EDITOR’S NOTE: Globehop was born at Lifespark in November 2013 – an internal hackathon with 150 Singtel employees. In January, the team came to Sydney to incubate the new business. 3 months later, after an internal pitch at Singtel for next stage investment, Globehop is funded and chasing down product/market fit.
Time flies and our short stint at Pollenizer came to an end. The team spent 12 weeks at Pollenizer with a bunch of innovative, open-minded and inspiring people. We saw the passion and fire in their eyes, and it was contagious. There were no skepticism, only openness to sharing and helping one another – it was an amazing environment to be in for a startup.
It was definitely not a bed of roses for the team. We climbed a steep learning curve for the first 1-month, unlearning what we have learnt from SingTel – the way a big corporate runs its business and build a product, and started learning how to build a lean startup and de-risking the business. The team struggled through differences and conflicts, which dampened the team’s morale, but eventually we overcame obstacles and grew together as a team, bonded as one. We are now mentally stronger (definitely not physically stronger with all the good food in Sydney) and working towards a common goal. The biggest obstacle for a startup is to find a common goal and understand that there are many ways to work towards that goal.
We are now back “home”, and successfully obtained our very first funding to continue building our dream. We believe that this is the start of something new, not just for us, but also for SingTel. Our determination to build a lean startup, our perseverance to pull through that contributed to our first success is a great boost to our fellow peers – to not be afraid of being different.
What we did is not going to change the direction of the ship. But we’ve added a small sail to this ship, to push it slowly towards a direction. With a few more sails like us, this big ship will ultimately sail towards a different direction, one with more creativity, innovation, and even greater success!