Go for startup as side project: TechLadies founder
Published on: Friday, October 06, 2017
CYBERJAYA: "Do startup as a side project," advised Elisha Tan, founder of TechLadies, to those who are keen to start a new enterprise. As a person who once experienced a failed startup, she said, a side project would give a person the stability, especially financially, and also provide more time to consider what is the best business model.
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"Besides, if a side project fails, it does not matter because you still have a strong safety net for you," she told Bernama on the sidelines of the MaGIC Academy Symposium 2017 here yesterday after participating as a speaker in the Fireside Chat session titled 'Rise from the Ashes'.Tan, 29, a psychology graduate from National University of Singapore, started her first startup, 'Learnemy', an online matching service for offline classes in 2011. Learnemy, which matches people's profile for various types of classes such as sports, programming and language, has to be wound down after four years due to lack of demand."We offer offline classes and after they finished, they don't come back to the site again.
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We lose a lot of recurring interest, recurring revenue," she said, adding that at the same time she got fired from her first job."When I was in university, I always knew I wanted to start a startup, and technical startup is the most cost-effective. However, as a fresh graduate I have no credibility, no domain expertise, no skill and work experience.
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I find it difficult to convince a technology co-founder," she said.However, the heartbreak from failing in her first startup does not stop Tan from getting back on her feet and venture into a new business, TechLadies, a community-led initiative for women in Asia to connect, learn and advance as programmers in the technology industry.Earlier in the session, Tan shared her experience of moving on, mostly assisted by a good support system around her especially "when you have people that believe in you and said that it was not the end of the world"." I told myself if I can recover from my startup failure, then I can do it again. And I started TechLadies," said the self-taught programmer from Singapore.She said TechLadies launched in 2016, was to support graduates to join the industry, as well as those doing mid career switch by providing them with education."We have a part-time boot camp where these ladies build up non-profit apps under the guidance of engineers. Since our launch in 2016, we've met 984 of you at our events; taught 311 ladies in Singapore and Malaysia how to code; and saw seven ladies getting technical internships or hired as junior software engineers," she said. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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