“Jangan Malu!”: How Indonesia’s Shame Culture Tanked Its Entire Startup Ecosystem
Indonesia’s startup scandals aren’t just about ethics. They’re about shame, silence, and fear. Here’s why nobody speaks up until it’s far too late.
Somewhere between the Series B round and the mysterious resignation, someone in Indonesia’s tech ecosystem forgot to schedule the most important meeting of all: a frank, guilt-laced discussion about what the hell was going on.
But who could blame them? In a culture where shame is treated like radioactive waste, admitting error isn't brave, it’s reckless. Owning up to a misstep too early is a reputational death sentence, one that precedes any legal consequence by months, if not years. It’s not uncommon for founders to fear humiliation more than bankruptcy, or even prison.
So here we are.
Unicorns have collapsed into crime scenes.
Founders once profiled as visionaries now appear in courtroom slideshows.
Public officials who promised reform are being reformatted.
If this all feels sudden, that’s only because the rot was quietly expanding while everyone was busy not talking about it.
Psychologists might call it shame-based suppression. Indonesians just call it another day in Konoha. The real tragedy isn't that things went wrong. It's that no one felt safe enough to say they had, back when it still mattered.
Malu Makes the World Go Round (Until It Explodes)
In Indonesia, malu (translation: shame, modesty, a deep-seated fear of embarrassment) is a structural force, a quiet architect of behavior. Like gravity, or the ever-present fear that your mic is still on after a Zoom call ends, malu dictates the terms of daily interaction.
It is instilled early. Children don’t just learn right from wrong. They learn not to bring shame to the family, the school, the neighborhood, the neighborhood's dog, and the entire extended family tree stretching back to Majapahit. You grow up learning to be watchful not just of your own behavior, but of how that behavior is seen. And nothing is worse than being seen badly.
This helps explain why,:
When a startup’s numbers don’t add up, the instinct is rarely to call a meeting and sort it out. It’s to smooth it. Quietly.
If an investor asks about gross margins, you smile and talk about “user excitement.”
If someone suggests an audit, you subtly imply they don’t understand the local market.
To admit trouble early would be to expose yourself. Malu banget.
Psychoanalyst Helen Block Lewis once said that shame clings not to what you’ve done, but to who you are. In that sense, an error in judgment doesn’t read as “we overhired” but as “we are not worth respecting.” Which is why confession often comes not in the boardroom but in the back of a van headed for court.
What starts as a tweak to the growth slide becomes a systemic denial spiral. By the time the truth comes out, the damage is institutional. And all because telling the truth would have meant being seen a little too clearly, a little too soon.
Guilt: The Emotion That Could’ve Saved a Unicorn
Let’s take a moment to appreciate guilt. Quiet, unassuming guilt. Often ignored at parties, always the one cleaning up after shame has knocked over the furniture. Guilt doesn’t seek the spotlight. It just wants everyone to be okay again.
Whereas shame screams “I am fundamentally broken,” guilt calmly states, “I made a mistake, and maybe I should do something responsible about it.” Guilt is the one who sends an apology at 1 a.m. It’s the person who brings up the missing invoice not because they were caught, but because their conscience wouldn’t let it go. It is, in many ways, the adult in the room.
But guilt doesn’t do well under threat. It needs a social environment where honesty doesn’t lead to exile. Where confessing a lapse in judgment won’t mean being unfollowed by your LPs, abandoned by your co-founders, and hauled in front of a press conference in a state-issued vest. In Indonesia’s high-malu startup ecosystem, guilt never really had a shot.
Instead, we get shame’s far louder cousin. Shame needs only the imagined gaze of others. It doesn’t fix problems, it hides them. Which is why people start lying not to get ahead, but to keep their face intact.
Psychology has a name for this: “blue lies.” They aren’t told out of greed. They’re told out of loyalty. Protect the team. Protect the name. Protect the LinkedIn profile. Fraud? Maybe. But in context, it's closer to emotional group insurance.
This is how billion-dollar valuations are protected by spreadsheets that wouldn’t pass a junior accountant’s quiz. It’s not that no one noticed. It’s that the one person who did felt guilt, and knew that wasn’t enough to save them.
The Pink and Orange Walk of Shame
Enter Indonesia’s justice system, armed with flashing cameras, soundbites, and the now-iconic orange and pink detention vests. Coordinated, high-visibility humiliation appears to have become a central pillar of the country’s anti-corruption strategy. Bold choice. Subtlety has left the building.
The intent is clear: make a public example. One photo op, several microphones, and voilà. An entire nation reminded that corruption will be punished with both prosecution and an aggressively colored wardrobe change. These are morality plays, staged for the national conscience and the evening news.
The rationale, of course, is deterrence. Don’t be corrupt. Or, more precisely, don’t become this person. The one trending on TikTok. The one with their photo above the fold, standing next to a placard that reads “Detained, Not Yet Convicted.” It's subtle.
But in a culture where malu governs everything from dinner invitations to financial disclosures, public exposure doesn’t encourage honesty. It encourages silence. Not telling the truth becomes a survival strategy. People don’t become better, they just become better at hiding.
This is how molehills become mountains.
One junior analyst notices something off but says nothing.
A supervisor notices too, but keeps quiet because accountability is a dangerous game when everyone is replaceable.
The CFO, having seen this before, simply adjusts the spreadsheet and orders more coffee.
By the time the investigators show up, what was once a manageable internal issue has ballooned into a national headline. Not because people didn’t know, but because they did, and chose not to speak.
If the punishment for error is public shaming in high definition, then don’t expect transparency. Expect more creative versions of denial. And probably a new shade of vest.
Face, Fraud, and the Fear of Being “That Guy”
In Indonesia, shame is a design principle, quietly shaping incentives, behaviors, and risk decisions from the boardroom to the WhatsApp group. It’s not policy, but it functions like one. This is why whistleblowing remains rare, and why accountability tends to arrive after the fact, often wearing a numbered vest.
Startups don’t say:
“We mismanaged funds.” They say “the macro environment was challenging.”
“We inflated revenue projections.” They say “we believed in our growth story.”
No one admits a culture of internal dysfunction until the company is being slowly dissected by a Substack post or an auditor with a grudge.
This is the logic of face culture, as defined by cross-cultural researchers like Leung and Cohen. It prioritizes social harmony over personal honesty. Loyalty over disclosure. You don’t speak up; you handle it quietly. When that fails, you stop replying to emails altogether and act like the problem never existed.
And now, as arrests mount, the question ricochets through X, WhatsApp, and late-night TV panels:
Why didn’t anyone say anything earlier?
Because the crime wasn’t the fraud. It was being caught. The tragedy is the fear of exposure that kept guilt locked in the basement. Guilt, that irritating but useful inner voice saying “you should probably come clean,” never stood a chance in a culture where reputation must be preserved at all costs.
What could have been an early correction became a spectacular collapse. Because nobody wanted to be that guy. Until someone was. And everyone else breathed a quiet sigh of relief that it wasn’t them. Yet.
Shame is not some rare psychological export found only in Jakarta boardrooms and government procurement units. Every culture does it. Silicon Valley wraps it in subtweets and LinkedIn thinkpieces. The UK hands it over to the tabloids and lets them chew. Singapore handles it with quiet bans, vanishing titles, and a quiet compliance officer who simply stops inviting you to meetings.
But in Indonesia, shame operates at a different altitude. It floats above law, reason, risk assessments, and even spreadsheets. It can override common sense. It delays action not because people don’t know what’s wrong, but because they are terrified of being seen as the one who says it out loud.
This is why so many problems get handled only once they’re already wearing a vest on national television. Because guilt, that quieter, more useful emotion, got crowded out. There was no room for it in the org chart.
If there’s a path forward, it starts with a simple adjustment: swap shame for guilt. Encourage small admissions. Create off-ramps before the cliff. Let people be wrong without requiring a public trial.
Until then, the headlines will keep coming.
At StratEx - Indonesia Business Advisory we help founders and boards create psychologically safe environments where issues surface early. Contact us if you're interested to build executive teams who know how to handle failure before it hits the press.