Dealoka student ambassador has finally started

The Dealoka student ambassador program has finally started ! Our goal for this programme is to give the young , smart and motivated youth who are interested in business a look at a real life startup from the inside out. This programme is not about learning how to be
successful (because you can’t be taught that) but its to learn about what a real life startup @ an early stage looks like and to then take away certain data points, which once you put together with the rest of your experiences will ALLOW you to be successful.

You can read all the books you want on how to start a business and how to grow a business (I have read many as well as read lots of tips and advice from really successful entrepreneurs) BUT absolutely nothing prepares you even remotely for building a company like doing a startup and experiencing it first hand. Now as a student who is interested in the world of business and startups … in most cases you can’t start one immediately due to your responsibilities as a student (I know , Mark Zuckerberg did as well as maybe a few others) but I am looking at the general case because well … as much as we want to we all can’t be Mark Zuckerberg right

So the best way to really see how a startup is run is by either interning (like Ivan and Erwin) who are from the University of Indonesia (information systems) who are both really talented and quick learners or by joining a startup part time as an ambassador and learn just how the startup does things from day to day. Most importantly you get to see how startups in this stage think about their business, their problems and any issues on a daily basis.

The advantage of joining a REALLY big and well known startup is well …. its just that, its well known and its probably more structured, also everyone knows who you work for so its something to brag about. However one of the disadvantages is you missed out on seeing how a company in the early stage feels and what its struggles are, something you are sure to come across when you start your own business. Why is this important ? The reason why is the toughest time of any company is when the company is not yet well known, its struggling for relevance, its still developing its product and you only have a certain amount of resources to get you through this early stage. Only once you past this stage can you classify yourself as a remotely successful startup.

As you know, the majority of the time no body quits their startup when everyone knows who they are, they might DIE of other issues but the founders don’t just wake up one day and say , you know what, screw this, I am sick of this, I am going to quit !

Founders of these kinds of startups have put in the hard yards and have real responsibilities to stake/share holders to ensure that he money, effort and believe invested into them is not lost. The hardest part of a startup is when you are still at an early stage, you might have raised some money but still fighting that really strong competition.

You are still fighting for relevance against older players (even though you know your better alternative) and where the pressure is on to perform because you have people who depend on you as well as stake/share holders who have invested in you. This is usually where most of the quitting happens and to see how things are run in this phase, to see how problems are thought about and to see how to maintain a solid composure to ensure that the a young and new team stay motivated, continue to have fun as well as have the same vision is the hardest part.

THIS is the major advantage of joining a startup in the stage Dealoka is in right now.

In our minds the big problems in our head are fresh cause they just happened yesterday, they didn’t happen last year like in many big companies or more established startups, they are fresh and clear. The guerrilla marketing campaigns, the hairy technical issues that happen when traffic spikes, the product development and the business development is still fresh in our minds cause all these issues JUST happened yesterday. When you join a startup at this stage you get to see it live. It wasn’t last years problem, its yesterdays problem, today’s problem and tomorrows problem and changes happen in an instant.

The smart & motivated student ambassadors who where recruited via our friends atstudentjob.co.id will now get to see this first hand. Over 200 students applied and we picked the top 20 all from different universities in both Jabodetabek and Bandung. We have students from the following universities: 

• Bina Nusantara – Maya savitri 
• Universitas National – Setio Hadi Nasution 
• IPB – Priscilla siregar 
• UI – Miqdad Darmawan 
• Prasetiya Mulya – Ivana Teresa 
• Bakrie – Buhat Siswi Yulianto 
• PNJ – Fadil Muhammad 
• STIE Banking School – Ridwan Salim 
• Moestopo – Abduaziz 
• Surya – Aliedza Fawzia 
• UPI – Gita Sonya 
• sampoerna – Ni Luh Komang 
• Al Azhar – Arimbi Annisa 
• ITB – Alexande Sukono 
• Unpad – Mahanani 
• i3L – Shabrina Tjandra 
• LSPR – Shintia Pramita 
• Gunadarma – David Cornellius 
• Mercubuana – Risna Tri 
• UI – Mutiara Azka 

The reason why we selected the top applicants from each university is that there is always a benefit from a diverse range of backgrounds. There are students from technology backgrounds like ITB who are already wizards at engineering and development but might want to improve their communication skills and students from public relations who are excellent and speaking promotions and marketing but might need to learn how to get their first web page up. Diversity is one of the things which helps a group grow and our hope is that this group of students can learn from Dealoka’s successes as well as some of its mistakes and also learn from each other as the months progress.

Just as a heads up the class is fully run in english, all the students where asked to introduce themselves and elaborate deeply into what they believe starting a business takes, what is most important, what they are most interested in and what they want to improve. This way we can all learn and know what each one of us wants to take a way and we can focus specifically on those areas.

The goal from us here at Dealoka is to teach the students about some of the ways to think of a startup and business, how to grow, find team members and how to come up with smart marketing ideas. There will be classes once every month as well as ways they can execute what they have learnt in real life.

Lets all learn together and all build our networks, business skills and have fun doing it !