This article first appeared in Personal Wealth, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on February 11, 2019 - February 17, 2019
Goh Ai Ching, co-founder of Penang-based infographic application platform Piktochart, believes that giving back to society is equally as important as growing one’s wealth. To put this into action, she divides her money into two “buckets”. One is dedicated to financial security and generating income while the other is for giving back to the community.
She places the money from the first bucket in financial products that will provide her with slow and steady returns such as fixed deposits. “I am looking to generate returns for my family’s financial security, especially now that I have a child,” says the 30-year-old entrepreneur Goh admits that she is not adventurous when it comes to investing as she only puts her money in products that she truly understands. Investing in something complex would mean many hours of due diligence and time is a luxury she does not have.
“I am pretty straightforward when it comes to investments. I do not invest in things such as foreign exchange and cryptocurrencies,” she says.
“I do have a lot of friends who invest in cryptocurrencies and they often tell me that they gain a lot in a short amount of time with just a few hundred ringgit in capital. It sounds good, but I think I would only dive in if I completely understood how it worked. If I do not, I would rather not even start.”
When it comes to the second bucket, financial returns are the least of her concern. Instead, she seeks out social enterprises that help those in urgent need of funding to meet their basic necessities.
“My thought process goes like this: I am not investing for ringgit and sen, I am investing in people’s well-being. I find it fulfilling when I know that the amount I have given has been used to provide a roof over the heads of a family of five so that they do not have to be afraid of the monsoon season, for example,” says Goh.
The amount in this bucket grows in tandem with the growth of her business, she adds. When Piktochart — a tool the company developed to help users easily create infographics and visuals — took off a few years after the business was launched in 2011, she and her husband achieved financial stability. They started talking about what to do with the accumulated wealth and came up with the two-bucket system.
Goh knows that the social enterprises working on such projects may not be able to generate enough revenue to offer contributors like her any sort of financial return. But she does not mind contributing as she fully believes in the causes that she supports.
“The more money I make, the more I think about giving back. I just want to see people’s lives improve. I want to see them going to school and having a place to call home. It is as simple as that,” she says.
However, there are opportunists out there who may take advantage of this movement. That is why Goh knows not to simply invest in projects without doing proper due diligence.
“When selecting where to contribute, my husband and I usually speak to the people behind the companies to ensure that they are not going to run away with the money. We also make sure that the money is actually used to fund the causes because we know that some companies use a large chunk of it for marketing activities,” she says.
Goh enjoys investing in social projects a lot more. She finds it enriching when she hears stories of people who were impacted by her contribution.
“Usually, we do not hear directly from them. But occasionally, we will get small trinkets and letters from the children whose education was sponsored by us. It is good to hear that they now have a better chance of getting out of poverty and having a promising career in their home country and perhaps even making a change. To me, that makes everything worth doing,” says Goh.
“I believe there has to be balance in everything you do. You cannot give away your entire wealth and not use it to take care of yourself and your family. You cannot care more about those living in African villages than your own parents. Strike a balance.”
Starting from scratch
Despite being a successful entrepreneur today, Goh did not plan to be one. She holds a degree in experimental psychology from the University of Bristol in the UK, which she pursued because she was interested in learning how the human mind works. However, she left the field because she found out that it was not what she thought it would be.
After completing a short internship with an investment bank, Goh worked as an associate media manager at Procter & Gamble, where she managed more than US$14 million in ad spend for Singapore and Malaysia. However, the corporate environment and work culture was not for her and she felt lost and unmotivated most of the time.
“I wanted to work at a place where there is a strong and supportive culture, but I could not find one. So, I decided to create one,” says Goh.
“That was actually the first reason I started Yet Another Studio. I wanted to create a workplace where people love coming to work because they feel connected to the mission and purpose of the company.”
Goh founded the company with her husband in 2011, when she was just 23, using money borrowed from their family members. Although people may think building the business back then was tougher than running the operations today, it is the complete opposite, she says. Back then, she was just executing her ideas and did not worry about a lot of things.
“Today, I face many difficult challenges. I know what is wrong and I have to fix them. At the same time, I am trying to change mindsets and learning to become a better leader. These are actually very tough. When I was young, I was oblivious to all these things,” says Goh.
Piktochart started as a side business to the existing graphic design agency that the couple was running. Goh came up with the idea of introducing the tool after reading about digital marketing and learning that content marketing was going to be a lot more popular than push marketing. She could foresee that information would be presented in a more visual form. So, she decided to develop the tool.
Piktochart is an intuitive cloud-based infographic solution. The beginner-friendly tool allows users to choose from a library of more than 600 professionally designed infographic, presentation and print templates to create their own visuals.
The business started as a four-person operation in a small warehouse in Penang. It uses a subscription model, charging individual users between RM29 and RM79 a month. After about a year, in November 2012, the number of users reached 170,000.
Business has since boomed. Today, Piktochart has 50 employees and 11 million users. It is widely regarded as the industry standard, used by media organisations such as Forbes, TechCrunch and The Guardian to create infographics that accompany their articles. Over the years, there have been various prominent user jumps, thanks to huge events such as the US presidential election in 2016 and the French presidential election in 2017.
Piktochart has received several accolades since its inception. They include the Best of Start-up Companies Award at the Malaysia APICTA Awards 2012, the Japan New Business Conferences Chairman’s Prize at the Asian Entrepreneurship Award 2013 and The Best Global Entrepreneurship Award 2013 by Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd.
Goh has worked hard to make Piktochart an organisation where employees do not dread coming to work to. In 2016 and 2017, it became a WorldBlu-certified company and was listed as a freedom-centred workplace. That means the company develops a high-energy, high-growth and high-performing workplace culture using a system that focuses on freedom rather than using fear and control.
Goh is a member of Forbes Technology Council, an invitation-only organisation for senior-level technology executives. According to its website, members are selected based on their depth and diversity of experience.
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