Yann Schuermans is the CEO and founder of Baskit, a company focused on digitizing offline distribution infrastructure in Indonesia.

They work with middlemen who own infrastructure supporting 80% of the total flow of goods and more than 50% of GDP in order to create healthier and more transparent supply chains.

Baskit has raised a total of $4.8M in funding!

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

My job is to rally people who are equally (or more) passionate about making supply chains stronger. My pastime is to be in the trenches with them.

Modernizing the middlemen in traditional supply chains can be difficult as we deal with a tremendous amount of diversity in terms of customer profiles, digital maturity, and the specific socioeconomic nuances of that region. 

This means that one of the most important things I have to accomplish is to grow and develop a team that has the right intellectual curiosity, diversity, and resilience to step up to the plate.

Finally, I have to be an advocate for the category we are helping to create. Supporting the middlemen is not "sexy" and there is a huge amount of education that needs to be done with investors and the broader ecosystem so that we can come together and unlock the middleman opportunity. 

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

The amount of time I spend in the field. Most people would not expect it, but even though I am a foreigner, and my Indonesian is a work-in-progress, I go visit warehouses, drink kopi with owners, and spend time with the front line more than I am in the office. 

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

I was lucky to have had great opportunities with AB InBev, one of the world's largest FMCG giants. They brought me to Asia almost 8 years ago, gave me experiences across China, India, and SEA, and made me the youngest country CEO at the time. 

They also instilled an acute sense of urgency, ownership, and cost-awareness in me, which transpires not only in business but in all aspects of my life. 

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

My family has been in the supply chain space for 400+ years so I can't escape my DNA. I watch the space closely and learn every day about the great start-ups in SEA, Africa, and even LATAM that are making waves in the space.

It sounds cliche now but I've kept a close eye on AI. Not because I think that having a bot write my emails will change the world, but because our business is extremely focused on gathering data (which was previously offline) and being uniquely positioned to act on that data. 

I strongly believe that we will be an important infra to capture and act on supply chain data in the future and want to continue honing my skills/knowledge so I can connect more and more pertinent dots in the future. 

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

There is no right or wrong (especially if hype/investors/ecosystem are telling you so), there is only the desired outcome and path to get there. 

This will dictate what type of business you build and your unique path to funding (if any). Not raising money is a perfectly acceptable path to building a great business.

If you are going to pursue VC funding—I have a humble suggestion: different markets, countries, and even applications will be extremely nuanced. So—don't focus on what is going to be the most venture backable idea, focus on creating expertise in an area, developing a thesis, and hypothesis testing it into oblivion. 

If your conviction increases with every iteration, you're onto something.

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

Supply chains and Brazilian jiu jitsu.

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show? 

City of God (as a Brazilian I am just so proud of the production quality).

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

I am more of a salty person!

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FYI. We've edited this interview for clarity.