Are Most Indonesian Startup Founders REALLY 'Indonesian'? Survey Says...

If you’ve ever wondered why Indonesia’s startup scene feels like someone threw a bunch of sticky notes at a whiteboard and called it a business plan, look no further than the founders themselves. They may technically be “Indonesian,” but only in the same way that someone who owns a surfboard for decoration is technically a “surfer.” We're talking about people who have spent more time calculating the exchange rate between the rupiah and U.S. dollars than ever actually setting foot on a TransJakarta bus. They're not really familiar with the lives of everyday Indonesians. They're just 'Indonesian enough' to check the right box for venture capitalists—qualifying for a 'local founder' badge while being completely out of touch with, well, Indonesia.

This is startup disruption in its most bizarre form: boasting about unlocking the "massive untapped market" of 270 million people while needing to ask their driver how much rice actually costs. If your life has consisted of bouncing between Jakarta’s gated communities, international schools, and Ivy League campuses, how much do you really know about the people you're trying to "empower"?

"Born in Indonesia, Schooled Abroad": The Recipe for Building Out-of-Touch Unicorns

In the world of Indonesian startups, the typical founder’s résumé reads like a highlight reel of everything most Indonesians will never experience. The formula is simple: be born into a family whose wealth includes not just land but an entire zip code or two, and speak your first word in English by age three. Their early education takes place in Jakarta’s elite international schools, where tuition costs more than most people’s lifetime savings and where the closest thing to a traffic jam is the valet line at drop-off.

From there, it’s off to a prestigious foreign university where they major in something that ends with '-preneurship.' This gives them an overblown sense of purpose and a chance to perfect their British or American accents, presumably to make their future TED Talks sound more credible. Studying abroad also allows them to 'find themselves,' preferably in a posh London flat or a New York loft, because nothing prepares you to solve third-world problems quite like living in the first-world lap of luxury.

When they finally return to Indonesia, it’s not to reconnect with their roots but to introduce their homeland to the marvels of innovation—as if nobody here had thought about creating apps before they showed up. Their knowledge of local life is mostly limited to what they've heard from household staff or that one time they took public transport “for the experience.” If asked to navigate a real wet market, they'd probably end up asking if there's a gluten-free section.

Armed with theories from their professors and buzzwords from their mentors, they proclaim themselves uniquely qualified to solve "the problems of the average Indonesian." After all, who better to transform the lives of millions than someone who learned about poverty in an elective course called "Emerging Markets 101"?

From Campus Dorm Room to Boardroom in Under a Decade

It's impressive when you think about it—going from graduation day at an Ivy League school to CEO of a "hyper-growth" company in Jakarta in just a few short years, with only a little seed funding from dad’s golf buddies. It’s almost like there’s a manual somewhere::

1. Study abroad at a school where “cultural diversity” means including exchange students from Singapore.

2. Return to Jakarta with “international exposure” and a vague British accent.

3. Start a company using money raised from a combination of friends, family, and well-connected investors.

4. Disrupt something, preferably an industry you read about in The Economist.

5. Rinse and repeat until you can make "30 under 30."

But here’s the thing: while international exposure looks great on a CV, it doesn’t always translate to understanding local realities. Talking about empowering smallholder farmers is one thing, but understanding their struggles goes beyond posing for a photo-op at an organic farm in New Zealand. It requires actually sitting down with them—minus the Instagram filter—and figuring out how they survive amidst fluctuating crop prices, limited access to credit, and infrastructure that sometimes feels like a relic from the Dutch colonial era.

It’s not that these founders aren’t intelligent or ambitious—they often are., but it’s easy to see the world through an office window and mistake it for reality. And that’s the crux of the problem—sometimes, disruption from a distance looks a lot like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic

"We Love the Common People," Says Founder, Last Seen Near Them in 2012

The startup pitch deck is always the same: a heartwarming story about helping the “average Indonesian.” It's practically a genre by now, like superhero movies—except instead of saving the world, it's about disrupting lives that these founders have never actually lived. The “average Indonesian” is talked about like some rare species that only shows up during funding rounds, and afterward, returns to its natural habitat: PowerPoint presentations and quarterly reports.

Take, for instance, their obsession with "underbanked populations" in Sumatra or Kalimantan. If you asked them to point either out on a map, you’d be met with a blank stare, followed by some vague hand gestures in the general direction of "over there somewhere." Many probably think "underbanked" is just an up-and-coming area in South Jakarta that they haven’t invested in yet.

The sum total of their research into these "underbanked" regions? A survey conducted by a fancy consulting firm that sent some interns to a remote village. These interns likely returned with a few data points, which were prettied up into an infographic titled, “The Future of Southeast Asian Disruption.” Said infographic is then presented at every tech conference abroad, as the founders boast about how they’re transforming lives, all while ignoring the crumbling infrastructure back home.

The whole thing is an exercise in learning just enough to be dangerous. It’s as if someone skimmed a Wikipedia article on Indonesia and thought,, "Perfect, now I'm ready to disrupt 270 million lives." Real engagement with the country? Optional. A compelling story for investors? Mandatory.

When Startups Move Fast and Break Trust Instead of Barriers

Indonesia’s startup graveyard is filled with once “promising” ventures that crashed and burned—not because the founders weren’t ambitious, but because they seemed to be aiming for the wrong targets entirely. When you’ve spent your whole life in elite circles and international schools, suddenly trying to understand the hustle and grind of Jakarta's street vendors or the realities of life in a small Sulawesi village can be… challenging. Yes, these founders may speak Bahasa Indonesia fluently enough, but do they really speak Indonesian? Do they understand what actually matters to the communities they’re trying to “help”? It’s probably not a digital solution to a problem they don’t even have.

The “move fast and break things” mantra works great if you’re breaking your own algorithms or disrupting luxury markets that can absorb a bit of chaos. It’s less charming, however, when what you’re “breaking” is the trust of people who don’t need a revolutionary app to tell them that their local infrastructure still revolves around promises made by politicians a decade ago. For many Indonesians, “disruption” would mean not having to line up for hours to pay a water bill, not necessarily the ability to split an e-scooter fare with five friends.

When these startups inevitably crash and burn, the blame game begins: regulations were “too rigid,” the market wasn’t “ready,” the government didn’t “support innovation.” Funny how no one ever wonders if the issue was just that they’d been pitching solutions to problems no one actually had. If the closest you’ve been to “local insight” is a PowerPoint slide on consumer behavior trends, don’t be surprised when your “revolutionary” app meets its fate.

In the end, perhaps the chaos in Indonesia’s startup ecosystem is exactly what happens when you have “local” founders who don’t know the first thing about local realities. Yes, they have the right passports, but their experience of Indonesia is filtered through a lens of extreme privilege and expensive Western education. For these founders, the country is a sandbox to experiment, burn some investor cash, and hope for a lucrative exit before anyone notices that their ideas are solving problems nobody had.

So the next time you hear about a promising new startup “bringing financial inclusion to the masses,” just remember that the founder’s idea of "financial hardship" might be not getting into that exclusive villa in Canggu during peak season. Yes, they’re Indonesian—technically—but how Indonesian are they, really?