Chitpol Mungprom founded Zanroo with Udomsak Donkhampai in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2013. As a marketing technology company, Zanroo began by offering a social listening platform. Zanroo later created Arun, which allows companies to track their return on investment across owned media, earned media, and paid media. The company is currently active in 15 countries and employs more than 160 people. The company is expected to become the first unicorn from Thailand and a world leader in marketing tech.

Ezra Ferraz: What were you doing in your career and life prior to founding Zanroo? Did you have a background in marketing?

Chitpol Mungprom: In the early days, I thought I could become a pop singer, and I had a few businesses such as selling authentic leather goods and running a food catering service. I graduated with a degree in engineering but ended up very exposed to social media, trying to build my business persona.

Ferraz: By the time you founded Zanroo in 2013, social listening was already one of the most crowded spaces in software. Why did you choose this field over another you could have entered in marketing technology?

Mungprom: At the time, social listening was still new in Thailand. There were some companies trying to use foreign software, but they were not designed to understand Thai. They were optimized for English and other western languages, where there is spacing. When someone says, “I love you,” for example, you know exactly what it means.

In Thai, on the other hand, there is no spacing. The words are put together—imagine “iloveyou”—so it becomes a technical problem. With no spacing, how can you identify each word? And if you cannot identify each word, how do you know what the whole idea is referring to? And if you cannot tell what the whole idea is, how do you know it’s positive or negative for your customers? The solution we made parses the sentence first, before identifying each word.

Ferraz: Did you discover this problem from using foreign social listening software?

Mungprom: We had actually started three websites for e-commerce, and then a portal that tracked trends people were talking about in Thailand, all in real time. But the e-commerce websites were not making any money from advertising. And the portal was not making any money either. Then I realized that we have a lot of data from our portal. How can I convert this data into income, especially since our server costs are so high? Our data would be relevant to enterprises, so we decided to focus on social listening. In our first month as a marketing technology company, we made one million Thai baht [THB].

Ferraz: What did Zanroo’s minimum viable product [MVP] look like?

Mungprom: It was very simple. If you were the customer—let’s say a banking company—we could use Zanroo to learn what people were saying about you on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or even local forums. We didn’t have any dashboards, we didn’t have any analytics, and we didn’t have any premium features. We just sold companies on the premise of getting market information in real time.

Ferraz: In several interviews, you mentioned that you got your first few customers by calling the numbers of companies you saw on billboards. Can you tell me a little bit more about that story?

Mungprom: After I invited Ome [Udomsak Donkhampai] to join, I felt a lot of pressure. He was the champion of the Microsoft Imagine Cup in France, so he had come from a good job with a high salary. Since I had to shoulder his salary and his friend’s salary, who was also a developer, we were going to die if I could not find any money. At the time, I did not know anything about funding, so we would have to get it from customers.

If I saw any brand that I did not know but I believed could be my customer, I just listed it down on a notepad. Everywhere I went—from walking through a department store to, yes, even driving down the highway—I wrote down the company’s name and its telephone number. On a single day, it could be hundreds of companies. I would cold-call each one of them.

Ferraz: Once you had a meeting, how did you pitch Zanroo, given that social listening was relatively new?

Mungprom: I explained it in their terms. If the prospective client was a gym, I would tell them that it would be good to know who wants to exercise on a given day. Let’s say there are a thousand interested gym-goers. If you know who they are, where they are, what they want, and why they want what they want, you can talk to them easily on social media. You can say, “Why don’t you come in to my gym today?”

Ferraz: What could you tell this gym about their space in general?

Mungprom: We could tell them what other gyms are doing on social media. The campaigns that they are running. The influencers that they are using. From this competitive intelligence, we can help our client learn what works and what doesn’t work in acquiring the right customers through the right content.

Ferraz: How would you charge a company like this gym?

Mungprom: We price on the number of keywords and the volume of data each brings. If they choose to listen for the keyword cycling, for example, the cost would be cheaper, since it’s so specific. If they choose the word exercise, on the other hand, we would have a lot more data coming in, so we would have to charge the company more.

Ferraz: As your early customers began to use Zanroo, what kind of feedback did you get from them, and how did you change your MVP based on what they said?

Mungprom: The very first client said, “Oh, Chitpol, it looks like your product is not finished.” So, I said, “Yes, it’s not finished because we just started. What I can deliver to you is my commitment that whatever we agree on today, I will deliver everything to you. If I am not able to deliver everything to you, you don’t need to pay us.”

Ferraz: What feature did you need to deliver for them?

Mungprom: It’s a bit complex, but we made it so that each company can have a hierarchy of keywords. This made it easier for our software to understand the nuances of the information coming through.

I always list the features that clients ask for.

Ferraz: After earning one million THB in your first month, did you still cold-call potential customers?

Mungprom: You have to understand the pressure was always back and forth between me and my partner. If there were not enough clients, the pressure was on me. If there were enough clients, the pressure was on my partner to deliver the feature we committed to. The problem is that in order to deliver, he needs more people—not just programmers, but also accountants, customer service representatives, and messengers. The pressure then swings back to me. I had to find more customers to generate more revenue so that we could hire these people. So, during our first year, I focused on sales one hundred percent. That was a lot of cold-calling.

Ferraz: Though many different companies could benefit from social listening, did you take steps to focus your cold-calling?

Mungprom: My target customers were companies in industries that have high involvement on social media. For example, before you buy a car, you access the manufacturer’s website, read reviews you find on Google, check the comments on Facebook or Twitter. So, my first customers were in automotive, real estate, and banking.

Ferraz: Since you were so focused on selling to these customers, what strategies did you pick up?

Mungprom: Because my clients mostly work five days a week between eight a.m. and six p.m., I segmented my time. On Monday, I had to make up to several hundred cold calls—enough so that on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I would have between four and seven meetings. This was my KPI [key performance indicator] .

Ferraz: How often did you meet your KPIs?

Mungprom: Most of the time. If not, I would just make more calls. [laughs].

Ferraz: What advice do you have for founders on getting better at sales, so, like you, they can rely less on venture capital, at least at the start?

Mungprom: I think this is all about mindset. Some startup founders work hard to convince their prototype only to investors but I feel it is much better to focus your energy on selling it to customers for the best value. In return, investors will be interested.

Ferraz: After founding Zanroo in 2013, you bootstrapped until 2017. Why did you choose to grow organically for four years without the aid of venture capital?

Mungprom: Because we have a vision. From day one, we wanted to expand Zanroo to ten countries, and we believed that earning money from customers was more sustainable than borrowing it from a bank or raising it from investors. I saw many of my friends fundraise and then not know how to scale on their own.

In short, we wanted to grow by ourselves and find our own way. During our first five years, many investors from China, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Thailand approached us to invest, but we still refused. We felt that we could grow up to ten countries with our own team.

Ferraz: What were the challenges of trying to grow entirely through your own revenue?

Mungprom: The problem is that customers always want long credit terms, and some companies still pay late. But we of course, cannot pay the salaries of our staff late. If our staff expects salary to come out on the twentieth day of the month, but they get paid the thirtieth, the delay has a big emotional impact on how they feel about working for our company.

Ferraz: How did you manage to pay your employees on time?

Mungprom: First, I made more cold calls. More new clients means more money and less risk. Second, we worked with external legal to draft better contracts that require clients to pay an additional charge for late payments.

Ferraz: When did you decide to look for new clients beyond Thailand?

Mungprom: Most startups wait until they become strong in their home country before even thinking of expanding to other countries. I wanted to prove that we could make it outside of Thailand.

As I was twenty-one at the time, I was not well-traveled. I did not have any friends who were foreigners. My former boss, who was Malaysian, was the only foreigner I knew. I called him and told him the story of Zanroo. Even though he had his own trading company, I asked him to close it down—importing and exporting was hard to scale—and join me instead. Together, we quickly scaled Zanroo in Malaysia after I earned one million THB, and then we went on to Singapore and Indonesia.

Ferraz: What were the challenges of doing business across so many different markets in Southeast Asia?

Mungprom: The business cultures are very different. Here in Thailand, we drink a lot. But in Malaysia, they do not drink. They only drink Milo [a chocolate drink]. We needed to understand the local culture in order to deliver the best service. To do so, we worked with local partners we could trust, or we hired the best local people we could find.

Ferraz: What did you look for when hiring?

Mungprom: To hire and retain good people at the operational level, we looked at three things: twenty percent was their background, thirty percent was the interview and examination process, and the last fifty percent was how they performed during the onboarding process.

For potential leaders, we focus more on attitude. Attitude is abstract, of course. My definition of attitude is the ability to recognize and solve problems, to think on your feet, and to talk to people.

Ferraz: Some of your hires served as consultants for your clients. Why did you feel compelled to offer these consulting services in addition to your social listening?

Mungprom: Some countries—such as Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Malaysia—are not mature markets. They do not know how to use social listening software, or they don’t have enough manpower. If they do have enough manpower, they tend not to have experience with social listening software. So, I saw consulting services as another opportunity to help them.

At the basic level, we need to convince them on the benefits of social listening. They may have never done social listening, so why should they start now? We try to explain it to them in terms of the impact on their brand. Once they understand these benefits, we ask them whether they want to do the social listening themselves, or whether they want us to handle it. Most are willing to pay more for the consulting services because they don’t have the know-how or they don’t have the manpower, and they believe in us.

After we sign the contract, we send a team to train them on how to use the software, listen for particular keywords, and generate reports.

We do this for businesses in almost every country.

Ferraz: What did you learn as you expanded regionally?

Mungprom: Once we scaled to five or six countries, we faced a lot of international competition in some markets, such as Singapore. Yet even though we had more competition, we still managed to go toe-to-toe with the very best. That made me question my original plans. Why stop at ten countries? Why can’t Zanroo become a truly global company?

Ferraz: During the four-year period you bootstrapped, Zanroo recorded between 200 and 400 percent year-on-year revenue. What kind of growth did you feel you needed to see in order to expand beyond Asia and into the rest of the world?

Mungprom: After some reflection, I realized we would not globally scale our social listening tool. Our competitors have been on the world market for too long. They already have many clients, and they have good relationships with them. There was no point in fighting with them on the global market.

This thought was scary. I had grown Zanroo to a team of 160 people. They have families, they have expenses to pay for, like their cars or condominiums, and they have high hopes for the company. It was no longer enough to find more clients or even expand to ten countries. We had to create a product that could scale the world.

Ferraz: You landed in social listening after trying to build e-commerce and portal businesses. How did you discover your second product?

Mungprom: I traveled the globe in search of our next big idea and spoke to founders from all over the world. I went to the United States. I went to the European Union. I went to China. I went to Hong Kong. In order to deliver something the world wanted, I needed to understand digital marketing better than anyone else. That’s how we came up with Arun.

Ferraz: How does Arun differ from social listening?

Mungprom: In the media world, we have paid media, owned media, and earned media. Our social listening helps clients keep track of earned media anywhere on the Internet. What are people saying about your brand—positive or negative—in real time? If I talk about a company in an online forum, that is earned media.

Like our original platform, Arun monitors earned media, but it also combines paid media and owned media. Owned media is media you own: your website, your Facebook page, your Twitter and Instagram accounts. Paid media is media you must spend to get. For example, if you pay Google AdWords to have your company advertised on their search results, that’s paid media. Display ads and influencer marketing also fall into this category.

By tracking all forms of a company’s media, we can measure the return on investment [ROI]. As of now, they do not know how or where they earn. It’s almost like traditional marketing. You spend a lot on above-the-line marketing, like television, radio, and print ads, but no one can really track the ROI across these channels. You just don’t know. Now that people have largely moved to online marketing, we can measure their ROI through Arun.

When we did our market research, we learned that many companies have tried to integrate paid media, owned media, and earned media, but no one has really succeeded. That’s why when we participated in a marketing conference in San Francisco, we claimed that we were the first in the world to offer this kind of service.

Ferraz: What kind of response did you get in San Francisco?

Mungprom: Very positive. We were able to gain a lot of feedback from customers at the conference, and representatives from twenty different companies wanted Arun as soon as they could. That really validated our hypothesis. Arun fulfills a need for companies around the world.

Ferraz: You decided in 2017—after several years of turning away investors—to finally raise a series A. What prompted this decision?

Mungprom: I started thinking about what we would need if I wanted Zanroo to go global instead of being in only ten countries. I determined we would need three things. First, to scale the world, we would need much more money than we currently had or could eventually gain through bootstrapping. Second, I did not have any connections in the United States, the European Union, or even China. If I got the right investors, they could introduce us to strategic partners in those markets. Lastly, I needed a larger team to create a product that could address a basic need of every customer in the world. These new hires would be in technology, marketing, and sales.

Ferraz: Now that Zanroo is active in fifteen markets, what is your next goal for the coming year?

Mungprom: While we’re operating in fifteen countries, most of these are for social listening. Over the next two and a half years, we want to scale Arun to more countries.

Ferraz: Based on this current growth trajectory, Zanroo is expected to be the first unicorn to emerge out of Thailand. What does this milestone mean to you?

Mungprom: It’s a measure of how many people we can help. If we scale to forty countries and become a unicorn, we will help our customers and their business communities by delivering them a product they find useful. We will also help our internal stakeholders, such as our partners, our staff, and their families. We will make their lives better. That’s why we have to scale to more countries, earn more revenue, and deliver more features.

Ferraz: How close do you feel you are to reaching the unicorn valuation that would be a huge achievement for both Zanroo and Thailand?

Mungprom: It is going to be a tough ride—not just scaling the revenue, but building a sustainable growth with a balanced customer, product and Talent strategy. Zanroo cannot be doing only social listening to achieve that. We will dive deep into our core technologies to uncover what we can possibly disrupt.

Ferraz: Many people frequently overlook Thailand as a tech ecosystem. Why should more founders consider building businesses there? Why should we be bullish on Thailand’s tech ecosystem?

Mungprom: As Thais, we are creative, passionate, and hardworking people. We excel in our passions but we were a little shy in the past to deal with foreigners. But now, the young generation of Thais are internet-savvy and eager to connect to the world. In fact, a lot of us are into computer engineering.

Ferraz: What advice do you have for entrepreneurs in Asia who would be eager just to reach the scale that Zanroo enjoys today?

Mungprom: You need to set a realistic goal. It can be short term or long term. After you determine your goal—your why—you need to identify how you will get there and what you will need to get there. You may need to have the right product. You may need the right finances. You may need the right people. But the biggest thing you need to have is the ability to connect the dots—which combination of these factors will take you to your goal.

Lastly, I think most people forget the when, which is more important than even the why. Too many founders say they want to get acquired, or IPO, or be a unicorn, but they don’t set a target date. We need to know exactly what to do to achieve our goal by a set time, and it has to be something realistic. It’s important not to lie to ourselves. Most entrepreneurs only believe in themselves, and that’s important, but you need to get everyone else—your partners, your customers, your advisors—on board with your plans. If they also believe you can achieve your goal according to your timeline, then you will.