Phl startups: pain points, pivot, profit
If millennials are, fairly or unfairly, typecast as those who expect to be handheld more, and the ones who feel “entitled”, then startup entrepreneurs are the antithesis of that stereotype. Not only are they self-motivated and independent, they are mentally prepared for hard work and sacrifice. They are not overnight successes, and many of them are still struggling to find traction.
One startup founder who has had a couple of pivots already to find profit intimated that if she can turn back the hands of time, she would consider a brick-and-mortar business, which may give her faster returns. But a startup cares for passion first before profit, and did I tell you earlier they have grit, lots of grit? Let’s get back to those pain points and how they solved such.
“How do I know what my employees in the field are really doing?”
If you have a sales force out in the field, or personnel in branches around the country, accept your human reality – you are not omnipresent. Imagine that you can monitor those in the field and in the branches, and their activities as they happen. And imagine that your same people know that their activities from far away are known to management, in real time. Will their performance improve? Will your revenue improve? Absolutely.
Businessmen who use the Tarkie mobile app swear by it. The ability to monitor in real time when field personnel logs in and out of work, when they deviate from their itinerary, or whether supervisors are doing their job at their respective outlets, is a game changer. It increases productivity. It is empowering for any business.
Rio Palabrica-Ilao, founder of MobileOptima Inc., actually had to do a few pivots before finally gaining traction with her digital tracking app. From a time-keeping system, to a tablet-based inventory system, and then finally to an app that tracks employees in the field, captures field expenses, and generates reports. Now that Tarkie is “tracking”, it is beginning to scale up its volume of users. Their challenge is to constantly keep the architecture strong, and the dashboard dynamic, with new innovations. It is also worth pointing out that this startup company is run by a partnership between Rio and her spouse – another interesting dynamic that we don’t have space to take up this Sunday.
“I am a small business, with small funds, and I am at the mercy of my clients as to when I get paid.”
“Cash is king”, or maybe, cash flow is king. For SMEs, who shun borrowing because of its tedious requirements and covenants, cash flow must necessarily come from investments – and from sales. B2B sales are however, almost always not in cash, and receivables don’t get converted to cash that quickly. Not only do big companies and payers have longer payment cycles, some receivables could become long overdue.
Magellan Fetalino not only observed, but felt this pain of SMEs who struggle to make both ends meet, let alone grow the business because the expected cash flow does not happen on time. His solution, factoring. His medium, fintech. Through the platform that his company, Acudeen Technologies, Inc. developed, SMEs are able to sell their receivables online for instant cash. The platform includes a credit rating system for the receivables and the SME to help retail buyers and big financial institutions evaluate the collection risk of receivables or invoices they will buy. Receivable or invoice financing, and factoring, are maybe
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