PayPal Stories Archive

Rachel Chan decided to pack in her job at a startup to start a company of her own after years of working for someone else. And despite the tremendous amount of stress and work involved, it’s a decision that has really paid off for her.

 

“It came to a point when I was no longer comfortable in my old job, at a startup, and I needed to be in the next phase of my career. Being in a startup and not in a typical corporate setting, there was not much potential for career progression for me. In a startup, once you hit 40-45 years old, you tend to get replaced by someone younger and cheaper,” explains Rachel. Faced with that sobering reality, Rachel reengaged her focus towards a new venture, in an industry that was still in its infancy in Singapore. Nonetheless, it held great potential, and with trepidation and excitement, Rachel brought Eggsplore's key product, LIV3LY, to market.

 

LIV3LY is an online marketplace for sporting events like marathons. The company supports event organisers with a plug-and-play solution for registration, race pack collection, design and hosting of event websites as well as managing race results and certification.

 

Rachel always wants to go above and beyond to distinguish Eggsplore from its competitors. As the company became more established, it was a natural extension to go the extra mile with a more holistic solution and help race organizers by including the collection of registration fees on their behalf in Singapore and abroad. But Eggsplore faced a major problem: how could it deal with different currencies in the region—especially controlled currencies like the Malaysian ringgit?

 

It seemed at first like a costly stumbling block for Rachel. She was successfully expanding overseas but when Eggsplore managed a race event’s registration abroad, it had to collect fees from runners in the local currency, transfer it back to Singapore to pay its costs, then the remainder would be transferred yet again to the race organizer abroad. The forex transfer rate fees often cost Rachel a pretty penny.

 

Rachel explored different ways to solve her problem but most required companies to have a business presence in the other country before online transactions could be done. “At the time, my company was very young—less than two months old. That's when I spoke to PayPal and told them about this issue. They advised me to set up my account first and together we found a workable solution”. When Eggsplore now works with an Australian client, for example, they were then able to manage all the participant registrations in Australian dollars and send the money straight to the client's account without losing a single cent in exchange rates.

 

Rachel continues to look for new ways to make everything as seamless as possible for her clients and the on the ground insight from her team has helped her company grow as they continue to add valuable services to help their customers - from easy cost effective handling of payments, to customer service. “Customer calls are now routinely routed to Singapore. We do customer service for the event organizers, and runners recognize us as a representative of the event. So instead of saying no, we're not involved with the organizer, we become an extension of them, and this builds the LIV3LY brand,” she says.

 

But what is the next step for LIV3LY? “Other than serving the needs of the event organizers, we must not neglect the need to engage and better understand our athletes. What is their needs beside joining a race? How about travel to race? Health care support if they got injured, data on race performance, etc.”. It is all in the works.

 

Nonetheless, Rachel admits that they have to be realistic and realize that they're still just a two-year-old company. Her current challenge is to find ways to maximize the resources she has while expanding to other markets as rapidly as is prudent. Besides being involved in China and Malaysia, she has set her sights on the Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. It’s a big world out there, and it’s a race to first place.

 

In her current position, Rachel has a good vantage point to see how far she’s come and how far she has to push forward. She has this to say to people dreaming of their first startup: "There is no guarantee that your business will become a success and it could fail overnight. Be fearless and believe in what you do. I told my team often, ‘It’s okay if you make mistakes, go ahead and make them. Just don’t repeat them.’ The experience you’ve gain from each mistake will make you stronger and more knowledgeable. Even if one day, I am left with nothing, I still have this experience and drive to start all over again.”