One year later… My story of building a social business after GO-JEK
It’s been a year now since I left GO-JEK ,my safe house, playground, and a beloved place where I learned a lot. And now I’m building my new venture, Binar Academy
So many things happened within 1 year, and I am really grateful of the journey and experience I’ve gone through so far. And through out all of learning from building Binar Academy for this past 1 year, I would like to highlight these learnings as a reminder to myself in the future, as a thought for sharing to anyone who might need it.
Give more to earn more
Living your purpose is not an easy way of living, trust me. You will get so many disturbance, temptation, and other stuff along the way.
Co-founding your own venture and become a Director of a very young age, surely is a hell of a ride.
You don’t think of your own salary anymore, it’s more on “how to pay my employee’s salary?”, especially on Binar Academy we are giving a full scholarship program, which we need more money to make it happen, it also makes me think, all the time.
You need to live below the line, get paid less than you suppose to be, or even pay your employee’s salary higher than yours!
No more thinking about performance bonus for yourself. Salary adjustment? Well, you need to literally generate more revenue for your company.
But.
To me personally, it’s totally fine.
It’s all about how can I create a bigger impact to people and help them.
If our mindset is to help people, then the money will follow.
Just recently, Binar Academy got donation from adidas to enforce us producing more women engineer. And this, to be very honest, it’s not what we (or at least, I) expect of.
Be grateful of what you have
This is another great thing that I learned through this 1 year co-foundership.
As a purpose driven person myself, I often questioning:
“Why there are so many people not making a choice of their own life and be happy about it?”
I mean, so many people within my age, or even older than me, complaining about job, culture in their places, the nature of their works, etc. If you don’t happy about it, what’s the point of being there? You can just move to other company and do what you like. I thought, it’s that simple.
But then, I stumbled upon a conversation with my Girlfriend, Indriari Vega Tyassanto. She was told by my very best friend, Tedo Ziraga that “Not everyone is as lucky as you, Gilang.”
I have a freedom to do both, pursuing my dream and get paid for it. I mean, I always dreaming on having a school and my own startup company. But not everyone has that luxury.
He is right, she is right. Not everyone.
But I realize one thing, to be grateful, or even more fundamental, to be happy, it’s on us.
Even someone who is as lucky as I am, can be ungrateful, right? It’s really depends on you yourself, are you gonna be happy and feel abundance of what you have, or just wanting more and keep on dreaming of what you don’t have?
You cannot please everyone
Alright, from my story, seems like I’m all good. Well, not really, though.
There will always be two side of a coin, achieving all of this thing in such a very young age, might make people to envy you as well.
I often encounter a moment when older people look down on me. I seems pretty young and lacking of experience.
It’s true. That’s why, I never say that I’m right.
What I did just sharing my experience, a very rare chance to witness and take part on how GO-JEK grow from a small company into a gigantic enterprise.
Now I know that until very end, there is always people who’ll drag you down, looking down on you, hated you, or envy to you.
And it’s not my job to make them stop doing it.
My job is to become a better person, and create a bigger impact.
I cannot control people, but I can always control my own reaction towards their actions.
So far, these are the most valuable lesson that I think it’s worth to share with.
I’ll write another article later to share another story.
Gilang Gibranthama is a co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Binar Academy
A proud ex GO-JEK employee
A futurist and social entrepreneur who will never stop learning and sharing
Want to have a cup of coffee to talk about how strange our life is? Reach me out at gibranthama@gmail.com
