By Mr. Patrick Grove
CEO of Catcha Group Ltd
I had a blast speaking at Tony Robbins’ world-famous Business Mastery event a year ago in Sydney. Sharing my story with like-minded and aspiring entrepreneurs, knowing that perhaps my story might positively impact even a small part of someone’s journey, always gets me going.
The story I shared with the eager audience is the response to a question I get a lot these days - how was I able to take five companies from inception to IPO within seven quick years? In short, what’s been key to my success as an entrepreneur?
The simple answer - perseverance.
Let’s look at iProperty, the first company we took public. Today iProperty is widely recognized as one of the largest and most successful online businesses in the region. However 11 years ago, this was a different story.
In 2007, newspapers classifieds were the defacto method of searching for property to purchase and rent. The few online real estate portals which did exist were relatively unknown and mostly unutilized. Our business model in Southeast Asia was yet to be proven.
Shortly after the company’s inception, we went out to raise funds to enable us to grow the business across the region. We did ALL the investor rounds, roadshows, pre-roadshows, mini-roadshows, etc. We saw every bank, banker, broker, VC, PE, family office, fund and investor who would meet with us.
The first five people we met said no. The next ten people we met said no. The subsequent 20 people we met said no, and so on, and so on.
It was our 75th investor pitch when someone finally agreed to invest in the business.
The sole reason iProperty exists today is because we persevered.
Imagine if we had given up after the 20th, 30th or even the 74th meeting. It took 75 meetings for someone to finally say “yes, I will give you $2 million for 10% of the business.”
Today that 10% stake is worth $50 million. Today, iProperty is Asia’s leading network of property websites.
Similarly, iflix - which has a 15-million subscriber base across 28 countries, and is emerging markets’ leading on-demand video streaming platform - had 115 rejections before our first investor said yes!
As Ben Horowitz describes in ‘The Struggle’ – sh#t happens. That is the nature of doing business. The grander your ambitions, the greater the challenges you face. The most important thing you can do is persevere.
We’ve had many of those sh#t happens moments where sheer perseverance, and not luck nor skill nor money, kept us going. Some of those moments include:
- Our entire Board of Directors resigning because we were trading whilst insolvent and they didn’t want to be personally liable for our debts.
- Our CFO telling us that our balance sheet was negative (by USD 2 Million!).
- Losing money, EVERY YEAR for 8 years in a row.
- Not having enough money to pay the monthly salary of my partner and I, for about 23 months in the last 15 years.
I have experienced all of these setbacks and many more. Perseverance allowed us, in the instances above:
- To pay all of our creditors back within 3 years
- Stay alive till the business turned profitable and we had profits to re-invest
Perseverance is the single differentiating factor of successful entrepreneurs and people.
Learning to persevere is one of the most valuable lessons you can learn in both business and life. It is more than just a simple state of mind or being tenacious in the face of failure. Perseverance allows you to accept that you will encounter challenges and occasionally defeat, but in persevering you learn from your mistakes, evolve and move on.
The road for entrepreneurs is a long and exacting one, both from the initial outset frequently characterized by tough conditions and limited resources as well as ongoing challenges as businesses mature.
Steve Jobs once famously said, “it is pure perseverance, which separates successful entrepreneurs from non-successful ones.” And I have lived and breathed that.
In one last humbling fact, in 2000, after we had almost run out of money and were on the verge of bankrupty, a magazine ran a story on Catcha headlined “Please Stop Dreaming” in reference to our crazy idea to attempt an IPO of our company. Well, guess what, that magazine went bust several years later, and we KEPT DREAMING and we are now 5 IPOs down – with more to come. So here’s to DREAMING and having the perseverance to keep at it.
1 comment
"There was a time when people thought (sic) Singapore wouldn't make it... /But we did..." The problem is, can we extrapolate this to having angel investors for our SMEs that aren't contemptuous - one would argue that having an inclusive society would mean that EDB/Spring SG also courts local businesses like my father's.
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