What Does It Take to Build a Successful Startup?
Talk to your users, think big and start small, speed is a habit
Dear Reader,
Last week, I attended an amazing entrepreneurship event organised by the Black Product Manager Network (BPM) and Cornerstone VC, an early-stage venture capital firm. It was attended by a mix of product managers, designers, software engineers, and aspiring entrepreneurs.
The event was a Q&A panel with three inspiring Black founders:
We got to hear their stories, challenges, and wins, in the journey to build a successful startup, and maybe change the world.
Here are my notes from the session. I have also included my thoughts on entrepreneurship from the session, and my own experience. Enjoy??.
Note: I have previously shared my notes from past events: London Tech Week 2024,? Issra Omer of Spotify, Product Leader: Shreyas Doshi and Apple’s WWDC 2024.
Introductions
The session began with introductions by the panel.
Tom Foster-Carter
Tom is a serial entrepreneur who previously was the COO of Monzo (the digital bank), and worked in strategy consulting at Bain & Company.
During the covid pandemic, Tom had his first child. He and his spouse repeatedly had to plan meals, and do grocery shopping, amongst other things. He figured that there should be a better way to do this, and set out to find it. This led to cofounding Cherrypick.co to improve meal planning and grocery shopping.
Bayo Ibirogba
Bayo cofounded usemappa.com to make it easier and less stressful for first time home buyers to find their dream home. This grew out of his own experience buying his first home, speaking to several agents, lawyers, and mortgage brokers. A tortuous process.
Bayo shared how he spoke to those in his network who were buying their first home. He used the insights gained from talking to users to create his first MVP (minimum viable product) using Excel. He also prioritised finding a technical cofounder.
Judith Omoregie
Judith cofounded efitter.com to help users find their perfect fashion fit when shopping online. Judith explained that efitter.com was born out of her frustration with finding the right size and fit when shopping online. Judith shared an interesting story of how she attracted and created a community of users through a podcast focused on fashion and shopping. This enabled her gain valuable insights from her potential users, and validate her initial value proposition.
Judith (paraphrasing):
If they had to return an item, why was it not a good shopping experience, so much data we got for free and that was because we had a community, which validated our offering…
We launched 2 years later in 2021, and we already knew then this was not revenue generating we didn’t want there to be a barrier of entry for customers, we didn’t want them to have to pay subscription, we were trying to reduce the friction that users experience when shopping online.
After the introductions, the panel answered questions from the moderator and the audience. Here are some of the questions.
Q1. How did you start your business while working?
Judith:
This experience is quite fresh for me, I quit my job a year ago. My advice would be to use all the hours in a day outside 9-5, while working, to prove this is a viable business. My routine was a 4am start but I don’t recommend it. I really loved what I was doing but I was not in a financial position to take that leap.
Now I am working full time on this but I still don’t have enough time to do everything I need to do. [While working on your business with your 9-5] realise its for a season so pour everything you have into it, while you get that safety net covered, and do everything you can to validate the business before you make that leap.
Bayo:
It’s about the tipping point, what’s the tipping point at which you feel confident that you can make this bet. Something that helped me was realising that there is a market for my [consulting] skills so I knew I could take on additional work to top up my savings like fractional CPO, contract product manager role.
When you are paid a day rate and you can work 3 days a week … that way your nest egg stays the same level and even gets bigger – so there were those practicalities. At some point, I didn’t have the time to take on more work as my startup was starting to pick up.
Tom:
It’s about the thinking space, so if you are tight on time and you are trying to squeeze starting a business into a few hours in a day, you are tired, your brain is tired, it’s going to be hard. Couple things:
Knowing what your golden hours (most productive time) are, for me its first thing in the morning and then it’s a slow deceleration.
Or you might want to try a little be later, and/or you’re taking a day off [during the week] so that you doing a 4-day work week. Try to get as far as you can into an MVP.
Q2. What was your experiencing leaving your job for your business?
Tom:
Don’t burn bridges with your employer – see if you can take some time off, I took 6 months at Bain. Also have a [savings] safety net.
Bayo:
Have skills that make you employable, and try these alternatives such as consulting first, while you do user research and validation.
Judith:
Reiterating what has been said: have a safety net and work on your idea when you can. I was working on my business idea for 3-4 years, and only left a year ago.
Q3. Have you had to pivot from your original approach?
Bayo:
All this crazy tech gets people super happy and we assumed that they would stick with us and use all our services like mortgage. Our first hypothesis was to provide quality leads to agents/brokers and they would pay us. But then we realised that agents don’t pay for anything.
So, I sat in one of the agent’s offices and watched them work all day, I then realised the real problem is they were getting leads from existing sources – Rightmove/Zoopla – but problem is they cannot efficiently qualify efficiently if they were good leads – so they had to call them and say “hey do you have …”. That was what we needed to solve.
Q4. Have you had any experience with burnout?
Tom:
Burnout is real. I remember when Monzo was scaling fast and I was burnt out, all the time. It almost broke my marriage and my wife spoke to me and I made changes. You need someone to pull you out.
Judith:
I was working to 4am, working all the time, and not taking any breaks. I barely celebrated my birthday, didn’t travel for 2 years.
Bayo:
I had an advisor who said I shouldn’t email him at 2am – you need to have people to pull you back. At some point I was burnt out so I handed over the running of the business to my cofounders and went for a 7-day holiday. By the time I came back I was refreshed.
Q5. Have you had any cofounder relationships that did not go well?
Tom (paraphrasing):
I once had a cofounder relationship that worked initially but I didn’t do my due diligence and realised it wasn’t a great fit. At some point I found myself not enjoying coming to work, and it was my company. It was messy to extricate myself.
Next time around I treated it more like dating – ‘try before you buy’. I needed in the CTO role so I brought in a guy that was a good fit and got him to contract for a year. When I saw it was a good fit, I had a conversation with him about coming on as a cofounder, and we have worked together successfully ever since.
Q6. What final advice would you give aspiring entrepreneurs?
Bayo:
My advice would be talk to your users – figure out your ICP [ideal customer profile], pick up the phone and call them, that’s it and let the rest just happen organically, the conversations would draw you into the problem space and you would build from there.
Judith:
Mine in addition to that, is think big and start small, don’t be in a rush to get that shiny app or shiny product out there. It is important to do the first step speak to your users, focus on the leanest version of your product, get that out there, validate and then build on that.
Tom:
My advice would be speed is a habit, it’s a muscle – you need to build that muscle in all parts of your organisation. It starts with you and your daily routines and you lead by example and inspire others and just ask “can we do that faster?”, you would be surprised how people would come up with options – “there’s this thing we can do and its twice as good” and just say do that – speed is a habit.?
Closing Thoughts
After the Q&A session was networking between the attendees, the speakers and organisers. I had some interesting conversations. It seemed most people would consider founding or working for a startup, but they had some concerns: the fear of failure, imposter syndrome about having the required ‘technical skills’, and the need to earn a salary to maintain their existing lifestyles.
The panel and all the conversations reminded me of my own entrepreneurship experience. The hard, lonely road from obsessing about your idea, your business, ‘your baby’. But despite these challenges there is also the adventure, the excitement, and the experience of achieving something you have not done before.
Some of the lessons I learnt from my own experience were:
To help I have written some helpful articles on talking to users, writing effective user stories, developing product thinking, ?The job-to-be-done (JTBD) framework, falling in love with the problem, overcoming product risk, ?imposter syndrome, effective marketing communication, how to sell, strategy, management & teamwork, starting a business cheaply, chasing a dream, and choosing yourself.
Good luck on this adventure, and remember:
“You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” ―?Christopher Columbus
There you have it.
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Thanks for reading and bye for now.
Nero
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