Arvid Yap

His dad was Dutch, and mom from Bandung.
Arvid was born in Netherlands, but then lived in Bandung from age 8-18 (1990-2000).
Then moved back to Netherlands.

He really wanted to move back to Indonesia.
He missed it and it felt like his real home.
But even though his family is from here, and he lived here 10 years, that didn’t give him the right to come live here.
He still had to fight for it - to prove his value with exceptional skill, so he could get hired here.
So he got a degree in business from a university in Netherlands, for the main purpose of qualifying for a job back in Indonesia.
His wife is in the same position, and they went to the same school here as teenagers.

Joko (former president) courted Silicon Valley back around ~2014 so there was a lot of money flying around, high valuations.
During that time Arvid started a startup here, which got bought, and was a decent success.

Now he’s working inside a chocolate factory run by a man he’s known since he was a kid, because his grandfather used to work at this same company!
He’s entrepreneurial inside the company, for example doing a campaign to champion Asian chefs who use Asian chocolate, instead of imported.
And made a direct ecommerce store.

Showed me how people use QRIS to pay by opening their bank app and scanning the merchant’s QR code, like India’s UPI.