At fifteen, Alfatih Timur sat in a classroom of students two years older than him. He had been placed in an accelerated programme, and the older kids had a word for him: cupu, roughly dorky. He kept his head down and kept studying.
Born in Bukittinggi in December 1991, he went on to study economics at Universitas Indonesia. There he was a busy student: head of student affairs in the faculty council and in the university-wide student body, a regular in discussions and rallies. One lecturer changed his direction, Rhenald Kasali, who introduced him to social entrepreneurship.
Crowdfunding was not widely understood in Indonesia, and asking strangers to hand money to strangers online sounds risky to many.
After graduating in 2013 he worked at Kasali's consultancy, Rumah Perubahan. It was there that he began to meet people at non-profits. They shared a problem. Many generous people wanted to give, but the people doing good work found it hard to reach them. Timur read about crowdfunding sites abroad and began building one.
With Vikra Ijas, a university friend, he started small. One early campaign raised Rp160 million, about US$10,700, to stop a street children's school in Depok being evicted. It worked.
Then came the stall. Timur took the site to campuses and the response was lukewarm. Crowdfunding was not widely understood in Indonesia, and asking strangers to hand money to strangers online sounds risky to many. What almost nobody knew was how he paid for the next step. He used what was left of his wedding money to improve the platform, according to a 2022 profile.
Trust was the real product. Kitabisa built a verification routine he calls three plus one, including identity checks and document review, and let the public report suspicious campaigns. In 2015 500 Startups led a seed round, and later investors reportedly included IFC, Northstar and Endeavor Catalyst.
The platform took a 5% fee on most campaigns and none on zakat or national disasters. When COVID-19 hit, donations jumped: 3 million individual gifts in March and April 2020, and the company said it channelled more than US$10 million. By January 2022 it was reported to have about 937,000 users and Rp376.95 billion collected.
The cost of being a trust business is that a single bad campaign can unravel years of work. Timur's answer has been process, not slogans.
His story hints at something a first-time founder can borrow. The boy who was the youngest in the room at fifteen learned to keep working while others talked, and years later he spent his wedding savings on the same habit.