Yopie Suryadi: Failure Gives Inspiration to Build a Business

For the past five years Yopie Suryadi has led MTARGET, a SaaS startup that focuses on email marketing automation. Even though it now claims to be in a safe position, it has even profitable, Yopie had experienced the ups and downs of building a company. Likewise, his career, especially in the technology industry, which he has been pursuing since 2011.

To DailySocial, Yopie recounted his failure to build a startup and depression that had discouraged him from rebuilding his business from scratch. After all, he got up and survived until now.

Starting from gadgets

Yopie's presence in the industry began with his interest in the latest gadgets and technology devices in the early 2010s. Even though at that time the process of buying and selling smartphones was still dominated offline at certain locations, this did not stop him from accepting request purchases with a direct home delivery system and payments with the concept of Cash on Delivery (COD). Sadly Yago's defensive effort issued is considered not worth the results to become a sustainable business.

He also built a news portal that covered information about gadgets called Gopego.com.

Apart from the gadget business, Yopie is interested in focusing on developing a different business. The next project is GDILab which is a social media analysis service. Founded with Billy Boen, Jefri Dinomo and Masas Dani in December 2013. At the beginning of its appearance, GDILab had produced several lines of analytical products, namely Polaris (Facebook-Twitter Analytics), Iris (Instagram Analytics), and also GNEWS.

In 2015, GDILab did spin-off against GNEWS to stand alone as a company. After spin-off that, in May 2016 Yopie and Masas full exit to focus on GNEWS as CEO and CTO. Billy Boen and Jefri Dinomo remained at GDILab and are now CEO and VP Product respectively.

"When we entered Social Media Analytics, there was one feature that I thought was good. The point is news aggregator but based on who is the fastest, earlier and who is the most credible. This is different from news aggregators which could be hoax news. [..] Finally we are spin-off That is me exit from GDILab, then built GNEWS," said Yopie.

The initial concept as a social media-based news search platform apparently did not work well. In 2016, not even a year old, GNEWS was forced to stop operations.

"We see that time is only spent on getting people to download the application, use the application and the rest is looking for fresh funds. In the end because of differences in vision with other Co-founders and shareholders"Finally, GNEWS stopped operating," said Yopie.

Had experience rock bottom

The closure of GNEWS left Yopie sad. This failure hit him hard. Thanks to his wife's support, Yopie is trying to recover from failure and create new, different innovations.

The idea that concerns Yopie is the lack of it channel content distribution as he built GNEWS. He then tried to develop this opportunity. Looking at the success of Mailchimp, the service email marketing named Mail Target (later MTARGET) he launched.

"What I see is that it is difficult for platforms like Mailchimp to develop in Indonesia, because of the different characteristics. Only local platforms can provide the ideal services needed by users in Indonesia," said Yopie.

To provide quality services, Yopie spent quite a long time studying in more depth what SaaS is and how to strategy services email marketing which is right for users in Indonesia. Although initially Yopie wanted to target the MSME market, because there were still educational and understanding challenges, he and his team focused on the segment enterprise.

He said, "At that time the trigger for the problem I faced was the distribution problem. There were still not many members of the general public who did it aware with email marketing. "In fact, indirectly, email has become oxygen for most of the general public."

"At that time it didn't seem cool to develop a SaaS platform email marketing and apparently to this day it still looks like that. After I studied more deeply, from the career journey of Mailchimp Founder Ben Chestnut, [...] the conclusion I drew was that business email marketing most are self-funded and self-sustained," he continued.

Even though they claim to have found the right formula, that doesn't mean they are out of the woods. At the start of the pandemic, MTARGET experienced slowing business growth. Towards mid-April 2020, when businesses began to adapt to the pandemic situation, the company's condition gradually recovered.

According to him, the pandemic has accelerated digital acceleration, "jumping" up to three years. Those who previously had little interest in adopting technology were forced to use it.

Yopie claims that until the end of 2021, the company experienced positive growth and had a profit.

Thanks to the support of the team and family, Yopie managed to overcome the challenges during the pandemic. Having been offered to work for another company, Yopie chose to stay with the team, building an even bigger MTARGET. This decision, according to him, was the best decision he ever made as a startup founder.

"I think more about calm or peace when making decisions. I don't want to sacrifice that calm and I don't think it will be worth it. Since then I began to learn to understand non-technical decision making, said Yopie.

Support to new generation startups

Even though it has been founded in 2017, MTARGET is among the startups that do not raise funds too regularly. It was recorded that only three rounds of funding were received, including from Azure Ventures and Prasetia Dwidharma.

According to Yopie, a startup that wants to grow well and profitable It's best not to focus too much on always raising funds. This is the mantra he conveys to the new generation of startups.

"Right now what I want to do is help the new generation of startups learn from the failures I have experienced, and the importance for them to think about how to make a profit from the start," said Yopie.