Week 6 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. This week was my first week focusing on one project!

Highlights from Week 6 ??

This week I’m working with Alfredo on building for communities. That is intentionally broad at this stage as we look to validate our hypotheses and learn from community managers and experts.

My highlights were:

Potential User Interviews ??

As you’ll have seen the number of thank yous is long this week (and they will be next week too!) as we speak to community managers and community experts. We’ve already gained some really valuable insights such as:

• Churn is actually less concerning than low engagement - so far everyone we’ve spoken to has said that losing community members is not as damaging as having a silent community
• Coworking spaces (one of our original potential target customers) use Slack less than we thought - still working on validating this one though
• Lots of people want to build communities for their businesses but don’t know where to start
• Community managers carry so much of the success of their community by their intuition and instinct of what the community needs… and they are TIRED

I’ve learned so much in a short space of time and have really enjoyed challenging my own thoughts on community building. More of this to come! ??

Lunch with Sthems and Anna ??

As cofounder relationships are being formed so are friendships ?? Loved spending quality time with Sthems and Anna over Babaganoush (same place I went to Bev with… have found a new Euston gem).?

Thoughts from Week 6 ??

Two main things on my mind this week: the need for an abundance mindset and the importance of user testing.

1. Abundance mindset and transparency ??♀?

Abundance mindset is a term most famously coined by Stephen Covey in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. If you have an abundance mindset it means you believe the world is full of enough resources and time for you and others to accomplish your goals.

I think having an abundance mindset is paramount for thriving on a programme like Zinc. There’s constant pressure to be secretive and protective about what you’re doing but there’s significant power in being collaborative. If you’re confident that you’re the right person to be building your idea, being open with others can only bring you value. I’ve seen this a lot this week - in sharing my ideas and being clear about what I need, so many people on the cohort have been so helpful and generous.

Equally, sharing the highs and lows in these posts has led to so many people being generous with their network and time ?? When I first started these posts I was worried that what I was working on would change so regularly that being too open would be risky. But while that has definitely been the case, so far it’s only been beneficial to me to be completely transparent… so I’ll keep doing it!

2. You know nothing until you speak to users

The second thing that’s really been cemented this week is that you really don’t know anywhere near enough until you speak to potential users - especially those that have nothing to lose or gain from being completely honest.

It’s uncomfortable to have potential users of your product tell you that they don’t need what you’re building but it’s infinitely more useful to know that now vs. after investing ￡￡￡ in the wrong product. Despite having worked for a long time in community-building, the conversations I’m having continue to open my mind to:

a) the varied challenges that community managers face and

b) the wide range of experiences in the community industry

In encouraging completely open conversation, we’re now starting to identify clear patterns that are putting us on the right track to build something people really need.

How You Can Help ??

As with last week our focus is still user interviews so I’d love to hear from you if you run a community or are an expert on community building OR if you can introduce to those people, please get in touch.?

Thank Yous for Week 6 ??

• Thank you to Serkan of PitchSpace for a great chat on community - follow PitchSpace, there’s a lot of exciting stuff coming!
• Thank you Neema - this was actually late last week! Lots of great insight on exciting opportunities under the Zinc mission
• Thank you Louise for tagging community experts on my last post! Hugely appreciated
• Natasha for speaking about her experience running the Female FinTech Operators
• Laura for the perfect girly chat/two-way therapy session
• Big thank you to Kourosh (and Alex for connecting us!) from Waves - learned a huge amount from you on community and the market.

What’s Coming Up ??

Next week our plan is to take our findings from these interviews and consider what we’ve learned and how that impacts our next steps. Before that, however, I’m dog sitting for a neighbor so am doing my user interview calls at home, while Maude (featured in the title image) sits at my feet (or on my shoulder).