Throwback to 2020: building our team rocket (Part 1) • Slash

2021 is well underway now and we finally managed to take the time to look back at our previous year and capture some of our highlights. Uff, talking about being busy!

Here are 8 highlights of our 2020.

Table of Contents

Highlight 1 – Productive year and a bigger portfolio

🏆 Across our portfolio, our startups raised ~US$4.85m in 2020. We have several startups that launched in 2020 (Sharelook, Augmented Tribe, 360 Sports), and others will pilot or launch in the first half of 2021 (Clik, TripTax, Acropolis, Hourvillage). Most of our startups are expected to hit revenue in 2021! Our portfolio of early stage startups is slowly hatching 😉

🚀 Currently, we have 8 startups in our portfolio:

➤ Sharelook – Netflix for Corporate eLearning. This mobile e-learning platform is designed for trainers, teams and organizations looking to enhance their knowledge through online courses. Sharelook offers integrated live video broadcasting (the only one of its kind to do so now) and course builders with user-generated learning mazes along with advanced analytics, 3D avatars, and more.

➤ TripWorld – The startup develops travel solutions for global conscious citizens. The pandemic might have hit tourism hard, but travel is starting to recover. TripWorld’s flagship, deep-tech solution TripTax, is the solution for travelers searching for a faster, cheaper, and safer way to do tourism tax refund while skipping the queue at the airport.

➤ 360 Wellness – This addition to our portfolio has introduced an end-to-end solution to help fitness & wellness professionals run their business online in a post-COVID-19 world. They can use 360 Wellness to broadcast live classes or coaching sessions, do the monetization & invoicing, put together schedules and follow-ups, retarget, and set up personalized programs.

➤ The Hourvillage – The startup provides a CSR solution for corporates to connect employees with charities & causes. It operates as a social equalizer platform, where one hour equals one hour-time regardless of who you are.

➤ Acropolis – Sell your international properties & land to Asian investors faster in one easy-to-use, unified conveyance platform. We enable digital ownership of cross-border property investments, and the users do not need to travel. The startup also provides a secure & immediately verifiable chain of title, super-fast transactions (~2 days) and cheaper transaction costs.

➤ Clik – This startup has created an award-winning unified payment, credit & loyalty solution for merchants and consumers in the Mekong Region. It is available online and offline, with advanced eKYC/AML-CFT and data-driven micro-targeting and loyalty schemes. The solution’s rich variety of functions includes a seamless consumer experience that also enables lending.

➤ Augmented Tribe – The startup has established a social learning platform for professionals. The app is organized around learning spaces to accelerate the know-how. It comes with structured curriculums, real-time collaboration, and on-demand experts. Augmented Tribe is a joint-venture with global business school IMD, operating in Switzerland/Singapore.

➤ Trust8 – It provides secure risk management & facility management dashboard. This startup’s primary goal is to help companies manage their back-to-work policies during the COVID-19 crisis. Among other key features, Trust8 also enables integration with an ecosystem of secure, trustless, private wallets to handle employees’ health data.

Despite the general volatility of 2020, it was a productive year for our startups. We are already working on a new stealth-mode startup, so stay tuned for announcements in the upcoming months! After this progress in our portfolio, we expect that our startups will be more visible in 2021 and generate more engagement opportunities for the core Slash team.

Here is a number of public achievements our startups recorded in the last 12 months:

📌 Augmented Tribe has conducted a successful first user pilot with the Civil Service College Singapore, the college for government employees in Singapore.

📌 360Wellness.io was founded and launched in less than 9 months.

📌 Clik raised USD 3.6m round and got its payment (PSP) license from the National Bank of Cambodia.

📌 Sharelook closed a major deal in Africa and we helped them build their team in Nepal.

Highlight 2 – Expanding Slash family in Asia and Europe

2020 was a year of growth for Slash. Guided by the commitment to increasing our geographical reach, we expanded in 2020 and entered into 2021 as a larger family with now 3 hubs: in addition to our Cambodian (Phnom Penh) office, we launched our Bali hub and the Armenian outpost by building our initial team in capital Yerevan!

By extending our geographical reach, we access more diverse and deeper talent pools, more time zones and cultural coverage for our clients, and more opportunities for our teams to experience life in different countries. We can’t wait to try to get everyone in one place for a celebration!

🌎 The choices for the locations were not random, as we always look for diverse talent pools and more cultural coverage. We are currently attracting the best local talent in each hub.

📌 Singapore is our oldest office and our headquarters. It’s the perfect launchpad for our global portfolio of companies and supports our global clients on the IT consulting side. Our team consists of senior executives and our financial team.

📌 Our first hub in Phnom Penh is significant with its strong L&D environment and community engagement. We have a mature team in the Cambodian office, with 3+ years’ longevity at the company. This impressive Phnom Penh team consists of many senior software engineers.

📌 Our second hub is in Bali (Indonesia), an attractive workplace both for local talent and high-skilled expats. It is also a fantastic place to live and work, as the pictures of our Bali office illustrate clearly! 😉

📌 In 2020, we welcomed a new hub to the Slash family, our third one – Yerevan. It boasts strong STEM talent thanks to the Soviet Union heritage and westernized culture with good English. Its location in the middle of Asia and Europe makes Yerevan the perfect hub to provide support to our Eurasian clients.

Highlight 3 – New services, new capabilities

In 2020, we expanded our Product Team at Slash and decided to start externalizing our product strategy & research and product design services to offer them to Clients. Previously, we primarily focused our Product Team on our own startup ideas.

By externalizing our product capabilities, we now offer end-to-end digital product development services from idea to engineering, and thereafter maintenance & scaling.

In the process, we are systematizing and refining our product methodology and improving how we build our internal ideas. This will also provide opportunities for the Slash team to extend their skill sets.

Check out Part 2 here.