"Experiences are very important. Feeling grounded in a space that you understand and that you love is extremely important. A lot of folks make the mistake of choosing being a founder as a matter of, ‘This is fashionable.’ ‘This is a resume builder.’ That can put you in a trajectory that is not as productive for your future because being a founder, when you don't have a good foundation, will teach you a bunch of generalist skills, but it's not going to be giving you any depth in any specific sector, especially if you die within the first year of starting that company that you’re not passionate about. The advice that I would give is, don't rush things. If you need to spend more time in a sector and a position, even take an intermediary step like I did, there's no shame in that. Use that as learning. Build your armor. Build your resilience, and then wait for the thing that you are so committed and so attached to." - Yann Schuermans
"Majority of people or companies who go into the space don't survive long enough to be able to have a medium to long-term adaptation. They go in this with promises of a massive TAM, a massive amount of funding, this promise that the model of disruption is going to take hold. This space is a survivalists game. The companies that will survive within this space are those that will be able to create long term change are the companies that can join and remain nimble, those that can keep their costs relatively low and can find ways to work with the different parts of the ecosystem, not just with a single part. When I say enablement, I'm not just talking about the wholesalers, the distributors, intermediaries. I'm talking about how that connects to the brands." - Yann Schuermans
"It’s critical to play multi-category. You need volume drivers, and you need margin drivers, and you need to have the data capabilities to be able to know what's what. If you're just a volume driver, it's going to be very difficult. So if you really want to, if you want to monetize from a marketplace model perspective you need to be able to play across different categories, and you need to be able to play across products that have different price sensitivities. Once you're there and building that relationship, and once you're already transacting, it's not too much. It's not too much to go beyond that and monetize different areas. So, once you have become multi-vertical, once you are driving volume for your partners across different categories for you to then use that data to monetize, as I mentioned, for instance, our financing partnerships, whenever we have a loan that is dispersed, we take a cut whenever we bring volume to some of the 3PL players that we're bringing, we take a cut. Whenever we bring incremental volume to the brand, we take a cut. That's how you can monetize." - Yann Schuermans
In this episode, Jeremy Au speaks on 400 years of family legacy, Indonesia supply chain, and the AB InBev to Circles.Life to Baskit founder journey.
Keywords: Yann Schuermans, 400 Years Family Legacy, Indonesia Supply Chain, AB InBev to Circles.Life to Baskit Founder, Indonesia, Founder Story
