Emang boleh sebocor ini wkwkw
$GOTO. dari pandangan mantan VP Vice President
nya. Kalau kalian investor goto harus baca ini sih.

Menarik ada beberapa yang gua udah tahu tapi kaget juga di ngomongin se open ini. Sama insider pula.

Buat yang gak isa inggris bisa langsung google translate
And now sit back enjoy the story


$BUKA $BELI $ARTO

A few weeks after I joined Tokopedia, Goto had just raised a few billion dollars, pre-IPO.

I had lunch with a senior executive, who earnestly and very seriously said "Rajeev, we (Goto Group) will be a 100 Bio USD company in 5 years..."

I was excited!

Cut to 10 quarters later, Tokopedia has been sold at cents to the dollar. At the IPO it accounted for a 40% of the GOTO group at IPO, or ~ 12 Bio USD. The drop in value works out to 95%.

In a cleverly priced IPO, Goto spread the risk across millions of small investors, motorcycle drivers who are now left holding the smouldering remnants of what was once a promising company.

What happened too Tokopedia ? Here are my thoughts:

1. Tokopedia (or Gojek) weren't really startups. They were bloated, inefficient bureaucracies that

had serious leadership and execution issues. The only motivation employees had was to hang to their job.

2. They didn't have real entrepreneurs leading the company. The Tokopedia founder had moved on long ago, surfacing a few times on conference calls where he spoke in halting English that no one understood. Contrast this to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, true wealth creators who stood the course and built truly valuable companies. Forrest Li is another outstanding example.

3. Tokopedia had their worldview upside down, with the key focus on "optics". Tens of millions of dollars were spent to maintain "optics" mainly the number of downloads and Tokopedia (or Gojek) weren't really startups. They were bloated, inefficient bureaucracies that had serious leadership and execution issues. The only motivation employees had was to hang to their job.

4. There were no discussions on incrementally, attribution or anything sophisticated. In fact senior executives would joke about their inability to think through complex issues.

5. Product development was a particular weakness. While claming to be highly data driven and scientific, the product teams were looking at data that was gibberish. ( I fixed that but that's the subject of another post) Tokopedia took 5 years to build an affiliate program at a huge cost, which is now the butt of jokes in the industry since it's so easily gamed.

6. While they liked to call themselves a "tech company" in the vein of Shopify, they were not. A tech company is a company where the CXOs code, not administrate.

Selling 75% pf the company is a realy smart move by the CEO Patrick Walujo.

The only way to unlock Tokopedia value was to pass it over to a ruthless executor like ByteDance, which is unfettered by the need for "Optics" or vague and idealistic statements like "democratising e-commerce in Indonesia".

They will come and do what they do best which is execution growth. Given that Tokopedia per-employee GMV and revenue is the LOWEST in the world, there will be a serious need to cull fat from the organisation - Ala what Elon Musk did at Twitter.

@itokireng @genn @argountuksaham @robertgunawankeren