Want a World of More Startups? Design for Access
“Startups are a very specialized business, as specialized as diamond cutting. And in startup hubs they understand it.”
— Why to Move to a Startup Hub, Paul Graham
If you work in this kind of startup hub, you’re lucky. You can talk about your startup to your Uber / Lyft driver or the stranger coding next to you at your favorite third-wave coffeeshop, and they’ll get it, no questions asked. Chances are you probably hear or overhear 2–3 product roadmaps during the day. And if IRL doesn’t cut it, you’re just a LinkedIn Premium upgrade away from an angel investor.
But access to this kind of thriving startup hub is still limited for most of the population, especially for founders in emerging markets like Jakarta, where I’ve spent the past 3 weeks supporting the local startup ecosystem. In Indonesia, access is limited by systemic factors — unreliable infrastructure, bureaucratic hurdles to starting your own business, and risk-adverse education and sociocultural systems, to name a few. But there’s hope:
We can proactively design for access.
Here’s some thoughts on how, using Jakarta as a case study:
1. Today access is both online and offline.
Access means you know where to go, and you have the capability to get there. Knowing where to go, however, requires there to be a place to go. In this digital day and age, access points must be offline AND online — and in the best case, they are connected.
Offline
Skills-Based Meetups — It’s hard to rely on the education system to prepare you with the hard and practical skills you need as an entrepreneur. In Jakarta, I saw strong momentum in the developer communities (where peer-to-peer learning is more normalized). The opportunity is ripe to apply this learning mode to design, sales and marketing, and growth hacking / user acquisition. These fields are constantly updating with new tools, platforms, and hacks, so informal communities of practice are really effective for keeping up with the latest and greatest.
Inaugural meet-up on advanced human centered design methodologies at UN Global Pulse Lab Jakarta
Hackathons — The hackathon is great for building community and hype. In young, fragmented ecosystems like Jakarta’s, hackathons are an important tactic for bringing together talent in a targeted and constructive way, since they tend to focus on a specific problem or theme. Bonus: Great way to break silos.
Pitch Events — If you don’t live in Startupville, you probably don’t get many chances to pitch your idea and get feedback. In the ecosystems where I work in Asia, there’s still a strong cultural fear of “idea stealing.” The pitch event, often organized as a collaborative effort among multiple stakeholders, is a safe space for startups to get feedback from mentors, investors, and the general public. Not to mention free PR and visibility!
Co-founder of Jakarta-based startup InfoDiskon pitching at the Seedstars Jakarta event
Online
Community forums — Forums provide access to information and community. I’ve seen both open and closed models work, but they optimize for different things: open networks give you volume; closed networks give you quality (but also limit access). Open Facebook groups based on types of founders (e.g., women founders, minority founders, Jakarta founders) or skills (e.g., Ruby on Rails, UX Designers, Growth Hackers) are easy to set up, just make sure you have an active moderator.
Startup media — Being a founder is infinitely easier if it’s generally seen as an acceptable life choice. The media can help with that given its influence on the public mindset. If we want a world where anyone can access startups, then it’s important that the legacy print media covers startups and tech entrepreneurship, not just niche tech blogs.
Twitter — This is different from “startup media” because the focus is access to individuals. The barrier to entry here is low, you’re often just one Tweet or DM away from an expert. It’s a good place to get in the heads of accelerators, investors, or successful entrepreneurs if you can’t meet with them IRL.
2. Access is a facet of urban design.
In a giant metropolis like Jakarta, access to online and offline access points is very much influenced by where you live in the city, since that affects your transportation options and Internet speeds.
Jakarta is undergoing rapid suburbanization: the population is growing faster on the fringes than in the center of the city. This means the majority of workers commute into the city, hence some of the worst traffic jams in the world. Case in point: the average individual in Jakarta spends 400 hours in traffic a year.
Traffic on a rainy day in Jakarta. Source: Voice of America
As the map below indicates, most investors, accelerators, co-working spaces, and tech companies are located in the city center. So if you live in the outskirts of Jakarta, the chances you’ll stay after work for a meetup is slim.
Jakarta needs more offline access points to reach those living in the periphery areas of the city. For the path of entrepreneurship to be accessible to more than a select few, Jakarta needs “hubs” of creativity and entrepreneurship in West, South, North Jakarta, and even further into the fringe areas of Jabodetabek.
3. Access is the product of social x cultural forces.
We can’t change where we were born. We can’ t change our culture. I was born into a traditional Chinese family where the only “right” path (and yes, there is a right and wrong path), was to pursue a stable job as a doctor, lawyer, pharmacist. In Jakarta, the family and cultural pressure to pursue a stable corporate job is very difficult to fully ignore. Missing a family support system as an entrepreneur is like running with a broken leg, especially since family is often the first supporter / investor in an idea. But while we cannot rapid prototype changes in culture, we can create communities of support — friends and peers who will give you access and validation not just of your startup, but also your choice to be an entrepreneur.
A Future of Access
In a young and fragmented startup ecosystem like Jakarta’s, there’s no clearly defined map, no set boundaries or established road signals for startups.
An entrepreneur must be both a navigator and cartographer, defining the direction, adding new points of access, and creating their own destinations — for others like them to find, discover and access.
→ I’m currently on a 14-country tour as the Asia Regional Manager of Seedstars World to find, connect, and invest in the top startups in Asia. Along the way I’m capturing my candid reflections on the startup ecosystems.
Views are my own, but inspired by the entrepreneurs, developers, designers, government officials, investors, and new friends I’ve been fortunate to meet along the way.
If you’ve got ideas for other ways to design for access, I’d love to hear them in the comments or via Twitter @kmok88.
