Three startups, helmed by seasoned entrepreneurs, the ones to watch
IF there is one trend we’ve seen in the startup world, it’s that seasoned entrepreneurs are returning to solve problems they’ve either been working on for a long time or turning their eye to new and hot spaces they hope to leave their mark in.
What this means is that startups are no longer the domain of the young and innocent – say under-30s – but older and more experienced executives who have got the battle scars to prove it.
Take the example of the three “spiced and seasoned” entrepreneurs who took to the stage at WiT Experience Singapore to share their latest adventures – Mary Li of The Atlas, who’s been working away at solving flights since she got into travel, Johnny Thorsen of Spotnana, who’s been trying to crack the code in corporate travel, since he built the first PC-based back office system for a travel agency in Northern Europe in 1987, and Turochas ‘T’ Fuad, who has sold two startups – Travelmob to HomeAway and Spacemob to WeWork – and now in the middle of scaling his third, Pace Enterprise.
Other than their experience, and because of it, they also bring stronger funding with their startups, which will give them longer runways to execute and avoid a common fate of startups who have to exit before their time because they cannot scale fast enough.
Take the case of Pace Enterprise – a month after founder and CEO Turochas ‘T’ Fuad spoke at WiT Experience Singapore 2021 came the news that the BNPL (buy now pay later) enterprise had raised US$40 million in Series A from serious names such as UOB Venture Management (Singapore), Marubeni Ventures (Japan), Atinum Partners (South Korea) and AppWorks (China Taiwan. Previous investors, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia, Alpha JWC and Genesis Alternative Ventures also participated.
The company said the new funding would go towards expanding technology, operations, and business development. The goal is to hit a Gross Merchandise Value run rate of US$1 billion in 2022, and grow its user base by 25x over the next 12 months.
“The region is expected to become the world’s fastest-growing BNPL market, and this funding supports Pace in achieving its mission of democratising financial services for all, by helping us pave our expansion into Japan, Korea, and China Taiwan,” said Fuad.
Founded in 2021, Pace allows consumers to split purchase bills into three interest-free payments over 60 days.
At the WiT event, he spoke about why he decided to get into the competitive BNPL market. “I’m always passionate about starting something if I do see an opportunity and I’m really most happy when I’m actually working on things, and just being challenged.
“Talking about breaking barriers, if you take a look what BNPL is essentially, it is point of sale financing. And if you take a few steps back, it is about digital financing. What we’re trying to do is to create this social impact where it is about helping those who can access financing easier, give them more options, and for those who cannot access them, you give them funds to do that.
“Ultimately the company is all about financial inclusion. Our goal is not to disrupt but to really empower the existing financial institutions, businesses from travel sector to retail and ultimately to consumers, and allowing them to really do sustainable spending.”
For Li, CEO & founder of The Atlas, it’s her passion for fixing flights that led to her third startup which she described as a “a new enabler of low cost carriers and domestic airlines”.
“Why an enabler? We offer not only airline tickets prices and ancillaries, automatic updating of ticketing services and customised bundle packages, but also the data to help … improve volume and revenue for all the flight parties.”
Li’s first startup was Wing On Travel in China. Her second was Aslan, which she ran for eight years, building it from a 40-person offline travel agency into the largest B2B air ticket platform in China. In 2014, Aslan was acquired by Alitrip (now rebranded as Fliggy), Alibaba’s online travel platform. She then joined Mystifly as co-CEO where she managed its product, technology, operations, human resource and APAC sales from Bangalore, India.
She declined to disclose the amount of funding she’s received but said it was from a major name, and she has built up global teams, spread out from Singapore to New Zealand.
Meanwhile, Thorsen, a self-professed tech evangelist, particularly in corporate travel, is bringing his experience in tech building as well as networks and relationships to bear in the sector’s hottest startup, Spotnana which aims to basically break down the walls of travel by unbundling with the first open API-based travel ecosystem.
Thorsen, who is vice president, strategy & partnerships, said, “We are trying to unbundle travel. What we mean by that is today if you’re a startup that wants to break into the travel industry, you’re immediately facing a lot of barriers or walls, preventing you from doing so. Best case, you get told you can pay US$10,000 or Euros, ‘so you can now access an API and when I tell you so. Secondly, I want to approve anything you build because I’m not just going to let you release to the market’.”
He added, “Spotnana is building a completely open API enabled platform. Everything has an API in front, it has micro services in the back, and it’s designed for the industry to start building on top of. You can use our UX capabilities or you can build your own. You can use our content or you can add your own content. Most importantly, a third party technology provider, plugging your services into our platform, with no approval, with no blockers in place.
“You can think of us as Amazon Web Services, but for the travel industry.”
Spotnana also comes with a board that’s the who’s who of corporate travel as well as US$41 million in funding, when it emerged from stealth mode in September. The Bay Area company’s investment includes a US$34 million Series A, co-led by ICONIQ and Madrona Venture Group with participation from Decibel and Mubadala Capital, and a previous undisclosed US$7 million seed round from 2020, also from ICONIQ and Madrona and including 8VC and Global Founders Capital.
It will be interesting to watch the journey as these three startups take their businesses to new heights, fuelled by experience and passion as well as serious funding.
• To find out why and when these startups do what they do, watch video of panel here.
• Featured image credit: mangsaab/Getty Images
