5 things I learned running an impact-startup

Running a startup is hard anyway, but doing it for a better world seems almost impossible. Let me tell you a bit more about building a startup using technology to help people in need, rather than showing what type of dog they are using AI.

During my time as a Freelancer, my interest in startups grew every day. I worked with them, I read about them and after 2 years I finally joined the founding team of one.?Felloz?was born.

Together with my co-founder, we started to grow a purpose-driven company. You can feel the power of purpose flowing through your startups' culture, but you can also see how the lack of purpose lets other startups alongside your way crash. In those times, I learned what's really important if you want to build, grow and lead a social impact startup.

1. People will tell you that your idea sucks

I know, founders get that a lot. “Don’t do this, it's too risky.” “I think it’s a bad idea.” It’s normal. What surprised me was that even though we were building something great here, a lot of people weren’t so happy about it.

“You can make much more money with AI or crypto startups!”

And of course. They were right. At that point, just using the word “AI” got a lot of startups tons of investments. The key is that we didn’t do it for the money and that’s what most people don’t get.

So what I learned in the early days of my startup was actually the fact that you don’t need to listen to anyone out there, because everyone is interested in money, not in our planet, nor in our people.

2. Sometimes purpose is the only thing you have

While working on our product, we faced a lot of roadblocks. Things, that could end our idea immediately. I know it’s common as a founder that you have to put out fires the whole day, but some days were just very disappointing.

What kept us going was the urge to change something. The purpose of our company was to help people, and still is. The option of giving up was never an option.

I’m pretty sure most startups fail because they lack purpose. Everyone will face obstacles at some point and overcoming them seems impossible. I learned that purpose is one of the biggest drivers to keep on going.

3. Work around your strengths

The best thing about being a team is that everyone has certain strengths. One might be a talented salesman, the other a talented developer. What we did was accept a role we take on at our startup. This role defined the tasks we had to do to keep on going.

Not long after that, everyone came across impossible tasks. We felt exhausted and out of options. No progress at all. Then we decided to forget about our roles for one day and played alongside our strengths. What a relief! We finally did some progress and impossible tasks became easily solvable.

The main learning is to be fully aware of your teams' strengths and weaknesses and use them to your benefit. And that sometimes you need to forget roles and job positions to just what you can do best.

4. People in this field are golden

As our startup empowers charities to help more, we worked a lot with them. It’s special. You can feel the urge to do good at every conversation. What I liked the most: I felt like a hero because our startup helped them so much.

As always in life, things come back. We did a lot of good things (Even better things in the future) and what you get in return is the appreciation of not only helpers, but also those who got help.

I recognized this only in the world of social impact. Other fields are happy if you make them your money and they will thank you by making you more money. That shouldn’t be standard.

5. You don’t automatically feel better by doing good

I had to learn that the hard way. I always thought that helping other people and animals would make me feel better. In the short term, it did. What I learned over the years is that there is one person who has the biggest impact on my mood: Myself.

Once I learned that, helping other people felt different. I do it because I choose to help. It’s my passion to do so. Helping others shouldn’t be done just to make yourself feel better. Helping is an instinct, and should be done every time someone needs it. This is my mission, good thing my startup is doing exactly that.

Join us on our mission

We are always looking for talented, driven people who want to have a great impact on the world. You can check out open positions here:?https://felloz.com/career