Originally brought up in India, Vinita Rathi later moved to London and began working at Goldman Sachs. For five years – with initially, no financial knowledge – she worked her way up in the fast paced environment, eventually becoming VP of the interest rate product teams. When her time with Goldman Sachs came to an end, she then started her own company Systango, an end-to-end IT service provider called Systango, which now has 300+ employees and works with names such as Grindr, Dialpad, ResearchNow, Deloitte, Oracle and Porsche. 

Not only does Rathi have 5.5 years in a tier 1 investment bank specializing in trading technology and 14+ years as a CEO of Systango, she is also the founder of Studio Fintech, a company that specializes in dealing with Fintech and blockchain ventures with a focus on blockchain-centric projects. Studio Fintech is arm of Systango focussing specifically on Fintech and blockchain. 

Additionally, Rathi is the founder of WomenHackForNonProfits currently made up of 1200 women in tech who are building open source projects for non-profits and individuals with a cause. She is also the founding director of Women Who Code (London Chapter), aimed to inspire women to excel in technology careers. To top it all off she is a Google Women Techmakers Lead, focusing on helping bolster the cause of feminism in Tech.

All of the above when put together indicate she has been playing this game for a long time.

“You start looking for analytics when you are solving a specific user behaviour problem. Thinking about it as part of product build enables you to solve the initial teething problems faster, quicker and efficiently.” - @VinitaKRathi
Share on X

During the early years, Rathi’s experiences at Goldman Sachs and now, working with a wide range of entrepreneurs under Systango and more, have given her some valuable insights about the role data science plays in building product strategy and how startups and scaleups can leverage it not only for increasing the efficiency of their businesses but also deciding the future course. Here are just a few of the takeaways Vinita will be speaking about.

• Planning your Data Strategy
• Data Mining
• Data Visualization
• Leveraging Visualization Techniques
• Other aspects of Data Engineering
  

“Often data during product build is an after thought. You start looking for analytics when you are solving a specific user behaviour problem. Thinking about it as part of product build enables you to solve the initial teething problems faster, quicker and efficiently.” Rathi says.

“Having right data strategy and appropriate tools in place early on enables you to learn more about your product and its usage than you can imagine.” - @VinitaKRathi
Share on X

This can be integrated into building your team early. Systango approaches its client’s problems with a human-centered and data-focussed methodology. They believe that there are no silver bullets in their space, and that the best solutions come from involving the right people in every step of the process, establishing KPIs for your teams and then tracking them with data you collect. 

Vinita says “When you are a CEO, you need to be able to see Sales, marketing, logistics, product analytics all in one place and be able to connect the dots.” Different departments/teams end up using their own tools, they end up collecting huge set of data but miss out on the holistic view. This has an impact on ability to see trends and spot patterns. You have to make sure that not only you define and collect but also aggregate and analyse the data points to optimise the effort/ROI across each channel. 

“When you are a CEO, you need to be able to see Sales, marketing, logistics, product analytics all in one place and be able to connect the dots.” - @VinitaKRathi
Share on X

Data science is slowly becoming essential for a lot of businesses, startups and enterprises alike. It helps organizations with crucial decision-making and helps companies gain a competitive edge in the market by leveraging any insight to increase efficiency and productivity by making the right decisions. It is important to ensure that you have an infrastructure in place that will allow you to monitor and analyze the data you collect.

To learn more about leveraging product strategy, see if you qualify for membership and check out the webinar from August 9.

The first thing to do is to define the data collection of which is going to be helpful to the business. Then collect and aggregate this data in one place.  Data mining (the practice of analyzing large databases in order to generate new information) aids you in learning how to improve your product or service and how to create a better marketing and sales strategy, while predictive models help to monitor customer behavior. In order to keep up with the competition and trends, you must know the activity of the customers. Setting up data strategy right from start allows you to monitor your business KPIs and build on them. 

“Only when you have KPI for your business and teams, you will be able to measure them.” - @VinitaKRathi
Share on X

Data visualization gives you the ability to interpret, convert, and eventually summarize data to a comprehensive language that you can also present to stakeholders. 

To learn more about leveraging product strategy, see if you qualify for membership and check out the webinar from August 9.

For early-stage founders, the term sheet is among the most consequential documents you’ll develop. Your term sheet — basically a written agreement dictating the terms and conditions of a deal — serves a critical role in the fundraising process, and can carry implications for your startup’s ownership structure in the long term. But managing term sheets doesn’t need to be a scary process. 

“For somebody going through the fundraising process for the first time, there can be a lot of jargon and unfamiliar terms in those term sheets,” says Joe Collingwood, associate in Dentons’ corporate practice. Along with Ataer Arguder, Founder of Aura and head of Founders Network London chapter, Collingwood breaks down the fundamentals of term sheets and ways to think strategically about crafting yours.

If you’re an early stage founder, register for the full Term Sheets 101 seminar and check if you qualify for membership to Founders Network and learn term sheet essentials, including: 

• Understanding VCs
• Setting a Valuation
• Liquidation Preferences
• Founder Vesting 
• Anti-Dilution Clauses + More

“A term sheet is basically a letter of intent: summary of mutual understanding of what’s going to happen when,” says Arguder. “Founders don’t really know how this works from the VC’s side, what the fund needs to do to make money — the dynamics, the math. Once a founder understands how this works, I think it’s easy to reverse-engineer the process and become VC ready.” 

Founders, particularly, first-time founders, are likely to encounter a bunch of terminology that they may not fully comprehend: Liquidation preferences, founder vesting, anti-dilution clauses, straight line vesting, preemption rights, just to name a few. 

“Both sides need to be very careful, because this round’s term sheet is the next round’s starting point. Valuation is critical.” - @ataerarguder
Share on X

“Both sides need to be very careful, because this round’s term sheet is the next round starting point,” adds Arguder. “In 18 to 24 months, you’re required to perhaps triple your business. So valuation is critical.”

Founders shouldn’t fall into the trap of seeking a higher valuation because it sounds more prestigious, or has the potential to attract more media attention, according to Arguder.

“It’s a great burden on the founder as well,”  he says. “The term sheet is sent by the VC, by the way. And if you’re not an experienced founder, you may not think like three or four steps ahead.”

“It’s essential for founders to get legal counsel in evaluating term sheets, and to square that advice with their own goals with the business. That can start with knowing how to spot what’s standard — and what isn’t — in basic terms such as liquidation preferences,” adds Collingwood. 

“It’s fairly standard to see a one times liquidation preference, which means if a company goes, bust the investor gets an amount equal to their investment back in priority to everybody else. 

“But if you’ve never seen that before, you’d have no idea of knowing whether or not that’s normal or not,” says Collingwood. The higher the number floats above one, the more favorable it tends to be towards the investor. 

“If a founder understands why a VC is asking for something, it can make negotiations a bit smoother.” - @Dentons
Share on X

Another challenge is understanding where to pick your battles and that starts with understanding the investors’ rationale in asking for specific terms — liquidation or otherwise. 

“If a founder understands why a VC is asking for something, it makes negotiations a bit smoother,” Collingwood says. ”Frankly, there are places where VC funds just won’t budge; they will expect a liquidation preference 95% of the time. So it’s not really worth fighting that battle.”

“A deeper understanding of your investors’ motivations, and how they’re aiming to make money off the investment will likely yield a stronger term sheet for both parties,” says Arguder. 

“As well as building a small business; you're building a growth machine. Term sheets need to be realistic because a VC wants to make an exit in the future.” - @ataerarguder
Share on X

“You’re not building a small business; you’re building a growth machine — that’s the idea at least,” he says. “Term sheets need to be realistic, because a VC wants to make an exit at some point in the future. There are going to be other rounds, and maybe they’ll want to go to a bigger VC and sell their shares. The expectations of a founder need to be managed.”

Pandemics may not last forever, but they present a critical opportunity to plan for the long-term health of your startup.

Businesses of all sizes are adjusting to a new reality of remote work, different financial realities, and other effects of COVID-19. And startups in particular must prepare for a host of secondary impacts to their teams, workplaces, and overall outlook — and be ready to seize opportunities presented by the crisis, as well.

Managing a remote workforce has its own host of challenges, from adjusting to video calls in lieu of meetings to shoring up the technical side of remote operations. Many startups may also need to reduce headcount during this period, given the necessity of extending cash runways in an uncertain environment for fundraising. But the COVID-19 environment also gives rise to opportunities, namely to invest in key talent that may be harder to nail down under normal circumstances. 

That’s according to panelist Maddy Cross, Talent Director at UK-based venture capital firm Notion VC. 

“If you're not too badly affected, then you might be able to hire that new CTO who you previously would have struggled to secure.” - @NotionVC
Share on X

“If you’re not too badly affected — maybe because you’re well-funded or you’re not relying on a revenue stream just yet — then you might be able to hire that new CTO who you previously would have struggled to secure, because they’re now available,” she says.

In the full panel, Cross speaks to a range of other potential issues founders need to be aware of in bringing people back to the office. Those include how to overcome challenges presented by a confined environment; options for supporting employees’ wellbeing, including annual leave and other options for easing a return to work; and communicating to staff the steps you’re taking to ensure a safe return to on-site work. 

Michelle Lamb, partner at Dentons who advises companies on employment law issues, adds a range of tips on how to transition staff back into the office, and what practical tools to have at your disposal that help startups adapt to changing business needs — whether they be safely reopening an office or planning for a strategic restructuring triggered by the health crisis. 

“If there are longer-term changes needed, you need to think about what options are in your toolkit if you need to make a change. Startup founders should get ahead of these issues now.” - @Dentons
Share on X

“If there are longer-term changes needed, you need to think about what options are in your toolkit if you need to make a change,” says Lamb. “If you need to reduce people costs, and if you’re not experienced in doing these things every day, how is that going to pan out? Startup founders should get ahead of these issues now.”

Founders are finding that COVID-19 opens up a can of worms across many areas of business. However,  employee and workplace challenges are manageable if you’re equipped with the right tools and resources. Seeking advice through peer networks is also instrumental in navigating the post-COVID landscape, with founders often sharing resources on how to manage returning talent and to safely reopen for business. 

Most importantly, founders and top-level executives need to be actively engaged at every level in these decisions. 

The COVID-19 crisis itself may be temporary, but for many startups — even those whose revenue streams are not necessarily impacted by the pandemic — it will necessitate some longer-term strategic changes that founders need to put into motion now. 

In the current environment, don’t delegate office and workforce management issues to lower-tier staff, adds Joseph Altendorff, partner in the corporate practice at Dentons who advises high-growth startups in all sectors.

“These issues aren't for middle management; they're for top level management. This is a potential total restructuring of your business culture, and how it will identify as a business going forward.” - @Dentons
Share on X

“These issues aren’t for middle management; they’re for top level management,” he says. “This is a potential total restructuring of your business culture, and how it will identify as a business going forward. If you’re a founder or a top level management manager and you delegate this down to a middle ranker, you’re going to end up with a middle ranking solution at the top of the agenda line for how your business is going to be managed going forward.” 

Request an invite to learn more about managing employees from the Dentons Team and 600+ fellow tech founders through interactive webinars and forum conversations featuring over 9 years of archived knowledge.

There may be no magic formula for launching the next Google, Facebook or Apple. But according to Adam Cheyer, there are a few steps founders can take to size up ideas and help to drive them towards success.  

Cheyer has a track record to back it up: As co-founder of Siri, he helped to transform the iPhone experience after Siri was acquired by Apple in 2010. He was also on the founding team at Change.org, the largest petition site in the world, and later created Viv Labs, a personal assistant software acquired by Samsung. 

Lesson #1: Playing The Long Game

Commercial success doesn’t necessarily arise from a lightbulb moment. It often takes time to cultivate, in some cases years. 

“Siri seemed to many like such an overnight success,” Cheyer says. “But the reality behind that was that it took two years of commercial hard work to get there. Before that, there was a five year research phase, during which I led technology development for the largest AI project in U.S. history researching intelligent assistants. And before that, I worked on the problem for over a decade, in both research and commercial settings.  Basically, it was something like 17 years of work from the lightbulb moment to get to the point where Steve Jobs called.” 

Lesson #2: Timing It Right

“Not every successful startup idea will take 17 years to develop — but it might take longer than founders think,” Cheyer says. One question often asked is: How do you know when is the right time to try an idea as a startup?  

It’s an important question, because if you launch too early, the world might not be ready to fully appreciate your idea — but if you launch too late, you will miss the opportunity and not catch the rising tide at the right moment.  

Cheyer uses two tools to answer this question: trends and triggers. First, he studies technology topics that are emerging at the time, and develops views about where the world is going, and what has substance versus what’s just a fad.  Once he feels he has a perspective, Cheyer waits for a “trigger” moment that confirms his prediction and gives him unique insight into what is going to happen over the next few years.  

An example? In 2004, Cheyer predicted that an interface paradigm would emerge to enable access to all the world’s content and services in a new way. When the iPhone came to market, despite many pundits predicting failure, Cheyer felt this was exactly what he had been waiting for. Looking forward two years, he posited that every handset manufacturer and telecom would be desperate for a new technology to compete with the iPhone, and he felt that Siri could be just what they needed. So he and two co-founders started a company to build it.

Lesson #3: Doing Something Big

Step three is to evaluate the size of the opportunity before deciding to invest years in developing, pitching and scaling your startup idea. A good number to keep in mind: 250. 

“It’s going to take the same amount of time to do something small as something large. So make sure you’re aiming for a market size of at least 250 million users — big companies like eBay, YouTube and Instagram are user-based. You can aim for $250 million in revenue, or you can have a differentiated technology with an application and a business model,” he adds. Why target the 250 threshold? There’s a better risk-reward profile once you get to that point, Cheyer says, with more promising prospects if your startup were to eventually get acquired. 

Lesson #4: Following the Data 

Keep your eye on the data.

“If you're not instrumenting everything you do, you're not doing it right. And if you have an advisory board, if they're not demanding to see metrics at every single board meeting, they're not doing their job.” - @acheyer
Share on X

“If you’re not instrumenting everything you do, you’re not doing it right. And if you have an advisory board, if they’re not demanding to see metrics at every single board meeting, they’re not doing their job,” he says.  

That was evident in the growth of Change.org, which wasn’t originally conceived as the world’s largest hub for petitions. As they tried many new functions on the site, the founding team followed the data of their users’ behavior to evolve what eventually became an influential platform with hundreds of millions of users. 

After Change.org launched, the site’s user counts increased initially at a relatively modest rate. That changed once the team observed high engagement with the petition feature, which was then a minor feature. Change.org was reorganized to make petitions more central, at which point the site’s users accelerated dramatically. 

“Letting the data lead you where you want to go is really important,” Cheyer says.

“Letting the data lead you where you want to go is really important.” - @acheyer
Share on X

Lesson #5: Visualizing Success

Finally, a more personal tip for entrepreneurs: Always remember to concretely visualize what success looks like — embrace it, and the ultimate outcome may wind up surprising you. 

“When we were just starting out at Siri, I walked into an Apple store and summoned up every bit of gumption I had, and thought: Someday Siri is going to be right up there on an Apple Store wall, alongside the Google, Skype and Pandora icons they were displaying,” he recalls.  It seemed outrageously ambitious to posit that his little team would create something as important as these giants of technology.

Fast forward, and on the day Siri launched, he returned to an Apple store and — to his surprise — Siri was not merely displayed as one icon among many. Next to the front door of the Apple Store, there was a sign saying “Introducing Siri”, and there was a plasma display showing Siri use cases running on a loop. This juxtaposition of the earlier image of success that Cheyer had visualized years earlier, against the even better reality presented this day, created a striking moment.

“Life often finds a way to surpass your biggest dream with a reality you couldn’t even imagine. That moment makes all the hard work completely worthwhile and satisfying.” - @acheyer
Share on X

“I just got chills,” he says. “Don’t just dream abstractly, but concretely visualize what success would look like. When you do this, life often finds a way to surpass your biggest dream with a reality you couldn’t even imagine.  And that moment makes all the hard work completely worthwhile and satisfying.” 

Register at Founders Network for Adam’s full insights on: 

• Playing the Long Game
• Timing It Right 
• Doing Something Big
• Following the Data
• Visualizing Success

According to Founders Network CEO Kevin Holmes, the London Chapter was begun in order to further facilitate the acquisition of top-tier talent. Currently, the London Chapter brings together 30 full-time tech founders that work together to help each other in these regards. With impressive leadership including Marco Scotti, Founder of Figaroo, Ben Iceton, Founder of Heed and Ataer Arguder, Founder of Aura, and supported by the London Branch of  Dentons Law Firm, it is a select team of founders and partners dedicated to peer mentorship.

A Truly Privileged Position

The London chapter’s Regional Director is Marco Scotti, a third-time entrepreneur who honed his startup skills in both New York and Silicon Valley, moving back to London in 2018 to found Figaroo, an invite-only app that allows members to share luxury experiences from around the world. 

With his great passion for building and expanding the start-up ecosystem, Scotti was a natural fit. Scotti notes that startups are fragile entities, yet vital for every country’s economy. All startup founders have a deep-rooted need to stay close to each other, alongside people who understand and value their choices, goals and motivations. The need to plant and grow deep roots that allow us to support and nourish each other’s businesses operationally and emotionally cannot be overstated.

So what inspired him to take up the mantle of Regional Director? According to Scotti, “being together here in London, under a big brand as Founders Network is, means creating a powerful and recognized community of ambitious people with similar needs, which greatly helps in attracting resources, connections with industry professionals and investors, government representatives; to ease the reach of those very same needs.” 

He continues, “Founders Network offers to its Members to be in a truly privileged position, being the only ‘invite-only’ community in London; by creating a selected environment, only with quality people that have proven their value and direction, external stakeholders see us as a great opportunity for them, and can’t wait to interact with us on a deeper level.”

Marco Scotti
Founder, Figaroo

“Being together here in London, under a big brand like Founders Network, means creating a powerful and recognized community of ambitious people with similar needs.”

A Foundation for Growth

Scotti is helped by Ataer Arguder, our London Chapter’s Growth Chairman who is best known for building Aura, an innovative storytelling platform that connects storytellers with cultural institutions and their visitors from around the world. Prior to founding Aura, he built a highly successful and innovative ticketing company from the ground up, with a particular focus on the Turkish and Middle Eastern market. 

The company grew by 300% on average in its first two years and worked alongside well-known global brands like Cirque du Soleil, Merlin Entertainments/Madame Tussauds, Sea Life, Legoland and Euroleague Basketball among many others. All together, Arguder has founded six startups, with two of them being in the tech industry.

When asked why he decided to take up the role of Growth Chairman at Founder’s Network, he answered, “Connecting people is in my design and I enjoy creating meaningful connections. I have already been connecting people all my life. Now that I will be able to do this using the power of a global network, [it just] sounded like the right idea at this stage of my life.” 

He also believes that there is a deep-seated need for peer mentorship within the London tech ecosystem, going on to say that the market is “quite crowded, and it may even be a difficult ecosystem, especially for first-time entrepreneurs and/or entrepreneurs coming from other countries. Without the help of a mentor, he continues, entrepreneurs would be risking their most important asset: time. With Founders Network, he believes that this position will afford him the opportunity to support entrepreneurs at all stages, whether it’s their first startup or they’re already experienced in this regard. 

Ataer Arguder
Founder, Aura

“With Founders Network, this position will afford me the opportunity to support entrepreneurs at all stages, whether it’s their first startup or they’re already experienced.“

Fostering Peer to Peer Mentorship

Of course, a new networking chapter cannot grow without someone to foster the existing community, which is where Heed founder Ben Iceton comes in. Since 2018, Founder’s Network has enabled Iceton to grow his business with like-minded individuals, gaining exposure to a global community of entrepreneurs at different stages. Iceton explains, “I am privileged to accept the position of Membership Chair – a role that will allow me to introduce new members, fostering key mentorship from the outset. The wealth and depth of experience found in the Founders Network sets it apart from similar groups in London.”

There is perhaps no better testimonial for an organization than to have one of its own members responsible for driving its growth in the same fashion as the organization did for him. In this way, we work to continuously reinforce and amplify the core philosophies that bring us together. It is due to the ingenuity, reciprocity, mutual respect and collaborative nature that Founder’s Network has reached its eighth year, spanning over 600 members in 9 global chapters, and showing no signs of slowing down.

Ben Iceton
Founder, Heed

“I am privileged to accept the position of Membership Chair – a role that will allow me to introduce new members, fostering key mentorship from the outset.”

Expansion on a Global Scale

To ensure that the London Chapter is properly supported, we have expanded our partnership with Denton’s law firm beyond Los Angeles and New York City. The global team at Dentons have been excellent partners over the past year, and we’re thrilled to add London to the list. As for Dentons in London, they “are excited to partner with Founders Network as it launches in London. Dentons has been advising start ups and high growth businesses in London for decades, and we’ve long believed that advice for founders of, and investors in, these companies needs a strong cultural understanding of how these businesses are run and the environment in which they operate. We were attracted by Founders Network’s ethos and the collaborative, peer-to-peer ecosystem Kevin and his team have built. The alignment of Dentons’ and Founders Network’s ethos’s made a partnership between us a natural choice as Founders Network looks to expand its own global network, in the same way that many of our clients have expanded their businesses on a global scale.”

See Your Future With Us

“If you’re involved in the tech industry and working on your own startup, it pays to have a network of mentors, supporters and innovators by your side that can help you further strengthen and solidify your market position as well as help to provide you with funding, talent and acquisition strategies. With this in mind, we would love to have you be a part of our growth together.” says Kevin Holmes, Founder and CEO of Founders Network.

“Our London chapter committee has just allocated an additional 20 spots open for full-time tech founders that exemplify Founder’s Network’s core values, including authenticity, reciprocity, humility and inclusivity. If you’re a full-time tech founder in London and you understand the crucial value of networks in helping you to cultivate your own startup success, please request an invite directly from our site or ask any of our members to invite you directly.”

Request an Invite to Join our London Chapter

We are going to bring you an amazing line up for a speed mentoring session which includes:

i) 1 Angel Investor

John Foenander, Founder & Digital Elder at FoeNetics AI

John is a seasoned entrepreneur in the marketing services space having co-founded multiple advertising and sales activation agencies, and taken these through growth cycles and trade sales.

He has worked with clients spanning start-ups, scale-ups and global enterprises across multiple sectors with a particular emphasis on media, communications and entertainment.

John currently provides advisory and virtual agency services (communications and CX) through his new vehicle, FoeNetics AI, which with its focus on Customer & Growth, fuels transformation and performance improvement through the fusion of data, tech and content. 

ii) 1 VC

iii) 2 Seriously Amazing Entrepreneurs

Anthony Rose, Founder & CEO at SeedLegals

Anthony Rose is a technology entrepreneur whose career has spanned across; 3D graphics, P2P music, internet video, social TV and online communities.

Rose is known for his work managing the launch of the BBC’s iPlayer, for which Wired UK named him “the man who saved the BBC”. He has founded/co-founded multiple companies including; Beamly, 6Tribes, Hey Blab, and QJAM.. Anthony is current CEO for his most recently co-founded company, SeedLegals, the world’s first legal automation platform for startup funding.

Rose currently holds 14 patents and has won numerous awards for his contributions to the digital product industry.

Chieu Cao, Co-founder & CMO at Perkbox

Chieu Cao is a co-founder & CMO of UK’s fastest-growing employee engagement platform, Perkbox (Series C, Raised $14.3M).

Prior to founding PerkBox, Chieu established himself as a tech marketing force to be reckoned with, leading initiatives for brands including Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo. A consultant turned CMO, Chieu’s repertoire spans both B2C and B2B, from SEO to social strategy. He looks forward to sharing his experience with our members.

Founders Network Members are welcome as well as guest. If you have never been you are welcome to attend as a non-member as long as an invitation has been received or approved by a current member.

AGENDA

• 6:30 – 7:00pm || Arrive and socialise
• 7:00 – 7:10pm || Introduction of speakers
• 7:10 – 7:50pm || Presentation by speakers (10min each)
• 7:50 – 7:55pm || Introduction of speed mentoring
• 7:55 – 8:30pm || Round robin speed mentoring
• 8:30 – 8:35pm || Closing announcements
• 8:35 – 9:30pm || Attendees are welcome to stay and continue conversing

Our events are for tech startup founders only. Please only RSVP if this applies to you. Registrants will be checked.

If you are interested in learning more about Founders Network, please request an invitation to join. And if you are not a current member, or have not been nominated for a membership, please join the event to meet your potential nominator. 

There are many sources of advice available to entrepreneurs and sometimes the volume seems overwhelming. Dipping into the wide-ranging trough of Medium articles, blogs and podcasts can be quite a time sink, and whilst entertaining, spreading your reading too thinly limits your ability to really progress on a few key topics.

So I try and be specific and focus only on the articles that are relevant to what I want to achieve, and resonate for me.

I believe you can make the same analogy with running a startup. I’ve been involved in two startups, and the experience I’m hopefully carrying into my third is all about specificity— to be as specific as possible in key areas of the business; target market, value proposition and message. This I find makes it easier to create momentum and hit targets.

Be as specific as possible in key areas of the business; target market, value proposition and message. @christobarley

Narrow in On Your Market

It’s all too common to aim for a big market in the belief that, as it’s a large pool of customers, your ideal customer will be out there somewhere and you will just miraculously find them – I’m certainly guilty of this! But of course aiming for a big market doesn’t make it easier to hit. This is common sense if you think about it – large markets have wide ranging and complex requirements which make it almost impossible to find that perfect customer and score a bullseye.

Build a Customer Persona

Defining your ideal customer in the early stages is hard, especially when you have little feedback or market data. Building a customer persona really helped me here – it forces you to define your buyer as a human, and to deeply understand what makes them tick. And once you have an identikit, you have something to aim for.

You may well get it wrong, but being specific should enable you to set goals and measure results quickly, and change tack without wasting too much time and money.

That’s not to say that you can’t start off with a grand vision and end up dominating a multi $bn market. But it’s very hard to do it the other way round. A start up has only very finite resources – which is mostly your (the founder’s) time. You have to be hyper focus on a defined niche otherwise you just spread yourself too thin.

A start up has only very finite resources – which is mostly the founder’s time. @christobarley

Define Your Proposition

Being specific also results in the discipline of really digging into your target market’s problems, so the solution is tailored just for them. This will almost certainly result in a small addressable market but as we all know, a few wildly happy customers are worth more than many mildly indifferent ones.

If you can’t be specific about defining your customers’ requirements, then the likelihood is that you’re making a guess at what they are. And that could result in your shot ending way off target.

With a market and proposition defined, I find its then a lot simpler to put together a persuasive and precise message that hits a nerve with the customer. A defined customer persona also really helps here to determine the optimum route to market.

Of course, this all requires hard, diligent work. But it can also save a lot of effort in the long run. Being specific means that you can test upfront your own assumptions about why your service might be successful. If you are going to build a taxi hailing app, it’s difficult to definitively say whether it will work or not. But if you say you are going to build an app for weekend limo booking in downtown San Francisco for time poor, wealthy tech entrepreneurs, then you can test each precise assumption, sometimes without even building an MVP.

With a market and proposition defined, I find its a lot simpler to put together a persuasive and precise message that hits a nerve with the customer.  @christobarley

Create a Mental Framework

And the rub comes from the fact that, in today’s internet and social media world, being razor focused is now an optimum strategy because it’s now much easier to reach your ideal customers in niche markets with a small budget. After you’ve achieved your beachhead, the internet means you can scale into a multi $bn market quicker and more cost effectively than ever before.

Specificity is an attitude and a mindset. I’ve found it can provide a helpful mental framework to making decisions about what to do next in your early stage business. Without it, a startup can be a long, hard, winding road, making success more difficult to achieve.

1. Why there’s no substitute for realizing mistakes quickly and learning as you go.
2. The importance of ‘herding cats’ when it comes to securing your lead investor.
3. How focusing on the right people, and ignoring useless connections can get you where you need to go.

Let’s start at the beginning with your MVP. Can you share any anecdotes about how that process went for you?

We got our MVP product completely wrong and chose the entirely wrong market! After a couple of months we realized so many of our key assumptions were wrong and we needed to pivot quickly. There’s no substitute for realizing quickly and learning as you go.

There’s no substitute for realizing mistakes quickly and learning as you go. @SamRyan17 @gozeelo

How did you meet your co-founders? Did they jump on board instantly, or did it take time?

There’s now 3 of us. Barney and I have been friends from school and we’ve started and sold a businesses together before so we’ve already been through the wars together! Our 3rd co-founder, Dani (CTO), was someone we built a relationship with in our last role. I think these things take time – it’s literally like a marriage and you have to be incredibly comfortable with the founder dynamic – especially ensuring you can be honest with each other and cover each others weaknesses.

Finding a co-founder takes time, it’s literally like a marriage @SamRyan17 @gozeelo

Do you have any advice for solo-founders about navigating the journey without a co-founder?

Even if you’re a solo founder, surround yourself with at least one person (preferably more) that you really trust and you know are capable. It will be a rollercoaster of emotions and you’ll need a sounding board and people to back you up when things get tough. Having someone you know and trust and can rely on in a personal and business setting is so helpful.

if you’re a solo founder, surround yourself with at least one person that you really trust and you know is capable. @SamRyan17 @gozeelo

How did you get your first customers? At what point did that shift from a manual process to a more scalable process?

Ha! We’re still doing unscalable things to work out what truly works. After many iterations of launch processes, it’s now all about partnerships (to support our brand and to leverage their databases) and 1st time use offers to encourage customers to try us for the 1st time. As things are growing, we’re seeing the referral mechanism really kick in and I think will be our biggest acquisition tool moving forward.

How did you find your lead investor? Can you talk about your valuation?

We ended up with a £4.2m post money valuation after our recent £1.2 round. We found our lead investor through a mutual intro by someone I’d met at a previous company I’d worked for. After we worked together, he and he went on to be a venture founder.

When it comes to locking in your lead investor, founders should focus on how to leverage that lead investor towards acquiring others that are going to follow on. In our case, we had a situation where our lead investor wasn’t sure he would be the lead, so we had to herd cats and get him in that position.

When it comes to locking a lead investor focus on leveraging them to acquire others @SamRyan17 @gozeelo

What is one thing you wish you knew at the beginning of your journey as a founder that you know now?

There’s a lot of ‘guff’ out there. A lot of people that use a lot of big words and talk a good game but don’t be put off. If you throw yourself in the deep end, focus on the right things and make the right connections, you will be there in no time.

If you throw yourself in the deep end, focus on the right things, make the right connections, you will be there in no time. @SamRyan17 @gozeelo

What’s next for you? What are the risks that you see moving forward?

Build strong traction in the UK events market, test other UK markets and test the overseas events market. Biggest risks are the assumptions we’ve made about how we can scale on both the user growth and operations sides.