Category: SendBird

Mini-YC within a Growth Stage Startup

An early-stage founder asked me over dinner, how we explore new paths and product ideas to accelerate growth at Sendbird. I’d like to share a program we introduced earlier this year at our company. We spun up a small tiger team to tackle a new idea. Operating like a small startup, this team was self-contained to a certain extent (e.g. PM, engineer, & designer), was given the autonomy to go talk to customers, pitch an idea of an offering, price things and sell if they needed to, and prototype a working model. An executive (in this case myself) was sponsoring the initiative, so that we can unblock resources and processes along the way.

Living and working together 24/7

Initially, the team booked an airbnb in Vancouver Canada, and lived & worked there together for a month. I also flew out to spend 2 weeks with the team (I had to come back earlier due to our quarterly board meeting) but for me it was one of the most productive times since Sendbird entered growth/later stage!

Continue reading “Mini-YC within a Growth Stage Startup”

SendBird’s First Billboard

We’re in this together

As part of a new initiative to strengthen SendBird‘s brand, market presence, and reach our developer community better, we’ve decided to start a long-term brand campaign, including, yes, a billboard.

While we’ve debated whether this was really a SendBird-way to engage our developer community, given that a lot of our current and future customers are heavily concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area, we decided to move forward with the campaign.

Due to the Covid-19 global pandemic, the billboard campaign may not have the initial scale of impact we had planned for, but we decided to use this time window to address a bigger message for our Bay Area community. Instead of focusing on what we do and our value proposition, we crafted and delivered a message to give hope and empathize with the community.

We’re in this together

SendBird Team

We’ll continue to engage and stay connected with our local community of developers around the world, and this is just the beginning of great things to come!

PS. If you want to check it out in person, it’s on 7th St and Harrison St in San Francisco, CA.

It’s okay to be not liked on demo day.

Y Combinator W16 Demo Day Story

Below is a post I wrote in August 2019 within Y Combinator community (which luckily received 300+ upvotes 🙇‍♂️). Now that I get a pretty steady stream of inquiries about fundraising and accelerator/demo days, I thought it might be helpful to repost here in public format. Hope it brings hope to a few.

Hi S19 founders,

Now that the demo day has officially begun, I just want to share our experience at SendBird (W16), so that perhaps some of you guys can relate.

I’ll admit upfront: We were not the hot company of the demo day. No where near. We didn’t get the overly enthusiastic emails from investors piling up in our inbox.

I thought we were doing okay during the batch, but on the demo day, the ones that got the most amount of ‘likes’ and ‘quickest raises’ were not necessarily the ones we thought did the best during the batch. Some companies raised a lot of money almost on the day of the demo day, while most of us felt like we were punched in our stomach, grasping for air.

Continue reading “It’s okay to be not liked on demo day.”

Situational Leadership Matrix (Simplified version)

After managing different teams of various background and scale over the years, I’ve always thought the question “what is your leadership style?” is almost a trick question. An executive from another company once shared with me a framework he learned at one of the leadership classes he took at Harvard.

It seems like the original version of Situational Leadership is a bit more complex, but the simplified version he shared made more sense to me and felt more applicable to everyday managers.

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Product Hunt Launch Experience

Just wrote a short article on how SendBird launched on Product Hunt.

🙂

Our 7 Core Values at SendBird

Company values are what the people within the organization believe in. Decisions, actions, hires/fires, promotions/demotions are based on the company values and they are the fundamental building blocks for a strong, great company culture.

Of course, there are many good values in the world, but company values cannot list them all. Rather, the company’s core values should embody a set of unique beliefs, and should be simple enough to be remembered and used during daily conversations and work.

So, without further ado, here are our seven core values at SendBird:

1. Endless tenacity for customers

“Only the paranoid survive” – Andy Grove, Intel

Customers existed before a company did. Facing a problem, few people dared to find a solution, and customer value was created. The organized and deliberate effort of finding a solution later evolved to become a company that we know today. We exist to satisfy the customers, then to leap beyond the status quo and create innovative solutions to problems that the customers are not even aware of yet. The journey will be challenging and frustrating, but endless tenacity is the only path to the true customer happiness.

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Dream: A Contribution to Civilization

I believe civilization is a collection of things people take for granted. Water, gas fire, electricity, internet, and nowadays, smartphones. It’s a great privilege to be able to contribute back to civilization and build something that people take for granted.

Historically, a lot of these innovations were driven by technological advancement. But technology alone doesn’t fulfil innovations. Technology must be used to solve human problems. Hands-in-hands with humane design, we devise solutions to these problems and better ourselves. With proper marketing to provide these solutions to those in need, we begin to change the world for the better.

This is why we do what we do. This is why it’s meaningful to work with our team.

Continue reading “Dream: A Contribution to Civilization”

Techstars at the Speakers’ Corner in London.

This is a memorable experience.

Before the Techstars Demoday of 2014

When you watch the World Cup, you notice the stark difference between the football players who’ve played on the European leagues and those who haven’t.

The sheer amount of experience you learn competing against the top players, being part of a great team is something that is unparalleled, and this is exactly what will push you forward light years ahead of your pack.

For me, Techstars felt like that experience I needed as an entrepreneur. Even though I had the fortune of selling my previous startup, this program feels like the place where you can really learn how to present yourself, how to crystalize your thoughts, how to deliver your execution, and bring out the best in yourself.

Without doubt, I would recommend the program to any aspiring entrepreneurs to take part in this wonderful journey.

Techstars London: Founder Diaries

Month 1: Enough drama & love for a soap opera.

Great post by Mick @ Spatch on the experience at Techstars’ 1st month.

If you are interested in startup accelerators, go check it out.

Techstars London: Founder Diaries

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