Every day, each and every one of us are compounded by choices that we have to make in order to do something, or go somewhere.
“You always have a choice” – or so people say.
Choice has always been a point of contention in our daily lives, and it is in the choices we make that may have a favourable outcome for those that affected by it.
A Startup That Is All About Choice
Faves Asia is a startup that thrives on the choices that people make as they continue on their mission of “Uncovering Rising Personalities, Redefining Selection Style”.
So who, or what is Faves Asia?
We met up with Sky Lim, co-founder of Faves Asia, to find out what they are all about, and why they are using choice to drive their company.
Faves Asia, in a nutshell, is an online popularity platform that showcases rising personalities and helps them gain recognition in a parallel comparison format. They strive to gather the hottest selfies, places, food, fashion and everything hot in Asia.
They are of the belief that a side by side comparison of the hottest people would be something that would even surpass the art of swiping right, and with it, they want to influence a new style of decision making in this generation.
Inspired By Facebook
When sharing about how the idea of Faves Asia came about, Sky mentioned an all too familiar name.
It was none other than Mark Zuckerberg, but more specifically, his first iteration of the Facebook we know today, formerly known as Facemash, which he created in college.
Sky fell in love with its parallel comparisons concept, and felt that there was huge potential to be explored, which unfortunately for Mark at that time, was limited by poor execution to continue to concept.
So earlier in January, he decided to aggressively pursue this path, and created a business model centered around it. Next, he found a programmer, and went on to make the website happen.
The beta version was launched this April.
From A Solo Start, To A Healthy Growth
Professing to be the only founder when Faves Asia first started out, Sky has along the way met up with some people who have helped contributed to the growth of his company.
One of whom is his chief technology officer (CTO) Danny, who has many years of experience in the IT industry, and also runs his own company, HTech Corporation, which is based in the Philippines.
Together, they have managed to create steady growth for the platform, and have garnered close to 400 signups from people who seek to become Asia’s next big personality.
On the website front, they have also managed to generate some 260,000 page views. What’s interesting to note is that all these stats was achieved with close to zero funds spent, and mostly through organic reach, namely the large number of followers that the personalities of Faves Asia command.
Aside from that, support from friends also helped, and at the moment, Sky and team are focusing efforts on social media presence with an Instagram page, on top of a Facebook page, an through this, hope to spread the word so that more people will discover Faves Asia.
Still A Work In Progress
Sky considers the stats that the platform has achieved thus far to be just small milestones that shouldn’t detract him from reaching his end goal – to run the biggest community of personalities in Asia.
And as any young startups go, there are bound to be obstacles along the way. They are constantly tweaking the platform to ensure that visitors are able to use it without issues.
Then there’s the usual bugs and data loss, as with any websites, but perhaps the best feedback he has received were the negative ones from users which he had to work on, because in the end, Faves Asia is a website for these users.
Also, Sky actively seeks the feedback of industry experts to gain insights on how to make his platform even better, and the common sentiment amongst them is that the focus is now too shallow and superficial, and only focuses on people.
This is why Sky hopes to add on more categories in the near future, so that people can parallel comparisons of not just people, but also food, places of interest, and fashion.
More To Come After The Pre-Launch
Earlier this month, Sky held a pre-launch event for members of the site to outline his vision and share more about what he plans to achieve through working together with personalities in Faves Asia.
While he is still planning the official launch which is slated to be held in January next year, he did share a snippet of what he will hope to roll out by then. One major event that he hopes to hold is a pageant show, as a showcase for all the personalities on the platform, where he will also have a big reveal of the new categories which will be launched into the platform.
Lastly, Sky shared some parting words for anyone hoping to come aboard as a personality.
He shared that if you were to join Faves Asia, not only will you benefit from the growth of your social media followers through it, you will also be granted access to many other perks. These include sponsorship opportunities, brand engagements, media invites to a variety of events, and much more.
We wish to thank Sky and the team at Faves Asia for sharing their story, and wish them all the best on the road to their official launch.
