Taking place at Sasana Budaya Ganesha, Jalan Taman Sari, Kota Bandung, on Wednesday (8/8/2018), those three rising entrepreneurs shared their experiences and motivations to 4,105 freshmen, encouraging them to dare to innovate and dream for future success. The event was held by institute for matriculation of ITB (LTPB).

Hari Tjahjono who is also an alumni of Mechanical Engineering of ITB ’84 told the story of his experience in building PT Abyor International, a company that engages in industrial engineering consultancy. He started the company when he was 44 year old. Despite no longer young, he assert that it is never too late to be an entrepreneur. “By becoming an entrepreneur, we help the government to create jobs,” he said.

As an entrepreneur, he faced many challenges. Even more so for a new company that need the trust from first customer. That step is when character, creativity, and networking are used the most. Hari explained that there are two ways to implement that things, go-branding and hard working.

“Being an entrepreneur is different with being an employee. In Entrepreneurship, we only get the return from what we have done and if what we have done is purchased by customers,” he said. Hari advised the freshmen to be active in organizational activities because that experience is very useful.

Values, Characters, and Ethics
Meanwhile, CTO & Co-Founder of Traveloka, Derianto Kusuma explained that companies are looking for fresh graduates that possess more values, characters, and ethics. That is because industry usually does not find it difficult to tackle technical issues, but to determine the core problem and the solution.

He started the career as an entrepreneur since his youth. This Stanford University graduate is the owner of a unicorn start-up (a start-up with valuation over 1 billion USD). Market research, according to him, is very important in starting a start-up, just like when he started Traveloka which have gone through various researches with his team.

He said that the journey of building a start-up is not easy. Since the journey is not easy, Deri thinks experience is not needed to start being an entrepreneur because it will come along the way.

Continuous Problems, Continuous Innovation
Different experience was shared by Founder of Bukalapak, Achmad Zaky. This alumni of Informatics of ITB ’04 explained about the golden opportunity Indonesia has with its demographic bonus. According to him, today’s youth should be smart in assessing existing problem. They should process the problem into an innovation. A problem, to him, is an opportunity.

“Indonesia has the potency to be an arsenal of innovation in 2014. It is predicted, in that year Indonesia is one of the countries with highest rate of productive age in the world. If we see problems only as problems, we are screwed. But if see it as a way to innovate, in the future Indonesia will have the next ‘bukalapaks’,” he said.

Zaky advised the freshmen to dare to try, dare to fail, and dare to learn. They should use time effectively because innovators come from young age. In younger age, ideas generated are fresher and swifter than in older age. “Create history, you only live once,” he concluded.

Reporter: Rosa Aldita