Nathaniel Yim: From Broke Founder to B2B Builder, Logistics Lessons & Why Human Creativity Still Wins – E639
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
40 min
1 speaker
7 chapters
transcribed 17 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why did Nathaniel turn down stable job offers to co‑found Janio right after graduation?
When we started working on January, it was January of 2018. And our first round of funding came in around May or June. So for the first four to five months, I was working three part-time jobs just to earn money to take the bus and then work on January full-time. I remember one moment, around April or May, we went to the full court with my co-founder and everyone was scanning, but I was paying in cash. My co-founder asked me, Hey bro, what are you doing? Just use pay. You get 50 cents of everything. Then I just looked at him and I told him, all I have in my wallet is all I have no money left. And if I'm not wrong, next week the funding came in. So you could pay ourselves and I could eat my Taiwan. But that was like a very real, this is real moment for me where literally like I couldn't withdraw cash from the ATM because I I only like $5 left.
Welcome to Brave. Learn from Southeast Asia's best tech leaders. Build the future, learn from our past, and stay human in between. No BS on Success. I'm Jeremy O, Venture Capitalist, Sarah founder, Harvard MBA, science fiction nerd, and dad of two daughters. Every week, we debate startup news, interview change makers, answer listener questions, and share personal insights. Join our movement of over 40,000 members and get transcripts, resources, and community at www.bravesea.com. Stay well and stay brave. Hey, I'm so excited to have you on the show. You are an expert on B2B sales and marketing, which is so needed and so hard to do in Southeast Asia. Could you share a little bit by yourself?
Sure, thanks so much for having me, Jeremy. My name is Nathaniel. I am currently running a B2B content-led marketing agency called Neela Studios. I work with B2B companies in the SAS professional service space, helping them. They can be startups or corporates using content as a way to grow their business, grow their brands. Prior to this, I was running a B2C cross-border logistics tech platform called Genio for about five and a half years. That was a venture. back startup. I was doing that before three other co-founders, four of us, scaled it up across Southeast Asia. And basically I took the lessons that I learned there, apply it to my business now to help other businesses grow their brands.
Yeah, so a lot to dig in because you were a university student, then you went straight to being a founder as your first job, which was venture-backed. And then now you're building an agency or slower growth business. So I think there's a lot to unpack, lots of different angles we can attack from this. But I think let's go back to the beginning. Is in university, you had National University of Singapore, you were a marketing guy even back then. So what were you like in undergrad? Uh
so before I was a marketing.
I was a finance guy. An aspiring finance pro, very misguided, didn't know what I was doing. One of those typical I want to be an investment banker, but don't know what investment banking means. I was studying finance initially. I even did an internship at Citibank for half a year. And then at the end of it, I decided this is not for me. It's not the most appealing kind of work. Halfway through year three, I took a module on strategy. strategy in general and somehow marketing the function of marketing just stood out to me from how businesses are run and I found it easy to understand marketing concepts. Switched my specialization to marketing in year four. Had to overlook and clear up to seven mods equivalent in one semester so that I could graduate on time.
So that could get Academically speaking it was the best decision I made because first the grades went up, there was great. Things made And I had to stack a ton of marketing internships within one year because I had no marketing work experience. We did three internships in one year, which was a bit crazy. I learned a lot and I think that was a very good foundation that set me up for January, where I came in as a marketing co-founder to help set the marketing from scratch.
Yeah, so let's talk about that because finance has many internships, it has a clear career track and hierarchy of banks and roles, like investment bankers.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Why did Nathaniel turn down stable job offers to co‑found Janio right after graduation?
0:00–6:06
2
How did the Janio founding team come together and decide to launch the startup?
6:06–10:03
3
How did Janio build an asset‑light, software‑driven platform to solve Southeast Asia’s cross‑border logistics puzzle?
10:03–15:33
4
Why is reverse logistics considered the toughest and least profitable challenge for e‑commerce in Southeast Asia?
15:33–20:09
5
How did Nathaniel evolve from marketing to sales, operations and even warehouse management as a founder?
20:09–25:21
6
How did Janio earn credibility and trust with partners and customers despite having no industry experience?
25:21–30:56
7
What motivated the creation of an in‑house marketing team and later the launch of Nila Studios?
30:56–40:46
Speakers
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