Founder Mythos
From Motorbike Dispatch to a Nation's Super-App
By getting to know them I quickly realized that this informal sector is incredibly valuable.
Gojek began in 2010 as a call centre dispatching a few motorbike-taxi drivers he knew personally.
What looked informal and disorganised was, with the right rail, a nationwide logistics network waiting to happen.
This was the only job that I would have accepted in government.
He left the company he built to become Indonesia's education minister, calling schooling the root of opportunity.
A founder's leverage does not end at the company. It can move an entire country's institutions.
If more governments acted like entrepreneurs, this world would be in a far better place.
He carried startup habits into a ministry: ship, learn, iterate, rather than plan for years.
The founder mindset is not just for founders. It is a way to run any large, stuck system.