Indonesia, an emerging startup pool in Asia. There have been lots of startups popping out of nowhere in the last 5 years. That means venture capitals begin to see the potential in Indonesia's emerging market. One thing in the majority, mobile apps.

It surely is an attractive market, digital marketing research agency, Emarketer predicts that Indonesia will be the fourth biggest smartphone user in the world after China, India, and America. Even if I would open my own startup it surely is a mobile app. Sure, Indonesia with approximately a quarter-million people would have many great apps developers, and the market was too great to be missed out. There even someone said that "Anything you sell in Indonesia, even if it's the most stupid thing to sell, sold." It's always great to see how they got an early success, and how they splendidly secure those big shot investments for these past years. Let me cut the chase. More startups mean more investment flow which is good. As long as those startups capable to survive.

The hard truth, according to Statistic Brain, only 37% of startups survive their third year.

There are many reasons why those "great" opportunities failed to make an impact and just wither in time. If you asked those veteran startup owners, they often said 2 reasons to base, for not be able to penetrate the market and not getting enough funds to survive.

Let's observe the first reason, "not be able to penetrate the market", or the other words, "they make the product no one wants" is usually a phare used by those so-called "experts", startup analysts, or in my phrase, commentators. I personally always believe that no creation comes without imaginations. "If you can see it, you can have it" thing comes from imaginations, and imaginations are a subtle form of human needs. Basically human is an egocentric being, as human will never think of something that we never need in general. When you are hungry, you will start to imagine all sorts of delicious things to eat, right?

Sometimes, the problem did not lie within the product or the needs. When bottled water first introduced in Indonesia, many people also said: "they make the product no one wants". Lots of things said, like "We are the largest archipelago on earth, waters everywhere, why should we buy bottled water?". Most of the problem comes to not enough marketing effort to create the needs within the market. This is also encompassing what the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs famously said, "A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

Usually, startup companies are founded by a tech-geek, a great inventor, really know how to create a magnificent UX (User eXperience), and all that you need to make a great product. Sometimes they also do a market research and product concept test to strengthen the product. Well, it's all about the product. They do a customer-centric approach just to end up in a product-centric development.

If you got a great opportunity to found an obvious unmet needs of the market like Go-Jek, then half of the job is automatically done. But please, realize that most startups, start from latent needs and need extra efforts to develop the market. That's where your small-sized capital should be used efficiently to make sure the business stays alive, even for minimum break-even point.

Did anyone aware of the needs of a digital video recorder? Tablet smartphone? Self-driving cars? Google glass, like 15 years ago? When people just caught up in the hype of PDA in the early 2000s, did most of the market think that they need an eCommerce mobile apps?

Even in the early 2010s, mobile apps discoverability is still being the greatest challenge for the developers. Low organic downloads due to the belief of 'the product no one wants' was killing lots of startup companies. The solution? Invest in a mobile marketing campaign.

Yes. The solution seems simple, MARKETING effort. Unfortunately, lots of startup founders read marketing as SALES. If we cite, The American Marketing Association defines marketing as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. I can see that sales (exchanging offerings) is the last mentioned thing in the definition. Sales are the thing that keeps you living, but in order to achieve the sales, you need to pave your way first, and that's what most startup fails to realize.

Through proper marketing, you will know how to properly improve your product without an expensive market research project, you will know where and who to target your resources on, or even an investment you need the most. It's a lifeline that being forgotten, which even some big companies failed to realize this, and keep insisting to read marketing as sales.

Want to make a difference? (CBA)