Hello Jakarta. Goodbye San Francisco.
Why I’m moving my startup to Indonesia.
I asked dozens of Muslim business owners in California the same question: “How would you get financing for your business?” The answer was the same across the board: “I can’t get financing. There is no option except a bank loan. But banks charge interest, and interest is haram.” I’d stumbled on an important problem: there’s no way for Muslim business owners in the US to get halal financing.
I founded Blossom to help people achieve financial prosperity through ethically sound principles. To me, that means financing compatible with Islamic principles. The Islamic finance industry isn’t altogether new, but it’s arguably less developed when compared with non-Islamic financial markets. Based on my research with Muslim business owners in California, there certainly weren’t any existing solutions meeting their needs.
So we started in California. Between 2-6 million Muslims live in the USA (depending who you ask) and 40% of them live in California. It’s admittedly a small market. But with so few existing Islamic financing options, we figured it was a good place to start. After all, it’s home.
Market invalidation
We soft-launched our product in January 2015, and began some limited marketing testing. We handed out flyers at a few local musajid. Bam! Calls started to trickle in. We had a few signups through our website, too. Within a few short weeks we lined up a backlog of qualified businesses to receive financing through our platform. Clearly we were on the right track, (we thought).
The initial buzz died down. So we launched a second test. We plastered musajid in Southern California the same way. But there was an eerie silence in reply. For a week we had almost no calls. Was something wrong with our flyer? Maybe business owners were on vacation that week.
Launching a financial product is expensive
Then we got some sobering news from the lawyers. What we are doing is “just about the most complex thing you can do from a legal and regulatory perspective.” In lawyer speak that means costly. We shopped around at several great law firms experienced with securities law, lending law, fund formation, and everything in-between. The answer?
To launch our financing marketplace in the US
would cost around $150,000 in legal fees.
Could we justify spending that much on legal costs for such a small market opportunity? And what about product development? Would it be worth investing in product development tailored towards the small US market?
Lean startup: persevere or pivot?
One afternoon after salat I asked myself the tough question:
The biggest market opportunity for Islamic Finance is in Southeast Asia, so why are we launching in the US?
A few months back I’d watched a talk somewhere by Kevin O’Leary and one thing he said particularly stuck with me (paraphrased):
“We’ll never see double digit growth in the USA again. It’s over. The opportunities are in Asia and Latin America. If I was just starting out, I’d buy a one-way plane ticket, get off the plane, and just figure it out.”
I asked Aman, my employee #1 (and only full time engineer other than myself): “how would you feel about going to Indonesia for a couple months?”
When I went home that night I told my wife I was considering going to Indonesia. Without hesitation she said: “I think that’s a great idea! It’s a huge market opportunity. I was actually thinking of suggesting it to you.” It was settled.
That same night I booked a ticket to Jakarta. It wasn’t a one-way ticket (read: Indonesia Visa requirements), but it was a start. More accurately, it was a re-start — in the largest addressable market.
