People often tell me that, hoping I will turn to local products, which will make me a nationalist. We have local products, why using foreign ones? I strongly disagree, and it has nothing to do nationalism.
I have my own reasons for using foreign products instead of local ones. Personally, for me there’s no difference between local and foreign product. I will not choose a product based on which country it comes from. That is ridiculous, pointless, and totally unsupportive.
Why do I choose to use PandaForm instead of similar local service? Why do I use WordPress platform for blogging instead of local ones? Why do I use Facebook and Twitter, instead of local social network service? Simple, because those services can meet my needs and in many ways are far better than local services.
If I choose to use local services just because they are “made in Indonesia”, that for me is degrading Indonesia’s startups quality standard. I use a service because that service is cool and awesome. Otherwise, they should do some improvement to get as high quality as the foreign ones.
I use services such as Bhinneka, Kartunama, Koprol, and other services that in my opinion are usable. Some time ago I criticized eEvent (local service) because they were not user friendly, and at that time I chose to use Amiando, a similar foreign service. But right now eEvent is already improved and I chose to use eEvent because their service is much better than Amiando. This is what I think can turn local services into better quality, not just using “nationalism” to sell their products but also become international scale global service.
Some people did express their mind by protesting me because I don’t use local services much. Are these local services that bad? Not really, but most of them still need to be improved. And I, as user, will keep supporting local services by giving feedback so that they can improve, like I did to eEvent.
And I think, it’s about time to stop treating Indonesian startups especially for the sake of “nationalism”. It’s about time for Indonesian startups to get our support by giving them feedback so they can improve themselves and become Indonesian startups with international quality and able to compete with other foreign services.
So, are you with me? Or you still insist on selling “nationalism”?
Translated by Nita Sellya.
Local Users had been used to so-called foreign services and “foreign” quality. As local startup, we don’t need any nationalism to sell our services. As long as it’s usable to people, people will use it. Nationalism only understandable by Indonesian, but usability and quality are global value proposition that everyone on earth crust understands.