Ryan Gondokusumo opens up about Sribu's journey to achieving profitability

"Finally, I can sleep soundly after deciding to pursue profitability," Sribu Founder Ryan Gondokusumo.

For Ryan, the pursuit of growth and fundraising like an endless show. He spent six years as solo founder not an easy thing. Moreover, he admitted that at the beginning of the startup industry developing in Indonesia, there was a doctrine that startups must continue to pursue growth.

Chat with DailySocial.id, Ryan shares his startup's journey to profitability. For six years, Sribu sought 'capital fuel' from fundraising, which for Ryan was a complex and time-consuming process.

Sribu is a service provider startup . and crowdsourcing design. Founded by Ryan Gondokusumo in 2011, Sribu has witnessed the country's digital growth for more than a decade. Sribu was in a phase where at that time there were only three venture capital only those who invest in startups.

East Ventures was Sribu's initial investor in 2012. In 2014 and 2018, Sribu received funding from asteria (formerly Infoteria Corporation) and CrowdWorks.

"Before securing funding from Asteria, I talked to 80 VCs for a year and a half. A lot time-wasting."

Experiment until you catch up profit

"I feel how long I have to chase growth. If this continues, you must have at least 2-3 co-founder. Meanwhile, at that time I was alone. Just met you co-founder in our seventh year of operation, who now holds the position of CTO," he said.

He admitted that money burning actions often took place from 2012-2016. Before carrying out the third fundraising in 2018, Sribu had experimented; (1) separating Sribu and Sribulancer; and (2) developing the Halo Diana virtual assistant.

"Separating Sribu and Sribulancer was a mistake. At that time, I thought the market for Sribu and Sribulancer was still small. I spoke without data. We made up for this mistake after two years of stopping feature development, just focusing merger platforms. "This was difficult because our portfolio was already very large at that time, the data was very large," said Ryan.

Currently, Sribu has served more than 30 thousand clients from 50 industrial sectors. Amount freelancer reached 30 thousand, one third of whom are active users.

From the story of the separation of Sribu and Sribulancer, Ryan and his team decided to develop a virtual assistant called "Hello Diana". However, again it failed and there was not enough resource to execute it. Ryan is still thinking about continuing to pursue growth until capital runs out.

The year 2017 was pivotal for Sribu because that year the company decided on its navigation direction towards profitability. Ryan said that at that time the startup had difficulty finding investors. Another reason, Sribu also wants it scale up business to serve larger projects in the B2B segment.

"In 2017 onward, we have pocketed the net profit. Then, we got funding from CrowdWorks in 2018. At that time, spending we focus on marketing, no hiring.

Acquisition and business redefinition

The acquisition of Sribu by Mynavi Corporation is the next milestone in its journey to redefine its business, namely raising the standard of Indonesian talent as a new focus.

"We are re-determining where our business model is going. Currently, our main focus is in five categories. We are discussing with Mynavi whether we want to enter the segment blue collar, other categories, or enter business consulting," he said.

Sribu will increase its business level by setting the gold standard; curate one by one from a total of 30.000 freelancer, and gradually carry out certification and specialization. This curation is also in order to improve quality freelancer Sribu is in line with its overseas expansion plans in the next 2-3 years.

According to data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), number of freelance workers in Indonesia has reached 34 million people in 2022.

Sribu's share ownership is now majority controlled by Mynavi Corporation, indicating that decision making must be very calculated. However, said Ryan, this does not mean that the acquisition influenced decision making or spending business.

“Even though Mynavi is corporate and very hierarchical, we don't want that culture it comes in because it can slow us down. The decision remains with us. The acquisition process took two years so we have u better."

Learn from mistakes

Seven years into his journey to profitability, Ryan mentioned three mistakes he learned when building Sribu.

1. Always rely on data New product/service development, or strategic decision making cannot be based on feelings. Always monitoring changes or new trends to better understand the market is also mandatory. "Everything must be data-based. Is it bankable market size, for example? Because revenue models we are clear, we know how to make money," he said.
2. No need to get involved Hello Diana, this is one of the failures that occurred in Sribu's business development. Hello Diana doesn't continue because it doesn't product-market fit, and ends up as a product nice to have just. "Don't get involved in making a product just because another company has one. Pressure from competitors will always be there. Focus on business."
3. Understand your own capabilities If you want to continuously pursue growth, understand the extent of the resources you have. Six years to be solo founder, Ryan decided to focus on pursuing profitability for the sake of the company's sustainability.