Speed Dating Is Expected to Encourage Startups Achieving Unicorn Status

Young men and women gathered in the Jimbaran Hub area, Bali. Each of them greeted each other, starting a conversation until getting into a long chat. After 20 minutes have passed, each person exchanged ‘pairs’ to start a different story.

The ‘Speed ​​Dating’ method is used by young men and women to convey their ideas, visions, and missions. This is carried out not to unite two persons in a marriage, but rather the two companies they represent to establish cooperation as funders and recipients of funds.

So far, the speed dating method is often used to bring together investment companies or commonly known as venture capital (VC) with startup companies. The method was also used by the independent Nexticorn foundation in the 2019 Nexticorn International Summit for two days this week.

NextICorn Chairman, Daniel Tumiwa, has the ambition to realize a minimum of 1,500 meetings between 103 startups and 169 investors who will participate in the event. Thus, it will further increase the potential for business agreements to occur in the future.

169 Venture Capitals Join the Speed Dating in Bali

“There are 169 VCs. 63 percent of VCs are from abroad, while 37 percent from the country,” Daniel said. A series of investors attending the event include Sequoia Capital, Vertex, Temasek, Alpha JWC Ventures, EV Growth, Kejora Ventures, SBI Investments, BRI Ventures, and Salim Group.

Meanwhile, some startups who participated in the event include Logisly, PrivyID, Kata.ai, KoinWorks, Snapcart, and Kulina. Daniel revealed that this event was like a speed dating exchange that showcased each other’s material and hoped to experience compatibility with each other.

“In this event, everyone is looking for chemistry. After this afternoon’s meeting, they will usually be followed up by chatting in the night,” Daniel said. In the process, not only startups show off their potential, but investors are also showing off competing with other competitors to attract potential startups.

“Every investor has a different taste. They will show the character of funding. Not only startups will pitch, but investors also offer to be chosen,” he added. Nexticorn’s chairperson of the Board of Trustees, Rudiantara, has ambitions to encourage the emergence of three new unicorns in 2020.

“Hopefully, this summit can trigger the creation of three new unicorns next year. As a consequence, it can encourage Indonesia to become The New Economy Global Hub,” said the man who had served as Minister of Communication and Information last cabinet.

Fin-tech Startups Still Become the Focus of This Speed Dating

Daniel said that this year there was a lot of increased demand from investors for startups in the category of the technology-based financial industry (fin-tech), health, agriculture, and education. “We predict that the fin-tech, healthtech, agritech, edutech, logistics, and e-sports industries will be the main focus of investors.”

“This event is not to create more startups, but to help those who have a solid business model and structure to advance to Unicorn,” he said. For this reason, Nexticorn and Ernst and Young Indonesia formulated a comprehensive standard in curating participating startups.

In terms of funding, around 20 percent of 103 startups have received funding of less than USD 1 million. Meanwhile, 55 percent have received funding of USD 1 million to USD 5 million. Then, 25 percent of them have received above USD 5 million.

On the other hand, the curation of startups with reference to several criteria, including startups in the form of limited companies (PT) or foreign investment (PMA) with local capital ownership of at least 25 percent. Startups have at least obtained an investment of USD 100 thousand from external investors.

If it is still funded by the founder, startup media categories have a minimum of 5 million monthly active users. For e-commerce startups, the minimum transaction value is more than USD 1 million. For Software as a Service (SaaS), it is USD 500 thousand.