A “Start-Up is Not A Democracy” – we often wonder how the inner workings of a start-up are usually like and how exciting it must be to be in that? In fact, there is a lot of politics to run it and one has to be smart in order to manage it.

Piktochart Webcamp event has hosted many aspiring entrepreneurs, developers, marketers, growth hackers, and individuals who are passionate about the local startup scene. They also had the privilege of having notable local and international speakers at their webcamp seminars.

Chew Soon’s speech titled “Start-up is not a Democracy” during the event talked about his challenges and struggles of founding Soft Space (spoiler alert: it’s not all rainbows and unicorns).

He explained that when venturing in the Fintech industry, certification and recognition by the EMVCo is crucial for banks and other financial institutions to have confidence and trust in you to conduct business with. In this case, securing EMVco certifications are important and that is what he did first. And the rest is history!

One of his slides, he wrote:

“The general misconception:

Business owners attend seminars and read books on sensitivity and how to make their employees love them. They want to be friends and colleagues. Hard and fast rules make them squeamish. They operate under the mistaken but widely held belief that they’ll get more out of their employees if they’re loved.”

The essence of his whole presentation was build up to this point, a “start-up is not a Democracy”. He said “a company is not a democracy, the only opinion that counts are that of ownership”.

What he meant by this is that, at the end of the day the CEO/Founder is responsible to execute their (business) battle plans as flawless as possible. They are the one who are answerable to the investors, directors, shareholders and consumers.

Being an entrepreneur is never easy, especially being an up and coming start-up. But with a lot of hard work and determination, anything is impossible. It’s events like these that are important for the entrepreneurship community – to help founders find their footing in what they do. Every guidance that they can take is crucial for them to grow.