Week 8 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 all about testing and validating our problem area PLUS I delivered the workshop I sold during the hustle challenge in Week 1 (i.e. 3 decades ago).

Highlights from Week 8 ??

Whew a big week this week…. cofounding, testing, hustling ??…

My highlights were:

Becoming Zinc-official Cofounders with Alfredo ??

Very excited to say that I’m working with Alfredo to support community-first startups (more on this in the next section!)

Alfredo and I have been loosely working together for the last few weeks but are now full-time cofounders ??

Alfredo recently exited Betterspace as CTO - an innovative wellbeing marketplace that supports UK employees to take a proactive approach to their wellbeing. Betterspace customers and investors included Accenture and Zinc ?? His approach to employee wellbeing was founded on the following 5 pillars:

1. Connect with other people?(social wellbeing)
2. Be active?(physical wellbeing)
3. Learn new skills?(developmental wellbeing)
4. Pay attention to the present moment?(psychological wellbeing)
5. Give to others?(emotional wellbeing)

And he’s particularly passionate about number 1 - hence his interest in communities!

Our team combines deep community-building experience (me ??) with a killer CTO (Alfredo ??) and an abundance of passion for helping people have meaningful experiences online. Watch this space ??

Closing in on an idea ??

The most uncomfortable thing about doing these posts is knowing it’s very likely that I’ll be working on something completely different in a few months' time ??

BUT It’s all about the journey…

This week Alfredo and I are honing in on two main problems:

1. Chat-based communities (e.g. on WhatsApp) are currently the simplest, most accessible way to set up a community but they quickly get overwhelming and therefore less enjoyable to be a part of
2. Monetizing communities is really hard so for overworked, stretched community managers the work of community building quickly has to be deprioritized by income-generating work. Let’s change that….

This week we’re starting to test some solutions for this idea - if you’ve explored these areas yourself and are happy to share your thoughts, please get in touch!

Hustle Challenge Workshop with Solutions Research ??

You may remember that in Week 1 we took part in a “Hustle Challenge”. We were given ￡10 and told to make as much money as possible in 1 hour. The rules: Nothing illegal (shame), you have to actually get the money in your bank account.

My team went out onto the streets of Euston and basically asked strangers what they would pay for ???It turns out my workshops on how to post content on LinkedIn (very on brand) were popular so that’s how we focused the hour.

The highlight of the hour was meeting Michelle and Josie from Solutions Research. Despite preparing for a pitch they let me harass them and we ultimately found that a LinkedIn workshop would be useful for them… and this week we did it!

I had an absolute blast with the Solutions Research team. A highlight from the workshop was a pitching exercise we did - in order for me to learn a little more about each team member I asked Michelle to pitch Emma, Emma to pitch Josie and Josie to pitch Michelle. What resulted was the most heartwarming, wholesome half-hour ??

As well as learning all about these amazing women, I also learned a huge amount about what makes a powerful, effective co-founding team (very handy for my time at Zinc!)

Huge thanks to Solutions Research for your engagement and time ??

How You Can Help ??

We’re still talking to community managers and community experts so please keep sending your contacts/yourselves our way ??

A couple of other ways you can help:

1. Ideas for testing MVPs - we’re using landing pages with “trapdoor” CTAs, surveys and building a “non-scalable” MVP that we can get up and running. But we need more! How have you tested your products in the past? Get in touch ??
2. Big ask….Run an ad for us ?? We’ll of course be providing spend but if you’re a LinkedIn or Facebook Ad master and are happy to help us set up an effective ad, we will be very grateful. I have a bit of experience here but know that experience counts for a lot in running ads.

Thank you! ??

Thank Yous for Week 8 ??

Many more thank yous this week!

• Thank you to Clara, Community Lead at PORTAIRE - the fastest growing interior architectural directory in the UK ?? ??
• Thanks to Ryan, Peter, Chinenye, Jack, Francisco and James (Zinc Founders!) for providing thoughtful ideas and insight for mine and Alfredo’s idea ??
• Of course big thanks to Solutions Research (Michelle, Josie and Emma)
• Big thanks to Joe for a lovely lunch and the discovery of my new favorite restaurant!
• Big love to Ruth for a vital girly chat and catch up ??
• Huge thanks to Francisco for your faith and insight on our idea - look forward to working more closely with you!
• Thank you Mel from More Human (a Zinc company!) for sharing both her Zinc story and her insights on community. They’re building lots of cool things for communities - check them out! ??
• Finally a huge thank you to Lorna from RedWigWam. Lorna and I met once 4 (!) years ago when I was doing my PhD in Liverpool and she kindly gave her time and expertise to talk about building marketplace businesses - thank you! ??

What’s Coming Up ??

Next week Alfredo and I will begin testing with a few different methods. We’ve done lots of user interviews with community experts and community builders so we’re confident the problems we’re exploring exist but now need more understanding of what a true solution to those problems look like.?

ALSO, I'm currently a week behind on these posts (it's now the end of Week 9) and next week (Week 10) I'm at Glastonbury ?? ?? so I'm either going to post another one before Wednesday or will be two weeks behind. So prepare yourself for a BUMPER week OR a very quiet week because I'll be hacking budget tent pegs into a rock-hard field. ??