business School, but in the process she was with us to do this, all this thing with the team, right.

Speaker 2: 1:17:02

And we were very focused and we basically count percentage of user migrated and percentage of revenue migrated and we and the same ratio is 90 days maybe we started doing the action about day 10, day 15. It was the first few days. We needed to settle the basic and then we knew it was 75 days or so. There's a fixed cut off and on the cut off date we wanted to get 60-70% of revenue migrated. That means on that. So then we started running two platforms. That means the old platform is still running.

Speaker 2: 1:17:33

We will try to convince the customer to cross on the new platform as much as possible. We will email them. So different customers will get it. Depending on your value. You might get an email, you might get an SMS, your super high value. You might get a phone call and it's very targeted. If you have been buying a lot of massage, based on your value, I'm gonna say 25 off massage or eight dollar or the tissue with small amount. That using data. So every day there's a war room to track exactly how many cross, how many not cross. So we started with the middle layer first, not so top because we don't want to. Then we didn't know whether how much it would work with start with that layer and then after that going on a more higher layer and one by one right go down and different play.

Speaker 2: 1:18:20

And on the actual day of migration we run a nationwide campaign. Good is that those days we were able to find cheaper media in a way. That's in Singapore. I still remember those days, the MRT station, the ticker of the train arrival is still analog, the train. You know the running, the wording and say the train is approaching to Boon Lay station three minutes or whatnot. Right, so we basically went in. I can't remember how much we paid. I think it's close to 50,000 Sing or whatever In the entire island of Singapore for one month. The train is approaching Groupon is now fifth. So we added the word Groupon is now fifth in every train arrival. Just the ticker, smart Right and because to them zero cost. I mean people were doing glossy fancy train, fancy billboards, those are expensive, they got a price tag. That ticker at that time has no price tag because no advertisement there and it's got lots of eyeballs. So every train arrival you look at a train approaching Groupon is now fifth.

Speaker 2: 1:19:28

So just drill it and for Malaysia because we came from Malaysia, we knew most of the founders. We got about 40 founders in Malaysia. We plan out, on the exact date, february 22nd, when we migrated, 40 founders sent to their database that our friends from KFIT has just bought Groupon and Groupon is now FAIF and we gave them a promo code and convinced all their now FAIF. And we gave them a promo code and convinced all their users to sign up. And we run a competition to see which startup can convert their users' best into our platform, to have a bragging right of the best conversion platform. And 40 startups did it and the winner get an email.

Speaker 2: 1:20:10

Because we did at that time when we bought from Groupon, we got a couple million email address each country. So we will say that we will announce to a couple million people that their platform is the best conversion machine and they were converting for us for free. I didn't pay a cent at all. All that, or some of it, is friendships right that we got it through, so we were able to do that in Malaysia. So imagine that today you are a normal public, six of the platforms that you are a subscriber to send you the same message and say Groupon is now safe. This is a promo code to come in. All the platforms had that right.

Speaker 2: 1:20:46

Amazing Love it and that sort of thing through and then around that time also. So Singapore we talk about the MRT play Malaysia, the MRT play Malaysia. The MRT just started. We had that was the first MRT line in Malaysia. A lot of the LRT advertisers moved to MRT. That created a 40% emptiness in LRT billboards so we got, interestingly, including KLCC main train station. The escalator down the KLCC train is maybe about 10 feet or 12 feet. Billboards. We paid RM900 a month. It's RM250 a month for a billboard at the main station of KLCC. I mean, we took quite a lot of different stations but even that was still completely affordable 250 singh right in Singapore. I think you can't get 250 singh for one day, not a month, never, never, yeah, yeah. So we were lucky to push that boundaries and test. I think a lot of trial error.

Speaker 1: 1:21:48

I don't think luck. I don't think luck, I don't believe. You know, you've used luck a few times and that's not lucky. That's looking and finding the opportunity, the strategic thinking there, right Making sure like how do we drive this brand awareness and bridge this gap in the most economical way? That has the most eyeballs. You know, I don't think it's luck. It's looking at the scenario and taking the best option.

Speaker 2: 1:22:16

And we don't have capital. We know that we don't have the money like everyone else, so we basically have to crack our head and say how do we do it in a different way? Correct, I think? That's sort of where we always knew that we always don't have enough resources, just like everyone else, right? So what are the ways that we can do that? Achieve the same or better, but in a funky way.

Speaker 1: 1:22:39

And what was the kind of summary of all of that? How successful were these campaigns in bridging that change from Groupon to Fave?

Speaker 2: 1:22:49

I think for I can't remember exactly, but Singapore, malaysia on the day zero that means on the day that we switched off, we got 60, 70% of people revenue crossover, maybe 50, 60% of users. 60, 70% of revenue was somewhat there, and then basically on the day that we switched over, the old platform will then redirect and then you will ask you to the old app will then come out a message and say please go download, Got it, but at least we got at this base. Is there a drop? Initially, yes, there is still Maybe a 15-20% drop. I think a bit bigger drop in Indonesia because I think Singapore, malaysia, we knew the market a bit better. We were able to leverage on what we know to drive that conversion better than Indonesia, because I think the understanding of market in Indonesia was not as good and our network of friends in Indonesia were not as good as well.

Speaker 1: 1:23:37

Did you try and do any clever design UI, ux differences to create a better user journey experience on the Fave side.

Speaker 2: 1:23:48

Yes, I think the user journey was I think there was quite a bit of that and I think the other one is we use a super bright color, pink color. So and for a long long time, for many years, I was basically out in pink color shirt. That is a bright pink color shirt. In any event, if I wear that shirt, I sort of overshadowed the host, because we look like our event, because in taking any group photo, our logo is annoyingly bright there, right, it's like there, and we talk about conversion as well every, every staff has a promo code, okay, in their name so they can share that and and I'm tracking each staff are you telling your friend to come in?

Speaker 2: 1:24:32

so create a network effect through your employees. And also because when their friend came in, if you have any bug and everything we will know first. Hmm, and then also, we do allow people every month, I think, $250 of credits for them to spend and all kinds of are at those days. So basically they're getting the whole cycle through. But a lot of trial and error, right, I think they see what works, what not.

Speaker 2: 1:24:55

And with a tailwind building up through and as we migrated, we launched FaithPay and we were sort of have that traction. It was first couple months. Faithpay was tough, and then my main partner, joel, he thought of a crazy idea. So we approached a chain in Malaysia and said that how about we pay you 10% for a month for to allow for any of your customer in your shop that convert to use us? So imagine this is a yogurt company. Right, margin maybe is 8-10%. Suddenly someone offer you additional 10% but all your customers pay using this so the onus is on them to get their customers to use the new payment mechanism and they are in a good spot in the shopping mall.

Speaker 2: 1:25:41

So we basically every shop, we negotiate and say we will have one staff wearing our faith t-shirt in their shop. So think of it, you go to shopping mall cheaper version. So after a while we repeat over 5, 10 shops. So you walk into a different shop, you'll see Faith logo in different shops. Right and for that, if you think, I need a yogurt at that time it was about RM8. 10% of a yogurt RM8 is 80 cents. We spend 80 cents to get a paying customer, not a download, not a customer that just registered, but a customer that has already transacted. It's cheaper than any form of online marketing.

Speaker 1: 1:26:18

Marketing yeah for sure.

Speaker 2: 1:26:19

I mean it's a bit if you think. On the first glance it sounds crazy. Right, I'm actually paying that shop 10%.

Speaker 1: 1:26:24

When you look at the economics, it's a no-brainer compared to the marketing cost, just to get some eyeballs onto your brand, because people pay a dollar for downloads.

Speaker 2: 1:26:34

Correct, but of course in typical mid to large company go and say let's pay our vendor 10% instead of collect money. It doesn't cross through but it's technically less than a dollar.

Speaker 1: 1:27:05

Where did it? Sounds like you and Joel had quite a strong founder relationship, really impressed with the kind of psychological, strategic approaches to either get eyeballs or to leverage other people to help you convert. You know there's quite a few nuggets that you've shared in all of your stories so far, not just Fave. Was that just a common theme between yourself and Joel? To kind of think outside of the box.

Speaker 2: 1:27:37

I think not just us, but I think the team right. I think the team knows that anything that they believe in, just make it happen right, just try. Making mistakes is perfectly fine and we have a lot of people that were with us right for many years. I think that, especially in Malaysia, we a lot of people joined as a fresh grad in Groupon 2011 and to actually even until actually subsequently, a lot of platforms in Malaysia. So one or two or three of their key people that were involved from GrabPay to Tash Go, to the Shopee Pay, to Razor Pay, to Shopee Food, to Maybank QR Pay, to Maybank Local, local AirAsia Deals a lot of these platforms. One or two or three of their key implementer managers or leaders that driving it were our alumni. So I think one is that a platform for them. We were not big enough to keep a lot of them, so some of them did go but stayed close and everything they went on to build. But I think that one is the platform for people to challenge, notion, try and we actually celebrate mistakes. I still remember platform for people to challenge, notion, try and we actually celebrate mistakes.

Speaker 2: 1:28:54

I still remember that there was once an intern on day one made a mistake that cost us more than $10,000. But the intern came and admit what is the mistake. I think it was sending some emails out and some promo codes or whatnot. Promotion, I can't remember exactly Cost you money or something. Cost of mistakes A basic mistake that causes people being started to use those things when it should have been. Got real, got it, but it was a first day or something for that intern right. And what we did was we didn't penalize the intern. We actually celebrate the intern, because I would want the people in the team, if we have made a mistake, to come forward and say I made a mistake and let's fix it. Yeah, and knowing that you won't get fired for doing that if you don't have a malicious or bad intention.

Speaker 1: 1:29:47

I've always said this to the teams I've had that have worked with me in different projects or businesses is is mistakes always going to happen. It's about how you deal with it right and you don't want to create a culture where it's swept under the rug and it's hidden, because then you know that tends to become a bigger problem or you know it just blinds you from being able to even rectify or take the corrective action. So I love that. That really resonates. So, to summarize, fave, what was the? Where did this go to from there? Yeah, so this.

Speaker 2: 1:30:26

So I think, as we built through that journey right 17, 2018, 19 were great right as we built through a good traction, COVID hit us badly. I think we were not prepared for it. I think at the time we were just also started the fund raise again. Our Series B was 2018. That was $20 million.

Speaker 2: 1:30:46

So 2016, we raised the first round and that 2016, we raised the first few rounds that I told you earlier that those were at higher valuation actually killed affect us quite a bit in 2017 and 18, because our fundraising for Series B became very difficult because we were raising at a very inflated valuation earlier on and while our business has grown multiple times at that valuation later it was a slight increase, so it was difficult.

Speaker 2: 1:31:16

So we actually had to drag it a lot bit longer and grow a bit quite a bit more before we were able to to do it right. So I think that's sort of one of that challenge play as well. Then the, the, the and then I think that where we did 2020 during COVID was that we we were underprepared. To be honest, I think that we will start the fundraising and, as the lockdown happened, because we don't have any, I think all the product product. The platform is digital, but every transaction requires you one way or another at the shop to eat, to massage, to do holiday, to go attractions service of fun must have been a proper knock.

Speaker 2: 1:32:07

Yeah, and it is not a year on year drop, it's not a month on month drop, it's a day-on-day On the day of lockdown. Each country has a different day Malaysia, march 18, 2020. It is a 90% drop from March 17, 2020. Jeepers, singapore a bit better, because Singapore was a bit more open. It was a 70% day-on-day drop, what? And Indonesia was a 70 day on day drop what?

Speaker 1: 1:32:34

and indonesia was a 96 day on day drop that must have. I can't imagine what she must have experienced and gone through realizing what was unfolding.

Speaker 2: 1:32:40

Yeah, it was a shock because we started seeing slight drop. But it was not a dip until the day the government said all massage, all facial, all dying, all dine-in, everything closed, just closed, done At midnight strikes, no more dine-in, no more massage, no more holiday, no more cross-state, no more car wash, no more anything. All this core business is zero.

Speaker 1: 1:33:07

I mean, what could you have done?

Speaker 2: 1:33:09

Yeah, and at that moment I mean you could you have done. Yeah, and at that moment I mean you could pivot to delivery or whatever. But we were not Right and we had some luckily not too big, the Groupon kind of model of business where people buy a voucher when all these places close because we already collected the money, what these people ask for, just like airlines refunds. So not just that, no new money coming in, you have to return, Return money to all these people. And we also had a because we pay the businesses one, two, three days lagging, that means the inflow stopped first. We still got one, two, three days of cash flow to go out, and then bunch of refunds coming in.

Speaker 2: 1:33:49

You're giving me anxiety just listening to this. So earlier we were sort of maybe had close to maybe, close to a year of runway, right that suddenly became a couple months, wow, because of all this thing and we wanted to be still doing the right thing. That means we allow refunds and everything. So it was tough because it's like your brand and the whole thing all collapsing and then we can't do face-to-face discussion with the team we were all dialing in.

Speaker 2: 1:34:18

Anyway, the first seven weeks of Malaysia lockdown, I did not leave my apartment building, did not even step out of apartment, not my unit, but the apartment compound. When you're going downstairs, it was just to buy whatever groceries and collect, grab food, the round floor. When you're going downstairs, it was just to buy whatever groceries and collect, grab food. For seven weeks I did not step up. It was tough. I still remember sitting at a laptop, looking at 18 hours a day and whatnot and feeling super down. Yeah, sure. And me and Joe went on a zero salary, right, and we were like he was okay because he had sold a business. I was not prepared, right. The five, six months down the road, my water, my internet, my satellite TV, all were cut.

Speaker 1: 1:35:01

That's crazy.

Speaker 2: 1:35:02

Yeah, I had invested in other startups but at that moment I can't be in my right mind and say, can I take my money? So I can't. So while I have investment in other business startups, all those are locked inside right To be there for the startup. Yeah, it just won't liquid. Yeah. And then I was not prepared for many months of zero salary and it was a sudden. It was an unprepared kind of sudden and then I still remember I was sitting in my place like I was 39 at that time, thought that I have done decent build this thing and I can't take a six month zero salary and anything right, and it was quite a shocker and pressure.

Speaker 2: 1:35:45

But I think that the lots of lessons learned, I think a few things that we did that maybe we were became the first few weeks. We became very reactive because as the market changed everyday we're like let's try this, let's try that. I think one we get. We got a bit of over panic maybe and tried across. So I think that's maybe one that and I saw back then, let's say K Qasem, what they did was quite good. Of course, they got more cash balance in the bank. They just closed the round, so they got more cash in the bank. So the Eric Qasem founder basically told his team don't worry about lockdown, focus on day one when the market reopened. So they were building everything in anticipation of the market. Reopen whatever date it will open, don't do reactive.

Speaker 2: 1:36:32

We did quite a lot of reactive, trying to capture whatever revenue, of course, for survival. And the other thing we had also done is we created a campaign called Save your Faith. Basically, convince everyone to buy a gift card to the businesses and they have six months to reuse. So basically, pick their favorite restaurant and we don't charge any margin at that time and paid the restaurant up front or the retailers up front. So pick your whatever favorite. Then we go with hundreds of them and basically give them cash flow to keep them flow. So so so, but we were lucky that that one has a lot of celebrity. Came in and do pitching for us for free, because we're not making a cent and we basically it's a save your favorite restaurant, save your favorite whatever. So we'll go to celebrity and say name me your favorite eateries. Right, that now struggle local eateries. Then we will then go to that eateries and say, hey, this celebrity will do a shout out for you. We will not charge you anything. Can we feature you and repeat that process? How?

Speaker 1: 1:37:38

did you survive, covid?

Speaker 2: 1:37:40

From a business standpoint. Yeah. So it was tough. Prime Labs came in at that time. I mean we got a couple of options. So one was internal investors wanting to invest but we couldn't get a consensus because not every investors had capital to put in, so that it quickly frizzles out because there were a couple of internal investors said they will put in money if all the key investors put in money. All good, good valuation and everything. If only a couple of investors put in money, the liquidity preference and everything will affect those that don't put in money and that doesn't go down well with all the rest of it.

Speaker 2: 1:38:22

But we had 20 investors at that time, right Bunch of VCs and whatnot, across corporates and whatnot. So it was so then very quickly we knew that Dezen became an option and Pine Labs came in. Amrish, who is the group CEO of Pine Labs, having just sold his company Citrus Pay and then joined Pine Labs, he took the step forward. His wife was a customer in Singapore and he invested in us with a call option for them to acquire us. It was a significant down valuation but that was the best offer we had on the table To survive him. Yeah, it was not great, because if we had not raised about $40 million over the years, it would have been fine. We sold at $45 million, but raising $40 million, a few shares swap for Groupon and all those things and sold at 45 basically, is basically almost bottom, but that was the best deal that we had on table.

Speaker 1: 1:39:21

Wow, life can throw curveballs, eh, I mean, I'm trying to think, because there's always soft signals that turn into hard signals, and I like the statement you made about you know. I mean I'm trying to think because there's always soft signals that turn into hard signals and I like the statement you made about you know not being overreactive. I suppose one of the things I'm trying to do with a lot of my startups is how to create more real-time business intelligence to pick up these soft signals and prepare for, you know, a black swan event. But it's not there yet and I think everyone has caught unawares with COVID. So you came out of COVID and you know to move past Fave where's Fave now?

Speaker 2: 1:40:04

So Fave now is fully owned by Pine Labs. Okay, so Pine Labs is a fintech from India? Okay, they have. So PineLabs is a fintech from India. They have built, I mean, in India. If you go walk to airport, shopping malls and whatnot, you'll see a lot of PineLabs terminals. They're huge in India and then they built across the region as well and they acquired a bunch of companies in India as well, as well as us. So I think now the business are fully operated, run through PineLabs teams. Some of our folks are still there, like our CTO, azumi, the one that built initially. He's still there. We have several folks there.

Speaker 2: 1:40:39

But I think that Yourself and Joel exited. Yeah, so Joel didn't stay all the way. So Joel left in early 2023. So halfway through the vesting he felt that opportunity cost time and everything, so he moved on. I left end of June. So just, I'm now one half months into this. So I think that the good is that.

Speaker 2: 1:41:03

I think Varun, who took over from Pine Labs he was a group corporate development head for Pine Labs group, so he he took over across, I think, the team, I think the transition went smooth and the the drive-thru. So before my June full cut off, april, may, june, I was part-time supporting transition and I think that me and Joel, since acquisition, we have always been very cooperative to ensure supportive transition. I mean we don't know been very cooperative to ensure supportive transition. I mean we don't know how long we'll be there, but we knew that we have acquired company before. We want the acquirer to have a play to ensure. So we have always been there to ensure that. Think through in a big picture, every decision is what's the right thing for the longer run. Right, I think, and we are still shareholder of PyLabs.

Speaker 2: 1:41:55

Pylabs success means eventually, or whenever they go liquid, ipo or whatnot. We will get some of it right Because some of our acquisition were investing stretch tops right. So for us personally, we have vested interest that they succeed, got it. And, of course, to the people we want the people to succeed and learn and grow. Of course there are differences cultural, right, a company from India, leadership style will be different. There's a lot of smart folks, but the styles are different.

Speaker 2: 1:42:22

No right or wrong, I wouldn't say which is better, but it's different. So there and what not, and I think that me and Joel we both felt that at different stage. When we step out, we likely would not the right, best person to take this to the next level. Yeah, we likely would. What we knew and what we think we can try, we have done so over the years right, we sort of get to this point and said that, yeah, cognizant that we maybe not the best person to take this to the next level, and possible with a big, uh, big kudos to be able to be wise enough to realize that you know you.

Speaker 1: 1:43:06

Sometimes, I think, when you birth something and you go through that journey and you take it to a point to let go, you know to make the hard decisions, whether it's um closing because of failure, or you know that it's not going to do what you envisaged, or to leave, or that you're not the right person to take it to the next phase. Uh, yeah, I think that that is a tough call because you know and I know how much you put into that brand and just listening to the story, I'm actually in awe at the journey. What a beautiful story from a founder perspective and what a disastrous Black Swan event, and I can only imagine how stressful and what dark moments you must have gone through, because not only were you isolated, but you just saw these drops across your, your metrics, which must have been just. It must have felt like you were in a, in a bad dream almost.

Speaker 2: 1:44:02

I think it was tough. I think any kind of scenario analysis by any company at that time, I don't think anyone would have that scenario, but I think the reflecting back, I think we learn, we grow and I think along the journey, let's say maybe. One other point I will put up is after we bought the Groupon right and then we successfully migrated. That's how we talk about successful migration 60, 70, 80%, whatever it is. Each of the migration it was on social media. People posted and said we successfully migrated. Hundreds of likes, comments, congratulations, whatever. Right, but the for a few months, that two, three, four months. What we focused on is we earlier focused on acquiring and then focused on migrating. That was the mission and that time actually it was a mission critical because we then migrated all the deals business on Groupon.

Speaker 2: 1:44:51

We haven't had the faith pay that we talk about later on and I still remember we had a trip to Langkawi. We brought the 50 leaders from managers and above, so not just the senior leaders, but some of the people that managed one, two, three people or somewhat middle management. So first day after a crazy many months, day one go on a boat. I mean we put 50 people on the same boat. So actually it's a lot of risk there, but had fun day one. Day two morning we knew that we had to inject emotion, urgency back to the team. People were on the cloud, including us, right? We were like, yes, everyone was saying great job, including us, right. We were like, yes, everyone was saying great job, great job, great job, great job. Of course people may not see the full numbers but they're like, okay, migrated, successful, right. So you think of it, the three migration in end-feb, april and May that people were all cheering and people were sort of tired after you. Three months of all the migration. I mean we sound simple, 67-80%, but there's a lot of work there, day in, day out, every micro moment, right. And but we didn't have a plan forward because all our plan was towards that migration, all the mission focus was successful migration and we talk about 67-80% on consumer front from merchant front.

Speaker 2: 1:46:11

The first time we call people and say we are faith, the restaurant will say what is faith? Who is faith? Right? So it's not as straightforward, right as we go through that, but yeah, got through that.

Speaker 2: 1:46:22

And during that Langkawi trip, day 2 morning we basically tell the team what are all the reasons that the company will fail. It's like playing fire we wanted to create emotion but it actually create and then the team start like we started putting the middle level folks and grilling them, questioning them, challenging them. We want to train, but it sort of get to a point I knew that. I mean at that time we were like, okay, we need these people have emotion. We need a people to have emotion, we need a fighting spirit back again and everyone is super gung-ho and hungry again and I knew that we didn't do it great enough. But it was like I knew some people were behind us Like these people are not appreciative. We fought so hard, we got it, all the migrations. Now you're telling company going to fail, this problem, that that problem, this challenge, why you not recognize me, not celebrate me, but now you're like putting me in a boat and ask me why this future cannot make it and not, not right. So the and I still remember that night I mean joe and me were sitting in the room and asking ourselves are we the right leader for the next phase of the company?

Speaker 2: 1:47:33

This time the company we started in 2015, just bought all these Groupons and turned into Faith Two, three weeks after that. Then we were like, okay, we got to this point. Do we know what's next? What's the next? We started changing the Groupon to pink color, pink color Groupon, everything else like pink Groupon right, if you think on it. But what next? I think, and that was a tough one. I think remember a couple hours we were like are we, do we know, we don't know what, not right? A lot of self-doubt, to be honest. As we came about there and then that night also, we knew that we need to create a new model. We don't have faith at that moment. We need to create that model. We told the team and we were a few of us were trying to build up a plan, the more that within the hour, 50, maybe the key, 8, 10 or so we like build up a plan.

Speaker 2: 1:48:24

And the next morning, final day, day 3, before everyone go back, 9am, we're supposed to update the team. We hardly sleep that night by 8.59. We got no plan. We postpone 9am to 10am. Say go eat breakfast, whatever, go enjoy, come back at 10. 9.59, no plan, no concrete plan. We were struggling. Nothing, nothing good enough to present. Postpone 10 to 11. Checkout time is 12. 10.59. Not good enough. Nothing Hit 12 o'clock, no choice.

Speaker 2: 1:48:58

We had to present because by 1pm we had to ship these people to airport. Different locations Indonesia, singapore, malaysia and we came up not perfect, but Faith Bay was one of the key things there and on that day we said let's put $100,000. We find two young people and said you lead this, we will all support and try. And of course there are a few other ideas that two, three, four bets and say, okay, $100,000, two people, three months to get back this number and luckily one of them, faithpay eventually. I mean it was a presentation that is not wow. If today we were the judges looking at that, it would be like mediocre presentation, but it was something that had to happen. And then we were like, okay, next week we'll continue to flesh out more and we'll tell you more, but in reality we actually don't have more to tell. Right? We were like, okay, let's do that. But that was the reality. I mean now thinking back, that was one of the critical moments in there.

Speaker 2: 1:50:06

I think there are a few times along the journey. There was one time we went to Sequoia Camp where all the Sequoia portfolio companies were there and we looked at everyone again self-doubt. There was one night, me and Joel are we the right people? Actually, there were a few times that we were like we have not. Joel had built and sold company, but in Malaysia, not regionally. I have not done any of that. If of that, if you remember when I went Group 1 CEO, I have not managed anyone before that right, and it was just trial hard and go through. Maybe I will do slightly shift gear and maybe share another thing that we did was that those days after now it's maybe later 2018, 1920, we used to have a growth summit. Basically put everyone, all the people from every office growth summit and I think one idea that we did that I think helped us reflecting back was that we always care deeply on people.

Speaker 2: 1:51:03

Throughout our journey this Groupon, kfit, faif I think we produced about 20 marriages among our staff. I, I think we produced about 20 marriages among our staff, I don't know whether but one thing was that during that growth summit, we wanted to make people feel as a team and, in a way, very closely. What we did was, before the growth summit, quietly, with Anisha, head of people, and Audra, both of the key people there, we actually went to people's home without telling our employee. We will go to interview your spouse, your parents, your kids, your siblings, what they think about you. I still remember. Went to Indonesia what they think about their siblings or their one, right, without telling them, I make them. So went to Indonesia what they think about their siblings or their one, without telling them, and make them so not to tell the person Until that video Unveil. I still remember, like Indonesia, I went to one of these stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:51:59

He joined us, he joined Groupon as office boy. Eventually he was Managing account management, use his first laptop, create his first, even social media account, took on first flight of his life, stayed hotel for the first time in his life, even went to Zug for the first time for any club, for that matter, and I still remember I went to. I wanted, because he go to office riding on the bike, sitting on the bike one hour plus. I'm not good enough to ride, so I took a Grab bike sit one hour plus through Indonesia traffic to simulate that journey to his place. Of course I got another colleague to take a car and bring a hamper, but I was on that ride through and his house was maybe 150 square feet or less.

Speaker 2: 1:52:48

I'm not talking about the room, I'm talking about the whole house and his brother was there. His brother sells vegetables, elder brother by a few years and we spoke in Basah. He spoke in Basah, he spoke in Basah, malaysia. But we sort of can communicate and that, asking him about his younger brother, right, he was not much educated, his younger brother actually not much educated, but built and grown and talking about the journey and I can see in his eye how proud he is of his brother. And we made this a video, multiple and different story at different people. And we started our summit where, with this video and none of them knew that we're gonna be and none of them knew.

Speaker 1: 1:53:30

And you know you're making me like choke up. Yeah, I can only imagine how powerful that must have been. 70, 80 percent of people cry, of course. Yeah, I mean I'm getting emotional just thinking about how powerful that must be because you know, as humans, the sacrifices we make for our family, right, so that's such a deep, profound way to wow. I think that's amazing to have done that.

Speaker 2: 1:53:57

And I got one that her daughter had never hide anything from her. You imagine getting a daughter never to let her know anything. Daughter went on recording.

Speaker 1: 1:54:06

What did that do for your staff? I mean, that must have just changed the whole feeling within the company.

Speaker 2: 1:54:12

I think it sort of built through. I think so the close-knitness like during COVID. I still remember we did pay cut. We were transparentized Me and Joel zero. We transparentized different pay cut of everyone. We didn't say how long it will be. We transparentized also the revenue of company through a link to every employee and said that as the revenue hit back to this point at any moment, it can click in. When it hit this point, the pay cut will be reduced to this percentage, of course by level.

Speaker 2: 1:54:38

We also decided that below, let's say Singapore is below $3,000, no pay cut. That means no one will get below $3,000. So at least ensure that basic. And then the more senior you get, more pay cut. And what's very touching is that the employees said thank you. When we do pay cut, the number of employees came to us and said can you cut mine more? Can I don't take salary, wow.

Speaker 2: 1:55:04

So I think that, and for the senior management, at some point when we needed before that injection, we actually for some a few of them, very limited, but a few of them that we say that, okay, we're going to pay you eight percent interest. You don't get money now first, we'll pay you later, for of course, not everyone is voluntary. And then what we did also for all the pay card joel me, anisha, jasonfo and a few others we offered 0% loan. We actually never even jot down anywhere. We will basically allow the people to fill in a form to us to say that, based on because of this pay cut, they got some hardship, they need borrow this much money, but non-contractual. We transfer the money. We actually never kept track. Some of them have returned us. Many of them. Some of them not even say many. Some of them likelihood never came back and we actually don't even know and we don't want to know. Thing for us is just that be there for the people.

Speaker 2: 1:56:07

I think that in this journey, like through this Last many years, what kept me going Is the people. Nothing else, right, if you think on it. There's ups and downs. There's great days, there are tough days, actually many tough days. Fundraising Series B News said we raised 20 million. News didn't say 61 rejections, 1 investment. Yeah, it's 98% rejection rate. Yeah, right, did our Emotion rejections one investment, it's 98% rejection rate. Did our emotion, ego, whatever call it affected? Yes, but remember all this sacrifice of these people is what that kept us going.

Speaker 1: 1:56:48

I think that's such a powerful point to start closing this discussion on. But before we do, I would like to know what next for CC, because I know you're doing a lot of angel investing and you've stepped out, and what's your next step? Where are you going? Good question.

Speaker 2: 1:57:12

I actually don't know fully. I know a few things right that I think at this juncture not going into any full time, I think that's clear. I don't want to rush into a quick decision. I think that the I been travelling with little pockets of locations, especially within Malaysia, small town, drive my car and pass by wherever I feel think this is a good spot, I just park, stop, book hotel. And when I talk book hotel it's like budget hotel, like 20 sing, 15, sing per night, kind of basic place and seeing a bit more at different locations. I've done more than 10 towns in Malaysia that I've never been in my life I've seen.

Speaker 2: 1:57:54

In the last three months I was just living on a boat, sea Rascals a few days ago, so a bit of that and that Sea Rascals also two of the main folks that put money in were my former staff. They got and when we sold to Pine Labs as well, esop right there were about 150 people got the ESOP amount. So some of that was used like and for me I think that what is quite clear is that over the last 15-20 years I have been focusing on education. So most weekend, even while doing this, whenever I can, it's always back at some campus, back at some campus, back at some students, programs, universities. I started this program called US Apps to help Malaysians to get to US universities. It's going on for 19 years. Today I don't teach anything there because I'm not qualified, but every year just make sure that people pay forward, people that who attended. We just did it last weekend 200 plus people turn up and some of these will get into their dream unities and about 60, 70 people that got benefited from before got into a dream unity, came back to guide the new batches and that has gone 19 years.

Speaker 2: 1:59:04

I'm not relevant there, technically, right, because I didn't do anything. I didn't even give a speech or anything. I was just there for the two days we can be around, but didn't do a speech or a word or anything. Just be there. And I think that seeing that continuing, seeing multiple platforms like McKinsey Leadership Academy it's a CSR McKinsey I've done it for 15 years most of the mentorship program in Malaysia, one way or another have done it, so I think that part will continue. Or the, whether lean in, whether the asset, the asset program, with multiple different, different organizations that do all this thing, whether cdac for slaw state government the founders did you and whatever, whether commercial to non-commercial, those will continue. So I think that's clear.

Speaker 2: 1:59:55

I think what I and I have always also done back then for the last many years even for corporate business, whatnot I have been doing it for free. I think what I'm still thinking exactly how to do it is that perhaps those large company, those that have made huge profits, and perhaps those large company, those that have made huge profits and those that can afford, I might start charge some bit for those so that I can continue to do, don't get into full-time jobs and I can continue to dedicate most of my time for free, with a smaller part of that that funded. I think that's sort of that. I'm still thinking through exact model tweaking. I did a bit of trial here and there, but I think that's sort of that. I'm still thinking through exact model tweaking idea.

Speaker 2: 2:00:36

But I think that to me is, and my guiding principle is is this people going to gain benefit rewardingly? And that and two, can they afford? Right? If the answer is yes for both, maybe I should do some model of that gotcha. But the answer is yes for both, maybe I should do some model of that Gotcha. But the answer is no for either, then my answer is free.

Speaker 2: 2:00:56

What I've also thought through that is anything that help think at an individual level, especially the middle underprivileged, will be free. Non-profit will be free, education will be free. So I think that's clear. Then I will need to think through deeper, hopefully in the next 1, 2, 3, 4 months, to come up with something more concrete. That's me. I think that they don't have a perfect answer. I'm always not a packager or what not. I'm just like a lot of time. I think that when in doubt, just use the heart to do the thing that you think is right. I've definitely made lots of mistakes, lots of things that are not ideal. I'm not a good packager, not inspirational, not visionary, not out there, but I think it's use the heart at work and just be there.

Speaker 1: 2:01:44

I'm not sure if I agree on a few of those last points.

Speaker 1: 2:01:47

I think that you have shown vision, you have inspired, you've inspired me today, I must say I want to personally thank you because you know, it's always interesting from a timing perspective who you meet and, I think, where I'm at right now, dealing with a few interesting challenges, both also in a transition period, you know, work-wise, I think, also trying to birth something as a concept to unlock innovation at scale.

Speaker 1: 2:02:23

But putting everything on the line and having this discussion with you today has, unexpectedly for me, personally inspired me, and I'll tell you why Because of just the reminder of how, even though you might be on the up and up, and you've eloquently and in detail shared your story, and it's just amazing to always hear how rewarding but at the same time unexpectedly disastrous this founder journey is and to be able to, in that journey, stay true to yourself, stay true to your people.

Speaker 1: 2:03:09

I think you know the way that you looked after your staff and the touches that you put in place to to make sure they're okay, um, and also that that video concept, just to remind everyone of who they are, has really, um, inspired me and I, and I really want to from the bottom of my heart, just thank you, cece, for taking the time to come here and share so openly, and I am confident that the universe will reward you with more Dharma and to do what you are destined to do, and I think that you've got an amazing story to share, amazing experience, and I look forward to watching your next step and your next part of your journey.

Speaker 2: 2:03:56

Yeah, thanks a lot, elvie. I think really really touching and appreciate I think you have done amazing, amazing work. I think that the listening I think that I came across your podcast with Churen before even we met and I think that I told Churen it's one of the best podcasts that I have heard Right, I think that and I think the flow of today and I was talking to Jasmine how this could be a free flow and I think really appreciate it and I think that and over all this podcast that you have done dedicated, and I think that all this capturing of different people from different fields and everything each of that could potentially change someone's life. I think that there are lots of people out there. We will likely not be able to change everyone's, but anything if that can move someone's a bit, that's great and really appreciate and I think wish you all the best as you chart through.

Speaker 2: 2:04:51

I think it's not easy. I know that, as a built through great careers and built through and taking this deep faith, anything at all I can support of be bouncing, listening, ear, everything. Let me know and I think the one thing that I sometimes tell some of my friends or maybe mentees and whatnot, is that a lot of time as you grow and do well, lots of people will be around you. At that time I don't have to be around you. I can be silently cheering you behind the scene. But when you're down, when people move away from you, when you are getting all the onslaught, lots of self-confidence, you know that there will be some people, including me, will be one message, one call away and will be there for you, and I think that's why I think I would encourage every listener to do that for your friends as well.

Speaker 1: 2:05:49

Yeah, perfect ending CC.

Speaker 2: 2:05:52

Thank you, thank you, elvie, appreciate you, Really appreciate it. I think this definitely is one of the best podcasts or interviews that I've ever had in my life. Thanks a lot. Amazing, thank you.

Speaker 1: 2:06:32

Cheers. Thank you.