Paying it back

In my last two posts I wrote about how much help I received in Indonesia and the Philippines. Today is the follow-up: what can I actually give back?

Our company doesn't do anything flashy. We build software that makes bookkeeping less painful for someone buried in receipts, and systems that make ordering and payment at a restaurant run smoothly. Plain work. But for me, it is a way of repaying a debt.

Talk to people running a business here and one thing always comes up: the paperwork is crushing. They stand in the shop all day, do the books past midnight, and spend the end of every month chasing tax documents. All that entrepreneurial energy, drained away into staring at paper. Every time I saw it, I thought: technology should be able to shoulder this. People here gave me their time when I needed it. Now it's my turn to give some back.

Fortunately, I am not doing this work of repayment alone. Two teammates I met in Indonesia and the Philippines are still beside me, holding this company up. I'm supposed to be paying my debts back, and yet the debts I can never fully repay keep growing. What a problem to have.

There is one more thing I care about just as much: the Japanese owners doing their best in Indonesia and the Philippines.

I know from experience that running a business in a foreign country is lonelier than you can imagine. The language wall, the tax wall, the wall of different business customs. There are nights you feel defeated because the Japanese way simply doesn't work here. Just as people reached out to me back then, I want to be someone who reaches out to the people holding on in these two countries now — and to those about to take the leap.

I can't promise anything grand. What I do have is a pile of failures earned the hard way here, and a little know-how that came with them. If you're working somewhere in the same landscape, write to me — a business question or just a chat, either is fine. Use the contact form; I read every message myself.

I'm writing this under a Jakarta sky. I hope our paths cross someday.