Anna Gong | The Turnaround Girl
This blog is part of Life in 360, a blog series featuring the stories of inspirational women entrepreneurs in Hong Kong and Singapore.
“When you have overcome the toughest part, then you can look back and see all that you have achieved and the journey is so worth it.”
We had a chance to sit down with Anna Gong of Perx in Singapore and learn more about the incredible work she is doing and her journey thus far.
Womentum: Can you tell us a little more about Perx?
Anna: Perx was started in 2011 by two Americans who pioneered a mobile lifestyle loyalty and rewards app to replace the physical stamp card and manual loyalty process mainly due to high smart phone penetration in this region. The B2C app was novel and it made sense and brought value to many merchants and consumers. Over the course of the next few years, the product market fit took a different turn. Consumers were getting more and more fickle and spoiled for choice. Thus sustaining this model could be a major and expensive challenge. I was brought in by the board in Nov 2014 to help grow and turn the company around. At the time, numerous companies in this space were shutting down or winding down. 6 months into Perx, I saw a much bigger opportunity with large enterprise clients that’s untapped by any solution provider. Soon after, I pivoted the company to an enterprise software company and raised a round of funding to focus on R&D with the objective of rebuilding the company and a world-class platform that enterprise-grade.
My entire career has been in the enterprise software space . Through those experiences, I realized as smartphone penetration continues to grow rapidly in Asia, consumer engagement and loyalty issues are still a major focus for large enterprises such as banks, insurance, and telcos. However, spending senseless amount of money on customer acquisition through ad-tech platforms weren’t solving the consumer engagement and loyalty problems. If you look at those Tier 1 companies, there is a massive gap in software that is preventing them to get closer to their consumers. We realized that, with the team’s background, we could address this gap, and pivoted the entire company to tackle this problem. So now we’ve built a platform that allows corporations to interact with consumers through a more engaged, real-time, location based, and gamified approach. All A.I. driven and mobile led. At the end of the day, data used the right way and in a more contextual, personalized and experiential manner, improves conversion rates, increased in consumer activity, and thereby spend. Traditional loyalty is dead and we need to re-define how we engage consumers today through intelligent data engagement.
Womentum: We noticed that you started off in the corporate world. What was the transition from corporation to start up like?
Anna: My corporate career in the beginning was short lived. Despite how enticing it was working for a tier 1 management consulting firm, I soon realized that designing and coding large scale SAP ERP applications 15 hours a day wasn’t for me. Since this was also during the hot dot-com bubble, many friends and I were looking into start-ups, especially because they made it so darn attractive and hip. The fact is everyone was doing it. Why not make the jump was what we all thought and the rest is history.
Since then, I worked with 4 startups prior to Perx. Some very early stage where I was the 4th, 8th, or 20th employee and one other I came in slightly at a growth stage. All were very memorable and I learned a great deal. The failed ones were just as great experiences as the more successful ones like Wily Technology where we exited to CA Technologies at nearly $400M in early 2006.
Post acquisition of Wily, I ended up staying on with CA for 7 more years and moved to Singapore and then to Japan for various sales leadership roles in 2009.
Womentum: Did the pivot happen before you were brought on board?
Anna: The pivot to Enterprise SaaS happened after I joined. One of the 2 co-founders left before I joined and the 2nd co-founder left a few months after I started.
I re-founded and re-established the company nearly a year into Perx; turned around 100% of the employees, and developed a new enterprise platform with a new R&D team. I also rebranded the company to Perx Technologies.
Womentum: Why didn’t you just shut down and start with a new team?
Anna: Perx pioneered Asia’s loyalty app business so it has a really strong brand. The Perx app serves as a reference implementation to the enterprise platform and a client to Perx Technologies. When we demo to large companies, we can show them that we are testing on real life consumers and merchants. Perx is the only enterprise vendor with a live revenue generating app. It’s a good validation that we’re drinking our own champagne.
Womentum: What challenges did you face with when you joined?
Anna: The culture and values were set in its way by the original founders. Pivoting a business from one model to another is hard but transforming a culture, vision, and mission from new leadership is equally hard if not harder. Once the 2nd founder also left, I restructured the team, business model and R&D, came up with a new set of core values, and it took me a few more weeks thereafter to really get the vision and Perx mission right. It was critical to have the fundamentals stabilized and have the team marching in the same tune in order for smoother and quicker execution.
Womentum: Why Singapore?
Anna: I originally moved to Singapore through CA Technologies post Wily’s acquisition. I spent over 5 years in Asia already before I joined Perx. During that time, I observed how much the Singapore government embraced and fostered tech startups and entrepreneurship. Venture Capital, grants and support from the government were on the rise. Singapore was a great tech breeding ground for the ambitious and risk adverse tech entrepreneurs. I saw a tremendous opportunity for us to make a difference and there’s little global and regional competition in the MarTech space focusing on mobile customer engagement.
Womentum: What have been some of the challenges you faced as you grew Perx?
Anna: Wow so many. I made plenty of mistakes in the beginning such as hiring too quickly, letting go non-performers too slowly, changing tools too frequently and not knowing where to look for answers and afraid of asking questions. I’ve since learned to hire slow and fire fast, especially with under performers. It only takes one bad apple to ruin the pot in such a small team.
Womentum: What kept you going through the challenges you were facing?
Anna: Running a startup could feel like a roller coaster ride. There’s tremendous amount of stress, uncertainty, and highs. To keep myself sane, I have my regimen and of working out regularly, daily meditation, and giving back to the community and doing non-profit work. I also reach out to my fellow entrepreneur and founders’ community for advice or even just to share and unload. It’s important to also seek mentorship. I have a couple of mentors that I go to for sounding boards or to share some of my ideas, challenges, and progress. They do not necessary give me solutions to my problems or tell me what to do but they often give me insights and ideas to further my own problem solving.
Womentum: Has it been hard raising money as a women? Have you felt any biases as a women running a startup?
Anna: Raising money is a difficult and tedious task for any entrepreneur. Gender is not a big factor anymore, I feel. Perhaps 5+ years back there was some difference but I don’t feel it as much now. There is a tremendous amount of money and investor and government support in this region for anyone with a great business model and product market fit. The biggest challenge for me wasn’t the fact I am female but rather I took a B2C app company and turned it into a B2B SaaS company that competes with global software players. It took a while for us to erase the B2C app only business legacy but we have moved forward and the Enterprise SaaS solution is our primary focus.
Womentum: Do you plan to expand Perx to other countries?
Anna: Our headquarters is here but we are not tied to the region. We’re a SaaS solution provider so our clients could subscribe to our service anywhere. We believe there’s tremendous opportunity and growth in Asia and the large enterprise markets are underserved with little MarTech competition here. Perx enterprise platform serves customers from Tier 1 regional and global brands by enabling their mobile customer engagement with the goal of increasing consumer activity, spend and conversion rates.
Womentum: Do you have any advice for college students who want to run companies or become entrepreneurs?
Anna: Find mentors. If there is a field you are passionate about, find people who were either successful or failed in that industry and reach out to them. Mentorship is so important but often not exercised enough. A mentor can even be your peer who gives you meaningful advice.
Persevere. There are a lot of naysayers who want to squash your dreams. There will be more naysayers than people who believe you. You know, those people who will say you will never make it. I’ve had a lot of people who think I should go back to corporate. I believe that it is easier to go corporate than to persevere and build something of your own. These past two years were not a easy experience but who said entrepreneurship is easy? When you have overcome the toughest part, then you can look back and see all that you have achieved and the journey is so worth it. I am actually enjoying every moment of it.
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