The co-founder and CEO of Piktochart, a web-based graphic design tool and infographic maker, shares her biggest lessons about running a global software company from her home base in Malaysia
Before starting Piktochart, Ai Ching Goh had a hunch that marketing would become more visually driven. She believed that infographics would grow to become an effective tool for communicating data and information in a manner that was easier to digest and more pleasing to the eye. She tried to learn how to create infographics using Adobe and on PowerPoint, but she found it too difficult and wasn't satisfied with the results either.
This led her and her husband, Andrea Zaggia, to develop their own solution. Their result is Piktochart, a web-based infographic creation tool that is now being used worldwide by more than 300,000 people every month.
Goh, who is also the company's CEO, says that infographics have become an essential visual storytelling tool to communicate anything from data-heavy reports to complex business processes—and her platform has the features to help make creating them an easier process. Piktochart has templates for users to create anything from reports to social media graphics to investor pitch decks. It also offers collaborative features that allow teams to work on a project together and share their feedback.
The company also runs Piktostory, a video editing platform that allows users to turn long-form videos into bite-sized clips ready to be shared on social media.
From her home base in Penang, Malaysia, Goh shares with us the five lessons she picked up from running a global company.
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1. Understand your target market
"Piktochart's success is due to multiple factors. One of the main reasons is that we offered the right product at the right time. Just as we were launching in 2012, there was a significant uptick in users who needed to make infographics. The main bulk of our customers come from the US and Canada, so I would often travel to these countries to learn about our customers and observe what our competitors are doing.
"It is essential to improve on your product continually. As Piktochart built upon our core strengths as an infographic creation tool, we also continue to create new products that help our users communicate visually. That's why in August 2021, we launched Piktostory, a video editing platform that allows users to turn long-form videos into shareable bite-sized clips."