Starting a Startup
This article is inspired by a tweet posted on 14 may 2022 by @usaashawan saying,
“Ada ke usahawan Melayu yang buat podcast about his or her entrepreneurship journey.” Without much thought, we decided to record the requested podcast.
Every entrepreneur has their own story and for our CEO, Hafiz Izwan, it began under a palm tree at the Sepang International Circuit, watching his favourite sport, F1 with one of his closest friends, Razak.
You see, these two do this every year but this time, the session was accompanied by some serious discussions on their future. With both men entering their early 30’s, Hafiz and Razak reflected on their IT and HR backgrounds and decided then and there that this was a good time as any to stop working for people and open up an IT company.
Not having a clear idea of what was in store, they went on to register a company anyway. The duo discovered a shelf company called Telcowin and purchased it. They struggled with people asking if they were a telco company so on the advice of their marketing freelancer at the time, they decided that Telcowin would be introduced as an abbreviation of telling companies how to win.
While Hafiz and Razak might not have had much of a plan, one thing they knew for sure was that they did not want to end up being another organisation which leveraged on the disadvantage of clients for mere profit. Instead, their vision was to actually bring value to customers in order for their customers to serve their customers better.
Soon after, Hafiz and Razak identified a product based out in Vienna, Austria which was looking to expand into the ASEAN region. They had never been to Austria before but they took a chance and purchased two of the most affordable tickets from an airline office just downstairs from the Telcowin office building at the time.
The CEO of chosen product out in Vienna didn’t take long to decide on awarding a distributorship to Hafiz and Razak after seeing their willingness to travel all the way to Europe simply to present their idea. Upon their return to Malaysia, both men realised they now needed to train their new customers in order to ensure implementation of the product. This was of utmost importance seeing as they were not just about selling the product but to see their customers all the way through. Their vision was to bring value and bring value they sure did.
Hafiz and Razak therefore took yet another flight out to Vienna. This time for an implementation training.
Back home in Malaysia, Telcowin was complete and along with one new staff, they closed their first deal, valued at RM7,500. It might not have been much but both Hafiz and Razak rejoiced at their first success. With determination and hard work, it did not take long before they began closing six figure deals.
This led to the hiring of more staff and Telcowin’s eventual involvement with Salesforce. Initially, Telcowin only dealt with social listening products as far as Salesforce was concerned. But after attending his first Salesforce event in San Francisco, Hafiz came home with his eye wide open to the infinite possibilities that could be realised by becoming a Salesforce consulting company. That was in 2015 and now in 2022, Telcowin has 75 employees and counting and have since moved to a larger office space.
According to Hafiz, there are a number of things that ensures the success of a startup. First and foremost is picking out a partner that constantly disagrees with you. A perpetually agreeable person is a follower and not a partner, he says.
A partner should have the ability to provide you with a different perspective on things. And Hafiz certainly found that trait in Razak.
Hafiz says the best thing about starting a startup is that you make the rules. Armed with passion and the stubbornness to succeed you can literally make anything happen.
To listen in on the details and find out more about what motivates Hafiz to keep going through the tough times, check out the podcast episode Starting a Startup, now available on Spotify via this link: https://anchor.fm/telcowin/episodes/Starting-a-Startup-e1kntiq