Liyen Tan is the founder and CEO of Hawkr, a marketplace for homemade food delivery! Currently based in Malaysia, Hawkr plans to expand to Singapore towards the end of Q1 next year.

👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

We aggregate the most delicious homemade food made by home cooks in your neighborhood and deliver them straight to your doorstep! That's what Hawkr is all about. It's as simple as that.

🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

Two things. Firstly, I'm sure my fellow founders know this but running a startup is not as glamorous as it seems. No yachts, cocktail parties, beanbags in the office, etc. Just loads of scrappy work I'd probably never do at any other job.

Examples include:

1. Chatting with customers and merchants at ungodly hours. To me, understanding our users is so much more than just running a survey and calling it a day. If we want Hawkr to be a huge part of their lives, it's only fair that we try to understand what their lives look like as much as they are willing to share.

2. Walking around town, speaking with people who could be users but aren't yet.

3. Cooking. Yes, in Hawkr's earliest days, I was merchant #1. Can't expect people to enjoy being merchants if I don't even know what it's like to be one.

Secondly, to say that running a startup is a rollercoaster ride is an understatement. One day my team and I feel like we're on the path to world domination. The next, we feel like we're going to die any minute.

🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

Getting an investment, getting more customers, more revenue and all that stuff is nice, but they're not why I do what I do. It's the little wins and the process of building every day that keep me going.

Seeing our merchants grow from cooking for 5 to 50 people, getting a lovely thank you message from an 85-year-old uncle who orders from Hawkr every day, and watching my teammates flourish make up the biggest highlights of this career so far. I wouldn't have it any other way!

🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

As an Econ graduate, definitely marketplaces because the dynamics between the different sides that comprise a marketplace are fascinating to me.

And anything food-related too, because I'm a huge foodie!

💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry?

Launch quickly, fail, laugh at yourself, iterate, repeat. Founding a startup is more affordable than ever. What surprised me was how little I actually needed to spend to build and launch something. Hawkr relied on Reddit, Google Forms, Google Sheets, Zapier, and Airtable for over a year.

This meant if you were a Hawkr customer a few months ago, you'd literally place an order on Google Forms and make the payment separately. We know it was a far cry from other established platforms like GrabFood and Foodpanda but launching quickly helped us learn and gain that early validation we needed to build a platform users actually want.

I will say this, though. Although founding a startup is more affordable than ever, I say this with a lot of privilege. I want to play an active role in the startup community in making it more accessible for anyone to venture into entrepreneurship.

🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?

Food (especially Malaysian food), game theory, and escape rooms. If we're ever in the same city, hit me up so we can head to an escape room together.

If we don't escape, I guess you'll have to listen to me talk about Malaysian food and game theory for eternity.

🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show?

This is going to be so generic, but I'm a huge fan of Game of Thrones. Westworld comes at a close second. But anything Disney will always have a special place in my heart!

🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Hokey Pokey. If you don't know what it is, Google it!