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Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast
with Gregory Shepherd, brought to you by
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Startup Science dot Io. Greg is
an entrepreneur who has built and sold twelve
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businesses. He's a recipient of four
private equity awards and is a featured ten
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X speaker and Forbes author. Here's
Gregory Shepherd. I'm back with Alice Benneck,
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the co founder of entrepreneur First and
the co author of How to Be
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a Founder. We've been talking about
how ef helps entrepreneurs build world class deep
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technology startups from scratch. Now,
Alice, I want to get into something
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I'm really passionate about. That's diversity
in tech. As a co founder of
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Code First Girls, can you talk
about the significance of promoting diversity and inclusion
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in the tech industry and the impact
that can have on startups. CodeFest Girls
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was set up by me and my
co founder, Matt and even though it
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is an initiative that is focused on
teaching women and non binary individuals to code,
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in some ways, I do think
it was super important that it was
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set up by a mixed gender team. And interestingly, when we have conversations
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about diversity, entrepreneurs entrepreneur first.
For example, some of the most powerful
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things that we've done has actually been
when Matt has been talking, rather when
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I've been talking. I think there's
something about championing diversity from the voice of
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somebody who knows and acknowledges their privilege
and is talking to the people who are
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like them, so other in his
instance, you know, white men who
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are also privileged. I think that's
sometimes some of the most powerful things that
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we can do to make sure that
the conversation isn't just within whichever group is
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marginalized. That said, I also
think it's important that codefust Girls was founded
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co founded by a woman, and
our CEO and latest co founder and a
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Brailsford is an amazing both role model
and she really rocks the problem. You
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know, she gets it. She
understands why this is a challenge, having
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worked in tech her whole life.
So I think it's it's important to have
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a mix that it's not just the
individuals who are experiencing the marginalization that try
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and work on these problems, but
the wider community as well. I mean,
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one of my big beliefs is that
there are lots of amazing organizations out
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there that generate conversation around marginalized groups. But ultimately, my big belief is
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that you need to have more and
more organizations who are actually doing stuff.
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And so codefesst Girls the premises that
is not just a conversation about diversity,
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it's up skilling women for free so
that they are able to take on significant
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roles within the tech industry. And
you know, we're now getting to the
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stage where, because COLDE First Girls
has been running for things sort of nine
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years or so, now that the
women that went through some of our first
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programs are beginning to hire, you
know, the next generation of Code First
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graduates as they become more senior in
their roles. So I'm a big believer
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in you know, small but significant
interventions that can change individual's career paths.
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And one of the interesting thing about
the women who have been on Code First
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Girls is that typically they were pretty
interested in coding when they were saying an
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early teenager, but they went through
the school system and puberty and teenagehood and
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and basically kind of realized that it
wasn't cool or okay to be interested in
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technical subjects. And then see Code
First Girls, which is largely focused on
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sort of university age and later women
and non binary individuals, and they see
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this as a way of returning back
to something that they did actually really enjoy,
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but culturally didn't see it as something
that they could follow. I couldn't
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have said that better. I really
couldn't have said that better. I come
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from a multi diverse family, so
my siblings are different nationalities. And but
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I'm white, right, I'm a
white man. I'm a privilege. I've
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seen this perspective, right, And
I always tell people, I'm like,
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the people that are privileged should be
the one standing up for the people that
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are marginalized, and that's how it
should work. And so the fact that
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you stated that so eloquently, I
can't even tell it's just beautiful. You're
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you're almost poetic with the way that
you word things. It's just beautiful.
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I want to ask you another question. How do you prioritize and manage the
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various challenges as a founder and risk
that come with, you know, getting
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in and starting a business. And
what advice would you have for the entrepreneurs
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that are currently navigating these challenges?
Oh, I mean, the amazing thing
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about being a found it is that
well, the amazing ound challenging thing about
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being a found it is that your
learning curve is just insane. And I'm
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sure you found this going through building
so many companies, but there's never a
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moment where you you sort of sit
back and think, yes, I've got
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it. I know I know how
to do this, and you know,
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at the point where you're six,
you're like, gosh, managing six people
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are so hard. And the minute
you think it's okay, suddenly you're nine
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people, then twelve people, and
twenty people and forty people, and the
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same for raising money and managing customers
and all the rest of it. I
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think one of the ways that I
think about managing this personally is to think
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about sort of micro happiness and macro
happiness. And the reason I kind of
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frame it that way is that I
think it's an important framing to drive resilience
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as a founder. So I would
say that on a micro level, being
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a founder can often be a bit
of a crappy job. You are often
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pretty stressed, there's always something on
fire. I'll tell you that you could
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take a beating, right, Yeah, you take a real beating, and
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sometimes that's really hard. And I've
definitely seen my friends and family sort of
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question why am I doing this?
You know, why am I putting my
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You know, there's lots of other
jobs out there that I'm sure al would
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be on a micro basis, on
a day to day basis much more fun,
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relaxing. You know, maybe I'd
go home at six and go to
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the gym and eat Devin with my
family. But I think the thing that
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being a founder gives you is genuine
macro happiness and satisfaction. And I feel
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so privileged that, you know,
I've been doing this for almost twelve years
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now and I'm in my started this
when I was twenty five, now in
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my mid late thirties, and I
still feel so genuinely excited by what I
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get to do at work, the
fact that I'm building something that I really
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care about existing. I want to
have this impact in the world. I
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want to make sure that the most
talented potential founders don't get caught up in
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hedge funds or at the big tech
companies, and that their potential is unleashed
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on the world. They have the
opportunity to build products and companies that we
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can't even imagine existing. At the
moment that I'm still just so passionate,
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excited about. So. Yeah,
the day to day of being a founder
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can sometimes be pretty crappy. But
looking at my friends as they go into
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their mid thirties, there's often a
moment where people realize they've invested a lot
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of time and effort into a career
that they don't really care about. And
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I don't feel that I'm there.
I would happily do another couple of decades
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on trying to solve this problem and
feel that it would be an excellent use
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of my life and career. So
I think this is why the idea that
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you end up working on his founder
is so important because if you if you
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have macro happiness, it gives you
that long term resilience because the day to
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day can be pretty challenging. It's
like Steve Jobs said, he said,
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if you didn't love what you were
doing, you would have to be crazy
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and insane to be a founder.
Very true, right, I mean I
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know that Thurs days ago, by
I mean, I can't stop. I
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start companies and I sell them,
and then I go, Okay, I'm
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going to retire, and I tell
my wife I'm going to retire, and
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then I go to the beach,
and then I come back and start another
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company and it just keeps going on
and I'm like that for like thirty years.
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But um, but to your point, it is so satisfying. I
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mean, you feel so good about
what you're doing and about what you're accomplishing,
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and it's so much easier to work
every day because you don't have the
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frustrations of you know, the corporate
what I call peanut butter. You know,
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when you work for a corporation,
it's like running through peanut butter.
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I think it's you know, you
get this this ability to actually do what
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you want to do, and it's
just so fun. Let me ask you
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another question. I'm going to shift
a little bit onto one of my favorite
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topics. Okay, I really am
passionate about why founders fail and trying to
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prevent that from happening. You're earlier
in the stage. You're incubating these these
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founders themselves, and then they're stumbling
on the idea. It's beautiful, it's
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really really beautiful. I haven't heard
this before, but what are some of
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the common mistakes you've seen founders make? And you know, when they're going
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from the phase of like I think
I could be a founder, and then
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you're you're fostering them and nurturing them
and getting to the point where they can
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be a founder. At that point
and right after that, what are some
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of the mistakes that you've seen these
founders made and how can they avoid them?
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So, the first and most significant
mistake is that when individuals are at
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that sort of just really early stage
of thinking about becoming a founder, is
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that they just don't do it.
They talk themselves out of it, and
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it's often that they are heavily influenced
by other people in their lives who obviously
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really care about them, but who
maybe aren't particularly startup savvy and who say
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things like, you know, maybe
it'd be better if you've got more experience,
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Maybe it'd be better if you got
more network, if you had more
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more of a financial cushion. You
know, think about the risks, what
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if you fail? And genuinely,
the biggest mistake is that people say,
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yeah, actually, I'm just going
to go and do two years in this
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big corporate and build up my network
and experience and all the rest of it,
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and then they never leave. Because
corporates are designed to ensure that their
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very best don't leave. The golden
handcuffs are real. You're never six months
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away, more than six months away
from your next bonus, your next promotion,
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whatever it may be. So that's
mistake number one is waiting to have
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all the assets that you need in
place. It's a fallacy. You cannot
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have all of those things in place, and even if you did, they
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wouldn't necessarily help you succeed. I
suppose one of the things I was encouraged
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the first time founders to recognize is
that you don't need to be an expert
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to start a start up. You
need to be an expert in your particular
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idea, and your particular idea hopefully
is unusual enough and new enough that you
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can be the world expert in what
you're doing in the particular problem you're solving.
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And that often comes from being at
the intersection of different things. So,
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for example, one of the biggest
companies on portfolio company called Cleo,
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which does financial management for millennials,
and gen Z. The founder Barney,
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he had been working at one of
the biggest fintech companies in London for about
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six months and so he had like
a vague understanding of how fintech companies worked,
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but he was by no means an
expert. But he also was I
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think at that stage like twenty two
or twenty three, and that intersection of
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being super young, so having a
deep understanding of that age group and that's
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particular customer segment, and having sufficient
knowledge enough knowledge about how the finance world
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worked and have fintech startups worked,
that positioned him really well to be a
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founder. And so often the mistake
being made there is that founders are trying
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to almost get too much experience,
whereas what you're looking for is sufficient experience
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in exposure. The intersects with something
else that you have that might be knowledge
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of a different customer group that is
currently underserved, or a set of skills
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that isn't significantly dominant in the particular
industry going after. So I say,
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that's the next, the next sort
of myth that holds people back. And
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then I think the final mistaken just
to reiterate the point I made before around
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finding the right co founder, not
accepting a co founder of convenience, Really
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pushing yourself to find the very best
co founder that you feel lucky and privilege
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to work alongside is super important.
It's so so easy to settle because you're
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worried that you may never find a
co founder. But I would push and
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encourage you to take the time,
explore different options, test out different individuals,
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and then commit when you get to
the point where you feel genuinely lucky
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and impressed by the co founder that
you're working alongside. It's so I want
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to endorse what you said. My
mom was like a huge part of my
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life. I really didn't have a
dad, so my mom was like a
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major part of my life. And
she used to said, if you're the
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smartest one in the room, you're
in the wrong room. And I think
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that that's one one component another thing
that I always think of when I talk
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to original founders. You know,
if I do a speaking event or something
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and they come up and they go, so, how do I get involved?
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And I need to go into a
corporate and get some experience from some
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some fortune company. I call it
quicksand. You know, they go in
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there and they just in there in
quicksand, and they're never going to get
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out because the more they struggle,
the more they're going to pull them down.
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So I agree with you one hundred
percent on that too. I just
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agree with everything you're saying, and
that's not common actually, because I've been
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doing this for a really long time
and I spend a lot of time researching.
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But you are just so on point
on everything you're saying. Let me
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ask you, how important is it
for a new founder to build these relationships
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around their ecosystem and network and connect
to other founders and supporters and mentors,
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etc. Etc. This is again
where it's both very important and also very
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easy to get it wrong. So
if you're building a network, you're building
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a network for a reason, and
general startup networking, unless you're building a
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product for startups, probably isn't that
useful. So who do you need to
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succeed as a founder? I think
it is useful to have peers, a
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small group of peers who are going
through the same thing at the same time
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as you, which is why going
through either a talent investing program like Yeah
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or going through an accelerator can be
helpful because you're a peer group who is
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experienced and struggling with the same problems
as you exactly the same time. It's
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useful to have mentors. But rather
than doing generic networking, I would try
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and find introductions to the specific people
that you're looking for, or even cold
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introducing yourself to them. I think
there is two most founders get most fertile,
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and founders get hung up on trying
to build too much of a generic
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network. Really, the network that
you need is your customer network. So
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for every hour that you could invest
in general startup networking, I would much
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rather see that hour being invested into
conferences where you would meet your customer,
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networking events that your customer hangouts hangs
out at, basically just trying to become
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deeply entrenched with the customer that you're
going after. So I think it is
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it's a careful balance. So i'd
say that, you know my personal experience,
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at the beginning of the f we
did do a lot of general kind
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of startup networking. I think we
quickly found that there were probably more efficient
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ways to meet the people that we
needed to meet, and once we had
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a couple of inns into the startup
community, she was much more effective to
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get introductions through people we'd already met, rather than sort of just trying to
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generally build a wide network. I'd
say a deep network with a handful of
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individuals who are willing to introduce you
to say the investors you might need to
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meet at some stage on a deep
set of relationships with founders who are very
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similar stage to you, is helpful. Otherwise, invest that time in your
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customer. I agree so much.
I have to tell you, like when
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we did the initial research and it
was reuffront again in twenty nineteen when I
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said that the number one reason was
bad advice or it was actually bad decisions
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and under that was bad advice.
A lot of the bad advice came from
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investors, came from mentors. It
came from people that are you know,
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one hit wonders, or they're somebody
that is involved in startups but never have
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done one, or they're trying to
sell them consulting practices, attorneys, you
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know, things like that. So
I agree with you so much. I
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encourage them. There's a lot of
a lot of push in the communities out
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there to say, oh, you
need to be talking to other founders,
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and I think that's important. But
to your point, the most important thing
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is to talk to the people that
you're going to be selling your product or
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service to because they're the ones that
are going to be paying you for those
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things. So I agree, so
so very much. You talked about the
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importance and resilience and perseverance in the
journey of being a founder. Is there
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anything that founders can do that feel
like they don't have that to prepare themselves
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for the foundership even though they feel
like, well, you know, I've
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never done anything like this, I
don't feel like I have the guts to
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do it. Is there anything that
you could mention to these founders that would
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maybe inspire them or train them to
do something. I swam a marathon last
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year, and you know, I
trained for the marathon. I couldn't swim
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at the beginning, and then I
swam the marathon. And so in that
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light, you know, is foundership, in your opinion, something you can
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train for before you go into it? Or do you just jump into the
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water and just start swimming. This
is a great question because I think a
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lot of people train full foundership by
doing other things. And my strong belief
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is the way you train for foundership
is to stop founding thing, just start
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building something. So if you're a
university, if you're in a job,
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do something on the side, start
tinkering around with ideas products. If you
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can't build there are now so many
tools out there that will allow you to,
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at least throughout a website, hack
together a simple version of your product,
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maybe even just creating wire frames and
getting them in front of customers to
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get feedback. Or if you can
build, then go build and start trying
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to get people to use whatever you
create. All of this will teach you
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valuable, vital lessons that you can
read about in books, but really they
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only stick when you have that embarrassing
moment when you realize you've built something that
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nobody wants and you've added far too
many features. And of course you can
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read that you should do customer development
and all the rest of it. I
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think sometimes you need to experience the
pain of going down the wrong route,
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So build your resilience. Build.
You'll understanding whether you should be a founder
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by getting started. One of the
ways that I became so interested in founding
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was that at my school they ran
a something called Young Enterprise, where you
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basically build a startup with your friends. And I'd never been interested in business.
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I'd never my family has has no
business background. But I did that
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and it was just the most exciting
and interesting thing I'd ever done, and
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I was immediately hooked and sort of
didn't stop starting things up from then onwards.
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So if you if you think you
might be a founder, the best
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way to start testing it and the
best way to see to learn is to
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just get going. There's kind of
no excuse these days, you know,
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use a couple of hours a day
if you're you're currently working or studying,
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just to start trying things out.
Speak to people about your ideas, get
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feedback, be open minded. And
yeah, probably the thing you do on
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the side is not going to be
the globally important startup that you that you
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think you may have inside you,
but at least it will show you whether
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it is the right career path for
you. Yeah, yeah, and and
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call entrepreneurs first. It sounds like
that's a pretty good a pretty good bet
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there. I have to say,
this is one of the funnest podcasts I've
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done, and I am inspired that
there is somebody before what I'm doing.
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You know, what I do is
help them after they have an idea,
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but you're even before that, which
is something that is a huge issue,
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and I'm so so excited about that. I wonder in closing, if you
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could share some final words of wisdom
to inspire these founders to wake up and
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go after what they want to do, the problems that they want to solve.
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Oh, I suppose my final piece
of advice would be don't let anyone
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constrain your ambition. I think many
of us grow up in families and cultures
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that have very set views of how
ambition should be expressed. Um. You
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know, you you get on a
career path, and you get any good
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at that particular career path, and
that's how you impress your friends and family.
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It's such an addictive pathway. You
know, many of us have had
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that drilled into us from when we
were very young. So I would encourage
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you to really think about what ambition
means for you. What does it mean
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to have an impact in the world, What does it mean to have a
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career that that deeply satisfies you.
And if you think that founding might be
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in your future, to then think
about what is the most am ambitious version
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of that. You know, often
people try and avoid risk by starting a
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small business. It's as hard to
start small business as it is to start
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a big business. But that's that's
a whole another a whole, another podcast.
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But yeah, don't let anyone constrain
your ambition, pursue the career path
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that will enable you to be the
most ambitious version of yourself, and that
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will enable you to take on the
most ambitious ideas that you are. You
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are brewing on. You're an amazing
person and I'm just honored to have you
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on the podcast, and I appreciate
all your time and all your advice and
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everything. Thank you so much for
being on the podcast. A real pleasure.
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It was being really great to cheflets
with you, and thank you so
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much for having me. You're welcome, And that's it for another episode of
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the Startup Science Podcast. If you
enjoyed the show, we would love it
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00:22:14.400 --> 00:22:18.039
if you could subscribe so you never
miss an episode, And if you have
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00:22:18.079 --> 00:22:22.400
a moment, a review on Apple
or Spotify would be greatly appreciated. I'll
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00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:29.240
see you next time, Adam step
my friends. The Startup Science Podcast with
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00:22:29.400 --> 00:22:34.200
Gregory Shepherd is brought to you by
startup Science dot Io. Founders can log
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00:22:34.319 --> 00:22:40.680
on to startup science dot io and
use code Forbes to get free access.
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00:22:41.079 --> 00:22:45.960
To connect and find out more about
greg Go to Gregory Shepherd dot com.
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00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:49.880
The Startup Science Podcast is a production
of Forbes Books
1
00:00:01.320 --> 00:00:07.120
Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast
with Gregory Shepherd, brought to you by
2
00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:13.199
Startup Science dot Io. Greg is
an entrepreneur who has built and sold twelve
3
00:00:13.279 --> 00:00:18.719
businesses. He's a recipient of four
private equity awards and is a featured ten
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00:00:18.839 --> 00:00:24.800
X speaker and Forbes author. Here's
Gregory Shepherd. I'm back with Alice Benneck,
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00:00:25.160 --> 00:00:28.280
the co founder of entrepreneur First and
the co author of How to Be
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00:00:28.320 --> 00:00:33.880
a Founder. We've been talking about
how ef helps entrepreneurs build world class deep
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00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:37.679
technology startups from scratch. Now,
Alice, I want to get into something
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00:00:37.719 --> 00:00:42.280
I'm really passionate about. That's diversity
in tech. As a co founder of
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Code First Girls, can you talk
about the significance of promoting diversity and inclusion
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in the tech industry and the impact
that can have on startups. CodeFest Girls
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was set up by me and my
co founder, Matt and even though it
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is an initiative that is focused on
teaching women and non binary individuals to code,
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in some ways, I do think
it was super important that it was
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set up by a mixed gender team. And interestingly, when we have conversations
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about diversity, entrepreneurs entrepreneur first.
For example, some of the most powerful
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things that we've done has actually been
when Matt has been talking, rather when
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I've been talking. I think there's
something about championing diversity from the voice of
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somebody who knows and acknowledges their privilege
and is talking to the people who are
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like them, so other in his
instance, you know, white men who
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are also privileged. I think that's
sometimes some of the most powerful things that
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we can do to make sure that
the conversation isn't just within whichever group is
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marginalized. That said, I also
think it's important that codefust Girls was founded
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co founded by a woman, and
our CEO and latest co founder and a
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Brailsford is an amazing both role model
and she really rocks the problem. You
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know, she gets it. She
understands why this is a challenge, having
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worked in tech her whole life.
So I think it's it's important to have
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a mix that it's not just the
individuals who are experiencing the marginalization that try
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and work on these problems, but
the wider community as well. I mean,
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one of my big beliefs is that
there are lots of amazing organizations out
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there that generate conversation around marginalized groups. But ultimately, my big belief is
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that you need to have more and
more organizations who are actually doing stuff.
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And so codefesst Girls the premises that
is not just a conversation about diversity,
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it's up skilling women for free so
that they are able to take on significant
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roles within the tech industry. And
you know, we're now getting to the
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stage where, because COLDE First Girls
has been running for things sort of nine
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years or so, now that the
women that went through some of our first
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programs are beginning to hire, you
know, the next generation of Code First
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graduates as they become more senior in
their roles. So I'm a big believer
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in you know, small but significant
interventions that can change individual's career paths.
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And one of the interesting thing about
the women who have been on Code First
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Girls is that typically they were pretty
interested in coding when they were saying an
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early teenager, but they went through
the school system and puberty and teenagehood and
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and basically kind of realized that it
wasn't cool or okay to be interested in
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technical subjects. And then see Code
First Girls, which is largely focused on
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sort of university age and later women
and non binary individuals, and they see
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this as a way of returning back
to something that they did actually really enjoy,
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but culturally didn't see it as something
that they could follow. I couldn't
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have said that better. I really
couldn't have said that better. I come
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from a multi diverse family, so
my siblings are different nationalities. And but
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I'm white, right, I'm a
white man. I'm a privilege. I've
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seen this perspective, right, And
I always tell people, I'm like,
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the people that are privileged should be
the one standing up for the people that
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are marginalized, and that's how it
should work. And so the fact that
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you stated that so eloquently, I
can't even tell it's just beautiful. You're
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you're almost poetic with the way that
you word things. It's just beautiful.
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I want to ask you another question. How do you prioritize and manage the
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various challenges as a founder and risk
that come with, you know, getting
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in and starting a business. And
what advice would you have for the entrepreneurs
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that are currently navigating these challenges?
Oh, I mean, the amazing thing
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about being a found it is that
well, the amazing ound challenging thing about
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being a found it is that your
learning curve is just insane. And I'm
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sure you found this going through building
so many companies, but there's never a
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moment where you you sort of sit
back and think, yes, I've got
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it. I know I know how
to do this, and you know,
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at the point where you're six,
you're like, gosh, managing six people
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are so hard. And the minute
you think it's okay, suddenly you're nine
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people, then twelve people, and
twenty people and forty people, and the
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same for raising money and managing customers
and all the rest of it. I
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think one of the ways that I
think about managing this personally is to think
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about sort of micro happiness and macro
happiness. And the reason I kind of
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frame it that way is that I
think it's an important framing to drive resilience
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as a founder. So I would
say that on a micro level, being
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a founder can often be a bit
of a crappy job. You are often
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pretty stressed, there's always something on
fire. I'll tell you that you could
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take a beating, right, Yeah, you take a real beating, and
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sometimes that's really hard. And I've
definitely seen my friends and family sort of
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question why am I doing this?
You know, why am I putting my
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You know, there's lots of other
jobs out there that I'm sure al would
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be on a micro basis, on
a day to day basis much more fun,
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relaxing. You know, maybe I'd
go home at six and go to
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the gym and eat Devin with my
family. But I think the thing that
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being a founder gives you is genuine
macro happiness and satisfaction. And I feel
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so privileged that, you know,
I've been doing this for almost twelve years
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now and I'm in my started this
when I was twenty five, now in
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my mid late thirties, and I
still feel so genuinely excited by what I
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get to do at work, the
fact that I'm building something that I really
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care about existing. I want to
have this impact in the world. I
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want to make sure that the most
talented potential founders don't get caught up in
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hedge funds or at the big tech
companies, and that their potential is unleashed
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on the world. They have the
opportunity to build products and companies that we
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can't even imagine existing. At the
moment that I'm still just so passionate,
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excited about. So. Yeah,
the day to day of being a founder
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can sometimes be pretty crappy. But
looking at my friends as they go into
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their mid thirties, there's often a
moment where people realize they've invested a lot
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of time and effort into a career
that they don't really care about. And
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I don't feel that I'm there.
I would happily do another couple of decades
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on trying to solve this problem and
feel that it would be an excellent use
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of my life and career. So
I think this is why the idea that
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you end up working on his founder
is so important because if you if you
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have macro happiness, it gives you
that long term resilience because the day to
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day can be pretty challenging. It's
like Steve Jobs said, he said,
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if you didn't love what you were
doing, you would have to be crazy
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and insane to be a founder.
Very true, right, I mean I
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know that Thurs days ago, by
I mean, I can't stop. I
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start companies and I sell them,
and then I go, Okay, I'm
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going to retire, and I tell
my wife I'm going to retire, and
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then I go to the beach,
and then I come back and start another
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company and it just keeps going on
and I'm like that for like thirty years.
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But um, but to your point, it is so satisfying. I
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mean, you feel so good about
what you're doing and about what you're accomplishing,
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and it's so much easier to work
every day because you don't have the
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frustrations of you know, the corporate
what I call peanut butter. You know,
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when you work for a corporation,
it's like running through peanut butter.
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I think it's you know, you
get this this ability to actually do what
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you want to do, and it's
just so fun. Let me ask you
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another question. I'm going to shift
a little bit onto one of my favorite
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topics. Okay, I really am
passionate about why founders fail and trying to
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prevent that from happening. You're earlier
in the stage. You're incubating these these
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founders themselves, and then they're stumbling
on the idea. It's beautiful, it's
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really really beautiful. I haven't heard
this before, but what are some of
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the common mistakes you've seen founders make? And you know, when they're going
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from the phase of like I think
I could be a founder, and then
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you're you're fostering them and nurturing them
and getting to the point where they can
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be a founder. At that point
and right after that, what are some
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of the mistakes that you've seen these
founders made and how can they avoid them?
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So, the first and most significant
mistake is that when individuals are at
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that sort of just really early stage
of thinking about becoming a founder, is
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that they just don't do it.
They talk themselves out of it, and
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it's often that they are heavily influenced
by other people in their lives who obviously
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really care about them, but who
maybe aren't particularly startup savvy and who say
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things like, you know, maybe
it'd be better if you've got more experience,
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Maybe it'd be better if you got
more network, if you had more
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more of a financial cushion. You
know, think about the risks, what
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if you fail? And genuinely,
the biggest mistake is that people say,
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yeah, actually, I'm just going
to go and do two years in this
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big corporate and build up my network
and experience and all the rest of it,
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and then they never leave. Because
corporates are designed to ensure that their
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very best don't leave. The golden
handcuffs are real. You're never six months
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away, more than six months away
from your next bonus, your next promotion,
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whatever it may be. So that's
mistake number one is waiting to have
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all the assets that you need in
place. It's a fallacy. You cannot
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have all of those things in place, and even if you did, they
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wouldn't necessarily help you succeed. I
suppose one of the things I was encouraged
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the first time founders to recognize is
that you don't need to be an expert
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to start a start up. You
need to be an expert in your particular
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idea, and your particular idea hopefully
is unusual enough and new enough that you
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can be the world expert in what
you're doing in the particular problem you're solving.
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And that often comes from being at
the intersection of different things. So,
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for example, one of the biggest
companies on portfolio company called Cleo,
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which does financial management for millennials,
and gen Z. The founder Barney,
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he had been working at one of
the biggest fintech companies in London for about
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six months and so he had like
a vague understanding of how fintech companies worked,
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but he was by no means an
expert. But he also was I
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think at that stage like twenty two
or twenty three, and that intersection of
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being super young, so having a
deep understanding of that age group and that's
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particular customer segment, and having sufficient
knowledge enough knowledge about how the finance world
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worked and have fintech startups worked,
that positioned him really well to be a
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founder. And so often the mistake
being made there is that founders are trying
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to almost get too much experience,
whereas what you're looking for is sufficient experience
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in exposure. The intersects with something
else that you have that might be knowledge
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of a different customer group that is
currently underserved, or a set of skills
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that isn't significantly dominant in the particular
industry going after. So I say,
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that's the next, the next sort
of myth that holds people back. And
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then I think the final mistaken just
to reiterate the point I made before around
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finding the right co founder, not
accepting a co founder of convenience, Really
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pushing yourself to find the very best
co founder that you feel lucky and privilege
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to work alongside is super important.
It's so so easy to settle because you're
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worried that you may never find a
co founder. But I would push and
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encourage you to take the time,
explore different options, test out different individuals,
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and then commit when you get to
the point where you feel genuinely lucky
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and impressed by the co founder that
you're working alongside. It's so I want
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to endorse what you said. My
mom was like a huge part of my
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life. I really didn't have a
dad, so my mom was like a
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major part of my life. And
she used to said, if you're the
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smartest one in the room, you're
in the wrong room. And I think
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that that's one one component another thing
that I always think of when I talk
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to original founders. You know,
if I do a speaking event or something
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and they come up and they go, so, how do I get involved?
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And I need to go into a
corporate and get some experience from some
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some fortune company. I call it
quicksand. You know, they go in
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there and they just in there in
quicksand, and they're never going to get
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out because the more they struggle,
the more they're going to pull them down.
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So I agree with you one hundred
percent on that too. I just
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agree with everything you're saying, and
that's not common actually, because I've been
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doing this for a really long time
and I spend a lot of time researching.
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But you are just so on point
on everything you're saying. Let me
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ask you, how important is it
for a new founder to build these relationships
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around their ecosystem and network and connect
to other founders and supporters and mentors,
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etc. Etc. This is again
where it's both very important and also very
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easy to get it wrong. So
if you're building a network, you're building
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a network for a reason, and
general startup networking, unless you're building a
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product for startups, probably isn't that
useful. So who do you need to
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succeed as a founder? I think
it is useful to have peers, a
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small group of peers who are going
through the same thing at the same time
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as you, which is why going
through either a talent investing program like Yeah
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or going through an accelerator can be
helpful because you're a peer group who is
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experienced and struggling with the same problems
as you exactly the same time. It's
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useful to have mentors. But rather
than doing generic networking, I would try
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and find introductions to the specific people
that you're looking for, or even cold
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introducing yourself to them. I think
there is two most founders get most fertile,
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and founders get hung up on trying
to build too much of a generic
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network. Really, the network that
you need is your customer network. So
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for every hour that you could invest
in general startup networking, I would much
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rather see that hour being invested into
conferences where you would meet your customer,
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networking events that your customer hangouts hangs
out at, basically just trying to become
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deeply entrenched with the customer that you're
going after. So I think it is
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it's a careful balance. So i'd
say that, you know my personal experience,
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at the beginning of the f we
did do a lot of general kind
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of startup networking. I think we
quickly found that there were probably more efficient
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ways to meet the people that we
needed to meet, and once we had
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a couple of inns into the startup
community, she was much more effective to
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get introductions through people we'd already met, rather than sort of just trying to
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generally build a wide network. I'd
say a deep network with a handful of
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individuals who are willing to introduce you
to say the investors you might need to
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meet at some stage on a deep
set of relationships with founders who are very
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similar stage to you, is helpful. Otherwise, invest that time in your
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customer. I agree so much.
I have to tell you, like when
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we did the initial research and it
was reuffront again in twenty nineteen when I
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said that the number one reason was
bad advice or it was actually bad decisions
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and under that was bad advice.
A lot of the bad advice came from
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investors, came from mentors. It
came from people that are you know,
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one hit wonders, or they're somebody
that is involved in startups but never have
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done one, or they're trying to
sell them consulting practices, attorneys, you
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know, things like that. So
I agree with you so much. I
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encourage them. There's a lot of
a lot of push in the communities out
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there to say, oh, you
need to be talking to other founders,
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and I think that's important. But
to your point, the most important thing
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is to talk to the people that
you're going to be selling your product or
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service to because they're the ones that
are going to be paying you for those
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things. So I agree, so
so very much. You talked about the
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importance and resilience and perseverance in the
journey of being a founder. Is there
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anything that founders can do that feel
like they don't have that to prepare themselves
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for the foundership even though they feel
like, well, you know, I've
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never done anything like this, I
don't feel like I have the guts to
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do it. Is there anything that
you could mention to these founders that would
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maybe inspire them or train them to
do something. I swam a marathon last
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year, and you know, I
trained for the marathon. I couldn't swim
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at the beginning, and then I
swam the marathon. And so in that
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light, you know, is foundership, in your opinion, something you can
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train for before you go into it? Or do you just jump into the
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water and just start swimming. This
is a great question because I think a
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lot of people train full foundership by
doing other things. And my strong belief
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is the way you train for foundership
is to stop founding thing, just start
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building something. So if you're a
university, if you're in a job,
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do something on the side, start
tinkering around with ideas products. If you
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can't build there are now so many
tools out there that will allow you to,
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at least throughout a website, hack
together a simple version of your product,
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maybe even just creating wire frames and
getting them in front of customers to
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get feedback. Or if you can
build, then go build and start trying
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to get people to use whatever you
create. All of this will teach you
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valuable, vital lessons that you can
read about in books, but really they
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only stick when you have that embarrassing
moment when you realize you've built something that
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nobody wants and you've added far too
many features. And of course you can
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read that you should do customer development
and all the rest of it. I
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think sometimes you need to experience the
pain of going down the wrong route,
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So build your resilience. Build.
You'll understanding whether you should be a founder
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by getting started. One of the
ways that I became so interested in founding
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was that at my school they ran
a something called Young Enterprise, where you
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basically build a startup with your friends. And I'd never been interested in business.
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I'd never my family has has no
business background. But I did that
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and it was just the most exciting
and interesting thing I'd ever done, and
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I was immediately hooked and sort of
didn't stop starting things up from then onwards.
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So if you if you think you
might be a founder, the best
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way to start testing it and the
best way to see to learn is to
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just get going. There's kind of
no excuse these days, you know,
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use a couple of hours a day
if you're you're currently working or studying,
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just to start trying things out.
Speak to people about your ideas, get
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feedback, be open minded. And
yeah, probably the thing you do on
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the side is not going to be
the globally important startup that you that you
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think you may have inside you,
but at least it will show you whether
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it is the right career path for
you. Yeah, yeah, and and
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call entrepreneurs first. It sounds like
that's a pretty good a pretty good bet
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there. I have to say,
this is one of the funnest podcasts I've
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done, and I am inspired that
there is somebody before what I'm doing.
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You know, what I do is
help them after they have an idea,
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but you're even before that, which
is something that is a huge issue,
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and I'm so so excited about that. I wonder in closing, if you
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could share some final words of wisdom
to inspire these founders to wake up and
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go after what they want to do, the problems that they want to solve.
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Oh, I suppose my final piece
of advice would be don't let anyone
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constrain your ambition. I think many
of us grow up in families and cultures
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that have very set views of how
ambition should be expressed. Um. You
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know, you you get on a
career path, and you get any good
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at that particular career path, and
that's how you impress your friends and family.
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It's such an addictive pathway. You
know, many of us have had
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that drilled into us from when we
were very young. So I would encourage
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you to really think about what ambition
means for you. What does it mean
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to have an impact in the world, What does it mean to have a
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career that that deeply satisfies you.
And if you think that founding might be
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in your future, to then think
about what is the most am ambitious version
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of that. You know, often
people try and avoid risk by starting a
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small business. It's as hard to
start small business as it is to start
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a big business. But that's that's
a whole another a whole, another podcast.
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But yeah, don't let anyone constrain
your ambition, pursue the career path
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that will enable you to be the
most ambitious version of yourself, and that
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will enable you to take on the
most ambitious ideas that you are. You
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are brewing on. You're an amazing
person and I'm just honored to have you
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on the podcast, and I appreciate
all your time and all your advice and
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everything. Thank you so much for
being on the podcast. A real pleasure.
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It was being really great to cheflets
with you, and thank you so
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much for having me. You're welcome, And that's it for another episode of
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the Startup Science Podcast. If you
enjoyed the show, we would love it
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if you could subscribe so you never
miss an episode, And if you have
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a moment, a review on Apple
or Spotify would be greatly appreciated. I'll
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see you next time, Adam step
my friends. The Startup Science Podcast with
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Gregory Shepherd is brought to you by
startup Science dot Io. Founders can log
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on to startup science dot io and
use code Forbes to get free access.
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To connect and find out more about
greg Go to Gregory Shepherd dot com.
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The Startup Science Podcast is a production
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