Successful Entrepreneur That I Admire: Jessica Li – The Founder Of Dah Makan
Dah Makan was founded when three young entrepreneurs had an idea that could revolutionise the Food & Beverage (F&B) Industry, Jonathan Weins, Jessica Li, and Christian Edelmann. They have dabbled with the food in the past such as, with Food Panda and being a food writer. It shows that they have a passion for food, and they are hands-on involved in creating Dah Makan’s menu, together with the talented chefs and customers’ feedback.
It started from a small apartment using the CEO’s own kitchen and public transport to deliver their earliest batch of quality meals. By meeting a lot of customers, they quickly discovered that they were solving a serious problem which many of us had faced on a daily basis. Many of them were sacrificing time, health and money on low quality meals when they had only minutes to spare each day. Their earliest customers embraced Dah Makan quickly and started to recommend us to their friends, colleagues and families and the potential Dah Makan had.
Jessica Li, whom have a very impressive tenure to uphold. She has a background in Psychology, receiving a bachelor’s degree with Honours in Psychology at the University College of London, and a master’s degree in Organisational Psychology at the University of New South Wales. With the experience of being a senior consultant for 3 years, progressing at the head of marketing at Food Panda in Hong Kong and now being Dah Makan Co-founder and COO. This woman has played an important role in the company, since she has impressive resume which includes, working with Food Panda, being a food writer, and help open a restaurant in Hong Kong previously, and she has a very good management skill.
Since Dah Makan runs everything in-house, cooking, logistics, and delivery, to control quality. Her top management tips that have helped Dah Makan successfully, with hiring great and talented people and give them more responsibility and freedom to do their best. In an environment of rapid growth and change, It is interesting to have people who can break things and build it again and go beyond what they have envisioned, initially hired them to do. The other thing is to give and receive feedback regularly, communicating expectations makes working together a lot easier.
Jessica Li has a different kind of strengths when dealing with obstacle, failure, and uncertainty. She stated that the experience of building something from scratch and going through so much together gives you a lot of emotional strength. In terms of building yourself up, it helps to consider that each challenge and failure is a a part of a journey and to embrace and learn from. From the mistakes that have been made such as in the beginning was to hire for experience rather than attitude where one can be learned, and one can’t. Another would be not taking more risks and playing it safe. , the way she overcomes it with, accepting it and always keep improving.
Recently, Dah Makan is on the point of closing more than US$2 million in follow-on funding after its US$1. 3 million seed round back in February, the company has told Tech in Asia. One of the investors is famed start-up accelerator Y Combinator (YC), which has just accepted Dah Makan into its latest cohort. Dah Makan is the first start-up from Malaysia to enter the program. Bringing Malaysia’s first start up food delivery company on an international scale and expanding its horizons for more future endeavours.
