How I Built a Million Dollar Company in 2 Years, at 22 Years Old
maven is a Limitless Digital Innovation Company specializing in creating digital product and digital campaigns such as mobile apps, web campaigns, and other to help Businesses across Asia win the market.
In 2 short years, we are operating in Jakarta & Singapore, done more than 200 projects, feeding a headcount of 30+ employees, and trusted by 20+ global brands across Asia.
Hi. My name is Raymond, currently acting as Chief Executive Officer at maven, and just recently finalized a merger of 2 local companies.
I never received a single dollar from anyone, building my company to the state it is now. I’m eager to share that you don’t have to come from a rich family or have a million dollar to journey in Business and Entrepreneurship.
note : In this article I will share my life milestones along with maven’s, if you’re just interested with the company’s progress, you can skip to Company’s Journey segment.
Chapter One, it Wasn’t Planned
Starting out, I knew from the beginning I was that weird kid that doesn’t blend well with others, I was 90% introverted through out life. That resulted in me having so much time and opportunity to be diverse in what I can do in terms of self improvements.
I realized that I have a knack to just be ‘good’ at everything, with no specialization. So by that, in no way that I knew I’d be running an International business by 22. More about that.
Jack of all trades, but master of none.
but oftentimes better than a master of one.
My journey on business and entrepreneurship isn’t as straight as a pole like some people think. I am a Computer Science graduate, with background in tech and coding, in fact I liked coding, and good at it! I remembered on the first semester on Uni I was tasked to create an entertainment app.
As I recall I was the only one from 0 experience to created a full fledged mobile game, for an assignment. To sweeten the situation, my mobile game was featured on the Uni’s play store app, what was then called Potato’s Castle.
For me this was the moment that shines a light in me “I created something thousands of people can enjoy!”, and I remembered asking friends to try the game out and seeing their faces trying so hard to win a level I designed! Truth be told, it was a very addicting feeling.
It was at this time I realized that value of Digital, and why 1 million startups are created. It opens Billions of opportunity to reach Billions of people with just some coffee, laptop, and an internet connection. I was hooked.
The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.
Jumping the Gun with no Gun
This story is also a very significant part of my journey. I was in class of “Entrepreneurship 02”, I attended a freelance/opportunity seminar. It was an e-education Company, that creates e-learning mini games and module for schools to improve the learning process.
Truth be told the money was very very interesting. BUT, their modules are created with Action Script 2, a language that I completely don’t know about, zero, nada.
So I cracked my knuckles, sit down, read, and watch probably more than 10 hours tutorial videos on Action Script 2. I wasn’t ready, it was 1 week of learning when it takes their full time programmer 6 months to be comfortable. Called the PIC and they gave me a test. No one was doing it..
I stayed all night and finished the test in 3 days, and (shockingly!) with flying colors!
They invited me to the office, sign some contracts and started my first project that was valued at 300$. I finished the job in less than a week.
They were very impressed that they compared me to their in-house performance, that would take the same module, 3 weeks to finish. They immediately gave me 2 to 3 projects at a time, and it was just projects after projects.
My first Pot of Gold ( 5000$ )
Job went months on in, at that I was making 2000$ a month doing 5–6 modules a week, bought myself a 2000$ laptop, and a new phone. Remember that I was only a third year. “you are exceptional”, said my Uni. Turns out the company I worked for is in contract with my Uni. This got me featured on a promotional video as one of the successful Student / Entrepreneur.
So I secured myself in the circle of my Uni’s Entrepreneur community. I always see on video, success story of business owners and startup owners, but never knew how to get there. So this boosts my knowledge and perspective on the subject in matter.
I thought that I was going to this job for a while, being naive hit me head first to a brick wall. It didn’t. The Company went out of modules to give freelancers so I was doing nothing. By the time they have new jobs to give, the rate they are paying is less than half what is initially offered. I’m not as interested. So I knew I have to go on finding other gold mines to explore.
Ready, Set, Team up
Turns out I know less than I’m aware of. Some of the other people in my class was doing projects for startups inside my Uni’s startup accelerator program. When they are planning to prototype the product, my class mate invited me over with 1 other guy to build the mobile apps prototype of this discount directory startup. We were a team of 3.
It wasn’t as big money as my previous job, but little did I know it was going to lead me to this Entrepreneurship & Business journey. After this startup job, we gained a name as a team of freelancers. We were offered to do our other first job.
The funny story is, the job is from a company I applied for the year before. The Boss was impressed by my story that despite me refusing the offer, he referred me to his brother to do mobile apps.
The damnest thing was, we accepted the 800$ price tag for the project. As per maven pricing, it would hit the 15.000$ mark, ha ha. We did it anyway. I’m not going to bore you with the details, but thing went on project after project as a team.
Then after just being repetitive, I popped the question “let’s make it a company?”
A Team is not a Company, A Company is a Team
Brand, website, name card, office, and filled it with furniture. The office, is not ‘office’ ‘office’. We paid out all costs, rent out a dorm room with the money we saved up on our previous projects, it was small but we see ourselves having up to 10 people working in the office. Initially it was just us 3, then 4, then 5, it grew as demand rises.
I remembered being half assed on meetings, trying to hire people, etc. I’m still a hardcore Introverted person, I’m still doing some coding in the team, I still manage projects, at least that’s what I like to do here. As business owner I know this is very wrong. I made the decision to stop doing too much coding, and force myself to learn Business.
Multi Disciplinary Individual
By then I was doing Marketing, Financing, Business Development, Client Relationship, Administration, Procurement, Sales Pitches, Project Management, Human Resource, Meetings, you name it. This is a leap of change for me, but I know that I’m not the type of person that doesn’t settle with being mediocre.
On my peak, I read about more than 10 articles on Business a day, finished books about Communication, Relationship, etc. This is what it cost to what builds my resume right now. The turn to being from Introvert to Extrovert is catalyzed by this decision, and it was full of pressure. I was 20. But this starts the timeline I counted my company’s journey.
The Company’s Journey 1st Year
Back then it was Maven Mobile, a mobile apps specialist agency. In the first year, we are building rapport. My values are..
Good Service will do Good Marketing
All I did was simple, I represented my company the best I could on meetings, reports, I became a perfectionist in delivery. It became the norm that I willingly sacrifice me and my team’s hours to fill customer’s satisfaction. Hoping client’s satisfaction would refer me to other bigger clients, and it did.
We do ZERO marketing activity, and sales outreach. We managed to hit our yearly target while doing steady growth. The year’s value was mostly learning, adjusting to the job role, and mastering client communication and negotiations. Read Recommendation : How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
But it was far from being a million dollar company, far from it. I took the year’s chance to teach me how to do sales-work-delivery the best the company could. It was always a good first move for everyone going into business
Sales is one the sought-after skill an Entrepreneur could have
Through this method, we managed to land clients like Adira Insurance & Ciputra while feeding a headcount of 6 employees. Even through it’s through 3rd party agencies, we took the win.
The Company’s Journey 2nd Year Q1
Two words, Organic Growth. In terms of sales and finance, we were growing at a steady rate. We ended that year with more than double our last year’s revenue. But it didn’t come without a cost, we had problems.
To open up that year I was reading a book by John C. Maxwell. In short, he is a Author and Motivational Speaker primarily in the topic of leadership.
A Leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.
Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.
As a business, Maven Mobile is doing well. As a company, we are not. A Company is a Team, and the Team’s strength is only as strong as it’s weakest link. Holes everywhere in the team makes everyone the weakest link.
I’m a good manager, but I lack leadership.
The problem is internal, we don’t have enough people, we don’t promote collaborations process, if it keeps up I am sure it will be a dictatorship company that won’t last long.
This is the year we had around 4 problems where client ask us for a ‘termination’ meeting. Guess what all of them complain about, internal communications. It was a damn mess, no one in the company knows which timeline is which. which job is which.
So we fix, took me a slap in the face to realize i was being egoistic in management. I took an enlightenment road and focused on leadership instead. Building company culture, building the people process, and results came with it. Through this enlightenment i came to believe..
In business, people comes first
The Company’s Journey 2nd Year Q3
At Q3 I was focused on strategic partnerships, I contacted man, women, agency, company, etc so I can just “meet up”. It was not conventional, but business is people. Amazingly we receive a lot of returns and quick update, we moved to a much proper office with 10–12 headcount.
After that, this is the big one, Maven Mobile got the chance to receive an opportunity in Singapore. To work a project there, to open a sales branch there, and receive a 200.000$ investment, that’s the idea. So Iflew down to Singapore to meet with him and talked terms. I unleashed every possible skill I have to show credibility and trust.
Through that, I choose my mentor in business. One can say he is a devil’s advocate, and I loved it.
We landed a deal on a considerably big project called MM, our first Singapore project. We did it with every finesse we have, on team management, and relationship. One thing lead to another, I had to fly back to Singapore to talk about continuation of our next move.
By the time I got back, I finalized the terms of the Singapore sales branch ( yeah! ) and was so pumped that we’ll soon have an investment of 200.000$, the funds will greatly scale our team, sales, and open new markets.
But I was still exploring other opportunities in Indonesia, through a long talk with the founders of the company we shared the office with. We both ended up believing a merger is the good way to go. So we did.
The Company’s Journey 3rd Year
This is the we re-branded as maven, the year of scaling. Lots of things happened throughout the 2 months that supersedes what we’ve been doing the last 2 years. To add the sugar coat, I learned my fair share of business strategy through my mentor.
I postponed the Singapore investment, to start talking about the terms and agreement of the merger. Shares distribution, Job description, Titles, Financing, the whole package. It took 2–3 weeks non stop in January to finalized everything. We chipped in the merger cash, and began to start company on boarding.
I was asked to be the leader, and so I orchestrate and led the initial board meeting to discuss planning and strategy. Through this merger we have lots of manpower to do plenty of things at once.
Each of our 4 divisions, Business Development, Production, Sales & Marketing, and Operations, have specific goal and target. It have never been clearer, it just came to me that this company could possibly be a multi million, of even in the hundreds of millions dollar company.
By February we had :
- Successfully led a merger
- a Singapore sales branch
- a International Team of 30+ headcount
- an Amazing portfolio of previous jobs
- a Valuation of a million dollar
- Most importantly, a clear vision and structure on where the company can achieve with actionable task. ( no wantpreneurs here )
That 200.000$ investment ? We didn’t get it. I was kind of morally down, turns out there a lot of due diligence needed to run an investment, I didn’t realized. Again, lesson learned. Life is about learning isn’t it ? Maybe it’s for the best.
Closing Time
This wraps up the summary of the journey I had to the time of the writing. What I saw was a challenge to step out of my comfort zone for me to grow as an Entrepreneur to learn the ins and out about Business, that grew and led me into this passion.
Everyday I adapt to what the business tells me to do, and when you love what you’re doing, is golden. Ambition is great. Knowledge is awesome. Experience is priceless. But all of it means nothing if we don’t, do. get out of your comfort zone, learn, and just jump the gun.
As for maven, we are not slowing down. I never see an achievement as our goal, success is in the process. We either grow and adapt, or stay and die. Growth is great, comfort kills. I don’t expect smooth sailing, but who’s to say we can’t be a Billion dollar company.
As for me I truly believe, as Entrepreneurs we either keep learning, keep adapting, keep growing, or stay in a fixed path the giant corporate paved for you.
Oh and one more thing. Most importantly, as nike said
Just Do It.
If your business wants to know what it takes, to grow your revenue in new heights through digital process, hit me up at : raymond@maven.co.id or if you just fancy a chat, or wants to talk about business and things, hit me up on LinkedIn.
Cheers, Raymond Chin
Chief Executive Officer of maven | Limitless Digital Innovation
