Unlike other entrepreneurs who usually share their success stories, the Co-Founder and CEO of GandengTangan, Betania Jezamin Setiawan, shares the other side based on his experience at GandengTangan. Usually, stories focus on what the start-up has accomplished. To achieve this achievement through many extraordinary challenges.
Betania recounted her experience while presenting as a guest lecture on Business Risk and Venture Capital at SBM ITB on Friday (17/2). GandengTangan is a fintech start-up founded in 2015.
Bethany explained that GandengTangan has gone through many phases. From winning The Nextdev Competition from Telkomsel, getting funding from several sources, being registered with the Financial Services Authority (OJK), to achieving a net income of US$100 thousand in 2022.
Bittersweet stories start with bitter stories. Bethany or who is often called Jezzie revealed that until 2015, they had not made any significant progress. Then in 2016, GandengTangan lost its information technology Co-Founder. As a result, the GandengTangan website cannot operate. Employees have also tricked the company.
From the entire journey, Jezzie concludes that entrepreneurs must be prepared for harsh realities. Entrepreneurs will face high uncertainty, unstable finances, long working hours, being lonely and isolated. The challenges continues with limited resources – difficult to compete with big companies – and many mistakes.
Jezzie believes that one thing that can make an entrepreneur survives is toughness or resilience. A person can get up and move forward after bad events as the truth is life does not get easier but we become stronger and tougher.
