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Flourishing Fintech Innovation Through VISA Everywhere Initiative Time for Indonesian Fintech Startup to Solve Most Pressing Problems in The Country
As a Nation, we’re progressing to be better and smoother in terms of our daily financial transactions and investments. Some innovative solutions have been created in the industry, but as a developing country, technology innovation needs a lot of catch up to fix problems in society. One simple problem that yet to be solved is about the ease of sending and receiving money from abroad. Right now, it’s still expensive, difficult and mostly need manual process to do that. More products and innovations needed to make this process easier. Last week, VISA Indonesia has launched the inaugural Visa Everywhere Initiative in Indonesia, a competition which challenges the country’s fintech startups…
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Life and Startup Lessons from Yiping Goh CPO MatahariMall.com
Yesterday, I had duck dinner with Yiping Goh, Chief Product Officer of MatahariMall.com and also MatahariMall.com first employee. Yiping is originally from Singapore, so I asked her about her decision to move to Jakarta and build MatahariMall.com, a company with hundreds of million dollars in investment, from scratch. Did she ever felt intimidated and having a hard time to take the challenge? Yiping answer was around her decision to move to Jakarta. She said it was tough at first because she didn’t have a lot of friends in Jakarta, so she started to ‘solve her own problem’ by creating her own circle by making ‘Kuningan Expats and Kemang Expats’ type…
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How Twitter Plans to Help Raising the Number of Women in Technology in Indonesia
“Why do you think more girls in Indonesia are interested to learn IT?” Dick Costolo @dickc, the CEO of Twitter himself, asked me on a rare opportunity to have breakfast at a roundtable discussion with NGOs for @TwitterForGood during his visit to Jakarta. He was intrigued by his visit to University of Indonesia the day before, where he met the Dean of Computer Sciences, who is a woman, Dr. Mirna Adriani and seen women students were actively participated in building projects using twitter data. I was invited to the roundtable as the co-founder of Girls in Tech Indonesia @GirlsinTechID. We (me @salsabeela, @anantya, @adheRiya) founded Girls in Tech Indonesia in 2011, to inspire…
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Recognizing Small Victories and Moving Forward to 2015
I’ve been a Muslim and embracing Islam all my life. While Islam means surrender, only recently that I surrender myself to the compassion and love of God. Accepting the fact that what I need is not neccessarily the same with what I want. And at the end of the year, I found myself losing some people I trust, losing a business I nurture for years, let go precious stuff I had, yet I gained so much more. In the midst of chaos, I finally found myself. In my religion, the first revelation that The Prophet Muhammad SAW received was ‘Iqra’ means a command to ‘Read!’. While inside a dark cave, the…
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Creating Miracles through Entrepreneurship – Key Lessons from Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2014 in Marrakech
Whoever seeks miracles, will find it. I believe miracles can help accelerate our action beyond the initial plan and entrepreneurs are the best people to get inspirations from on how to create miracles. That is exactly why I’m so excited to attend Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2014 in Marrakech, Morocco, to represent my company NulisBuku.com – an online self-publishing print-on-demand platform in Indonesia. 6800 participants (mostly entrepreneurs and investors), 194 speakers, 405 medias are buzzing at the #GES2014, opening gate of serendipity and new opportunities. I’m one of the lucky 70 young entrepreneurs from 30 countries around the world, to be invited as a delegate and participate in GES Youth. GES Youth was hosted as part…
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From Tech Forum Central Asia 3 In Almaty, Kazakhstan
I came to Almaty, Kazakhstan, as a trainer at Tech Forum Central Asia 3, but the truth is, I’m the one learning so much from this trip. First, I’ve learned that Almaty is one beautiful and unique city. The city has a magical background of the snow-capped mountains that reminds me of Narnia. I told my friends that nobody can ever be depressed in Almaty. When you feeling down, all you have to do is to held your head up, watch the mountains and you’ll be okay in no time. A mix of ethnic groups in Almaty also the reason why there are a lot of beautiful people with strong…
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How to Work in Paradise: Start with Hubud
Last weekend, I have to work overtime but I have nothing to complain about, because I was working in paradise. NulisBuku.com and The Bay Bali held a writing competition ‘Letters of Happiness’ and a writing workshop in Bali. Me, my NulisBuku.com partners and my lovely writer friend Feby Indirani, headed to Nusa Dua, to speak in front of 50 aspiring writers, doing writing exercises while enjoying the sound of the beach nearby. I sat down near the coconut tree and wonder to myself, am I working? Because it felt like a holiday! I went straight to Ubud the next day to speak about social media at Akademi Berbagi, Bali. It…
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Empowering Productivity at CrowdSourcing Week Global Conference 2014
People say, “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” – I was definitely in the right room when I attended CrowdSourcing Week Global Conference 2014 in Singapore, 7 – 10 April 2014. The event was packed with brilliant speakers and visionary audiences. That way, I found myself learning new things about crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, co-creation and open innovation the whole time I was at the conference. I’m one of CrowdSourcing Week 2014 advisors from Indonesia and Epi Ludvik Nekaj, founder & CEO of CrowdSourcing Week, was speaking about CrowdSourcing at StartupLokal meetup last February in Jakarta. The concept of CrowdSourcing has been a part of Indonesian…
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La Journée de la Femme Digitale 2014
Palais Brongniart was forbidden for women until the late 50s. Naturally, it was the perfect place to celebrate International Women’s Day 2014 #IWD. So, Catherine @cathbarba & Delphine @DelphineRB decided to use the venue, also known as Place de la Bourse (The historical Paris Stock Exchange), for their La Journée de la Femme Digitale 2014 Conference #JFD on March 7th, 2014. I met Cath on my US trip with 28 entrepreneurs from around the globe – IVLP: A New Beginning program. It didn’t take long for us to understand, despite of our different background, we share the same vision, specifically in women and entrepreneurship. I believe women should step up, and willing to explore technology…
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Unleashing Women Power with Technology
Just like Michelangelo who already can see ‘an angel’ inside a marble stone that later we know as statue of ‘David’, I also can see how women potential can sparks with technology. Women have highly potential traits like the ability to multitask; able to use time effectively, they have more empathy, they will think about the community wellbeing first before themselves. All the qualities that will be more powerful when combined with technology. I wasn’t born knowing that someday I will be a web developer and co-found tech startups. But gradually I build the love of using technology from a very early age. My dad bought me my first laptop…
