07 Nov

Jason Lamuda: Hard Work is not the only Success Key for Startup

by Veritrans Indonesia

1950Views

Hello everyone! It’s Friday again. TGIF people! This article is a summary of an interesting article that I came across a few days ago, which is a story about one of Indonesian eCommerce figure, Jason Lamuda.

As it is generally known that many people said that hard work is the only key to success. However, the founder of Berrybenka, Jason Lamuda has different opinion. For him, there is one thing that is much more important than hard work. Work-life balance. He indeed has a dream to make Berrybenka as number one in fashion e-commerce, but not only that, he also has a dream to create a comfortable working environment. He inspires people to be brave in becoming entrepreneur.

Jason started his career as a business analyst for 2 years at McKinsey & Company in August 2008 after he graduated from his master degree in Columbia University. After that, he established Disdus together with Ferry Tenka until it was acquisitioned by Groupon in 2011. After his first success, Jason established Berrybenka.

Berrybenka has now expand and have HijaBenka who sells Muslim clothes. They also recently explore men’s clothing, beauty and sport apparel for further expansion. “If Berrybenka wants to be number one in fashion e-commerce, I need to expand this business to all fashion sectors” said Jason who also planned to launch mobile apps for Berrybenka.

According to Jason, establishing a startup business always looks good on the outside which in fact, the company condition is up and down like roller coaster. No matter how great the founder is, he cannot handle all the problem by himself and thus, he need to build a solid working team. The problem is that it is hard for startup to recruit best people from the industries due to their financial resources. Therefore, he advises startup to recruit people who has positive mind.

As it is said by Jason “Hard skill such as programmer, it is impossible to hire people who does not understand programming language and teach them. However, soft talent skill such as marketing and others, the most important thing is to hire people that are fast learner and have passion”. Jason believes that a comfortable working environment supports the development of startup since up and down condition in startup can cause mental exhaustion. In startup which have a smaller scope working environment, sense of kinship can be easier to be built.

In addition, since life is not only filled with work, Jason emphasized the balance in life which should be implemented in working environment as well. “It is good if you work really hard, but time for family is a must. Target and deadline must always be completed on time, but flexibility in work must be adopted” said Jason.