Learning Organizational Change Process and Woman Leadership from Hipwee Co-founder, Nendra Monik Rengganis
Nendra Monik Rengganis, one of the co-founders of Hipwee shared her journey on leading the Gen-Z oriented online media in a guest lecture for the Organizational Communication on June 8th, 2021.
Ms. Monik, as she usually refers to as, started Hipwee with her two friends in 2014 to cater for the need of light reading for Gen-Z and Millennials who spend most of their time online, seeking for information relatable to them.
Speaking in front of Communication students at Binus International, she points out three prominent lessons about organizational change process that her partners and she went through in establishing Hipwee.
First, changing goal is inevitable in any organization and Hipwee is no exception. She expresses that Hipwee changes its goal from Menemani langkahmu (accompanying your journey) to “to become an enabler of good causes for millennials and Gen-Z using our content and communities.”
“Hipwee serves as the bridge for good causes and movement,” she points out.
Second, Hipwee also experiences its exponential growth where the media must think of the way to survive in the fast-changing industry by having to monetizing the content.
“In order to grow bigger, we need to think of finding revenue. At that time, we got our first funding from Kejora, the funding company for start-ups,” Ms. Monik adds.
Third and most importantly, making a big decision to be part of a big entity was hard, but Hipwee managed to go through it just fine.
In 2015, Hipwee was acquitted by MigMe, a mobile entertainment holding based in Singapore. After the acquisition, the staff in Hipwee grew triple in a year and the marketing fund increased from USD10 to USD60.
Ms. Monik reveals that the culture in Hipwee changes from a start-up style to a corporate style, implementing a more economic-based approach to focus more on branding rather than sales.
Leading a start-up media company is not easy for Ms. Monik and conflicts are inevitable. She indicates several conflicts that occur within the company including the bankruptcy of the holding company, founding dilemma, and going through bootstrapping.
On the one hand, she wanted the company to be profitable, but on the other hand, she did not want the company to be dictated by other bigger company. For this reason, her two co-founders leave the company and she had to run the company through bootstrapping where she maintained the company in a small size but stays profitable.
Ms. Monik further explains her strategies in managing the conflicts. To maintain the company in the mid of unavoidable conflicts in the future, the company does the following:
- Stay true to the company core value
- Hire more staff slowly
- Run the company based on friendship
- Focus on growth, not money
- Find angel investors
Speaking about leadership, Ms. Monik states that a media industry is not a woman-friendly environment due to low work-life balance. Therefore, as a woman leader herself, she is committed to make Hipwee a woman-friendly company.
According to her, Hipwee aims to be a place where life can simultaneously runs with work, making work-life integration a thing.
Hipwee also encourage its content writers to write non-sexist, unbiased content. Most importantly, Hipwee promotes inclusive environment at workplace.
Hipwee is also committed to creating a safe platform for women to achieve their potential and women employees are allowed to adapt to their working time.
Last but not least, she makes sure that every decision in Hipwee is data-driven.
Contributor: Lily El Ferawati
Editor: Lily El Ferawati