🌏 Hiring Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

You hired them to buy back your time. 3 months in, they're costing you more of it than before. Or the role won't fill, so you look further: a developer in KL you've never met, a freelancer in Manila on a contract nobody's checked. It's a bigger pool — and a whole new set of ways to get it wrong. Nobody teaches founders how to hire. You learn it 1 expensive mistake at a time. 🚀 So this one's about hiring, unfiltered. We've brought in 2 founders who hire in very different ways. Alfan Hendro rose to COO at Traveloka as its team grew to about 2,000, most of them in Indonesia. Now he's running Revenue Scaler, which uses AI to track market share, pricing and competitors for brands and sellers on Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop. And he's building a team again. Kevin Sim founded Eigen Energy, which designs and installs solar, EV-charging and battery systems. It led the project behind Singapore's 1st clean-energy-powered Shell stations. To grow it, he's hired everyone from software engineers to licensed electricians who have to be on site. Both will be honest about the hires they'd take back. It's a small room: founders, business owners and the HR leads who hire for them. 🍽️ Food and drinks are on us. Agenda 3:00pm — Registration + food & drinks + networking 3:25pm — Intro + a quick word from Glints 3:30pm — Panel Sharing 🧠 4:15pm — Audience Q&A 4:30pm — Open mic + networking 5:00pm — End 🔥 Meet Our Speakers Alfan Hendro (Co-Founder & CEO @ Revenue Scaler) Alfan's 1st startup began with the property ads people stuck up at bus stops. He built a site to put the ads online, collecting them at lunch and typing them up in the evenings. That site, SG-House, was bought by iProperty in 2010. He joined Traveloka in 2014 to start its hotel business, back when it only sold flights. Of everything he built there, the team is what he's proudest of. Founded in 2023, Revenue Scaler is an AI-powered e-commerce intelligence company backed by East Ventures. It made Singapore Business Review's 20 Hottest Startups of 2025. Kevin Sim (Founder & Head of Business @ Eigen Energy) Kevin got hooked on solar through a solar-car race at school, and founded Eigen Energy in 2015. It designs and installs solar, EV-charging and battery systems. The start was hard: no track record, and a string of rejections before a United Nations project in the Maldives gave Eigen its 1st big break. In 2021, Eigen won an EMA–Shell grant, announced in Parliament, to lead the project behind Singapore's 1st clean-energy-powered Shell stations. By 2024 it had put solar on about 1,000 homes, and today it's a group with its own construction and software arms and a company in Thailand. 🌏 About Glints TalentHub Sooner or later, the right person for the job lives in KL or Jakarta, and hiring them seems to mean setting up a company there first. Glints TalentHub finds the talent, then employs them for you, handling payroll and compliance in markets like Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, with no local entity needed. → See how to hire across Southeast Asia without setting up a company there 🚀 About The Runway Ventures The Runway Ventures is a weekly newsletter that helps founders and operators get sharper by learning from other people's mistakes. Every Sunday you get 1 failed startup story, 2 mistakes, and 3 lessons you can actually use, all for free. We've broken down the ones everyone still talks about: Style Theory, eFishery, TaniHub, Kaodim, Fusionex, Privé, and Oriente. Today 84,000+ founders, operators, and investors across Southeast Asia follow us. We also run Beyond Runway, a private, vetted community of founders doing $100K–$20M a year, so you stop making $1M decisions alone. Every month: a handpicked warm intro in your inbox, and a seat at a curated dinner (6 founders, 1 table, 1 topic) — We call it Circle. It's the heart of Beyond Runway.