In 2009, Daniel Cerventus Lim and a former business partner started a simple Facebook community group to find connections and support for their own business a while back.
Little did Daniel know that this community group would today be the catalyst for overwhelming growth not only for him but for his friends and the 69 thousand members of this Facebook community group which enables entrepreneurs to reach their full potential.
‘Entrepreneurs and Startup Malaysia’, as the group is known, was born to empower entrepreneurs in Malaysia to grow and learn from each other. It provides a platform where startups and entrepreneurs can connect, network and finds answers to solutions on their entrepreneurial journey. About 15 volunteers act as moderators to manage and engage in the admin role for the group whenever they can. Some of the main questions and posts discussed are issues pertaining to best practices, best services, suppliers and providers for digital tech and online businesses.
Throughout the pandemic, the community came together to help each other’s businesses survive. The community group has been busier ever since the pandemic hit last year due to the spike in online start-ups and digital entrepreneurs.
“I think some of the key challenges last year was some of our members messaged us saying they only have 2 months worth of cash to survive. Some as little as 2 weeks. We were wondering what we could do and decided to help them pivot.
“One may think it sounds trivial, but we got people who survived financial crashes and the second person that got quarantined during SARS from Alibaba to share how they came out of those times of darkness and thrive,” he says.
Recently having successfully qualified to enter the FB Community Accelerator Programme, Daniel says that by being of service to the startup community and addressing a need to provide a place where new businesses and startup entrepreneurs can find answers to their issues, the founding members including himself found their purpose in serving a growing community.
Yeap Mei Yi, founder of We Can Academy, Daniel Lui, founder of Law tech Malaysia, and Lily Sim, founder of YOLOPacers are some of the key members from ‘Entrepreneurs and Startup Malaysia’ who are participating together with Daniel in the FB Community Accelerator Programme which helps community leaders connect and learn more on how to effectively lead communities.
Through the programme, Facebook will be awarding over USD 7M in funding to Accelerator participants to support work that advances their communities’ goals. The 2021 Accelerator participant cohort can be found on https://www.facebook.com/community/accelerator/.
