"Life as an entrepreneur is tough" Is An Understatement For Vanessa Techapichetvanich

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September 12, 2022

Some business owners spend years building a company only to see it fail before it even takes off. How are you going to survive and cope? Will you just give up that dream business?

We all know that life as an entrepreneur is complex, but once you hit it, everything falls into place. Following the example of 27-year-old Thai entrepreneur Vanessa Techapichetvanich as she trusted the process and waited for the right moment to reap the benefits of her efforts.

Read through as Vanessa shares her story with the AHN community about building her passion-driven business Jamulogy, a 100% plant-based Indonesian herbal tonic. She discusses her struggles that almost made her give up, and what kept her going in order to reach her successes today.

Hitting Rock Bottom At The Very Start

2 years ago, I poured all my life’s savings into building Jamulogy. I raised quite a significant amount of funding through families and angel investors, built my first factory from scratch, and lost over $1M, due to the pandemic and an over-prioritization of FoodTech R&D.

I was devastated. This tremendous loss was beyond tragic. I was at the point where I wondered whether it was stupid for me to leave my high pay corporate job only to lose all my savings along with a sum of money from my investors.

What am I going to feed myself tomorrow? What will my employees do when they lose their job? How will I regain all the money I’ve lost? How will it affect women founders’ reputation in the startup ecosystem?

These questions and my desperation kept me wide awake at night for months. I was distressed, depressed, and hopeless. It was one of the lowest moments of my life.

It also made me realize that when someone says “life as an entrepreneur is tough”, it is very much an understatement. You’re pretty much living on the edge 24/7, giving your 10000% best while success isn’t guaranteed.

What am I going to feed myself tomorrow? What will my employees do when they lose their job? How will I regain all the money I’ve lost? How will it affect women founders’ reputation in the startup ecosystem?
-Vanessa Techapichetvanich

Shedding Some Light On Untapped Opportunities

I almost gave up. I would have.. had I not coincidentally connected with someone from AHN who is in the import and export business. One really good thing about this group is you have people from everywhere around the globe, and they are able to share insightful expertise on some stuff you’re not familiar with.

I joined AHN more than a year ago when Facebook suggested the group to me. One day, I saw some people posted about expanding their food products to big retailers like Walmart, Wholefoods, and Costco, and from there, I got to connect with someone from San Francisco who works for a national distributor company in the US, and that’s how Jamulogy’s products entered the US market.

This encounter shed some light on untapped opportunities and calls for a pivot in our business model. And I have been rebuilding since January. Despite the adversity I have been put through, this journey has been my greatest teacher yet.

I’m proud to share that Jamulogy is now available in 5 countries worldwide, including the US, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Thailand. Jamulogy has also recently “graduated” from Southeast Asia’s biggest FoodTech accelerator program.

Despite the adversity I have been put through, this journey has been my greatest teacher yet.
-Vanessa Techapichetvanich

Transforming Traditional And Holistic Drinks Into Recipes Of Yummy

Jamulogy was born out of my passion for a healthy lifestyle and my dream to bring Asian pride to the global stage. My mother is Indonesian, and I was introduced to Jamu when I was 5. The word “Jamu” itself means herbs in Indonesian. Sadly, our generation in Asia has overlooked these Indonesian herbal drinks that have over 1,300 years of history as they often associate herbal blends with older people.

Using modern food tech and all-natural non-GMO ingredients, we aim to recreate traditional Indonesian Jamu as a way to restore health to modern consumers. We are also committed to debunking the myth that healthy food tastes terrible.

Our concept is “From farm to bottle,” and we take every opportunity to support local farmers & growers around Asia. Each bottle contains only 40-80 calories without cane sugar or highly processed ingredients.

Going forward, we are also diverging our product offerings into herbal powder mix to cater to different consumer lifestyles across the world.

Inspiration To Keep Going and Work Harder

What inspires me the most are our customers. I received all sorts of feedback from customers, both positive and negative. Whenever I hear our customers telling us how our products have created a value-adding impact on their health and life, I can’t help but smile to myself.

But of course, we also received negative feedback and complaints, which I got a lot of value from as those have helped us improve, adjust, and create even better products for our customers. Truth be told, we have experimented with over 150 recipes. It was a struggle at the start, but “fall seven times, get up eight.”

It’s the joy of being able to create a positive impact in society that keeps me going.

It’s the joy of being able to create a positive impact in society that keeps me going.
-Vanessa Techapichetvanich

Advice To Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it.
Do not let your failures define who you are, but do learn from them. Every successful person I know has gone through several major failures before they get to where they are today.
Surround yourself with like-minded people. I can’t stress enough the importance of this.

For me, the most important traits of being an entrepreneur are a growth mindset and adaptability. It’s not about who has the most brilliant ideas or who has the highest IQ, but more so who adapts the quickest to fit the market’s needs and customers’ expectations.

Connect With Vanessa

You may check out our IG/FB at @drinkjamulogy.

If you’re just starting an F&B business or planning on exporting to Asia and want some advice, feel free to reach out as well. I’ll try my best to answer

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Wu first realized the importance of insurance policy when her 20-year-long best friend lost his father and financial backbone at the same time after the latter’s father died of cancer.

Upon knowing more than a year ago that she was pregnant, it gave her mixed emotions as a 16-hour working woman who travels from here and there.

Trying to sort out the situation, she researched articles on early-stage founders as moms but failed to find ones that fit.

As a BIPOC member, she sought a community from the same race who are also women founders only to find out that barely 7% of the global fintech community are women and that they only receive 2.4% of the total capital invested for startups.

Finding no one, Wu felt alone and wondered how others balanced the various startup stages while starting a family.

The journey was never easy for Wu but truly, hard work, goal orientation, and perseverance make everything achievable.

Wu started to plan everything before and after her delivery and how she would be able to raise funds for her business considering the time when the market dropped so low.

While thinking about getting a nanny and how the set-up would be after her delivery, Wu engaged in lower-stakes conversations to test investor sentiments, and fortunately, she was able to secure a large reinsurer’s venture arm.

Wu also woke up early in the morning daily to study for her investment adviser exam and everything else she did with her impending delivery as motivation.

Three days before finally giving birth, they signed the term sheet for the company.

In the 9-month time of pregnancy and struggle towards establishing the business, Wu raised over $25 million in investments and thereafter hired a full leadership team, kicked off their RIA status, signed several significant partnership contracts, and grew their revenue four times: everything planned in her to-do list.

With her success, she shares in Quartz 5 work strategies to prepare for parenthood:

Sort your parental leave plan. It’s harder for early-stage founders to take leave, but preparing your care plan and naming what’s important to you.

Consider your travel schedule. Prioritize travel by business needs, and don’t be afraid to break from the way it “should be” done.

Become an expert on roles and responsibilities at home. You, your co-parents, and caregivers must become experts on the roles and responsibilities at home. Stay connected to the right people and in the right ways.

Plan for everything and expect failure. Be easy on yourself when mistakes happen, or roadblocks pop up.

You don’t have to choose. We don’t have to choose between our careers and families. It’s not easy, it will be far from perfect, and undoubtedly you’ll need a lot of support, but you can have it all if that’s what you want.

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With 22 goals, the most in the NHL, the 23-year-old Filipino-American left winger for the Dallas Stars, made his season a success.

Robertson extended his point streak to 13 games, tying the Dallas Stars record set by Dave Gagner in the early 90s with a point over their opponent Blackhawks on Wednesday.

On Thursday night, he scored three goals, which were assisted by Joel Kiviranta and Wyatt Johnston, as well as Oettinger’s 31 saves in a shutout victory.

His 39 points ranked second in the league, trailing only Connor McDavid and setting himself as the highest-pointer in the 24 games of the season for Dallas Stars.

Leading the way for the Stars, the victory was the team’s second straight triumph and was the 10th time Dallas had scored points in the previous 11 games.

Additionally, Miro Heiskanen and Roope Hintz also both enjoyed multi-point outings with three and two assists, respectively.

Stars coach Pete DeBoer reportedly claimed that “Robo is a guy that’s honestly hard to defend because he scores in a bunch of different ways,” according to the Dallas Morning News.

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Coach Pete also remarked on how amazed he was to see Robertson play such an exceptional game and how incredible the player was for making it seem simple despite the difficulty of the game.

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“It’s like she dances with life,” a netizen commented.

During the tragic incident in Sichuan where Zhi was trapped in the ruins of a building for 30 hours, she not only lost her legs but the most important persons in her life, her 10-month-old daughter who died in the disaster and her husband who divorced her seven months after the tragedy.

Being the only one to survive in the devastated building, the brave woman neither shed a tear nor complained of everything she went through including her legs being amputated.

Instead, Zhi said that “The earthquake gave me rebirth.”

After learning to walk with her artificial limbs, Zhi moved on from the nightmare by continuing and staging her passion in different places.

Although the training had been difficult and painful, Zhi was determined in doing what she loves.

According to the South China Morning Post, she and her husband-dance partner defeated competitors in China and won as first runner-up in the reality show Dance Out My Life in 2013.

Her husband became her strong support in recovering from her downfall.

Despite having been through a lot, Zhi remained optimistic. “Dance is my ray of sunshine, and while I would also be fine if I didn’t dance, I would not feel the same sense of joy that it gives me when I do,” she said.

Being an inspiration to many, Zhi’s life story was turned into a play entitled Angel’s Psalm that was staged at Kwai Tsing Theatre in 2015.

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AGA appointed Jared Stern’s “A Stern Talking To” former vice president of cinema and television Winsor Yuan to lead its film and television section.

As for the short form, such as music videos, advertisements, and branded content, Doug Klinger, co-founder of Internet Music Video Database and Reprobates agent and executive producer, will be in charge.

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Tran and Estrada were quoted in the Hollywood Reporter as saying, “We couldn’t be happier about providing a creative home for emerging filmmakers looking for a window into this often insular industry.”

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“We are looking forward to partnering up with the most inspiring independent voices coming from communities that have been historically overlooked and helping them usher their stories into the world,” the two added.

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