Passion and Respect Fuel Success” — CEO Interview with Zendy Tedja of Yuna & Co.
*The following CEO feature comes from the Type-A Brief, the newsletter for our CEO/Founder Retreats. To learn more or signup for the newsletter, please click here.
Winzendy “Zendy” Tedja is a successful entrepreneur and current Founder & CEO of Yuna & Co, an A.I. and Machine Learning fashion startup based in Indonesia. I “sat down” with him over email this week to briefly get a pulse of his career, the biggest lessons he’s learned as an entrepreneur to date, and also info on his new startup.
TW: Hey Zendy, thanks for sitting down with us today. To start, how long have you been an entrepreneur?
ZT: I have been an entrepreneur since 2008. I have always been passionate about building my own business, especially in the digital world ever since my college years.
TW: Awesome. So how many businesses have you lead or found?
ZT: Yuna & Co is actually my second business. I co-founded a digital creative agency on 2008 and got acquired by WPP, a global advertising holding company on 2012. I had just exited the agency in 2016 to start on this exciting new journey.
TW: What has been your highest moment as an entrepreneur thus far?
ZT: Growth is always good, especially when it comes to profitability. I think that would make every entrepreneurs happy. However, my happiest moment was when two of my junior strategists got Gold in the Newcomer Award for one the biggest national advertising contests. I feel like the company was able to contribute well to their growth, and their growth was then rewarded nationally. It was fulfilling.
TW: …and the lowest?
ZT: First year of the businesses. It’s always the same with any entrepreneur, I feel. It’s the time when you’re excited with the idea and the setting up of the business, but in the same time, you almost always feel alone. Not everyone agrees with your ideas, or not everything runs as smoothly as you’d like. First years are always the lowest.
TW: What is the most important lesson you have learned in life (business or personal) to date?
ZT: Wow, there are way too many. But I think, the two important lessons that I keep on holding on, as a person, are to keep your passion burning and to always treat people with respect.
Building a business, or even just living as a human, is never easy. Problems would arise and there are challenges on every turn, and that can easily discourage and even break a person’s spirit. So passion, it’s the fuel, it needs to keep burning, needs to keep getting fed. Ideas, vision and purpose would appear like sparks in your brain, but passion is required to help us pursue, and in turn, achieve them.
However, passion alone could only bring yourself to your limit. You need people who share the same passion to collectively achieve things that are even bigger than yourself. So respect for people is the fuel to move this collective passion. I have found that the more successful people are, the more humble and respectful of others they are. This is especially important for people like myself, who are a jack-of-all-trades. I need specialists that can deep dive into certain functions and I also need advisors who can put me back on track and ground me. If I do not have respect, I would not gain theirs nor would I have the humility to listen to their advice.
TW: Excite us about your current venture, Yuna & Co. What inspired you to found it? Where are you headed!?
ZT: Yuna & Co. is a personal fashion matchmaking platform. We are using AI and machine learning to understand women’s style preferences and match them up with the right fashion item, brands and contents. It’s very exciting for me because we are the first mover in this category. We have the technology, the model, and — most importantly — the team to get us far.
The idea came during my time working in my regional office in Singapore last year. I was sitting in a coffee shop and started to look around on how fashion aware the people surrounding me were. I started to think, how much time do they spend to find the right item and how difficult it must have been (looking at it from my own experience). So I figured, why can’t everyone have their own personal stylist or personal shopper? And that’s when my “AHA!” moment happened.
In the long run, we want to be the go-to platform for every woman to find her fashion match. Through our platform, we hope that everyone can look good, feel good and be more confident about themselves.
Yuna launched in Indonesia on iOS on May 17th, and we will be launching the android version within next week. You can check out our promo video on Youtube.
TW: Any additional information our CEOs/Founders should know?
ZT: We are always looking forward to meet like-minded and passionate people to share our mind to. If you are interested, please contact me anytime!
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/13250527
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yunaandco
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