What can you do next when you want to start a business, Simon and Enzo?
Please tell me if what I am going to describe is similar to your experiences. You are tired of working your full-time job and you have identified a potentially better opportunity for your career. You want to work for yourself and you think strongly that what you want to build will be the entire revolution in the industry you are active in. You are somehow committed to your own project but still wandering around. Do you really know what’s next?
Every week Potlatch is organizing online AMAs (Ask Me Anything) sessions with founders and product managers in the start-up arena. Those might not be answers to all your problems, but it is a great opportunity to explore, ask and hear from someone else’s experience.
This week we have been in touch with 2 alumni from Y Combinator who shared with us their journey as well as some little secrets about their experience in the program. (For those of you unfamiliar with YC, this is the place where Airbnb, Stripe, SendGrid, Zapier, Dropbox had an amazing launch, support, and funding).
Simon, was a Senior Engineer @YoutTube when he decided to shift his career towards entrepreneurship. He is now the co-founder of Remix which is the next communication platform that can facilitate a wide range of online event settings.
Enzo had been building up his strong career as a product manager when he identified a huge lack in the industry (after trying 3 different verticals). June is an instant product analytics for Startups that is supported with valuable data for any type of user.
These are the main takeaways:
- Finding a business partner is not easy, yet not impossible. Our speakers have mentioned that YC can help in finding you the next co-founder. Another solution discussed was about messaging your network about your idea and seeing who is crazy enough to embark on your journey. Last but not least, even LinkedIn can play a role in this search
- Coming up with a business idea or working operationally on it is so much easier than building the team around it. Enzo has told us that the most time-consuming activity when he has started was to finding his peers and making sure that the team he has build will be as sustainable as possible
- Simon told our attendees that in an emerging business idea, it is important to match as much as possible the real need that the users are confronting. This can be made by very intense market research or validation tools and practices. Attendees have been advised to not skip this step and to try and spend as much time as possible on this step in order to assure that the product build is adding value to the market
- Building any sort of MVP opens a wider range of opportunities. It can act as a motivational drive to attract investment and credibility. Our speakers showcased that any product iteration represents a vast conversational point that can act as future recommendations for the business/product
- Attendees have also had the opportunity to hear from Simon & Enzo how impactful the YC Experience was and how it shaped their businesses to an outstanding level. There is no doubt that one of the USA’s greater accelerators is adding value to the start-ups chosen. We were very happy to see how 2 stories from the cohort 2021 are on their way to success.
We were very delighted to have Simon and Enzo in our 30 minutes AMA and we wish them the best of luck in their entrepreneurial journeys.
Discover More opportunities From other founders 1–1 At Potlatch
With Potlatch, founders have the unique opportunity to connect 1–1 with other startup founders and seek for advice or just have a quick introduction
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Network from home was never that easy! :)
