What I learned from past 3 months in NYC

Today is a special day for me.

It’s been exactly 3 months since I flew to NYC with Hung to further pursue Bebarang through NYC SeedStart program.  This past month, I’ve been able to reflect on my journey with Bebarang and how much I’ve grown on a personal level.

This past 3 months was one of the most physically, emotionally, and financially challenging times of my life. Starting up a company is HARD and not knowing where the company will be next month or even next week can be extremely devastating at times. No one is there to tell you what the right answer is and you continuously make mistakes to learn how to take the right step forward. Things never go the way you want it to be and there are always some random roadblocks you never anticipated happening at the worst time possible. 

But through this experience, I learned how to overcome difficult situations and became mentally tougher. The lessons learned and experience gained by living on the edge of life was absolutely invaluable. Recently someone asked me “Allen, if you knew it would be this hard to run a business, would you do it again?” I thought about that question for a moment and I answered, “Yeah, I think I would.”

I dedicate this post to recollect my thoughts and express the valuable lessons and experience I’ve gained. This post will specifically target things I learned on a personal level. In the near future, I wish to express lessons I’ve learned on a business level. 

The importance of empathy

Entrepreneurs go through perhaps one of the most stressful and fragile time of their lives. There’s always a constant fear your company will never make it through and all the hard work you put in will never see it’s full potential – on top of the fact that you don’t know how you’re going to earn salary to survive.

Even at the toughest times of my life, I felt others had harder problems than mine. I always made my door open to listen to others’ difficulties and be sincere to help them the best way I could. Just from 3 months in SeedStart, I made lifelong friendships with some of the most brilliant and kind people. Furthermore, through empathy Bebarang serendipitously recruited one of the most talented and passionate chief technical officers. The friendship we built was so strong, he rejected the offer to have his company acquired by a large firm with a six-figure salary and decided to join us. 

I certainly never expected anything in return by showing empathy. But I surely witnessed what came back. I am grateful and happy I was able to be there to support my friends through their toughest times. What goes around somehow comes around.

Being passionate

It’s important to maintain the same level of enthusiasm and passion across the team. When shit hits the fan, it’s your team who are responsible for getting the company out of it. Yet it’s really hard to keep every members of the company at high productivity and energy level when the future of the company is so unclear. At times, I was lost and didn’t know what to do. Rather than constantly fearing the worst-case scenario, I decided to embrace fear and face them directly.

I decided to analyze exactly what Bebarang ‘enemies’ are with my team and how we can defeat our enemies in order to make Bebarang prevail. Few examples that were on our enemy list were: lifetime value of the customer and the item, acquisition cost of each customer, revenue per customer, and our competitors. 

Knowing what fight we were fighting made each Bebarang team member a soldier prepared for battle. The level of unity and passion ignited to a new level. We know who we are fighting and how to fight it. Regardless of who wins, we are embracing the fact that it’s going to be a glorious battle. We’re ready to put up a fight.  

How to keep my head down

Simply put, there’s so much shit entrepreneurs have to do. Set the direction of the company, construct business models, test them through customer interaction, go out the building to ask customers questions, create financial analysis, assess market opportunities, brainstorm features and functionalities, execute them, set up investor meetings, deal with team problems, constantly improve pitches, the list goes on forever. 

By immersing myself into the entrepreneurial life, I was able to greatly improve my ability to prioritize what’s important and what’s urgent. With a never-ending list of to-do’s I’m learning how to maximize my time spent every hour and minute. Sometimes important tasks aren’t necessarily urgent, but making the time to do important things first helps you manage your life better. 

How to keep my head up

I probably would have gone through depression and insanity if I didn’t take the time to take a break and reflect on my life – seriously. So on weekends, I would walk across Manhattan city or the Queensboro Bridge to have some quite time and think about life. ‘What’s going to happen with my life?’ ‘What’s the worst thing that can happen to me right now and how bad is it?’ ‘What does Bebarang need right now?’ 

These reflection times helped me focus on the right things. Suddenly things didn’t look so bad after all.  Things could have been worse and I’m happy it’s not that bad. I was always fired up on Mondays. 

First who – then what

Jim Collin’s Good to Great was a very powerful book to me. One of many great lessons I learned from the book is the importance of team. People are NOT your most important asset. The RIGHT people are your most important asset. No company sustained themselves to be great through one-man show. I made sure I had the right people on the bus at the right seats and wrong people off the bus to figure out where to drive it. The journey I went through to make this happen was extremely difficult. But I fully believed in the words of Good to Great and acted upon it. I made some mistakes at first by doing a poor job negotiating and upsetting people.  But I didn’t make the same mistake twice. 

Summary

I can’t imagine finding a workplace that’s capable of offering me even a tenth of this much learning in 3 months. This wasn’t just a great experience to build successful companies, but truly a valuable experience for me to learn and grow to be a better person. Bebarang is still an early stage company with large inventory needs. But, if I could go back in time and do this all over again, I would. The knowledge and experience I gained outweighs the daily $2.50 falafel lunch or 2 people sleeping in 1 bedroom with no AC during the hottest days of summer. Grinding it through the trenches made me a stronger person that’s capable of delivering higher challenges and difficulties. I’d recommend this to anyone who’s up for the task. 

Questions for you...


Are you an entrepreneur? A soon-to-be entrepreneur? Or just interested in self improvement? What have YOU learned this summer? Please share with us.