MARES Mae Nuera, founder of IHub Coworking Space and Bistro, thought she understood how to grow money until she started hiring people. Her first business began with a vehicle she bought while working in the corporate sector, using her transportation budget to cover the monthly payment and renting it out whenever she did not need it.
The formula seemed simple: acquire an asset, make it earn and reinvest. But when Nuera hired a driver, an accounting assistant and a secretary, the business stopped being only about revenue and became responsible for people.
When the pandemic disrupted operations, Nuera said much of the roughly P40,000 she earned monthly from her corporate job went to employees for nearly two years because the business could no longer support them. “That was when I realized the bigger ‘why’ of why I’m in business,” said Nuera.
Her experience reflects a reality that surfaced during WE Meet Davao 2026 on September 16, 2026 — starting a business may require an idea and capital, but sustaining one demands systems, reliable markets, cash flow and the ability to support people when revenue slows. The challenge is not simply getting a business off the ground, but keeping it moving once growth creates new costs and responsibilities.
When the founder becomes the system
For Felicitas “Joji” Bautista Pantoja, co-founder and chief executive officer of Coffee for Peace, one of the earliest bottlenecks often develops inside the business itself. Small enterprises usually survive because founders handle nearly everything, from accounting and marketing to operations and administration.
“We do everything. We do the accounting. We do the deciding of whatever marketing strategy. But creating a system is hard,” Pantoja said. That arrangement may work in the beginning, but as transactions, employees and expenses increase, the founder can eventually become the very system that limits growth.
When Pantoja started Coffee for Peace in 2008, she had to learn registration, labor requirements, employee benefits and other business rules largely on her own. “Masakit ang ulo ko noon kasi hindi ko talaga alam. Wala nag-guide sa akin na tulad ngayon (My head was aching back then because I really didn’t know what to do. No one guided me like they do now),” she said.
She now teaches entrepreneurs to begin with something basic: record every peso earned and spent. “Alam niyo ba kung saan napupunta yung pera mo? (Do you know where your money goes?)” she asks, emphasizing that a founder cannot manage money she does not fully understand.
The lesson separates making a product from managing an enterprise. A founder may know how to produce coffee, food, clothing or a service, but growth also requires financial controls, documentation and systems that can function beyond the founder.
A good product still needs a market
For Marj Alawi-Bulahan, co-founder of Creative Circle Philippines, another barrier lies outside the business: sustainable market access. “We’re not short of creatives and artists [and] makers,” she said, but good products still need reliable places where customers can consistently find them.
Many local makers depend on pop-ups, bazaars and seasonal markets that disappear after a weekend or a particular season. “Where is their place in the local economy?” Alawi-Bulahan asked, pointing to the gap between producing something worth selling and building a business that can survive.
Creative Circle Philippines responded by creating recurring market opportunities where entrepreneurs can test products, build repeat customers and understand what buyers actually want. “And so we build the market for makers,” she said.
Working closely with micro and small entrepreneurs also changed how Alawi-Bulahan sees the startup sector’s usual definition of growth. “Startup language is always about growth and scale, right? Ten times,” she said. “But when you get to work on the ground with creative entrepreneurs, it changes your perspective.”
“Sana ((I hope) we can redefine growth,” she added. For smaller enterprises, growth may not mean expanding tenfold but becoming stable enough to keep producing, paying workers and reaching customers.
When growth becomes the problem
Nuera eventually learned that solving one bottleneck can create another. She built iHub after searching for a space where she could conduct trainings and run other business activities, securing around P1.8 million in net capital to transform an old house into offices and a 24-hour bistro.
“I was looking to provide people a space to create their future and celebrate their now,” Nuera said. But the new venture also brought fixed costs, limited parking and payroll obligations that continued regardless of customer traffic.
Nuera said monthly salaries reached around P300,000 at one point, while her workforce eventually grew to about 60 employees across her operations. The costs became heavy enough that she considered shutting down.
Instead, she began connecting her ventures through shared resources in areas such as marketing, technology, real estate and back-office services. “You might see them as different businesses, but I see them as an ecosystem,” she said.
The strategy returned her to the principle behind her first venture. She once made an underused car productive by sharing it, and years later, she began applying the same idea to people, spaces and business functions.
Beyond the first sale
The experiences of Nuera, Pantoja and Alawi-Bulahan show why capital alone cannot guarantee growth. Money can finance inventory or expansion, but it cannot fix poor systems, create reliable markets or remove the obligations that come with hiring people.
Their stories also complicate the idea that success must always mean rapid scale. For many entrepreneurs, the harder achievement is building a business that can withstand weak months, pay its workers and continue operating when the next constraint appears.
Pantoja also recalled how women had to push for inclusion in spaces where important decisions were made. “We demanded that there should be a seat at the table for women,” she said, while Alawi-Bulahan offered another way of looking at that space: “We don’t ask ourselves, ‘How do I prove my worth?’ We ask ourselves, ‘How do we create from here?’”
Nuera began entrepreneurship believing she knew how to grow money, but years of managing payroll, people and several businesses changed that definition. Growth, in her experience, became less about becoming bigger and more about building enough systems, markets and resources to keep moving.
For enterprises growing from Davao, that may be the harder measure of success. The real test is not how fast a business expands, but whether it becomes strong enough to survive what comes next.
WE Meet to share
These women shared their experiences through the WE Meet on September 16, when the Nüshu Network brought its flagship networking event to Davao City. The event gathered women entrepreneurs, investors, and ecosystem partners at iHub at Pines Place for an evening of community and collaboration.
According to its press release, the event was in “partnership with Upgrade Innolab and IDEAS Davao, with support from ARQ SME BDC and ecosystem partner Creative Circle Philippines, designed to spotlight local women founders and strengthen the bridges between founders, funders, and ecosystem partners across the region.”
The event drew women entrepreneurs and ecosystem supporters for a program that paired an intimate, high-impact investment session with a lively community gathering. ACA