“Listen First, Solve Second”: Professor Zakaria on Startups, Failure, and the Power of Purpose

By Giulia Rainero and Cardinale Carlotta

from an interview with Roslan Bakri Zakaria

June 8, 2025

In a world obsessed with speed, power and overnight success, Professor Zakaria cuts through the noise with a refreshingly different philosophy:“If you’re not solving real problems, you’re not building anything that lasts.”

Having mentored over 3,000 startups, launched six different businesses of his own, and worked closely with both private firms and the government—including Malaysia’s Prime Minister—Professor Zakaria has seen just about everything. From immediate success to negotiations gone wrong, his journey in the industry is anything but linear, yet his advice remains remarkably unvaried:“Listen before you act.”

Roslan Bakri Zakaria

It all began, oddly enough, with curiosity.“I was doing my master’s, and our professor gave us a username and password to use this thing called net,” Professor Zakaria recalls. “It was limited, but you could talk to someone you didn’t know, someone from other universities. That was mind-blowing.”This spark of excitement and passion for technology quickly brought him back to Malaysia, where he started discovering all the potential behind it.

His first startup, born out of this vision, was founded in 1996, but it soon failed.“Who the hell am I for people to want me as their consultant?” he says.Professor Zakaria also adds: “In Malaysia, for whatever reason, they look more highly upon foreigners.” This led him to bring in an American partner for his second startup, only to learn that he just cared about revenue—quickly bringing about the end of this second experiment as well.

Soon, startup number three started to take shape.

“I wanted to change how people played the stock market,” he explains. “We put the stock exchange online, let people subscribe, trade. We broke borders, Americans could trade in the Malaysian market and vice versa.”The venture almost made him a millionaire, until greed got in the way.“They offered us a million each, but my partner wanted more. The deal collapsed.”

But failure isn’t the enemy; it is the teacher. It is bitter, yet the most valuable lesson you’ll ever learn.“If you screw up on something, you probably won’t do it again. If you do, you haven’t learned,” he says. “You fall, you get scraped—next time, wear the helmet.”It soon became clear that entrepreneurship was less about glory and more about humility.“A lot of startups fail because of arrogance, thinking: ‘My ideas are the best, nobody else is doing it.’ Arrogance kills good ideas.”

It took failure to understand he wasn’t thinking for the people, but for himself. And this is when a change in perspective happened:“By my fourth startup, my focus shifted completely. I started asking myself: ‘Does this solve something that matters?’”

The catalyst? Love and poverty.

“My wife grew up in a council flat, in unsafe conditions. I wondered why the government didn’t have mechanisms to make it better, so I started studying social issues, not from behind a desk, but on the ground. I started talking to the people.”That’s where the biggest lesson started to sink in:“If you don’t talk to your target, whatever you are doing, you will solve the wrong thing. You always think you know what the customer needs, but do you really?”

Professor Zakaria has had six startups. Some failed, some succeeded.“The reason I keep going is I believe entrepreneurship is about solving problems nobody wants to touch—and, most of all, listening to what others think they already know.”If you want to build something meaningful, don’t start with the solution, start with the question:“What is the problem, really?”

To anyone planning to break into the industry and build something meaningful, Professor Zakaria says:“Start today, don’t wait. You already know what you want to do. Your brain will always tell you not to, it rationalises why you shouldn’t, but your heart knows. Just jump in.”

He advises to fail more:“Fail fast to learn faster.”He reinforces:“Never be arrogant. Keep asking. Most importantly, keep learning.” He continues:“The myth of the invincible founder—the Zuckerberg or Jobs figure who drops out of school and builds an empire—is extremely dangerous if misunderstood. Humility is the real superpower.”

In Professor Zakaria’s world, entrepreneurship isn’t about pitching flashy ideas—it’s about solving what others ignore.“Start today. Fail fast. Listen hard. And don’t assume you’re right,” he says. “Because chances are, the person with the real answer is the one you haven’t listened to yet.”