Delivering Coffee and Opportunity One Cup At a Time

This story begins at a coding camp in California, traverses a few peaks, endures many valleys (including Silicon Valley), and ends on the streets of Jakarta.

It’s the story of entrepreneur Christopher Oentojo, a 2012 graduate of the Master of Science in Software Management program, and how he brought a new concept to market that delivers coffee, one of Indonesia’s main exports, back to its people while also creating upward mobility through micro-entrepreneurship.

“If you don't bring new things to market, then you don't advance how other people think, or what other people think is possible. That’s a huge aspect of what we're trying to do,” Oentojo said.

Oentojo co-founded Jago Coffee in early 2020 with his long-time friend Yoshua Tanu, a coffee connoisseur, champion barista, and owner of several specialty coffee shops in Indonesia. 

“Yoshua was successful in building his coffee business, but most Indonesians can’t afford coffee at that price point ($5) and drink a low-quality instant coffee instead. The question we asked ourselves was, ‘How do we make great quality coffee accessible and affordable to the masses?’” Oentojo explained.

A now-defunct startup from Sweden called Wheely’s piqued their interest: It built and sold mobile coffee carts.

Oentojo questioned the model though. Why not create a network of coffee carts powered by an app so customers could have a fresh cup of coffee delivered directly to them?

 The duo had just brewed a business concept – not for a coffee company but for a tech company.

Oentojo traces his interest in tech back to the 7th grade when his father enrolled him in summer computer camps. He pursued that interest as an undergrad at UCLA where he majored in – and struggled with – computer science.

“I thought I had some background, but everyone else must have been coding since they were like seven! It was super intimidating,” Oentojo recalled. “I was not doing well in my classes, and I felt lost because, up to that point, all I wanted to do was software.”

Unsure of what to study instead, Oentojo stuck with computer science and fortunately, through internships, found his software interest rekindled.

While considering a job offer from Cisco, Oentojo “stumbled upon” the MSSM program.

“Entrepreneurship has always interested me. I grew up reading about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates – these titans of industry. The MSSM program hooked me because I could learn, get a degree, and walk away with a viable business concept at the end. It sounded awesome. It was exactly what I wanted to do,” Oentojo said.

He joined with two classmates after graduation to design a mobile app to quickly review restaurants while providing meaningful insights – akin to Yelp.

“We worked on that business idea for eight months, didn’t get any traction, and didn’t pay ourselves. We kept hoping that we would raise funding. There was no light at the end of the tunnel,” Oentojo shared.

"Entrepreneurship is a lot harder than it looks. The media glamorizes it. It’s not like that at all. You have to be okay with things sucking all the time. So you either have a high pain tolerance and deal with it, or you have a strong conviction about what you're trying to achieve and you don't waiver from that. But you need one or both of those things to survive,” Oentojo cautioned.

Following the failed startup, Oentojo took a month-long break to visit family in Indonesia and to figure out his next steps. There, his uncle introduced him to a friend’s son who also worked in tech. This casual intro would lead to a life changing lunch meeting years later.

Oentojo returned to the US and sought industry experience in order to understand how to build a team and create a healthy company culture.

“I applied to Dropbox, which was around 500 people back then. I remember the last interview was with Arash Ferdowsi, the CTO and co-founder. I learned later that he interviewed every single person they hired – up until they grew to 1,000 employees. I learned a lot about company culture there and how it was created by someone who truly cared about every single person they hired,” Oentojo said

As a product specialist, Oentojo supported Carousel, a cloud-based photo gallery, from its innovation phase to the launch phase. Those efforts were for naught though: Dropbox sunset the project shortly thereafter to focus on enterprise products instead.

The decision zapped Oentojo’s excitement and primed him to consider other opportunities.

It didn’t take long for one to surface - thanks to his uncle’s fortuitous introduction (and, in part, to free lunches at Dropbox). During a visit to San Francisco, Oentojo’s Indonesian friend met him at Dropbox for sushi, bringing along a guest. That guest was Indonesian entrepreneur Kevin Aluwi.

Aluwi had co-founded a ride-hailing startup in Jakarta called Go-Jek, a motorbike version of Uber that delivered people, food, and goods from Point A to Point B.

“I thought Uber would destroy them, but every time I talked to Kevin, the business was growing at an insane clip. I had a trip planned to Indonesia already so I decided to check it out. When I landed in Jakarta, I saw drivers in green jackets everywhere, and I immediately knew that I had to join,” Oentojo said.

So, seven years ago, Oentojo packed up his life in the US for Indonesia.

He was immediately tasked with running the mobile teams that focused on Go-Jek’s core services like ride-hailing and food delivery. Within his first two weeks, the CEO announced that Go-Car, the company’s version of Uber with four wheels, had to be ready in a month because Uber was launching a competing bike service.

“It was a crazy, hectic experience, but I learned a lot of firefighting skills and collaboration skills at Dropbox that helped me integrate quickly. We managed to launch within a month,” Oentojo said.

Transportation was Oentojo’s main business vertical, but after two years, he desired a role that encompassed more. He pitched leadership on the importance of developing core mapping technologies and eventually received approval to form his own team.

“It was a big investment. I hired a team of 30-40 technical staff, and we ended up building a few technologies to power multiple businesses within the company. It was a challenging but rewarding experience of building something from scratch,” Oentojo said.

During his four-year tenure, Oentojo experienced Go-Jek’s hypergrowth, from 200 people to 10,000 people and from operating in a few cities to operating in 50 cities across Indonesia plus expanding abroad.

“It got to the point where Go-Jek just got way too big. It became a humongous corporate company. I don’t like bureaucracy. I don’t like politics. I was starting to not enjoy what I was doing so I knew I had to pivot to something else,” Oentojo reflected.

Jago Coffee offered that opportunity, but was the idea viable? Oentojo opted to stay at Go-Jek and pursue Jago on the side.

He and Tanu focused on prototyping the electric coffee cart, crafting the drink recipes, and developing the app to connect it all. The business model was “grab and go” and hinged on placing coffee carts in office building lobbies with options priced to attract young professionals.

After eight months of building and refining, the duo successfully launched their first cart in the fall of 2019.

Oentojo left Go-Jek in February 2020 to work full-time on Jago – unaware that the entire business model would implode due to the coronavirus.

“Consumer behavior totally changed. We couldn't operate in public spaces anymore. People were afraid to even meet other people, and they didn’t want to spend as much money. So we had to pivot really quickly," Oentojo recalled.

Within a few months, the team switched its model so consumers could order coffee directly to their homes with no minimum order.  They also embraced micro-entrepreneurship so that those driving the carts – the Jagoans – would own the cart and make money on every sale. The increased visibility gained the company some buzz, but it was insufficient. 

“It was the hardest moments in my professional career, which affected every aspect of my life. We were trying to fundraise for eight months. Everybody said no. We were running out of money and so close to shutting down. My partner and I kept putting our own money in, and we were getting into more arguments because the business wasn't doing well. Honestly, everything was going to shit,” Oentojo said.

Amid all the rejections, the duo had maintained close ties with an Indonesian-based venture capital firm that had liked their business model. The firm, having witnessed the team’s perseverance throughout the pandemic, gave Jago Coffee what it so desperately needed: a chance.

It led Jago’s seed round in the summer of 2022, helping to attract three more investors. The round closed in the fall of 2022 with enough funding for a two-year runway.

Early in 2022, after two years of iterating on the business model, Oentojo and Tanu landed on two changes that clicked: focusing on small neighborhoods and (begrudgingly) lowering the price point to target a different customer segment.

“A few other venture-backed companies were succeeding at this specific price ($1.20-$1.40/coffee). Everyone’s focusing on the young professionals and so were we. For the longest time, we were unwilling to change our price. We felt that we could compete because our model and product are better,” Oentojo said. “But no one here was thinking about the customers drinking instant coffees at the $.60/cup price point so we pivoted again.”

Since the change, Jago Coffee has exploded. The company now employs 40 people, which does not include the 80 Jagoans, the owner-operators of the electric coffee carts.

“Our Jagoans – the baristas - are our champions. Some have been with us since the beginning when it was rough, when they weren’t making much money, and they stuck with us. And now to see them thriving and making a great living from our platform... I’m beyond grateful,” Oentojo said.