Founders Feature #053 - Newcon
The platform for the best conferences and speakers
Happy Sunday!
Welcome back to Founders Feature, a weekly newsletter all about the journeys of young startup founders.
For this week's edition, I interviewed Cephas Ndubueze, Founder of Newcon, a video platform for the world's best conferences and speakers based in Germany.
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Here’s what Newcon is all about:
🏠 The Basics
The Problem:
So much amazing content is generated by companies and individual speakers every year in the form of keynote speeches and conferences. Before Covid, none of this content was recorded and therefore was not available to a wider population, letting it go to waste. Post-Covid, the recordings exist, but many companies still don’t know what to do with the content they have.
The Solution:
Newcon is a platform that makes some of the best conferences, speakers, and keynotes available to the public for free. Companies can choose whether they want to collect email addresses in exchange for access or make it completely barrier-free, while viewers can enjoy world-class content that was previously hidden behind the walls of some of the world's best conferences.
The Team:
I’m the CEO and founder of Newcon. My educational background is in mechanical engineering, innovation management, and design thinking and I previously worked within Venture Capital and as a Product Manager for various startups. We are a team of 5 people. One founding engineer, one COO and 2 for business development, and marketing.
🚀 The Journey
How did you come up with your startup/solution?
When I got involved in the startup ecosystem, I found one of the best ways to gain insight and more experience was to attend conferences in different cities. To access these events for free I volunteered at the conference because the ticket prices were so expensive. I learned so much from the talks I attended. I kept thinking just how much other people could benefit from hearing this too, but at the time, almost none of the talks were recorded. This gave me the initial motivation to try and democratise the knowledge hidden behind the conference walls.
From here I created a first business plan but realised quite early that the idea was not really scalable. To record every event worldwide would involve huge expenses and operational complexity by sending teams to all cities with events at the same time. At this point, I put the idea aside for the time being. Then, when covid started, it led to a situation where every call, seminar, workshop, and masterclass became digital, but more importantly, became recorded. Suddenly all this content was available in a recorded format, and I revived my business idea.
I contacted conference hosts and asked them what they were doing with their video recordings, and many of them said they didn’t know yet. I was shocked that they had such amazing content, but no plans to do anything with it. So that’s how Newcon really came to be. I thought of ways to give them the supply-side incentive to share their video content while providing a great platform to the demand side. We now create a platform that gives conference hosts complete control over the experience, allowing them to monetise, win leads, or simply put their content out there for free in a clean environment.
Why is this the right time for this problem to be solved?
Covid was a huge accelerator to Newcon being able to grow. The fact that everything moved online, certainly helped, as companies were recording their content anyway. Secondly though, video consumption is a huge and increasing trend. Not only are we consuming more, but more users and businesses are creating video content and thought leadership content, which is driven by the tools that are now available on the market, such as Tiktok, Hopin, or Linkedin Video.
What is a recent success you are proud of?
One of the biggest successes is the angel round we recently raised. We have some amazing business angels on board, all previous founders, and some great institutions like On Deck and Hustle Fund. I’m very happy that we had 30% female investors and more than 30% underrepresented investors. Diversity was something I put a lot of effort into in setting up this round, and I’m particularly proud of having done it as a solo founder.
What is a recent challenge you have faced?
Time is always my biggest challenge. There is never enough time to do everything. Another challenge is of course hiring. I’m currently hiring a C-level management team for Newcon, and finding the right people can be difficult. I spend a lot of time thinking about how best to attract these people in terms of culture, having a remote or hybrid model, there are a lot of factors to consider.
What do you wish you knew before you started and is there anything you would have done differently in hindsight?
I would focus even more on building the right team early on. I would say enjoy the time you spend building alone, it’s a great time, but when you go out to hire, put 100% of your energy into it. It’s ok to deprioritise the main business activity for this because hiring is so crucial you might as well do it right.
🧠 The Lessons
What is the best advice you have been given recently?
Always put your customer first. Focus on them, ask the right questions, and listen well. Use every opportunity to find better insights regarding the problem you want to solve.
What advice would you give to other young founders?
Enjoy your time building, especially in the beginning. During the period before you've officially launched, raised funding, or hired a team, it’s just the founder and the idea, and that makes it the perfect time to learn different skills from sales, design, marketing, customer interviews, finance, and all aspects that you eventually end up outsourcing when you hire a team. If you go through that process well, you will know exactly what your strengths are and what you can’t do yourself, and this will make hiring so much easier.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned so far?
The biggest lesson I have learned is in leadership. Part of leadership is how you behave in front of your team. If you want the culture to be good, be the one who inspires that culture. You want people to be punctual, be punctual. You want people to jump in on Monday morning with a good mood, bring that good mood to the call yourself.
✨ The Inspiration
Who inspires you?
My mom inspires me all the time. She came from Nigeria to Germany as a single mom with 5 kids and has allowed us all to have a good life. She is my absolute role model in taking on pressure and challenges and being so confident in being able to figure it out, no matter what comes at her.
What book do you think everyone should read?
The Art of Gathering - Priya Parker
Podcast: Acquired