The Indo Tekno podcast is hosted by Alan Hellawell, who is the founder of Gizmo Advisors and a venture partner at Alpha JWC Ventures. In this episode, Alan talks to Bram Viktor, founding member of restaurant chain Hangry.
When listening to Bram Viktor’s personal story of achievement as an entrepreneur, Winston Churchill’s famous quote comes to mind: “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Viktor’s enthusiasm and entrepreneurial vigor are indeed infectious. He self-deprecatingly attributes his unquenchable desire to build and innovate in his early years to a mix of “stupidity and self-confidence.” It is however very clear that many more factors came into play in building one of Indonesia’s first fintech companies, Taralite, a P2P lending SME lending platform purchased by Fintech leader Ovo early last year.
He eventually moved on from Ovo to launch Hangry, Indonesia’s first multi-brand virtual restaurant company, late last year. In the interview, Viktor reflects on the importance of mentors in his drive to become a better entrepreneur and better leader. Tokopedia founder William Tanuwijaya has played such a role in his career.
Viktor describes the best VCs as those who are willing to give “a slap to our right and left cheeks to wake us up when we’re not looking at things right.” A good VC is also a partner who can also empathize, unlike those who might see entrepreneurial investment in a strictly transactional way.
Read this: Hangry wants you to have a virtual restaurant experience: Startup Stories
When asked what elements that tech ecosystem needs in order to to become more robust, he said that participants need to become more comfortable with taking risk, and learn to treat failure, and those who fail, with “respect and admiration.”
His final advice to aspiring entrepreneurs: Be absolutely dogged in your search for product-market fit and think about sharing more of the upside your company with your colleagues. It could be through a more generous ESOP plan, or by other means—but do the right thing.
Listen to the full podcast here.
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