Ilya Kravtsov: Inside Indonesia’s Startup Meltdown, eFishery’s Hidden Fallout & How Real Founders Survive – E590

"So you wanna depict a good picture, but you also wanna be realistic and say, 'Look, there could be this and this that can happen.' I'm doing that a lot more than I used to, and then admit that a lot of things you don't know. Say, 'Look, I don't know, and we'll experiment and see if this works, but it just might not work.' But to be more honest in that sense, I think, is a sign of maturity as a founder, right? Mm-hmm. And I've seen this in some other founders that are talking openly about their mistakes. They don't know, they're trying these things, and they hope it will work, they'll do their best, but it might not work—versus younger founders saying, 'Oh, we know what needs to be done. We're going full steam ahead, and this is gonna work out, this is gonna be massive,' right? You can immediately see the two more different types of founders." - Ilya Kravtsov, Co-Founder of Ringkas

"Founders should really be very clear on that. One thing is legal and the other one is illegal. You never wanna cross that line, right? But even what you do to try to hack your numbers, you also need to be transparent about that. As long as it's clear, people will take the risk. In that case, there were two lines crossed. Mm-hmm. First line crossed—that it was illegal, which you cannot do. The second line is that whatever was happening was not fully disclosed in a transparent way. So I think every founder should never cross one line for sure—and the second one as well. Only in that case you can boost your business or whatever you have to do, right?" - Ilya Kravtsov, Co-Founder of Ringkas

"But again, are you scaling for the right reasons? Are you scaling with the right methodologies? For me, it's not only about fake it until you make it. I think you need to, as a founder, take a step back and try to seek the truth. Seek the truth means, are you doing it just to boost your numbers, or are you doing it because you really believe that long term it's gonna work? And I think at a certain point, more and more—as a younger myself 10 years ago—I would be hungry about pushing the numbers and getting to that next milestone. But now I look at things differently. It is gonna explode—yeah—and it's gonna waste my years—mm—of effort, because boosting numbers takes a lot of effort. So that's why I think it's very important to seek the truth and be very honest with yourself. First of all, with yourself. Secondly, with your team, right? And that's why having a culture where your numbers are quite transparent and people know what's going on is very important." - Ilya Kravtsov, Co-Founder of Ringkas

Ilya Kravtsov, Co-Founder of Ringkas, joins Jeremy Au to unpack the rise and fall of Indonesia’s lending wave, the ripple effects of the eFishery scandal, and the hard lessons founders must absorb to build sustainable startups. They examine how early hype misaligned business models, how fraud damages more than just a company, and why radical transparency is key to long-term leadership. Ilya shares how Ringkas scaled without lending, why developer partnerships unlocked bank adoption, and how he carefully built a diversified cap table to preserve founder control.