Christian Sugiono, co-founder and CEO of MBDC Media.
“I’m actually not the type of serial entrepreneur who likes to build ventures and let other people run it. I am kind of a possessive type of person,” explains Indonesian actor Christian Sugiono from his hotel room in Tokyo. “I love dreaming up the coolest thing I can have, and then just going for it.”
Sugiono is the co-founder and CEO of MBDC Media. Last week, his company grabbed headlines when it announced a new round of capital investment from Rebright Partners and 500 Startups.
Christian Sugiono is a name that most Indonesians will recognize. Since 2005, the tall and handsome Sugiono has starred in local television shows and films all across Southeast Asia. His work features movie titles like Dunia Mereka (Their World), Akhir Sekolah (Final School), and Tipu Kanan Tipu Kiri (100 Lies to Hide a Wife). Sugiono’s career also includes modelling for Hai Magazine and serving as the Indonesian ambassador for brands like Hewlett-Packard and Close-Up toothpaste. He has also contributed extensively as a journalist to Trax Magazine on behalf of MTV Indonesia.
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But Sugiono is not just a pretty face. He is quickly building a reputation as one of Jakarta’s serious tech founders. The star of Jakarta Undercover is also a nerd-by-night computer programmer, who knows how to code fluently and earned a Bachelor’s degree from the Technical University of Hamburg in Germany. Today MBDC Media is the parent company of Indonesia’s popular humor site MalesBanget.
Homesick for humor
MalesBanget can be traced back to 2001, when Sugiono was still studying in Germany. While abroad, he used IRC (internet relay chat) to talk to random Indonesian people around the world, and claims this is how he met fellow co-founders Aryo Sayogha and Arianjie Az. He explains:
We often talked about what was happening in Indonesia, what the current trends were, popular jokes [...] The IRC channel was named #malesbanget (in English: very lazy) and became semi-popular. Finally, in 2002 we bought the domain malesbanget.com and together with other members’ IRC channels, we created a website with Indonesian-style humor content. Arianjie and I wrote lots of articles at the time. Aryo often took pictures, and there were a few other friends who helped to code and design the website.
Sugiono claims MalesBanget later became a well-known portal among Indonesian college students abroad. Its taste and silly articles comforted students feeling homesick. However, he adds the company limped along with only moderate success as no one was properly taking care of the site. Sugiono says he and Az became sidetracked by another project, Subtube Studio, a web development company. As a result, MalesBanget died from a lack of content in 2006.
With Subtube, Sugiono and his team spent several years developing websites for other people, but still craved a fun and entertaining media portal of their own. “That’s when we thought that resurrecting MalesBanget from the dead was a good idea,” he says. In 2011, Sugiono and his co-founders established PT MBDC Media to act as the umbrella company for Subtube, MalesBanget, and any other projects they wanted to pursue in the future.
MBDC Media Team
A focused audience
Sugiono says what he was doing was unique because, at the time, the local online media players only focused on news, entertainment gossip, sports, or politics – all of which had broad market segments.
MBDC Media had not yet come across another publisher that focused only on the young male audience segment the way MalesBanget did. Additionally, MBDC decided to create custom content for advertisers in an effort to standout from the crowd. “By segmenting, our audience became sharp [..] and we believed we could be one of the alternative solutions to advertisers who wanted to spend their budget on new content rather than conventional banners or advertorials.”
In addition to supervising the company as a whole, Sugiono is proud of the fact that he is hands-on in producing and programming videos for MBDC. He also produces the successful internet travel series Jalan Jalan Men, co-presented by MalesBanget and aired on well-known local media outlet GlobalTV.
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Investors take notice
In mid-2014, Takeshi Ebihara, founding general partner of the Japanese venture capital firm Rebright Partners, made contact with MBDC. “At the time, we were on our fundraising roadshow,” Sugiono explains. “We met several times with Ebihara to talk, discuss and get to know each other. He also came to our office for a visit and saw the team and the way we work.”
From left: Aryo Sayogha, Takeshi Ebihara, Christian Sugiono, Khailee Ng.
In August, Ebihara took Sugiono to Jakarta’s Geeks On A Plane event, where he introduced him to Khailee Ng, 500 Startups’ venture partner in Southeast Asia. The group went for drinks and had what Sugiono calls “very interesting and deep conversations” about the media industry, and how to build a million-dollar company.
On September 4, MBDC Media formalized its partnership with Rebright Partners and 500 Startups with an investment worth an undisclosed amount. Sugiono claims both Ng and Ebihara have visions aligned with his own, as well as passion and experience related to the media field. He adds, “The reason they are attracted by MBDC is because of the demand for online content, especially video. It continues to increase and is met with our ability to draw on creative ideas.”
From showbiz to tech biz: Christian Sugiono on acting, MBDC, and new investments
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