Our3Q – Continuity Skateboards, Malaysia
Wann – founder of Continuity – skateboard initiative which builds community and supports local kids and teenagers. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? For becoming entrepreneur. At the beginning I just wanted to create a skate park, now I see more and more ways to sustain it. I started almost 4 years ago. I brought a piece of rock and put it in the park so kids can come and play with skateboards. And I saw they were coming. More than 2 years ago I started to build a proper skate park, also with shops, with drinks, different businesses around. It became amazing. It’s easy to start a blog, but to maintain it with interesting content is harder, right? This is the success for me. I make sure that business is going on. Every month we have different events, things are happening. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? When it becomes a community space, the biggest challenge is to unite its members. There are a lot of people, some of them can get crazy, start a fight and it’s not good for the park. The challenge is to make people feel comfortable […] Read More
Our3Q – Tandemic, Malaysia
Kal – founder of Tandemic, a company that provides consulting, training, and venture building for people who want to create social change. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? From the traditional point of view, two of our initiatives: Do Something Good and Make We Can are our success. Make We Can became the largest design thinking-based program in SEA with 5.000 people per workshop. Do Something Good is quite a sizeable platform, with few hundred thousand registered volunteers. From a less traditional point of view of success, we are proving that something is possible. A lot of people think that the kind of work which we do in Malaysia is just not possible. Building social venture and generating income, what the hell is this! For me it is part of building a new kind of culture. You don’t have to be poor and run an NGO which is constantly straggling to make impact and bring money. It doesn’t have to be necessary how the social sector looks like. For me creating that culture and a community of people around this organization thinking that way it has been more important. Q2: What is the biggest challenge […] Read More
Our3Q – Tribu, Philippines
Jason – founder of Tribu – a shoes company. Recently, they started a new project called Ligid, which aims at creating shoes from used tires. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? The achievement depends on the stage. Before, when I was 25, the biggest achievement was to do something and make some money. Then, I could employ a lot of people and that was my achievement. I helped 400 people and their families. I also helped my own family, my parents have now their own factory; the same for my brother and my cousins, they created their own brands. But for me, personally, the biggest achievement now would be to live the way I want, find balance between work and my own dreams, passions. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? With our new brand, Ligid, which provides shoes made from used tires, the biggest challenge now is to find a distributor. We want to create shoes trucks: mobile factories which we can move to the places where people really need a job, for example squatters in Metro Manila. We could already sponsor one of them, this is not a problem, but before […] Read More
Our3Q – GK Enchanted Farm, Philippines
Tito Tony – founder of The GK Enchanted Farm, which is Gawad Kalinga’s platform to raise social entrepreneurs, help local farmers and create wealth in the countryside. It also organizes university courses for social entrepreneurs and guided tour for people interested in the topic. Gawad Kalinga is a Philippine-based movement that aims to end poverty for 5 million families, by first restoring the dignity of the poor. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? Getting people to believe in themselves. Getting people to believe that if we work together we can achieve every goal. Getting rich and poor to be partners in business and not keep going with the traditional way where the rich is a master and the poor is a slave. Showing people that we can build inclusive society by building solidarity economy. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Convincing people who don’t want to be convinced. We all have the same aspiration, we all want a safer world, we want good quality of life, dignity. Q3: What advice do you have for yourself in this situation? To convince people you need to show them success. If you talk about […] Read More
Our3Q- HyperTree, Thailand
Gouston – founder of Hyper-Tree, company which creates architecture with living trees. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? My biggest achievement was to accept my new perception of what a career path is, and take on the challenge of changing the way I am, and then embrace new skills, find better ways to interact with people, fight my fear for public speaking, learn other ways of getting things done… Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Convert a concept into a business is not easy without resources. To convince my potential clients that my Hyper-Tree system works, I must build prototypes and finished products. Since I’m growing architecture from trees, my biggest challenge is to find a place where to grow my trees… for free! Q3: What advice do you have for yourself in this situation? I have met and keep meeting so many incredible people giving me feedback, advice, connections, tips and tricks… An entrepreneur’s main ability is her/his capacity to communicate and interact effectively with others. Would you like to add something more? Changing the world is actually not so hard upon understanding that you must practice what […] Read More
Our3Q – Thai Jungle, Thailand
Pitua – founder of Thai Jungle, a community-based ecotourism. They offer the tourist a unique touch to living the Thai jungle, organizing trekking, trips, bamboo rafting and other kind of activities, with the possibility of dining and staying overnight. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? I think that our strongest point is having a good team. We started Wang Khunphrom Ecotourism about three months ago. First of all, I tried to talk to people in the village to find those who are interested in creating a community-based tourist business. We got 9-10 people. Everybody put the same amount of money, everybody shared the ideas. We don’t want to have a business growing unleashed like in Khao Sok, where everyone does its own. We want to stick together, making something as a society, a community. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? I grew up in Khao Sok, now a popular tourists destination. But it was not like that before. When I was young I saw a lot of foreigners coming in. It was good, they brought money, jobs. But time passed and 10 years later the family business in Khao Sok changed. A […] Read More
Our3Q – Makespace, Malaysia
Hakim – founder of Makespace, company that caters to corporate and communities to run workshops, talks, brainstorming sessions, team building, hackathons, performances, parties and so on. Makespace is also a funky joint to inspire and create. They have tools available to turn ideas into reality and at the same time be surrounded by likeminded people. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? It’s not easy to choose among the many things we’ve done since 2013… but if I have to say one, I’m super proud that we managed to create a space where all those disfranchised makers can come to and do their things. They can use our space and we will support them as much as possible. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? The evolution of the space… Did you ever play Supermario? There is one boss, whenever you find the princess he is always stealing her and generally shifting goals. So our big boss, our challenge, is to balance being sustainable and being relevant. When you think about makers community, it’s very difficult to build a project you can charge a lot of money for. So we have to build […] Read More
Our3Q – iCare Benefits, Thailand
Paweł – board member of iCare Benefits, company that gives the employees immediate access to essential products and services by providing a loan without interest. This way it aims to improve their quality of life and well being. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? It is a very good business model. It is working in Vietnam, now we are spreading it in 6 other countries. I work for Thailand. Icare benefits proposes real win-win situations: factory workers, their employers, retail sellers, even banks. And us, as a for-profit company. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Finding more and more people who want to join us. I started here from nothing. I arrived in Bangkok in September knowing nobody. In Vietnam people are more business oriented, probably because they are often poorer and very motivated to change their life. In Thailand recruiting staff is much more challenging. We are a start-up, it’s not a 9-to-5 job, you work till it’s done. Not many people are ready to do that. But thanks to that a 25-years old guy like me can be one of the most important people in the company. Q3: What […] Read More
Our3Q – Phare Circus, Cambodia
Dara – owner of Phare, the Cambodian Circus that is a social enterprise which collaborates with the Phare Ponleu Selpak school for socially and economically disadvantaged children to support it financially and to offer job positions to graduated artists. It’s becoming one of the most famous circuses in the world and one of the biggest attractions in Cambodia. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? The fact that we have proven that this social enterprise is working. We are making net operating profit this year, after paying all taxes, after paying very good salary to artists, fair salary to employees – and hopefully very good salary to employees later. This is what we achieved in the three years we have been in operation. The fact that we are able to gain confidence from the community, that we are here to stay. When we opened everybody wondered when we are going to leave, because we may not be successful, because we had nothing. The circus was outdoor, without tent. And our two operating partners were very afraid to put us in their program, because they were not sure we would survive. And now we gained confidence in the […] Read More
Our3Q – AngkorHUB, Cambodia
Jeff – owner of AngkorHUB, co-working and co-living space designed especially for social entrepreneurs, changemakers and digital nomads. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? One thing can be Eco Warriors, an event during which I tried to unite businesses in Siem Reap so they can buy together friendly packaging and do other environmentally friendly actions. And now they are united. They got in touch and they started to work together. As a result many things happen. For example there is way less plastic straws in circulation thanks to one of the initiative. We talked to different companies and as soon as they have some output also from the clients they start to think: maybe I save money by not putting straws in drinks and I will be environmentally friendly so I can even make marketing on it. Last summer we had a 5-days training event for young Khmer entrepreneurs and I’m really happy about that, they are big friends till today and it was a great success. And the last thing I’m proud and happy about is that I will never come back to my previous 9-to-5 life. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for […] Read More
