🚀 Lessons from 20 young founders
Happy Sunday!
Welcome back to Founders Feature, a weekly newsletter all about the journeys of young startup founders.
The latest issue marked the 20th edition of Founders Feature, so to celebrate this milestone and the founders interviewed so far, this week’s edition will share some of the best advice from the first 20 editions, from founders in industries ranging from FinTech, MedTech, and PropTech, to HRTech, Fashion, and Community.
Thanks to all the founders for sharing your stories with me.
I’m already looking forward to the next 20!
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🧠 Adriana Crovetto: On continuous learning
"Everything can be learned. Not knowing how to do something, and not having previous experience shouldn't stop you. There is no entrepreneur that started something knowing everything.
You need to get over the constant feeling of not knowing and realise that there is no one out there who will just magically enlighten you. And then one day you decide that you just have to figure it out yourself."
⚡ Joe Gobara: On taking risks
"Now is the time to take risks. If you've got an idea and you want to start a business, the best time to do it is now. The risk to just leave your job increases with time. When you're young, your risk reward ratio is much better. Plus, it's such a great experience starting your own business."
💡 Tim Meyer: On finding your why
"You should be clear about your personal why, what it is that you stand for and that you want to achieve with your life. Thinking about it, being clear about it, and keeping it in mind, will challenge decisions you might want to make along the way."
🙌 Sarah Greisdorf: On confidence
"I found that if you have enough confidence, most people will let you do pretty much anything. So you really need to be the biggest believer in your own idea first, before anyone else can."
💪 Pierre-Loup Dupré: On never giving up
"Never give up, and stand up to pressure. Take the time to fail, and take the risk to lose what you invest. Take the risk of feeling ridiculous. Try everything possible for you, because one day it will pay off."
🧘♀️ Sydney Phillips: On embracing the power of boredom
"Spend time by yourself. Spend time being bored. Some of the best ideas stem from boredom and taking a break from mindless social media scrolling. Take time by yourself to actually explore your interests."
🚀 Basile Bedelek: On the importance of just starting
"Don't try to optimise everything in the beginning. Just start doing it, and over time it'll naturally get better."
👀 Ahriana Edwards: On not comparing yourself to others
"Every entrepreneur's path is their own path. Follow your own timeline, try to compare yourself to others as little as possible and, you know, just do you. Because, you know that if you're doing you and you're doing the things behind the scene that matter, then success will come no matter what."
🎯 Tristan Maurel: On finding your niche early
"Focus, focus, focus. Don't diversify, start with one direction and become the best at that one very specific task or area in your industry."
🏠 Tiara Sahar Ataii: On maintaining a work-life balance
"The founders who seem to have the happiest teams who don't only live for their work are the most successful startups and the ones that seem to be having the most fun.
Similarly, the ones where the founders maintain a social life and work-life balance are also those with a really successful, growing team. It's important to remember that your company might exist because of you, but you don't exist only for it."
🙋♂️ Aaro Isosaari: On being your own target audience
"Build something that you yourself would love to use. It can be quite difficult to come up with an idea that will solve other people's problems if you can't at all relate to it. Be the number one user of the product yourself."
🤝 Michelle Kwok: On the importance of culture-fit when hiring
"Hire for soft skills over hard skills. People might be the best at a certain skill, but if they don't fit your team culture, they don't truly believe in your missions, and they don't align with your personal and business values, they're going to be a bad hire. People can improve on the relevant hard skills later."
🥇Tsemaye Uwejamomere: On learning how to prioritise
"Learn how to prioritise. Everything feels important, and everything may be important, but not everything is important right now."
🎢 Samuel Frey: On learning to enjoy the journey
"A lot of people are driven by wanting to solve a particular problem, make the world a better place, earn a lot of money, whatever it is that drives them to start the startup. But I think it's wrong to start a startup having only the end goal in mind. Starting a startup is nothing you just start and then at some point reach that goal. It's a long and hard journey, and if you don't also enjoy the journey then it's not worth it."
📖 Abidemi Awojuyigbe: On selling your story
"As a founder, you need to learn to sell your story. People buy from people, so it's important to work on your pitch and really bring your why to your potential customers or investors."
🧐 Valentin Bula: On the importance of remaining curious
"Be curious and open-minded. If you are curious, you will be open to learning new things, receiving feedback, and meeting new people. I believe you can learn pretty much anything today, you just have to be in the right environment for this and have the right mindset to want to absorb the knowledge around you."
💫 Michael Kowatschew: On surrounding yourself with great people
"One of the biggest lessons I've learned is a quote from Socrates which is "I know that I know nothing." Too many people who think they are great leaders tell others how things ought to be done. Instead, I think as a great leader you don't have to know everything, but you know who to ask, you know who to trust, and you trust your employees, because they know many things that you don't. It's also important to listen and surround yourself with people you want to listen to."
📈 Andreas De Neve: On allowing yourself to think bigger
"When we were raising our last funding round I was challenged to think bigger, and this is a lesson I think is worth passing on to others. If you think bigger then you will automatically act bigger and your chances of success will increase tremendously because you will start doing different things."
😌 Carl-Philipp von Polheim: On managing stressful situations
"Serenity (but seriousness) during stressful situations mostly leads to positive outcomes."
💬 Cornelius Palm: On talking to users early
"My main advice is to always talk to users to understand the problem better and then go back to the problem and try to solve it better. Keep iterating on this for a constant feedback loop."
❓Nicola Filzmoser: On learning to ask why
"Learn to ask why. Ask your users why and don't just take the first answer they give you. Ask your teammates why, and most importantly, ask yourself why you're doing certain things a certain way. There's this technique where you ask why five times and applying it can be challenging but you have to push people to answer and it helps in uncovering the depth of a problem."