From the Hangar to Digital Aviation
Pitchspot turned five in September this year. It’s been awhile since we wrote and updated everyone on the status of Pitchspot and we thought it would be timely for us to share some exciting news going into 2023.
Pitchspot and its recent successes
Over the past five years, we’ve built a suite of impactful products. We began our journey in 2017 with Launchpad, a digital platform equipped with various strategy and innovation frameworks (eg. Business Model Canvas, market entry frameworks, etc) for early-stage founders to systematically validate their ideas. Launchpad amassed over 25K users in our first year with ~20% conversion rate to paying customers. We also landed major logos in Southeast Asia, marking our entry into international markets such as Australia, Hong Kong, and Indonesia.
In 2019, we went through the Antler Accelerator Programme alongside our friends, Reebelo, Homebase, and Appboxo. We also became a part of Batch 20 at the Taiwanese Accelerator, AppWorks — startups that went through this programme include Carousell, Glints, and Pace. It was an amazing experience for both See Ting and myself to be amongst a pool of highly talented founders and also to have met numerous mentors along the way.
Our second product, Academy, was built in conjunction with our alma mater, the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2021 to offer underprivileged youth aged 16–25 a platform to learn select strategy frameworks in a kinaesthetic manner. Now, over 500 students have earned exclusive micro-credentials from Academy, which is no mean feat for students who were not previously exposed to the fields of strategy or business.
Last but not least, Zone is the pinnacle of all the products we‘ve ever built. It underscores the spirit of enterprise, designed specifically for the future of work. Zone provides an affordable, all-in-one workflow management platform for companies which are just starting out. In the first six months alone and at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, we received hundreds of emails from users reflecting positive feedback and grew to over 15K signups at our pre-launch campaign.
Where we’re at right now
Our products gained influence with many of our users only because we had a capable team. We would like to thank all our team members, users and customers, and investors for championing our cause over the past five years. A special shout-out to the OG Hangar and NUS Enterprise folks (you know who you are), NUS Overseas Colleges, The Hacker Exchange, AppWorks, and Antler for relentlessly supporting us.
Following the pre-launch of Zone, we spoke with ~120 VCs in the next six months and these were some very inspired conversations. Inherently, Zone was operating in a market rife with competition especially with other more established Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) players.
This meant that it would require a large amount of funds — one investor mentioned we would realistically require at least $25M in the first one to two years in order to compete in this cutthroat, red ocean which did not make sense for us nor any of our investors. With that, we think it’s also opportune to consider our raison d’être as founders ourselves.
In hindsight
Our experience at Pitchspot has taught us invaluable lessons that we will take with us to our graves — The last five years taught us two key learnings: (1) Emphasis on team culture, and (2) The key driver for a global launchpad for ideas needs to be industry-focused, which we thought would be a particularly timely lesson to share with prospective founders and entrepreneurial individuals alike, given the tumultuous macroeconomic environment that is upon us.
Emphasis on team culture
Every single founder we’ve met has told us the most crucial ingredient to building a successful startup is the team. We are no different. It is of paramount importance to hire the right people, and at the right time. At the peak of developing Zone, our team comprised nine team members — but it’s not just the complementary skill-sets in individuals we hired for, but also the individual attitudes of our team members we weighed strongly as well.
Not so long ago, one of our investors shared their advice for identifying great founders — we believe that it is still relevant today, and applies to key hires as well. Here’s our two cents’ worth on the topic of securing a co-founder or your key hires:
Drive: More than just skating along with the wind, candidates are expected to cross chasms unfazed, and possess a similar level of resilience and grit the founders do. We typically ask our team members: ‘what drives you’, ‘what keeps you up at night’, ‘where do you see yourself in five years’. We do this because we strongly believe in developing the potential in the team, and to offer them support and oftentimes resources to make things happen for themselves.
Intellect: Arguably, intellect comes in two forms — book-smarts, and street-smarts. The key hire should possess at least one of the two smarts, to perform their tasks in a smart(er) way. We selected people who could hack systems — not traditional hacking — but someone who knew how to leverage loopholes. For example, one candidate shared that they used the ‘Inspect’ tool to alter the html code, bypassing paywalls on subscription-only articles on news webpages.
Coachability: See Ting believes that this is the most key trait in anyone we interview. We see value in the concept of ‘What got us here won’t take us there’. It is key for founders and candidates vying for roles at startups to embody this belief, and take it along with them wherever they choose to go. Their credentials and what they have learnt in school may secure them their first job, but it will not be enough for the second job in their career, and so on.
Humility: One of Pitchspot’s core values is to stay humble, hustle hard. We wrote this very early on in the founding year of Pitchspot and it has stayed true to our hearts for the past five years. We don’t dismiss arrogance in candidates. Instead, we take it as an opportunity for them to express it in a way that sounds more palatable to listeners — confidence is key, overconfidence is not. It is only by being humble do we deserve a chance to contribute to something greater than ourselves.
In essence, it is the culture that founders aim to build for their company and is imbued within the founders’ DNA and ergo, the company’s. It’s what makes them unique. Every startup is going to tout their flat hierarchical structures, open collaborative spaces, fun and familial environments, and so on. Now, we’ve heard all of these — but what makes a startup successful is not just the typical traits we hear every other day. Rather, it is the culture that ensures objectives being met, and harnessing true esprit de corps within the team.
The key driver for a global launchpad for ideas needs to be industry-focused
Our vision at Pitchspot is to create a global launchpad for ideas that will benefit users when it comes to innovating. Upon reflecting on our work for the past five years, the greater success for this vision is through purpose-driven innovation, and within a space where the market is strongly aligned to an industry focus.
Having served a number of clients to augment the experience for participants at innovation challenges and hackathons, we saw many successful spin-offs coming out of these programmes. Our clients, most of whom are leading universities and multinational companies often yield the results they had expected — innovative ideas, catered to the client’s industry, with a functional prototype and commercial strategy or proven business viability.
There is a caveat though — the industry should not be too minuscule nor too niche as ideas generated are far more likely to be similar, or one might end up hitting a brick wall too quickly. It should not be too wide either as the many ideas shared could get lost in the noise. With ideas as particles bouncing off in constant, random motion going in many different directions (think Brownian motion), it may result in users searching for a needle in a haystack.
We know we’ve always seen the world differently and we knew we had to leverage our expertise and skill-sets in our respective fields to explore innovation in a specific industry.
Adventure at first flight
With that, See Ting and I are happy to announce the next chapter in our journey to expand our horizons and pursue innovation in the capacity of Advanced Technologists as part of the Digital Aviation Solutions, Product Research and Incubation team at Boeing. We are certain that our initial vision will continue to thrive with the right objectives, focusing on the aviation industry.
The future of aviation
When it comes to the future of aviation, Boeing developed Cascade — an impact assessment data modelling tool to evaluate carbon neutrality strategies. With Cascade, airlines are better able to determine optimal routes to achieve their carbon net-zero targets. However, the tool barely scratches the surface when it comes to the future of aviation. But it does represent the spirit of collaboration amongst Boeing business units bringing with them their expertise to solve the most pressing issue of our generation. We were amazed at how a company with over 140,000 employees was sufficiently agile to work seamlessly together and deliver despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
Aviation is an industry that is currently being recognised globally as an essential enabler to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. With demand for air transport expected to increase ~4% year-on-year, the industry is preparing itself to support a near doubling of passenger and cargo numbers by 2036. What this means is that the demand for pilots, engineers, and other aviation-related jobs is expected to rise dramatically. It is without a shadow of a doubt we will see innovative technologies and approaches to achieve this growth in a responsible, and therefore sustainable way.
All in all, we expect to see emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, 6G, and augmented reality / virtual reality (AR/VR) solve the most important problems in the aviation industry. See Ting and I are very excited for what lies ahead for us to be part of a larger vision and culture at Boeing, contributing in the ways we know how.
What does this mean for Pitchspot?
To all our users, investors, partners, and friends and family, we would like to express our deepest gratitude for believing in us all this time. Launchpad, Academy, and Zone will continue to serve thousands of users daily and we are happy to share that all products and services built by Pitchspot will continue to be made available to anyone, anywhere.
It has been our pleasure working with each and every one of you and we are certain that our products and services will continue to serve you well.
We would also like to express our appreciation to the partners, investors, and mentors who have supported us from the very start, in particular Prof. Wong, Sang, Anuj, and Eunse.
That said, this is not goodbye. We’re eternally grateful for all who have helped us along the way, and we’ll continue to stay connected to the startup ecosystem to give back to aspiring founders. Let’s stay in touch — feel free to reach out to See Ting or myself on LinkedIn — and have a great year 2023 ahead!
