GUEST COLUMNIST
By AMANDA CUA
Three years ago, I didn’t even know there was a Philippine startup ecosystem. But now, I’m a Filipino startup founder myself. And here’s how I got here.
So, what’s a startup?
But first, some clarifications. Is any technology-related company a startup? Or is any company that raises external funding a startup? Not necessarily.
Take the definition of Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, the US startup accelerator that birthed startups like Airbnb, Reddit, and Twitch.
“A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology or take venture funding, or have some sort of “exit.” The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.”
But it’s tough for a new company to grow fast!
And that’s why many of them (but not all) end up raising funding from angel investors or venture capitalists. The millions in funding they raise is for them to achieve that goal of fast growth.
How I got started?
Every startup starts differently, but here’s how I started BackScoop, a media startup that focuses on Southeast Asian startups. Our first product? A free newsletter that makes it fun and easy to stay updated with startup news in the region.
I started with a problem. There was no easy way to stay updated with the latest news about Southeast Asian startups.
Then, I decided to test if my problem was a real problem (aka, see if there was a market for it). So I found the quickest and cheapest way to test it—by building an MVP (minimum viable product).
My MVP? A newsletter. Here, I could centralize all the news in one place and write all the content myself to make sure the quality was great.
To keep the test cheap, I built just the essentials: (1) a website (2) my newsletter, which I started releasing weekly. It cost about ₱3,000 in total. I didn’t raise any funding for this.
How do you get customers?
After building my product (my MVP), I needed to get it out to customers to validate it.
For most new and early products, you’ll have to find quick hacks to find your first few customers. What I did? I manually messaged people one by one to invite them to sign up to my newsletter.
First, I messaged all my close family, friends, and ex-coworkers. Then, I messaged all my Facebook friends one by one for days until I had messaged all my Facebook friends. People thought I got hacked (I didn’t).
It may sound tough, but that’s the reality of finding early customers and growth for your startup—it’ll be time-consuming and manual. You usually won’t get that growth unless you push for it to happen.
My goal? Get the newsletter to as many people as possible, get their feedback, see if they actually use it, and, if it’s a paid product, check how many of them actually pay for it.
How do you get funding?
Again, you don’t need to raise funding early on. The worst thing you can do is raise money when you don’t need it (or raise too much)!
How did I get investors?
I initially bootstrapped BackScoop using my own savings to pay for business expenses. At the time, I didn’t plan to raise funding.
But, I had never spoken to investors before, so I wanted to land some meetings with them to understand what it would be like. Surprisingly, the third investor I met was interested enough to book a second meeting, then a third.
I realized raising a small amount of funding would be good for my startup. This was Buko Ventures, which is run by Lazada Philippines executives and some current startup founders.
For one, I would have enough funding to run my business without having to work a day job (or take away from my savings). On top of that, I could invest a little in growth, like using the right software and tools and hiring one team member.
Here and now
That all happened in my first six months of building my startup. Now, my startup has been running for two years.
We’ve grown to 15,000 subscribers for the newsletter, mostly startup founders, executives, and investors not just from the Philippines, but all over Southeast Asia. launched a podcast, One More Scoop.
When I started my startup, I was 19 and didn’t know much about the tech and startup world. Hopefully, this column helps you if you’re looking to launch your own startup!
(Amanda Cua is the founder and CEO of Back Scoop, a media startup with a free newsletter that features news on business and startups in Southeast Asia.)