Hanging Out With Danny Tan Of Foound
June 29, 2010 by Larissa THIA
Not for the faint hearted: Before starting Foound, Danny Tan applied for credits cards from almost all the major banks in Singapore so that he could be ensured of an operating credit of a few tens of thousands if the need ever arose. Luckily for them, there has been no need to draw on this credit line just yet.
Heard much about Foound after their successful outing at Echelon 2010 but are still clueless as to who are the people drivers behind the company? This interview brings to you Danny’s personal narrative of the foound team and his personal entrepreneurial journey thus far.
At The Begining
How did you guys get the company started? It seems to be in part a collaboration between COMA (Aen) and yourself – perhaps you could explain the mechanics of your working relationship? Foound contracted COMA to do design and branding work, but we had such a great time working together that we decided Aen should join foound full-time.
In starting up foound, did your team obtain seed funding/get angel investors? If so, how did foound approach potential investors?
Foound is funded by SPRING Singapore’s YES! Startups Grant when we first started. It is a S$50,000 one to four matching grant so I put up the requisite S$12,500 myself. I basically emptied my savings for this, and had to borrow money from friends just to get by. We are also immensely indebted to SMU’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for supporting us during our grant application process, and for subsequently providing us with a great incubation space. SMU is a great partner to foound and everyone at the office is genuinely supportive of start-up activities.
Risk taking is a necessary part of entrepreneurship.. the faster you realize that as an entrepreneur, the better your chances of success
One other thing I did just before I started foound was also to apply for credit cards from almost all the major banks in Singapore, so that I knew that if the time ever comes, I had an operating credit of a few tens of thousands I could tap on. While we have been lucky enough not to have needed this credit, I think in general this is a great way to bootstrap, and also keep yourself on your toes when it comes to managing expenses. Some people might think this is crazy, and obviously I won’t recommend everyone to do the same, but then again I feel that risk taking is a necessary part of successful entrepreneurship, and the faster you realise that as an entrepreneur, the better your chances of success.
What are the individual strengths that Aen and yourself feel bring to the team and how do your skill sets complement each other?
Aen is extremely creative and pays lots of attention to details. He has an unmatched intuition as to what looks and feels good to the users, and can translate that into product. I drive the team in terms of product direction and strategy, and also run biz dev and marketing. Besides the 2 of us, there are other members of the team who each play a critical role. I think this is our main strength, that while we are both extremely opinionated, we are willing to trust each other to make decisions. Basically, we believe that if 2 people always agree, one of them is redundant. However as a team, once we make a collective decision, everyone sticks by it and there is no second guessing.
Who are your mentors, if any?
In life, I had the good fortune of getting great advice from many people that I’ve met, so it will be difficult for me to single out any one of them as the definitive “mentor”. As for foound, we had the privilege of being adviced by Umar Akram of youpark.com and Jayesh Parekh who is investor-in-residence at SMU. Both of them played a big part in helping us polish our product and go-to-market strategy.
Learning From Experience
Do you feel that your past working experiences have been helpful in developing foound?
I spent almost 2 years starting a biomedical device company in the US, 1 year in venture capital investing, and another few more months in Stockholm Sweden starting a web 2.0 startup. Each of my previous experiences, while not financially rewarding, were invaluable in educating and preparing me for foound. I learnt many valuable skills like hiring only the best people, managing finances, etc. that can never be learnt in school. I strongly recommend anyone who wants to become an entrepreneur to work with someone more experienced than yourself, regardless of financial rewards, before doing something on your own.
When Simplicity Is The Hardest Language
“We will do everything necessary to achieve these objectives.”
Foound seems to encapsulate the idea of simplicity – this is evident in your pitch as well as the app that your team has designed. To what extent has this “principle” guided your team whilst designing the product?
Simplicity is an easy word to use but difficult concept to execute. Anyone who has gone through a product development process will instantly understand what we are talking about. When foound first started, we had over 20 features, each of which we though was extremely interesting and exciting. However when we tried explaining it to someone else, nobody got it. This taught us that no matter how good your idea is, the most important thing is for people to understand what you are doing, and therefore simplicity is critical. Zaki of Game Ventures once told me, would you rather have a “great” product and no users, or “lousy” product with many users. I didn’t realise this at that time, but this is obviously a trick question as the only measure of how “great” your product is is the number of people who use it. The rest of the “greatness” is just swelling in your head.
Based on our previous conversation, you previously mentioned that foound aims for an international roll out by July and is also working towards attaining 1 million downloads within the first 9 months of its launch. With regards to this, how is your team currently preparing for the large scale launch of your product?
For this, I am very pleased to announce that we have just added a new hire to the team, Lichi Wu, who will oversee our user acquisition strategies. Lichi has over 3 years of experience with Google in the US, and 1 year of experience with AdMob in Singapore. With him joining the team, we will be laser focused on creating the best product for our users, and maximizing the viral distribution of foound through various social media channels.
“Zaki of Game Ventures once told me “Would you rather have a “great” product and no users, or “lousy” product with many users” … the only measure of how “great” your product is is the number of people who use it. The rest of the “greatness” is just swelling in your head.”
On another note, will it be convenient to divulge some of your expansion plans? For instance in which countries are you aiming to launch in the near future? Are there any potential partners you are currently talking to now?
I am afraid I can’t disclose partnership discussions at this point, but rest assured that we have lots of exciting news coming up! In terms of geographic expansion, we are targetting major metropolitan cities around the world, most likely starting from the US.
Finally, what are your hopes for foound in the near future?
Foound’s objective is very simple, “To bring the world closer, one hangout at a time”. The hope is of course to have as many people using foound as possible, and to hear from our users that foound is genuinely making their life easier and more enjoyable. We will do everything necessary to achieve these objectives.
About The Author
Larissa THIA - SGE Alumnus - Editorial Intern
Larissa is a fresh graduate who has a love for the irreverent and outré. She is highly fascinated by culture, thought processes and human nature in general.
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