Learn From Leaders is a platform where we give voice to the opinions of our leaders, mentors and industry experts in the Asian technology, innovation and startup community. Here, you will find recommendations of books, blogs and even podcasts that will be highly relevant to you as an entrepreneur.

To help you stand on the shoulders of the most brilliant minds in the world, we present you with invaluable advice obtained through a targeted interview of 5 questions about our leaders’ career development and life lessons.

Overall, we hope that we, as Chinaccelerator and MOX, can utilize our resources as leading cross-border internet accelerators in Asia to benefit you in terms of business knowledge, career development, and more importantly, how to succeed in both work and life. Cheers!

Learn From Leaders With William Bao Bean, General Partner at SOSV, Managing Director at Chinaccelerator & MOX

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors have been called many things from arrogant navel gazers to immoral jerks. But it pays to keep an eye on the leading global startup and innovation ecosystem and the best way to do that is by reading The Information. It’s amazing the amount of crazy stuff that goes down in the valley and The Information hands down has the best coverage. As a bonus, they also have great Asia coverage led by the amazing Shai Oster who attended Chinaccelerator Demo Day 8 in the winter of 2015 and in 2016 chose Bitmex as the subject of a feature article, then just another early stage startup but now the most valuable startup in the history of Hong Kong. The Information costs money but it’s well worth it. Hit the link to check it out for just Usd1.00. http://thein.fo/r/shai MORE

Lean B2B: Build Products Businesses Want (Customer Development & Lean Startup in B2B) | Étienne Garbugli

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Learn From Leaders With Oscar Ramos, Partner & Managing Director at Chinaccelerator

This year we completed a shift with more focus on B2B companies, but still, the core of our activities is around challenging all the assumptions behind any business models, rapid experimentation to validate and discover what works.

Entrepreneurs tend to think that is a consumer-facing product type of operation. In SOSV, we have already proved that Lean Startup can be applied to areas that were never applied, like hardware via our HAX program or biotech with our IndieBio and RebelBio Programs.

In the book, the author covers the cycle of the launch of a B2B product from a top-down approach but goes in details to very specific tactics that can be used for experimentation. The book starts with describing some of the concerns from B2B entrepreneurs and explains why those concerns are actually what creates an opportunity for startups in the space… MORE

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs | John Doerr

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Learn From Leaders With Jenne Wong, Program Director at MOX – Mobile Only Accelerator

For any entrepreneurs who are in the stage of setting up teams, scaling, or expanding cross-border, there is a constant need to evaluate and discuss company targets with the team in an agile manner. We often get distracted by the daily activities that lose our focus on the bigger goal; having a robust regular informal team target discussion is critical to growth. 

 The OKR book is a constant reminder of how we should measure the critical factors contributing to objectives regularly between management and team members.  In 2019 we had an insightful meeting with Manoj Kohli, the former CEO and joint managing director at Bharti AirTel Limited, the #1 mobile telecommunication in India growing business from zero to 150m plus mobile subscribers, advised our startups regarding organization culture: informalities and speed of decision making is the edge of success. Constant innovation and brainstorming with teams are what make your company leap forward. 

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days | Jessica Livingston

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Learn From Leaders With TR Harrington, Program Director at MOX – Mobile Only Accelerator

Provides short chapter interviews with Internet 1.0 founders of PayPal, Hotmail, etc. The lessons learned from the 1.0 are still valuable to the 2.0+ internet founders and many of these covered became famous angel investors, serial entrepreneurs and mentors to 2.0 companies. It is an easy read in that each chapter is only a few pages on a different founder and company so you can read a chapter even between meetings.

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses | Eric Ries 

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Learn From Leaders With Navin Danapal, Director of Southeast Asia at MOX – Mobile Only Accelerator

The book looks at how many of the failures in startups are actually preventable. It takes you through a lean approach that many companies are adopting, which is changing the way products are launched. The lean approach encourages entrepreneurs to continuously test their vision, rather than create elaborate but unrealistic business plans. I used to be involved in Microsoft Ventures Lean Startup Machine in my previous role and it was eye opening when we ran workshops with corporates and saw how new methodologies really helped executives approach problem statements with a simple execution rather than complex processes instead – and this was evident in LSM’s “Get Out Of The Building!” which tests assumptions and validates it instead of relying on just data alone. It’s important for founders to understand the know-hows of building a company with few resources, especially if they are in a developing ecosystem like Southeast Asia, where talent is scarce and industry maturity varies.