VJ Africa of Eurekloud
VJ Africa
VJ Africa of Eurekloud
A
“startup accelerator” featuring cash and care
By Glacer Barnett
Eurekloud is a platform that promises to catapult startups to their fullest potential. It acts as groundwork of relief and assistance for startups by cultivating their processes and accelerating their growth.
Eurekloud sets its sights on risky startups and prefer them over the traditional ones; the company sees these startups with a great vision for success. At the end of the day, ideas are cheap—attention should be placed on the person who has the drive to translate that idea into reality. Curious people who are hungry for opportunities are what Eurekloud looks out for.
Eurekloud’s focus of help is primarily
directed at early-stage companies that need guidance and nurturing. It assists
these startups by instilling three essential features for development:
Ideation—through mentoring and coaching, it aids to build a startup’s ideas for
its products and services; Infrastructure—in order to remove any distraction
that might serve as a hindrance for startup founders, it takes on the tedious
tasks of providing legal HR and accounting; Investment—to materialize the
concept, the company offers cash for startup founders so they may pivot their
way forward.
For the incubation period, Eurekloud
looks at a two-year horizon. Should its startups fail to achieve the designated
milestone within that time period, Eurekloud will examine what went wrong so as
to modify the ineffective model.
Early-stage startups often have
difficulty in understanding the operational side of a business and make the
mistake of fully setting their sights on their selling product. They can be too
in love with their ideas, and thus they become incapable of opening their minds
to alternatives that reality would prefer. Eurekloud’s primary lesson in this
aspect is to have the founders listen to their clients and build something off
of their desires. An amazing product is meaningless if nobody cares about it. These
founders need to make people pay for what they are offering.
The
Mad Hatter’s ‘’Eureka’’ moment for Eurekloud
One of Eurekloud’s principal pillars is
embodied by a man named VJ Africa, its co-founder and managing director. As a
futuristic entrepreneur, VJ gained his nickname the “Mad Hatter” from his many
experiences in the corporate and social enterprise.
He spent 9 years of his career life in
Singapore. But after having children who wanted to indulge in the Filipino lifestyle,
he kissed that life goodbye and moved back to the Philippines last December of
2014.
As a self-confessed geek with a vision
for tech, he invests his time in helping tech startups grow and achieve their
purpose. It was during the startup boom that VJ observed a lot of commercial
opportunities here compared to Singapore’s saturated market. Upon coming up
with Eurekloud’s original concept, he decided to meet up with his trusted
friend, Paolo Delgado. Being active in the entrepreneurial network throughout
Asia, it didn’t take long for Paolo to light up with the idea.
VJ describes Paolo as organized and
thorough with his logistics, which is quite complementing to VJ’s knack for
creativity in ideas. Leveraging on their skills and backgrounds, the both of
them are in it together to make the concept fly.
VJ admits to being a reluctant
entrepreneur. Working in a bank before moving to a software company, VJ seeks
comfort in the stability of structured organizations. Initially, he was
hesitant, but as fate would have it, he was made to run a small company as CEO.
At the beginning, it was common for him
to question whether he was doing things right. But it is in second-guessing
himself that he finds great happiness whenever he rises to the challenge. These
newfound avenues for self-improvement made him stick with entrepreneurship.
Now, VJ outsources his passions from
technology to social kindness. Technology is the only mechanism that can enable
a novel idea to become reality, and social kindness is what prompts different
people to cooperate with one another for a better reality.
To be efficient, VJ keeps three things
in mind: First, that motivation and drive is important for him to reach his
destination. Dory from the blockbuster movie Finding Nemo is portrayed as being
very scatter-brained and forgetful. While these characteristics might be
disadvantageous, VJ admires her and her famous line of “Just keep swimming.” Second, he always remembers that there is no
room for contentment. VJ believes that there are opportunities everywhere to
learn and to improve. Lastly, he bears in mind that curious people who bear the
question of “Why aren’t things like this
instead?” are the people who reach achievement. Asking why things are the way they are keep
VJ on his feet; he always thinks of how to develop things for further
innovation.
Taking
the Westerner’s view of entrepreneurship
VJ believes that entrepreneurship is
seizing opportunities with not only success in mind, but also learning. Such a
thing can only be achieved when one recognizes their failures as strict
instruments for self-growth. Nevertheless, we should only treat ourselves to
our failures at a quick pace, for if we stay too long, we risk being consumed
by pessimism.
While the culture of the US receives
failure positively, VJ thinks it’s unfortunate that Asia’s culture shuns it
with disgrace. It is as though failure is treated like a permanent branding of
a bleak future. VJ shares the US’ point of view. He sees failure as something
equivalent to an experience that people should want to learn from. To him, the
most engaging real talks come from those who acknowledge their failures. He
believes that, instead of sweeping mistakes under the rug, we should promote
more stories about successful people and how they have committed errors like
any other person has. This will serve as encouragement for people who weren’t
lucky enough to have things work out for them, proving that you can always get
back up.
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