[Day 1] Geeks on a Beach (GOAB): TRACTION

Related Story: [Day 2] Geeks on a Beach (GOAB): VALUATION
I truly enjoyed the first panel discussion o GOAB, hosted by Joey Gurango. The topic was about “Founders with Traction.” Though it was a quick discussion but I’m sure the audience got good nuggets of wisdom from the founders. 

Here are some nuggets from the founders on different topics of growing a startup.

On defining traction:

Rio Palabrica-Ilao of Tarkie.com. For her it’s about “paying customers.” It can be a long process. For them, it took them 6 months before they got a paying customer.

Jerry Tieng of Titanium Techniques: For him, it’s about “being able to pay employees.” It took them 7 years to get a traction.

Jojy Azurin of printers2go.ph: As he was involved in a printer business, which is monopolized by a few big distributors, it was about “getting 1 big unfair advantage in a big monopolized market.”

Gian dela Rama of Innovantage: It’s “cash flow” for him. When the customer lifetime value becomes greater than their customer acquisition cost is what traction for him.

On how they think startup can help Philippines:

I think somehow all of them summed it up that though they may not really know how they impact nationally, but they’re working best on being able to at least impact the people around them: clients, and team mates. And, hopefully, they’re inspiring more them to also build their own businesses.

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David Brown, managing director of Techstars, gave a reality check in building a startup, as well as the community around it. It is always a 20-year plan. The more important thing is to move the ship one degree at a time. And to resist the temptation to build the next Silicon Valley; instead build own local tech community with its own local flavor.

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Yosuke Fukada, CEO of Yoyo Holdings also shared a wonderful outside insight of the Philippine Tech startup scene. It’s rather not so clear but try to squint to read the message below.

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In the afternoon, I stayed at the Sampaguita extension for the breakout session.

I attended the Geeks and Tech chat hosted by Shad Roi of sym.ph with Haifa of Devcon, Sonny for Python, Joshua Lat of DealGrocer.

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Bohol International Marathon is this weekend, but we’re here first for GOAB. If GOAB is a running event, it’s like CCM or AWUM to me which is a must event I want to join annually. (To know more about GOAB, please check http://geeksonabeach.com.)

Here are other random photos of GOAB Day 1 in Panglao Island, Bohol.

It was nice to see the friends manning the registration booth. And these are real geeks!

It was nice to see the dou geeks of sym.ph  hosting again the event: Dave Overton & Albert Padin. They are now sponsored by Zalora. 🙂

Dave & Albert with Tina Amper, founder of Techtalks.ph & Geeks on a Beach.

The people who are making this event possible for being very supportive sponsors.

Gerald of Istorya.net, Wesley of Mynimo & Teradoor, Mark

The hustlers of istorya.net

JJ of UP TBI

Karen of The Dragon Eats Cat Food
Kareen, the social media queen of Techtalks.ph

And the beach sunset to wonderfully end Day 1.