Alvan Aiau Yong

This is one of the hardest thing to do when you are growing really fast. A common mistake is to structure teams based on individual talents. I prefer to start with objectives, followed by structure before deciding who to hire. We can also talk about how to manage remote and diverse teams of different sizes. I've lead team sizes between 2-70 and it requires very different approaches but with very similar fundamentals.

Sales is critical to growth but it's pointless if you have a "leaky bucket". Customer sucess is not only about retaining customers and driving revenue. When well executed, customer success can turn customers into advocates and evangalists. Whether you are a Saas or platform business, the land and expand strategy needs equal if not more focus than pure sales. I would love to chat about how you are driving additional revenue and loyalty from your customers.

I built the Airbnb for Work business from scatch in Asia Pacific from 2017-2020, scaling the business 3x in consecutive years. I grew the team and the business to cover major markets such as Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia, Japan, Korea, India and China. Prior to Airbnb I lead the Asia Pacific commercial team at CWT, focused on driving enterprise solution and advisory sales in the travel management business.

I am a mentor and advisor to many early stage startups, many of which are through work I do for the Antler and Blackbird founder community. One of the biggest decisions founders take is to whether or not to pursue specific ideas. I have heard many founders either receive advice from mentors that tell why the idea would not work or provide confirmation bias as to why it would 100% be great. I prefer to talk through how founders should use simple methodologies to validate ideas.

When you have a few people in your team, good manegerial skills are often good enough. If you want to build a successful career or a great company, leadership is essential. I believe leadership is an art form that combines creation of a vision, building of teams to achieve the vision and inspiring them to deliver beyond their own limitations. Whilst its an art, you can easily break them down to simple foundational elements that can easily create huge impact.

Having spent most of my career in logistics and travel, operations is in my blood. A great idea can only deliver amazing outcomes if you are able to execute and do it consistently in the most efficient manner. I'm six sigma trained, which really helps in quickly identifying inefficiencies and use data to help deisign processes that are scalable. I'd love to learn about your operational challenges and help you design the structure, process and tech to scale your idea.

At Airbnb and PayCargo, I lead teams to research, test and iterate products until you find a market fit in specific geographies and customer segments, especially in the B2B environment. If you're looking to understand what product features to prioritise that will get more interests from customers, we should chat.

One of the most complicated and powerful tool to manage sales teams and customer records. It's a nightmare if you don't set it up well but an amazing tool when done right.