Disillusioned Traveloka Co-Founder Resigns: 'This Game Is No Longer for Me’
Skift Take
In what appears to be a clash of ideals and aspirations, the brains behind Traveloka’s technology, Derianto Kusuma, is leaving the company he co-founded in early 2012. It is telling how a startup that has reached unicorn status is changing. But is it for the better?
Traveloka’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Derianto Kusuma, has resigned, effective November 30, saying "this game is no longer for me" in an article he wrote on the publishing platform Medium.
Kusuma is the technology mastermind behind the Indonesia-based unicorn, a ticketing and hotel booking services company that received a $350 million investment from Expedia last year. He graduated in computer science from Stanford University in 2010, then worked at Microsoft as a software development engineer and LinkedIn as a senior software engineer.
The loss should be palpable. His co-founder and CEO, Ferry Unardi, has always prided his company’s success on being co-founded by people with engineering instead of marketing and banking backgrounds.
It appears to be over a clash of ideals and aspirations.
"As was my original goal, I have tried to bring the company as close as possible to Silicon Valley tech company ideals that is still possible within the constraints of the battles and landscape dynamics in Southeast Asia," Kusama wrote. "However, starting a few years ago, the battle starts to show trends towards being more commercially-driven than innovation-driven, predatory than productive, perception-oriented than fundamentals-oriented. While one can argue it might be a necessary stage (debatable) in Southeast Asia tech landscape, I gradually realized that this game is no longer for me, and among other reasons, the consideration for
