Unlike other incubators and accelerators in general, Y Combinator focuses on developing the business products of its participants. Therefore, Terry Djony, the CEO and founder of Chatbiz.id, and one of the tenants of the Greater Hub who has just been accepted at Y Combinator 2021, advised startup founders interested in joining Y Combinator to focus on business development to get better metrics, rather than being distracted by the preparation for the interview or the pitch.
Y Combinator is an accelerator and incubator for startups based in America. After experiencing mentoring at Y Combinator, Terry advised that new startups should always focus on validating problems first. He is confident that this is the biggest reason for a startup to reach its success.
“The most successful startups are those that try to solve problems directly experienced by their founders,” said Terry.
After getting enough validation on the problem, Terry suggested that startups focus on solving the problem as quickly and effectively as possible. Terry recommends startups join the incubator because, based on his experience, local incubators like Greaterhub enable startup founders to have networking and access to a good mentor ecosystem.
Mentored by Darren Christopher at the Greater Hub in mid-2020, Terry and the team decided to apply their startup, Chatbiz.id, a platform that collaborates with WhatsApp to ease businesses to run their business through WhatsApp and assisted by virtual assistant chatbots, to Y Combinator. They applied to reap the benefit promised by Y Combinator on its official page, including funding, a mature ecosystem for startup founders, one-to-one office hours mentoring, batch events, and group events, before a demo day in front of global investors in the third month. This journey was pursued by Terry and the team step by step, starting from answering the questions on the official Y Combinator link to interviews with Y Combinator about Chatbiz.id. Chatbiz.id is now available in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, with international, local, and national clients.
Before joining Y Combinator from January to March 2021, Chatbiz.id previously entered the Greater Hub in 2019. Terry’s interest in Greater Hub stemmed from an Instagram post that accidentally appeared on Terry’s timeline. As an ITB Engineering Physics student far from SBM, Terry sought further information by consulting Mr. Iwan at the SBM building before finally deciding to register and be accepted in the Greater hub. This step led to the process of Chatbiz.id being accepted at Y Combinator.
Written by Student Reporter (Tjia Alphani, Entrepreneurship 2022)