Andrew Darwis, Co-Founders of Kaskus
Born as the second of four children, Andrew has one older brother, one younger brother, and one younger sister. His father was an electronics expert who worked in a pipe company. Since childhood, he liked to tamper with the radio and other electronic items. Initially, he was a creative child, many friends and a bit naughty. But since he did not move up to grade 6, he turned into an inferior, confined himself, and only made friends with a handful of people, but was quite familiar, two of whom were Ronald Stephanus and Budy Dharmawan.
In the 90s, when he was a teenager, he began to get to know the internet. Even in 1997, Andrew had created a personal website. But because he still uses the internet from a telephone connection, his mother was angry because the end of the month's telephone bills swelled. In accordance with his interests, Andrew also enrolled at Bina Nusantara University or Binus Informatics Engineering Department. Because of its activity in cyberspace, a data processing company in Menteng offered him a job so that the internet and telephone were paid by the company.
Another offer was obtained when his uncle, who owns a furniture company, asked Andrew to make a website to promote his products. Andrew immediately processes data and photographs of his uncle's furniture and designs interesting websites. After that, he was given an envelope containing ten million rupiah.
Andrew claimed that he had met with Bill Gates while launching the Xbox in Seattle. In November 1999, the lecturer gave the assignment to create a personal website. His classmates also fill his personal website with their experiences. Because in his past he only filled himself in a room, Andrew then switched from creating a personal website to a community website after learning that E-commerce was in demand in Indonesia near the end of the collection date.
From the community website he created, Kaskus was born which was originally used as a venue for sharing for Indonesian students in Seattle and the United States. His lecturer also liked the community website created by Andrew and gave many suggestions regarding Kaskus. Andrew also decided to continue the existence of Kaskus so that it was not just a mere campus task. Andrew then invited Ronald and Budi to participate in managing Kaskus. Ronald was assigned to translate articles written by Andrew into English, considering that foreign students also opened Kaskus, while Budi uploaded photos of student events held in Seattle.
In 2000, Ronald and Budi decided to stop helping Andrew manage Kaskus but both of them still hoped that Andrew would continue Kaskus. Because the income he got from Kaskus was still lacking, Andrew also had time to work as a tomato slicer in the kitchen and then a cashier at Burger King and as a photocopy of documents owned by the Thais. In mid-2004, Andrew met with Ken Lawadinata, one of his brothers and a person who later became Kaskus's CEO. Since early 2006, through posting job applications on monster.com, he has been given the job of copying song lyrics from other sites and displaying them to lyrics.com which is owned by a Vietnamese-American man named Alex.
Education
SD: Tarakanita Pluit Jakarta
Middle School: Tarakanita Pluit Jakarta
High School: Gandhi National School, Ancol, Jakarta, 1998
University: Informatics Engineering, Bina Nusantara University, 1998
University: Multimedia & Web Design, Art Institute of Seattle, 1999 - 2003
University: Master of Computer Science, City University, Seattle. 2004 - 2006
Career
Part time web design work at kemana.com and indotradezone.com (1998)
Web designer Thor Loki, Seattle, United States (2003 - 2006)
Web designer lyrics.com, Seattle, United States (2007 - 2008)
Kaskus Founder & CTO (1999-now)
Andrew founded Kaskus on November 6, 1999. Starting from his experience while studying at one of the leading universities in Uncle Sam's Country, Seattle University, Multimedia & Web Design Study Program, Art Institute of Seattle Computer Science in 1999, the man who was called Andrew was inspired create a community forum website that can be said to be the largest in Indonesia. "At that time I was assigned by a lecturer to create a program from free software, from there began the idea to create a website with the name Kaskus." Said Andrew, who worked at the company lyrics.com while studying in America. Kaskus comes from the word Kasak-Kusuk or means to gossip. With an initial capital of US $ 3 (Rp. 30,000) to rent a server, Andrew and two of his colleagues, Ronald and Budi, chose to create a portal that contained news and information about Indonesia. The portal was deliberately made into a media to satisfy the longing for the people of Indonesia who are abroad. The benefit is that the improvement of online business is improving, and the number of people starting online businesses is seen by Andrew as a great potential that supports the development of Kaskus. Based on surveys, there are more than 40 million Internet users in Indonesia. With this extraordinary number, he assumes that each Internet user is a potential target market The obstacle Andrew admitted that he faced the most difficult obstacle when he first formed Kaskus. He must intervene directly and fix if there is a server that is down, because at that time Andrew did not have employees. In addition, he faced the most difficult obstacle when moving to Jakarta, because he had to convince customers and advertisers about Kaskus's image.
Marketing Andrew and his team at the beginning of the business must have door-to-door guerrillas to introduce Kaskus positioning and in less than a year, Kaskus has been trusted by large clients who have supported Kaskus since Kaskus was first launched in December 2008. Intermittent 2 months later Kaskus officially became a professional company under the banner of PT. Darta Media Indonesia. Currently recorded Kaskus has 4,366,134 members (update dated May 20, 2012 at 13:21) and continues to grow every second. Kaskus has a target market from the age of 15-40 years among students, students, employees, professionals and entrepreneurs. Various awards were also received by Andrew including The Best Indonesian Communities for 2005 and 2006 version of Alexa.com and Wikipedia, from Microsoft with the Kaskus Indonesia Innovative Top Web Site nomination in 2008, and from Indosat with the Kaskus nomination for The Online Inspiring Award in 2009 Currently, to manage Kaskus, Andrew is assisted by 30 employees who are divided into marketing, sales, IT and creative teams. Of the many contents in Kaskus.us, Andrew undoubtedly called the content of the Buy and Sell Forum (FJB) and Lounge as the favorite visited by kaskuser. Kaskuser who come from all corners of Indonesia can utilize this content for online business transactions. In just one day, 80 thousand items are listed in the Buy and Sell Forum (FJB). Andrew's obsession to develop his online business is to continue to develop Indonesian content (on the website), so that foreign people will buy the content later.
2005, 2006: The best Indonesian Communities version of Alexa.com and Wikipedia.
2008: By Microsoft: KASKUS Web Site that is recognized as Indonesia Innovative Top Web Site
2009: By Indosat: KASKUS - The Online Inspiring Award 2009
2009: By the President of the Republic of Indonesia: KASKUS - The Biggest Market 2012
2012: By the Minister of cooperatives and SMEs: Youth Promoter of Entrepreneurship
2013: By the Director General of Intellectual Property Rights (Ditjen HKI)
2013: By the Indonesian Ministry of Law and Human Rights (RI Ministry of Law and Human Rights): Copyright and Multimedia Content Innovator and E-Commerce
Endah, Alberthiene (2013). Ken & Kaskus: Success Stories at a Young Age. Jakarta: Gramedia Main Library. ISBN 9792291415.
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