The Greater Hub School of Management Business ITB, together with Alpha JWC Ventures and the Bandung Startup community, held an “Ask Me Anything” session at the SBM ITB Auditorium on Monday (22/8/2022). Jeffrey Joe, the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Alpha JWC Ventures, attended the event.
This event also presented Gabriela Tudorina and Clarissa Alvina as Investment Professionals and Value Creation Alpha JWC Ventures. It was open to the entire Greater Hub family and the public.
The arrival of Alpha JWC Ventures to SBM ITB is a form of collaboration between The Greater Hub, Alpha JWC Ventures, and Startup Bandung, aiming to provide input to startup founders in running their businesses. In the event, participants were free to ask questions and the experts immediately responded.
“I feel that Indonesia has a chance to be famous in the world of technology and startups. We are a huge supporter of the whole Indonesian digital economy,” said Jeffrey. “We’re here to try and share what we know to increase your chances of success.”
Alpha JWC Ventures is a venture capital company that debuted in Indonesia in 2016. Most of its team members are Indonesian; they are venture capitalists focused on funding Indonesians. They already have almost 70 active company portfolios, with 70-80% of the investment in Indonesia. Among them are Bobobox and Evermos, which are based in Bandung.
“We positioned ourselves as partners, being entrepreneurs for our founders. When they have thoughts, they can have thinking partners,” said Clarissa as value creation Alpha JWC Ventures. “We want to be as close as possible to startup founders, so they can make the best decisions.”
The event is interactive. Not only answering participants’ questions, but JWC Partners also provided input beyond the questions asked.
“Don’t convince venture capital first but yourself. You have to be honest with yourself to know whether it makes sense. The important thing is not to convince VCs, but to make the business run,” said Jeffrey when one of the participants asked about ways to convince VCs to invest. “As for the next stage, it’s even more difficult to convince because good numbers are good, and bad numbers are bad.”
“We want to support founders who are solving real problems, big problems; because in the end, we have to have exponential or big results, regardless of the sector,” added Jeffrey.
Jef also explained that the purpose of VC investing is nothing but to get exponential returns. This is, of course, obtained from real problems successfully solved by a startup. “In addition, clarity of thought or assumptions and hypotheses is important for a founder. In the early stages, you need to understand why people are using your product, not just how many people are using your product.”
The session was closed with a photo session of the speakers and participants. This event also made the business atmosphere at SBM ITB alive again after the pandemic. Of course, in the future, there will be lots of collaborations and other events organized by SBM ITB to support the development of startups and other businesses in Indonesia.