The Runway Ventures

Get the weekly newsletter to help you learn from startup mistakes and become a better founder.

Every Sunday, we analyse and share:

• 1 failed startup ☠️
• 2 costly mistakes made ⚠️
• 3 lessons learned for founders 🧠

90% of startups fail because founders made mistakes. Don't be one of them.

Subscribe for free here 👉🏻 www.therunway.ventures

Founder

beehiiv

beehiiv empowers you to create, monetize, and grow your newsletter with an all-in-one publishing suite.

(right team, great product, crazy execution)

Angel Investor

Fathom - AI Meeting Assistant

Fathom records, transcribes, highlights, and summarizes your meetings so you can focus on the conversation.

(proud user of Fathom)

X10 Media

X10 Media, a regional influencer agency established over 7 years ago before Influencer Marketing became part of the mainstay, holds a network of over 3,000 Influencers with a combined 30 million network reach in Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia.

The agency has served over 1,000 brands including Pepsi, Singtel, Capitaland, LVMH, Warner Music, Owndays, Casetify among others.

With its proprietary Leadgram technology and data-driven insights, X10 Media empowers brands to achieve exceptional results through influencer campaigns.

X10 media currently owns 3 business units — Faves, X10 Ventures & TheSpokenTribe, that span regionally across 3 countries in Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia.

🌏 Faves (micro-influencer marketing arm) runs a combined network of 10 million reach in Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia.

🌏 X10 Ventures (technology arm) empowers brands with our proprietary technology.

• Leadgram was launched as a first-of-its-kind software in Asia to deepen social media campaign ROI & sales/traffic conversions for brands & companies.
• We retarget consumers that engages on influencers/brand content to create conversations leading to higher call to actions.

🌏 The Spoken Tribe (LinkedIn marketing arm) brings professional voices to endorse companies and brands through the word-of-mouth recommendations.

👉🏻 With a commitment to excellence and innovation, X10 Media continues to drive impactful influencer marketing solutions for brands. Visit www.x10.media to learn more.

CTO (Acquired by TSL Media Group)

Admond Lee

On a mission to make data science accessible to everyone through consulting & corporate training.

Data science consulting and analytics services for startups, SMEs, and marketing agencies.

✅ Previous projects include:

• AI & marketing consulting
• Web analytics & data visualisation
• Web scraping & marketing analytics
• Crypto price prediction model using deep learning with millions of sentiment data points


✅ Corporate & Institutional Training (Data Science / Analytics):

• SPH, DBS, MINDEF, Singtel, NTU, NUS, UTAR, Decoded


▶️ Learn more at www.admondlee.com

Consulting Data Scientist | Corporate Trainer

chatted.ai

Get AI insights from data in seconds and make informed decisions 10x faster.

1. Upload your data
2. Ask questions
3. Get actionable insights

That's it.

❌ No more formulas
❌ No more pivot table
❌ No more learning how to code
❌ No more waiting for your reports

✅ Just ask.

Sign up for free here 👉🏻 chatted.ai

... and start chatting today 🧠

YouTube

Making videos focusing on data science, programming, and tech stuff in general.

👉🏻 Link to channel: youtube.com/@admond1994

Content Creator

Staq

At Staq, we are building the universal API to help fintech companies securely access financial data from SMEs in a quick and easy way across Southeast Asia.

We are reimagining the technical infrastructure to drive financial inclusion for businesses in Southeast Asia.

Our mission is to empower you to build amazing financial products for businesses with more visibility and informed decisions. 

With Staq:
• You can easily and securely access financial data from businesses for SME lending, user identity verification, compliance and KYC etc. 
• Businesses can instantly share their data instead of sifting through tedious UX from multiple banks to extract bank statements. 

Headquartered in Singapore, Staq is backed by Entrepreneur First, the leading startup incubator in the world.

Co-Founder / CTO

Entrepreneur First

Entrepreneur First is the place where the ambitious come together to build globally important technology companies.

Founder in Residence (EFSG10)

Medium

Contributing Writer | Towards Data Science

Co-Founder & CTO @ Staq | Data Scientist

I’m a physicist turned data scientist, now a founder building The Runway Ventures — a weekly newsletter to help people learn from startup failures to become the top 1% founders.

I spent the first 3 years of my career helping companies solve business problems as a data scientist. Meantime, I was also a corporate trainer, speaker, and writer in data science. Then, I spent the next 3 years building startups. 1 failed, 1 acquired.

🧗🏻 This is how I got here:

• Got my degree in Physics from Nanyang Technological University.

• Started as a data scientist at SME (Titansoft), then MNC (Micron) before joining a startup (Hackwagon).

• Quit my job during COVID (wild timing), joined an incubator, found a co-founder, and built my 1st startup (Staq). Spent 1.5 years building Staq but we failed. Despite our mistakes, we learned a lot.

• Was very lost after my 1st startup’s failure. Spent the next 2 months doing self-reflection and exploring my curiosity.

• Started my 2nd startup building Leadgram at an influencer marketing agency (X10 Media). 8 months later, we got acquired by The Smart Local (TSL) Media Group.

***

After 3 years of building startups, I'm convinced that mistakes are the best teachers to become a better founder. For any startup, there are many ways to succeed, but only a few ways to die.

That’s why I started The Runway Ventures. 

Every Sunday, I analyse and share 1 failed startup story, 2 mistakes made, and 3 lessons learned with actionable tips to help you learn from startup failures.

Real life case studies, with key takeaways you can apply in your business.

No theories or BS.

99% of startups failed because founders made mistakes.

You’ll learn why and how startups failed to become the top 1% founder.

🤝🏻 Join us here (it’s free!): www.therunway.ventures

🔗 FB: @admond1994
🔗 Twitter: @admond1994
🔗 Instagram: @admond1994

Admond Lee Kin Lim

💍 She said YES!!!

After being together for more than 5 years, today, I proposed to her.

I still remember when I started my first startup. I was working as a food delivery rider part-time. I was broke af. I had nothing, literally nothing — except fire in my belly to make something people want.

It was the darkest period in my life. Yet, she supported me wholeheartedly throughout the time. She loved me unconditionally.

During that period, I told myself, “I want to marry her. I better don’t fxck this up.”

5 years later, here we are.

I’m sharing this with you because I really want to share the joy and happiness with you. 

You’ve been reading failed startup stories from me, and most startups failed because the founders made the wrong decisions.

Well, guess what?

💟 The most important decision of your life is to decide who you marry — your life partner. 

I’m glad I’ve found mine.

li_at

JSESSIONID

Helping you become the top 1% founder by learning from startup failures | 2x founder | 1 exit | Founder @ The Runway Ventures 🚀

$60M run rate. 5M+ downloads. #2 in Indonesia. Dead overnight.

Perfect metrics couldn't save Sorabel when they only had 6 months of runway.

Picture this: Indonesian husband-wife duo starts selling clothes from their garage in 2014. By 2019, they're sitting on 800 employees, 58% gross margins, and investors lining up for Series C.

But here's what should've terrified everyone:

They NEVER had more than 6 months runway. Even after raising $27M from Gobi Partners and Alpha JWC.

Every month was a race to raise more cash before the music stopped.

They even cracked the trust problem that kills most e-commerce in Southeast Asia. "Try First, Pay Later" — couriers wait 15 minutes while customers try on clothes at home. Only pay for what you keep.

Like a fitting room at your doorstep. Genius, right?

The numbers backed it up — $5M monthly revenue, 2.4x growth after rebrand, and they'd captured 9% of Indonesia's women's fashion e-commerce market.

CEO Jeffrey Yuwono was talking about becoming the Zara of Southeast Asia. Everything looked unstoppable.

March 2020: COVID hits. Investors can't fly to Jakarta. Term sheets pulled overnight. Fashion demand drops 50-70%. Their middle-class customers — the ones buying trendy clothes — all getting laid off.

July 2020: Game over. 800 jobs gone. Dreams dead.

Did COVID kill them, or were they already dying?

Tonight at 8pm, I'm publishing the full Sorabel autopsy. The 2 critical mistakes. The warning signs. Every lesson you need to know.

Subscribe now to get it when it drops → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. Innovation without unit economics is just expensive suicide.

$1.4B unicorn faked 4.8x revenue. $40B wiped in 3 days. CEO diverted funds to personal accounts.

Southeast Asia's fraud epidemic just hit critical mass — and 99% of founders are still blind to it.

I've written 90+ failed startup stories. But these 5 fraud cases shocked Southeast Asia:

eFishery (Indonesia's agritech unicorn):
• Claimed $752M revenue → Actually $157M
• Showed $16M profit → Actually $35M loss
• 6 years of dual-book accounting before whistleblower exposed it

LUNA/UST (Terraform Labs):
• $119 peak → $0 in 72 hours
• $40B market cap evaporated
• Millions lost life savings globally

Investree (P2P lending):
• CEO allegedly diverted company funds to personal account
• NPL hit 16% (reg limit: 5%)
• License revoked October 2024

The pattern is brutal: Fake metrics → Fake growth → Dead startup.

Singapore just dropped from #1 to #10 in global fraud resilience. Malaysia fell 52 places. Indonesia ranks dead last in Southeast Asia.

Your dashboards are lying to you. That 30% MoM growth? Could be bots. Those 10,000 signups? Might be fraud farms. Your growth might be fiction.

Nov 19-20, I'm at What the Fraud Summit (hosted by Sumsub) in Singapore. Because knowing these patterns before they hit you is worth more than your next funding round.

2 days learning defense beats 1 fraud scandal destroying everything.

Register here → https://lnkd.in/gN_TXqju
Use code ADMOND15 for 15% off.

P.S. If you think fraud only hits "other" startups, you're already a target.

Sumsub

3 Malaysian founders. 2 weeks. 4 all-nighters. 100,000+ users.

The LinkedIn Unwrapped story nobody's talking about.

Ashvin Praveen and his co-founders (Lizzie Tan, Muhammad Fathy Rashad) at Cleve.ai were behind on growth targets. Desperate. Running out of runway. They had this wild idea — build a "Year in Review" for LinkedIn creators.

Everyone thought they were crazy. Including themselves.

They shipped it anyway. In 14 days flat.

Week 1: 30,000 users (they expected 3,000)
Week 3: 100,000+ users
Countries reached: 100+

Even the CEO of PepsiCo Latin America posted their LinkedIn year-in-review. Alex Hormozi commented on their posts.

But here's what you don't know:

The early Cleve was "absolutely unusable." Users couldn't figure out the UX. 70% were on mobile but the product was built for desktop. Growth was dead.

So they did what most founders won't — burned the whole codebase and rebuilt from scratch.

Their 2 biggest fxckups:
1. Built a product that was "too clever" to use (tried to reinvent UX instead of following patterns people already know)
2. Spent hours in Mixpanel trying to "find the answer" in data instead of talking to users and trusting their gut

From 0 to 20,000 users grinding.
From 20,000 to 100,000+ in weeks.

All because they stopped patching problems and made the hard call.

Tonight 8pm: Why rebuilding from scratch saved them. The UX disasters that nearly killed them. How LinkedIn Unwrapped changed everything.

Subscribe now to get it when it drops → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. They rewrote their entire codebase on their one-year anniversary. Most startups die before making that call.

$53 million in customer funds. Vanished. Coinbase was about to drop $40M at a $400M valuation.

Then Zipmex collapsed overnight.

Marcus Lim had already exited OneFlare. Akalarp Yimwilai was Thailand's regulatory heavyweight — Georgetown master's, public admin doctorate, plugged into the Ministry of Finance.

Perfect split. Marcus raised money. Akalarp got licenses.

By August 2021, they'd pulled in $41M from Krungsri Finnovate (Bank of Ayudhya/MUFG), B Capital, Plan B Media. The "Coinbase of Southeast Asia" was crushing it.

Users loved the 10-14% yields on ZipUp+. Move your crypto from Thailand to Singapore entity. Zipmex lends it to Babel Finance and Celsius. You get fat returns.

Except nobody told users their money was actually sitting with leveraged crypto funds.

June 2022: Celsius freezes withdrawals.
Five days later: Babel halts redemptions.
Zipmex exposure: $48M with Babel, $5M with Celsius.

July 20: Zipmex freezes all withdrawals.

The rescue attempt was even worse. V Ventures promised $100M to buy 90% of Zipmex. They missed the first payment. Then the second. Then the third. Then they walked.

Court recovery plan: 5.1% back to creditors.
Straight liquidation: 1.6%.

February 2025: Akalarp gets 5 years in prison for fraud. Thai SEC reported that he moved customer funds offshore before updating terms & conditions.

The entire "regulated, licensed, safe" crypto exchange was just a funnel to risky lenders. When Terra blew up and took down 3AC, the dominoes fell fast.

Tonight 8pm: The full Zipmex autopsy drops. Every red flag. Every warning sign. The exact playbook of how "regulated" platforms blow up customer money.

Subscribe now → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. 14% yields in crypto? That money wasn't sitting in a vault. It was funding degens trading 10x leverage. You were the exit liquidity.

Last week, 35+ founders gathered to share their biggest fxckups. No BS. No sugarcoating. Just raw startup failures served with dinner and drinks.

We called it Startup Fxckups: Media Edition.

Willis Wee sold Tech in Asia for 8 figures. Joel Wong built Social Jet to 7 figures with 1,500+ creators. Both stood on stage and admitted: "We fxcked up. A lot."

Willis's confession hit hard:

"I ignored users for too long. Built features nobody wanted. Nearly killed the company."

His survival playbook:
• Ask users obsessively — stop assuming, start listening
• Watch your runway like a hawk — tough times always come
• When looking for best hires, ask HOW questions to know their thought process, review their case studies and do role play.
• Fire fast — 3 months max if they're not the right fit
• Test different ideas, remove what doesn't work, and double down on what works.

Joel doubled down on his biggest lesson.

His hiring revelation:
• The best hires with zero experience outperformed the "expert" every time
• Proactive beats qualified
• They fail fast, learn faster, grow fastest

50 founders. 2 hours. Zero pretense.

This is why we host these events. Not for the LinkedIn posts. Not for the networking cards. But because 90% of startups die from preventable mistakes.

And the only cure? Learning from founders who survived theirs.

Every founder left with at least one mistake they won't make now.

Massive thanks to Wong Wei Jer for co-hosting and making this happen. And to SUNRATE for hosting us and believing in honest founder conversations.

Want to join our next Startup Fxckups event? The only way to know it firsthand is through our newsletter → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. Best quote of the night: "If you're not embarrassed by your fxckups, they weren't big enough to learn from."

10 investors. 10 rejections. $10k left. 2 months to live.

I almost became a paper millionaire at 28. Instead, I burned my startup to the ground.

We had everything lined up for Staq. $100k pre-seed in the bank. Singapore's largest digital lenders ready to pilot. Term sheets being drafted for a $1M seed round.

I thought we were unstoppable.

Then reality hit.

The rejections came fast:
• 5 straight "NO"
• 3 investors pulled out: "This space is too tough"
• 2 wanted "more traction" (translation: you're not there yet)

We were burning $5k monthly. Bank balance: $10k.

Do the math. That's 2 months of runway.

Game over.

Here's the brutal truth nobody tells you about raising money:

Investors sense desperation. The moment you NEED their money, you've already lost. We were begging, not negotiating. They knew it. We knew it. Everyone knew it.

The 3 mistakes that killed us:

1. We built a solution looking for a problem. Not the other way around. No amount of VC money can fix that core problem.

2. I wanted to get rich more than I wanted to solve problems. Wrong motivation leads to wrong decisions, always.

3. We tried to raise money from a position of weakness. Never fundraise when you're desperate. Raise from a position of strength.

The shutdown was brutal. Telling customers we're done. Watching 2 years of work disappear.

But here's what failure taught me:

Building a startup isn't about the money. It's about caring so deeply about a problem that you'd solve it for free. Everything else — funding, growth, success — follows.

That's why I built The Runway Ventures. Every week, I dissect a startup failure so you don't have to make the same expensive mistakes.

My first startup cost me $100k to learn these lessons.

You can learn them for free.

Join 20,000+ founders getting the autopsy reports → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. The best time to raise money? When you don't need it. The worst time? When you're 2 months from death.

What's the most expensive lesson your startup taught you?

I've written ~100 failed startup stories.

My goal? Run out of them.

Sounds backwards, right? Most creators want endless content. I want to exhaust my supply.

Every Sunday, I dissect another collapse. Style Theory's $25M implosion. eFishery's $1.4B collapse. Bluelearn returning 70% to investors.

Each story means another founder learned what not to do.

When I run out of failures to write about, it means founders stopped making the same preventable mistakes. No more burning through SoftBank millions on broken unit economics. No more chasing vanity metrics while burning cash.

The graveyard is already full. 90% of startups die from self-inflicted wounds.

But if just 100 founders avoid one critical mistake from reading these autopsies, that's 100 companies that survive their first crisis. 100 teams that keep their jobs. Millions in investor capital preserved.

Running out of content means winning.

Until then, I'll keep writing. Every collapse. Every scandal. Every preventable death.

Because the best education costs someone else $25 million, not yours.

Join 20,000+ founders getting these stories before they make the mistakes → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. The goal is making this newsletter obsolete. Until then, every Sunday at 8pm.

16 sushi restaurants. $21M in debt. $15.3M in fines.

Australia's biggest worker exploitation scandal just exposed how a "successful" chain was actually a house of cards.

Sushi Bay looked unstoppable. Korean immigrant Rebecca Shin built a conveyor-belt empire across NSW, Canberra, and Darwin. Customers loved the fresh, fast sushi. Investors saw steady expansion.

Behind the scenes? 163 migrant workers getting robbed.

The Federal Court just dropped the hammer:
• $653,129 stolen from staff wages
• Falsified records to hide the theft
• Workers forced to "pay back" their own wages
• Record $15.3M penalty (biggest in Australian history)

Here's the math: They saved maybe $600K by underpaying staff. The penalty? 25x that amount.

Everything collapsed when 2 former workers lodged complaints to the Fair Work Ombudsman about underpayment.

March 2022: Fair Work Ombudsman strikes.
February 2023: Court-ordered liquidations begin.
April 2023: 15 outlets dead.

The collapse was brutal:
• Multiple stores liquidated for unpaid taxes
• $21M total debt left behind
• Only 1 ghost store remains

Tonight at 8pm, I'm revealing the full Sushi Bay autopsy. Why nobody saw it coming. The 2 fatal mistakes that killed a 20-year empire.

The graveyard is full of "successful" chains built on exploitation.

Don't let yours be next.

Subscribe now to get the complete breakdown → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. Bad actors get caught. It just sometimes takes 20 years.

$400M valuation. Coinbase circling. Thai bank backing.

Then 95% of customer funds vanished overnight.

Zipmex promised 14% returns. They delivered Southeast Asia's most catastrophic crypto collapse.

Thai users moved funds to "Z Wallet" for higher yields. They thought they were using a regulated platform. Reality? Their money crossed to Singapore, then straight to Babel Finance and Celsius.

$53 million. Gone.

The Thai co-founder just got 5 years in prison. He allegedly moved customer assets offshore before updating the terms & conditions.

I just published the complete Zipmex autopsy. The 2 fatal mistakes. The offshore deception. Why "regulated" meant nothing when $53M disappeared.

Read the full story → https://lnkd.in/gv8AbzRz

P.S. If someone promises you 14% guaranteed returns in crypto, ask yourself: where's that money actually coming from? Zipmex users found out too late.

Profitable cloud kitchen. Major hotel contracts. Big-name clients like Lazada and Maybank.

Still had to sell. Still burned out.

Mojos Kitchen's founders were waking up at 2am to prep breakfast boxes. By 6am, hundreds of meals were out the door. Nasi lemak, chicken curry, Western omelettes — all from one kitchen.

They'd survived COVID. Pivoted from physical kiosks to cloud delivery. Built up to 1,000+ app users. Finally hit profitability in early 2022.

Then sold the whole thing.

Not because the business failed. Because the founders were done.

Shrayas Saranathan told me something that stuck: "We wanted to prove the model first — turn profitable, then pitch. The only thing that happened was that we got burnt out first before we could go for funding."

The F&B grind is brutal. You're competing on razor-thin margins while managing:
• Multiple cuisines simultaneously
• 2am wake-ups for hotel contracts
• Staff turnover that never stops
• Equipment breaking at the worst times
• Compliance costs eating profits

They bootstrapped with over RM 1 million of personal money. Every ringgit reinvested. Zero networking. Zero investor meetings. Just heads down, grinding.

By the time they needed help, they had no one to call.

My parents run a hawker stall. I've watched them work 14-hour days for a decade. F&B isn't just hard — it's relentless.

Mojos Kitchen proved their model worked. They just couldn't survive long enough to scale it.

Full founder interview and autopsy here → https://lnkd.in/gR_Ui2_p

P.S. If you're running F&B and still standing, you have my respect 🫡

I invested in beehiiv in 2024. Best decision I've made.

$32M annual revenue. 3 billion emails monthly. Creators earning $3M monthly on platform. All in 4 years.

Love the investor updates from Tyler Denk 🐝. Real numbers. Real progress. No bullshit.

I'm not just an investor — I'm a power user. The Runway Ventures runs on Beehiiv. Every newsletter. Every subscriber. Every dollar we make flows through their platform.

Tyler says they're building the operating system for the content economy.

Watch what he shipped last month:
• Digital products
• AI website builder
• Native podcasts
• Link-in-bio
• Full analytics suite

10 features. One day.

Most founders would call that their 2026 roadmap.

The playbook is simple:
• Watch creators juggle 7 different platforms
• Build everything native in one place
• Ship faster than anyone thinks possible

Half their team runs newsletters on Beehiiv. Tyler himself grew Big Desk Energy to 125,000 subscribers. They don't build for creators. They ARE creators.

TIME runs on Beehiiv. TechCrunch runs on Beehiiv. Arnold Schwarzenegger runs on Beehiiv.

While competitors debate features in product meetings, Beehiiv ships them before lunch.

The content economy needs its operating system. Someone's going to own it.

My money's on the founder who ships 10 features while others write one roadmap.

I love you beehiiv.

I tried Replit to build an MVP. I'm still processing what just happened.

20 minutes. Plain English. Working app. On my phone.

I've been skeptical of no-code tools for years. They promise the world, deliver toys. So when someone said "just try Replit", I rolled my eyes.

Then I had a problem that pissed me off.

We have 20,000 founders in our TRV community. When someone emails me asking for help, I spend hours trying to find the right founder with relevant experience. Manual search. Memory gymnastics. Usually give up.

Yesterday, I opened Replit.

Typed: "Build an app where founders can ask questions and get matched with the right founder based on their profiles, company stages, and experience."

I expected errors. Setup hell. "Please configure your API keys."

Instead? 20 minutes later, it was live.

The app:
• Analyzes 20,000 founder profiles automatically
• Matches questions to expertise in seconds
• Connects founders instantly

Zero code written. Zero.

I just described what I wanted. In plain English. Like texting a friend.

It connected to our Notion. No OAuth dance. No API documentation. Just logged in and it worked.

Deployment handled. Security built in.

The old way: Find developer. Negotiate price ($5K-10K). Write 20-page specs. Wait 6 weeks. Debug for another month. Still doesn't work right.

The new way: Get pissed. Type what you want. Ship it.

I'm still skeptical of most no-code tools.

But Replit? I don't even know what to call this.

Can it build the next Uber? No. Can it solve 80% of your operational headaches? Absolutely.

Every founder has that one operational nightmare that drives them insane. You know the one. The thing you've been "meaning to fix" for months.

Stop living with it.

Build your first app today → https://replit.com

Willis Wee sold Tech in Asia for 8 figures. Now he's spilling his biggest media startup fxckups.

November 27. Our FINAL Startup Fxckups event in 2025. And we're going out with a bang.

Willis built Tech in Asia from a university project into Southeast Asia's most influential tech media platform.

Joel Wong? Scaled from dropshipping streetwear to running 250+ influencer campaigns. Generated 7-figure revenue. 

The media/agency space is brutal. One wrong hire, one bad client, one misread metric — you're dead.

These founders survived. Most don't.

Forget polished panels. This is founders telling you exactly how they fxcked up so you don't have to.

Free dinner. Free drinks. Unfiltered truth about building in media.

26 founders are joining. Only 4 spots left. When they're gone, they're gone.

This is it. Our last one. Don't miss it.

Register now → https://luma.com/0774rm7j

P.S. If you're building anything content-related or in media space, you need to hear these stories. The graveyard is full of media startups that looked unstoppable.

P.P.S Oh, and don't forget to use "TRV20" for 20% off

Make something people want.

Tech in Asia

Helping Brands Scale With A Full-Funnel Influencer Strategy | Ex E-Commerce Brand Builder

Just read ALL LinkedIn influencer's predictions for 2026, so you don't have to:

OpenAI is dead.

AGI is dead. 

Em-dash? Em-dead

Economy? dead (tomorrow)

Employees? Automated

9 to 5 - somehow also dead?

996? Kills you 

Remote work is dead.

The office is however also dead.

SEO...dead, again. 

AIO start-ups... dead upon arrival

AI Wrappers in general ... oof dead

Seat-based pricing? dead

Pricing in general. Dead - Free is the new MOAT

ARR. Dead

Sales? Replaced by AI SDRs (who are also dead)

The EU? Dead (consent collected) 

Germany? Dead even before the EU 

Stay positive 🫶

They achieved profitability. Landed major hotel contracts. Then sold the company.

Because the founders were done.

Mojos Kitchen just proved that even profitable startups can fail when founders burn out.

Picture this: You're finally profitable after 3 years of grinding. Your Kuala Lumpur cloud kitchen serves thousands of meals daily. Lazada, Maybank, and a major international hotel chain are your clients.

You should be celebrating. Instead, you're waking up at 2am to pack breakfast boxes.

Gaurav Joshi and Shrayas Saranathan put in RM 1 million of their own money. Not investor cash. Their savings.

COVID killed their 8 kiosks across KL overnight. Revenue went to $0. Meat rotting in refrigerators for months.

They pivoted. Built a cloud kitchen. Climbed back to profitability.

But profitability came with a price:
• 2am starts for 6am hotel deliveries
• Producing Malay nasi lemak, Chinese noodles, Indian curry simultaneously
• Managing B2C app orders, corporate boxes, hospital catering all at once
• No time for their kids anymore

The brutal truth about bootstrapping in F&B:

They waited to raise after proving the model. Smart, right?

Wrong. By the time they proved it, they were too exhausted to pitch.

"We wanted to prove the model first — turn profitable, then pitch. The only thing that happened was that we got burnt out first before we could go for funding."

That's what Shrayas told me when I interviewed him.

Two critical mistakes killed them:
1. Zero networking while building (no investor relationships when they needed them)
2. Bootstrapping a capex-heavy business too long (RM 1 million hole they never climbed out of)

They had 4 interested buyers. 3 ghosted. 1 lowball offer they took just to escape.

Tonight at 8pm, I'm publishing my full interview with Shrayas and the Mojos Kitchen story. The hidden cost of bootstrapping RM 1 million in Malaysia's F&B scene that nobody talks about.

The business was winning. The founders were dying.

Get the complete breakdown when it drops → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. If you're bootstrapping in F&B, you already have my respect. But please, build your network before you need it.

74% of enterprise deals go to whoever responds first. Not the best product. Not the lowest price. The fastest.

I just ran a B2B enterprise sales masterclass with Ned Phillips for my private founder community. 10 tactical plays that actually close deals:

1. 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘀
Spend 80% of calls listening. Only mention your product in the last 10 minutes — after they ask.

2. 𝗩𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗲 × 𝗩𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 = 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲
Target: 3 sales meetings/day. That's 30 warm outreaches + 100 cold actions daily. Manual, personal, thoughtful. Not spam.

3. 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘀, 𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺
Post daily about problems you solve (not your product). Comment on prospects' posts. Follow up within 5 minutes of any inbound lead.

4. 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝗮 𝗖𝗥𝗠 𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴
HubSpot. Every deal needs a next action assigned. No next action = dead deal.

5. 𝗞𝗶𝗹𝗹 "𝗺𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗲" 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁
"No" gives you clarity. "Maybe" wastes months. Walk away if their pain isn't painful enough.

6. 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗮𝗻'𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆
Write their email to their boss. Draft their internal deck. Remove 100% of friction. They just forward and click send.

7. 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗵
Watch yourself for 10 minutes daily. Track: % time talking, questions asked, objections fumbled.

8. 𝗗𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗻𝗼𝗻-𝗻𝗲𝗴𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘀:
• Find 1 new lead
• Engage 1 warm prospect 
• Follow up 1 existing deal
• Post once on LinkedIn
• 10 total sales actions minimum

9. 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱
Ned's example: Someone sent him 5 curated running videos → instant meeting. Research manually. Send something personal.

10. 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝘀 74% 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘀
Submit RFPs early. Respond same-day to emails. First to follow up usually wins.

The brutal truth? Most founders don't have enough pipeline. They're doing 10 outreaches when they need 100.

Enterprise buyers buy trust, speed, and likability. Not PowerPoints.

My private founder community gets you:
• Private WhatsApp community of vetted founders
• Quarterly private dinners with our members
• Concierge intros + 1-1 founder matching
• Monthly live masterclasses with top founders

Ready to level up? Apply to join:
https://tally.so/r/gDDeyN

P.S. Massive thanks to Ned Phillips for dropping these bombs. You're the GOAT in B2B enterprise sales 🐐

Willis Wee sold Tech in Asia for 8 figures. Joel Wong scaled to 7 figures, then built 250+ influencer campaigns. And they're about to spill their biggest media startup fxckups.

These aren't just any founders. They're the ones who actually survived the media bloodbath.

27 November. SUNRATE Singapore. We're hosting Startup Fxckups: Media Edition — where successful founders share the disasters that almost killed them.

This isn't your polished TED talk. No scripted success stories. Just raw, unfiltered truth about what it really takes to survive in media.

Willis built Tech in Asia from a university project into Southeast Asia's most influential tech media platform. Then sold it to SPH Media for an 8-figure exit.

Joel dropped out to build a streetwear brand. Scaled to 7 figures. Then started Social Jet Singapore - Influencer Marketing Agency — now running campaigns for the region's biggest brands with 1,500+ creators.

The media/agency space is brutal if you get it wrong. One bad pivot, one wrong hire, one missed trend — game over.

And right now, with AI eating content jobs and ad costs through the roof, the margin for error is zero.

That's why we're bringing them together. To share the expensive mistakes they made so you don't have to.

What you'll get:
• Their biggest fxckups + learnings
• The exact pivots that saved their companies
• The hiring disasters that almost ended everything
• How they scaled from $0 to 7-figure revenue (and finally got acquired)

Plus open mic session — share your own fxckups and learn from others in the trenches.

Dinner and drinks included. Capped at 50 people — serious operators only.

Use code TRV20 for 20% off → https://luma.com/0774rm7j

P.S. The last Startup Fxckups sold out in 3 days. 50 seats only. Once it's gone, it's gone.

SUNRATE

Social Jet Singapore - Influencer Marketing Agency

Which T-shirt would you wear? Design A or Design B.

I need your help.

After 2 years of building The Runway Ventures, we're finally making merch for our community. The designs are ready. But I'm stuck.

Both tested well internally. Both cost the same to produce. Both represent what we stand for — learning from mistakes to become better founders.

But I can only pick ONE.

You've been with me through ~100 startup failures. You get to decide what we wear.

Here's the deal:

Comment "A" or "B" below. Most votes wins. Takes 2 seconds. Seriously.

✌🏻

$15.3 million in fines. 163 migrant workers exploited. The biggest worker penalty in Australian history.

Sushi Bay went from a single Sydney outlet to 16 locations across 3 states. National brand. Packed restaurants.

Then the Federal Court found what was really happening.

$653,129 in unpaid wages. Falsified records. Workers forced to pay back part of their wages.

Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth:

"If you deliberately underpay migrant workers and try to cover it up with false or misleading records you will be found out and will pay a heavy price."

The price? Record-breaking penalties. $21 million in debt. Every outlet liquidated except one.

The full story reveals how cutting labor costs became a death sentence.

Read the Sushi Bay collapse → https://lnkd.in/g7V-t6F6

Every week I dissect startup failures so you don't repeat them.

Audr

Fractional CAIO (Chief AI Officer)

JobGenie

Artificial Intelligence Research & Development Agency creating AI products focused on social impact.

jobgenie.ai
doineedai.com
ai4families.com

Founder / Creative Director 

jobworx.ai

Strategic AI Consultant

Breakthru Analytics

Web and mobile app development and automation for small businesses and freelance clients.

Cleverman Inc.

- NLP Specialist
- Built and deployed recommendation systems

Data Scientist

Hispanic Counseling Center

Youth Counselor

CAIO, AI Advisor & Founder | Building AI-First companies & sharing best practices

I’m a Fractional CAIO, Advisor and the Founder of JobGenie - an AI research and development company focused on using AI for social impact.

Our portfolio includes:

1- Do I Need AI?: one-day workshop that identifies your business’s AI opportunities and risks, crafts tailored action plans and gets your team using AI confidently. (Clients varied across 7 industries and 3 countries - Featured in Forbes)

2- AI For Families: AI & social media safety resources to help families navigate technology responsibly. (Available for individuals + nonprofits + schools)

3- Ayuda Rapida: A free people-first, gig-economy marketplace making it easy to find and share local services. (In Puerto Rico)

4- JobGenie v1 ( Job Application Agent): One of the first AI agents for job applications. Launched in 2021, enabling users to apply to 100 jobs with a single click.

5- Symptom Diagnostic AI: 24/7 medical assistant tool for assessing the severity of menopause and postpartum symptoms.

I've also developed data-driven frameworks guiding top PE/VC firms in investment decisions and advised startups on high-impact AI adoption strategies to achieve results with limited resources.

I'm an AI generalist passionate about clear thinking, meaningful frameworks and using data to create positive impact.

If you want to work with me in any capacity send me a DM or check out: jobgenie.ai

Jared Bonilla

“Does a startup’s name matter?”

I hear this all the time.

I recently heard a VC say it’s extremely important.

But the data says it’s more nuanced than a simple yes-or-no.

Here’s what research actually shows:

1- Easy to pronounce → better outcomes

- Higher linguistic & phonetic fluency increases funding odds

- Chan et al. showed even a small decrease in fluency reduced funding probability

2- Unusual names → higher early attention

- Distinctiveness drives memorability, media mentions & curiosity spikes

- Novelty is especially helpful in early-stage recognition

3- Short names → stronger long-term adoption

- MIT research found companies with shorter names grew faster

- Fewer syllables = easier recall, sharing & global transferability

This is why category leaders sound nothing like their product:

Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Spotify, TikTok, Wix, Canva

Here’s a useful naming framework:
(I call it SOAR)

-Short → under 10 characters or 2 syllables
-Obvious pronunciation → no phonetic guessing
-Attention-getting → not generic or bland
-Repeatable → others can share it easily

If it doesn’t SOAR, it might not scale.

Data-driven growth strategies for startups in an AI era | building 🇵🇷 gig economy

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