Accelerating the Future of HR and People
By the time you read this post, you should have heard the news (I hope so). I am very proud to announce that we are getting acquired by an undisclosed consortium which brings us together (merging us) with Sleekr.
If you didn’t know them already, Sleekr has two pronged approach in SaaS which combines Accounting with HR, the former has huge adoption rate with small businesses and the latter are popular amongst startups.
“Why?” is probably the first question that pops into your head as you read or hear about the acquisition. And my answer would be (typical) “Why not?”
After building Talenta for almost 4 years, 44 months to be exact, I realized that despite software industry already existed in Indonesia, the cloud software market has just started. It will take another four years, or even eight more years for us to build a sustainable and big recurring revenue. This needs both an investor and a partner that is used to building long term projects.
Suwandi, the founder and CEO of Sleekr, has the same vision of how we can build the back-end of workplaces through tech products. Moreover, it’s not just the workplace but also how we can touch the people especially their financial aspects.
We have met and became friends even before we compete against each other. Despite selling in the same vertical, we both agree that the market needs to grow larger and fast. This deal will only make the vision of reaching one million users/employees come true sooner.
This merging between Sleekr and Talenta will also complement each other as we are stronger in the corporate/enterprise level and Sleekr is definitely the go-to software for startups and SMEs.
There won’t be any change, at least not immediately, Talenta will still be a standalone software as we look to integrate both products seamlessly. Talenta will also retain all its employees and both companies are looking to also match its culture going forward. It will not be an easy feat, combining two fast growing companies, but we will share more of the ups and downs as we proceed.
With this post, I’d also thank our hard working Talenta employees and alumnis. Whether you have worked at Talenta only for 3 months or 3 years, we can’t thank you enough for your effort. I personally thank each and every one of you for joining an inexperienced CEO’s ship. Specifically, I’d also like to mention Alexander Novendo (co-founder), Ryan Juanda (Head of Customer Experience), Widia Wijaya (Sales Manager), and Andreas Saputra (Development Manager), and the rest of MT Plus team (you know who you are!). Without them as our core management team, I couldn’t have built Talenta alone.
We would also go bankrupt without all the Rupiahs that our clients have trusted us, with more than 300 current companies as clients and processing more than 35,000 employees every month, we thank you for your patience and your trust in a new software company like Talenta. Thank you.
Last but not least, for our investors that has injected both their funds and time to mentor me personally, and Talenta as a company. Grace Tahir of Mayapada Group, Willson Cuaca of East Ventures, Fenox Venture Capital, and Skystar Capital. It is truly meaningful and I’m thankful to have received investment from all of you.
I’m not leaving Talenta just yet as I will be helping out with Sleekr officially as a VP Marketing & New Business (Fintech companies, ping me, soon we will have 100,000 users as your market) but will be exploring my future plans and looking forward to catch up with more people this year! See you around :)
