RIYI 2026: Side hustles test hidden costs, not just revenue, Rehda Institute mentors tell young founders
Young entrepreneurs at RIYI 2026 heard that a side hustle can generate income without creating a sustainable enterprise. Mentors warned that unaccounted personal costs, founder dependency and false demand often mask whether a venture is truly profitable.
Side hustles may look profitable on the surface, but founders who do not account for hidden costs such as late nights, personal equipment and emotional pressure may be subsidising the appearance of profit, mentors told participants of the Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association (Rehda) Institute Youth Initiative (RIYI) 2026.
Launched by Rehda Institute as part of its CEO Series 2026 on 15 Jan, RIYI is a year-long corporate mentorship programme for final-year university students and recent graduates. EdgeProp is the media partner. In a recent session, mentors, business leaders and fellow mentees explored whether a side hustle genuinely builds an enterprise or simply creates another job with an unusually demanding boss — yourself.
Progressture Solar co-founder and CEO Cliff Siaw described a strong business model as “repeatable, scalable and sustainable”. In practice, demand is often easier to create than capacity. Erica Nagie Xue Mei, a Strategic Communication student at Universiti Sains Malaysia, launched Multi Uncle Delivery after identifying demand for vegetarian meals on campus. Customers responded and the business ran for about a year, but limited manpower, peak-hour pressure and academic commitments eventually made it difficult to continue. The market had validated the problem, but the venture had not developed the capacity to solve it sustainably.
Lee Hui Ann, a Universiti Malaysia Perlis student, developed SCrown Academy as a part-time teaching venture. As enrollment increased, her personal involvement became a bottleneck: she planned lessons, taught classes and communicated with parents. “If every decision waits for the founder, every problem requires the founder and every customer relationship depends on the founder, the individual is no longer leading the system. The individual has become the system,” the mentors noted.
Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology real estate student Tan Li De began selling boots online and later took on part-time work with a property agency. He received enquiries from people claiming to look for factories to rent. The enquiries later led to whether he knew anyone who could exchange USDT into renminbi or ringgit — false demand that consumed time, attention and professional relationships. Tan eventually stopped selling boots and focused more on agency work, which he considered more profitable. “Knowing when to stop” is a perspective rarely celebrated in entrepreneurship, the session highlighted.
Peter Tiong Zhi Mao, a Construction Project Management student at Universiti Sains Malaysia, invested his savings, weekends and confidence into a venture that never generated enough demand to sustain itself. He eventually discontinued the venture. FAR Capital founder and CEO Faizul Ridzuan encouraged young people to “learn first, earn later”, adding that rejection and failure are data points. Resilience does not always mean holding on; sometimes it means stepping away before a weak idea consumes more time, money and confidence.
The session concluded that a side hustle may become an enterprise only when personal effort becomes organisational capability, growth no longer depends on exhaustion, and responsibility expands together with revenue. “The first sale tells us somebody is willing to pay. The hidden balance sheet tells us who is really paying. Perhaps entrepreneurship begins only when those two answers are no longer the same,” the report noted.
