Week 14 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. Some deeper work on understanding our customer persona this week + lots of calls!

Highlights from Week 14 ??

My weeks are starting to become quite similar - calls, sales, pitching. That makes it sound dull but I’m having the time of my life ??

My highlights were:

Calls with Zinc Fellows ??

A lot of thank yous this week due to this! Zinc has a vast network of experts that support the programme and you can book in with them weekly to chat online or in person. This week we spoke to Clare, David and Kayla to get insights on community, B2B sales and growth. And also to get thoughts on Lima! Found these conversations really motivating and super valuable.

Strategising on Sales ??

I honestly have struggled to feel fully comfortable in a sales role this week and felt a bit scattered. As a consequence, we weren’t getting the results so it was time to re-strategise with a focus on learning. And learning = data. So I drew up a few different routes to reach our customers and have started tracking EVERYTHING. It’s only been a few days but it’s really helping us get calls so feeling super good about this now.

Getting into a Routine ?? ♀?

Starting this programme (and now Lima) has been a huge change to my lifestyle. Not actually in terms of hours (I was working long hours at The Funding Crowd ??) but in terms of the type of work I’m doing (much more deep thinking, brainstorming and talking!). As a consequence, it’s taken a long time for me to feel balanced and energised. The impact has been a lot bigger than I thought - I went from going to the gym 4 times a week to not going at all for 3 months. Feel like I’ve finally got a grasp on this, and made some good changes that feel sustainable for founder life ??

Lima Champions ??

This week we started sharing some sales materials with community managers, experts and friends - to get leads and to get feedback. There are too many to mention here but you know who you are! We’ve really been blown away by the support here - thank you to everyone that gives their time with no expectation of return. You make the startup world go round ??

Thoughts from Week 14 ??

Two things on my mind this week - adapting to the founder lifestyle and managing the Zinc pressure cooker.

“The Founder Lifestyle” in my experience is long hours (that fly by), the need to be your best self as much as possible and finding effective forms of rest that allow you (however briefly) to separate your identity from your work. Adaptation in my experience has predominantly focused on the last two. The way that I rest (time with family and friends, exercise, reading, films, travel) has to be optimised - that sounds a bit toxic - not optimised for productivity but optimised for removal from productivity. I really need that time to not think about Lima and I really need that time to get in touch with other aspects of myself not related to my business. So the gym is great but if I find myself thinking about work throughout the whole session, I need to find another form of rest that day to give myself that break.

On a completely different topic, now that a lot of Zinc companies are progressing and working towards investment, it’s interesting to see how we’re all handling the pressure of getting investment. And how maybe a subtle culture of competition is emerging. If one company has revenue, people feel pressured to get revenue, if another has started hiring, people feel like they’re behind. I think truly everyone is supportive of everyone else but definitely see this as a by-product as the pressure builds towards the investment committee. And I think this is a microclimate that represents the startup ecosystem as a whole. My tactic is to keep my head down, focus on what we’re doing and focus on meeting our definition of progress.

How You Can Help ??

Calling all….

• Founder Community Managers! We’ll help you find sponsors ??
• Brands that want to advertise to founders! We’ll connect you with amazing community managers ??
• B2B Sales experts. I have nothing to offer you other than abundance of smiles for sharing your knowledge ??

Thank Yous for Week 14 ??

• Priyanka for your ever-generous spirit and abundance of knowledge. Doing big things at TL;DR - check them out ??
• David for sharing your thoughts and insight on Lima. Amazing discussion that really helped focus our next steps ??
• Clare for letting us pick your huge brain on all things community + for the social media shout out (our first mention on social media!)
• Kayla for really valuable clarification on the defining aspects of our value proposition - so important for our sales pitch. Thank you!
• Huge thanks to Mac from Commsor (and Aadil for the connection!) They’re making big waves in the community space (my new holy grail for community engagement is Meetsy!) and was kind enough to offer incredibly relevant insight for Lima ??
• Ash for your vote of confidence on what we’re building and an enriching, important discussion on founder mental health. Glad to be on this journey with you ??
• Hackney WFC for the best weekend in Brighton ?? ??

What’s Coming Up ??

From Wednesday next week Alfredo is heading home for a few weeks ?????so we’ll be working remotely. As a consequence, we need to get a few in-person bits done before he’s off. That includes: filming a pitch video ???and refreshing our product strategy ?? See you then ??