Week 12 of Being a Founder

The Zinc Venture Builder is a full time, 12 month programme where a cohort of 70 from across the globe unite in founding teams to build startups that tackle the biggest social challenges. Alfredo and I are building Lima - a marketplace that helps private communities acquire sponsorship. This week we onboarded 13 communities representing a reach of 80k+ ??

Highlights from Week 12 ??

The last few weeks have been a lot of thinking but this week felt like a lot of doing. And we’re really excited by our progress so far. We’ve onboarded some of the best founder communities globally and are now working on connecting them to amazing sponsors.

However, lots of other stuff happened this week… my highlights were:

Speaking at The Rosewood School ??

I was really honoured to come to The Rosewood School's breakfast club and speak to them about my career journey. Pupils join The Rosewood School due to their mental, medical and physical health needs, with many disadvantaged socially through missing chunks of their education.

I talked to them about studying Mechanical Engineering, failing my first year of University, doing my PhD during the pandemic and my unorthodox route to entrepreneurship. I spoke to amazing pupils that, despite having a difficult start to life, had amazing energy and ambitions for the future. Big thanks to The Rosewood School for inviting me - happy to come back anytime!

Onboarding 13 Amazing Communities ??

This week we officially launched our manual pilot - we’ll be working with founder communities to help them acquire perfect-fit sponsors. I’m so excited to say that we now have 13 global founder communities onboard that have a reach of over 80,000 founders. My job this week is finding them some sponsors - watch this space ??

Returning to Training with Hackney ??

One of the best communities I’m personally part of is Hackney Women’s FC. Last November I broke my collarbone (during a match ??) and have since been recovering. This Wednesday I was v excited to return to pre-season training. Also with my new IDA boots (football boots designed for women ??) which were amazing.

Thoughts from Week 12 ??

Many thoughts resulting from a varied week. I feel like this week has been the ultimate week for me in terms of “CEO training” - the beginning of the week started with reflection and the rest was figuring stuff out. The learning curve is steeeep.

Look at how far you’ve come ??

Speaking about my career journey at The Rosewood School was a nice (and rare) opportunity for reflection. Starting Lima feels like starting at the bottom of a very big scary mountain but looking back at how I got here was a reminder of how much progress I’ve made to get to base camp ?? Encourage everyone reading this to have a quick look back and remember how much progress you’ve made ??

Discomfort = on the right path? ??

We’re still very much in the early phase of figuring out our proposition but the reality is, we have to keep moving. And being in a situation where you know you have incredibly limited information and have to still make important decisions is UNCOMFORTABLE. But I’m spinning a theory (maybe just to make myself feel better) that if you feel fully in control and confident at this stage, you’re probably kidding yourself - because it’s impossible to have all the information. So from now on, if I feel uncomfortable, it means I’m a realist about how little I know…. which is okay.

You move quickly, but things move slowly ??

I spoke about the intensity of pace last week. That pressure is very much everpresent and what I’m feeling is that it’s imperative to move quickly because outcomes take time (especially in B2B world). We’re the second hand, moving 60 times a minute and the outcomes are the hour hand, consistently but slowly moving forward. I’m learning not to take indications from how quickly things happen but instead how consistently things happen - and that outcomes often happen in bursts not linearly. E.g. It’s taken 2 weeks to onboard 13 communities but they’ve mostly joined in the last 5 days.

Having spent the last 6 years working for myself, I’m always interested in how effective my time is being used (maybe an unhealthy obsession) but I’m fascinated to see how time has warped by working in a venture-backed startup.

How You Can Help ??

Calling agencies and businesses that want to connect with founder communities ???We’re now looking to support our communities by connecting them with sponsors that their members will love. This could be a B2B startup that makes fundraising a lot easier or an HRTech that makes onboarding new employees a breeze - if you work for or are the founder of a B2B startup that wants to connect with founders, get in touch ??

I have a second request this week (mainly for Kent-based folks) - get some coffee in a new spot! ?? As mentioned, I joined The Rosewood School this week and was amazed to see their newly opened coffee shop, Bulunga. This coffee shop is open to the public and the pupils work there with a supervisor to get work experience. The coffee shop is right on a great walking route in Kent and they have an amazing cake selection (also baked by pupils in the school kitchen). If you do go, be generous as the pupils also get to keep the tips ??

Thank Yous for Week 12 ??

• Thank you Mohammed for sharing your amazing insights! Mohammed talked about community before community was a thing!
• Thanks to Danielle for sharing her experience building FLOCKHERE and amazing advice on community building.
• Huge thanks to Roger from Finary for providing his YC advice - hope you enjoy London! ????
• Big thanks to Alloy, Anthemis, BCV, TWIF for hosting Fintech Happy Hour - great vibe (and cheese boards)
• Thank you to James (and Maddy for introducing us) from Startup Grind - was so great to hear your thoughts and advice on what we’re working on
• Thanks to Zinc team for lots of support this week (realistically I would tag them every week if it wasn’t for the notification spam). Especially Paul, Ella, David and Julia for your time this week ??

What’s Coming Up ??

Next week I’m working on procuring sponsors for our community while Alfredo continues building our MVP. Our MVP will allow our communities to publicise the partnerships they’re open to and their pay expectations as well as provide time-saving tools to help community management. Also, crucially, the Barbie movie is out so I’ll aim to make a bit of time for that too ??