How Deemples CEO David Wong built the largest golf app in Malaysia

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

My name is David Wong, born and raised in public schools in Malaysia, got a finance degree from Indiana University, spent a few years working across the US, Beijing, Shanghai, and Singapore, mainly in digital media advertising and technology, and now back in Malaysia chasing dreams and living cheaply.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

The startup is called Deemples. It’s an app that golfers use to find each other and book tee times.

What is the origin story?

I started golfing 12 years ago, with a few friends that I “forced” into the game with me. Very quickly they decided that it wasn’t the game for them, but I loved it. Golf courses in Malaysia didn’t allow me to play alone, or match me up with other golfers at the golf course. I got frustrated, and was wondering, if there were platforms that could allow me to get a ride with a stranger, get food delivered by a stranger, stay at a strangers house, heck go on a date with a stranger, why wasn’t there anything for golfers?

So we build Deemples, and today it has become the largest golf app in Malaysia :)

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

The Deemples idea is not new. A lot of people have tried and failed in other parts of the world. Main reason why we think they’ve failed is the lack of skills in 1) product design/dev 2) user acquisition/retention 3) monetisation. I’m very fortunate the team we have does a good job in these 3 area, which has not only kept us alive, but thrived in an area where most have failed.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

I’d probably be based somewhere else outside of Malaysia, climbing the corporate ladder in the advertising or consumer product space, and golfing weekly.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

As any app product - core metrics are: downloads, monthly users, transactions, GMV.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

As soon as monetisation features were available on Deemples, number of monthly users tripled. We were curious and found out that instead of a drop off that we expected since golfers had to make payment now, golfers came in more because golfers now have an additional reason to use Deemples aside from just finding golf buddies. Golfers were also egging each other on to make payment, so that they know their playing partner was confirmed to participate!

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

From a non-tech perspective, the technology that Deemples uses are not rocket science. Only when we get to a level of scale, would we use AI and recommendation algorithms to show the most relevant games to golfers.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

Straight up, no bull, tech publication!

Editor’s Note: YES #NOBULL 💚

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Care less, and do more. I think at that time, I was falling into the mindset of how to do something that paid the most, especially when you see your peers’ successes. The same mindset that shapes you during formative years during your teens, came to play in the 21-30s, where you either made it early or you didn’t. Only later on do you realise, that focusing solely on the money wasn’t the best option, but using that 21-30s time to explore a ton of different things, to find out what truly you enjoyed doing was probably the better bet. So, care less, do more.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

Don’t regret all the mistakes you’ve made. Learn from it, and move forward with it. You can’t change the past, so don’t beat yourself up about it. But you can change the future, so let’s focus on that instead!