I should have done it much earlier. But I also had a time of my life working for Spotify, which I joined at series B as an employee no. 150 and leaving when it was a post-IPO streaming giant with 8K+ employees. I was not sure what my next dream job could be, I just knew it had to be at the intersection of content, tech and media, hence I started my own startup with my dear co-founder, another ex-Spotifier, Riccardo Buzzotta.
There are no overnight miracles, it's very hard work: both physically and emotionally. Requires resilience, grit, strategic approach and grind.
Balance rest and work, as rest is an essential part of being productive.
To come yet, we are just a bit more than 1 year old. We’ve raised a little pre-seed round during the summer of 2023 after having faced 120+ rejections from investors. It allowed us to build the initial tech, launch our beta and start getting the first paying customers.
Right now, I am re-reading Gabriel Weinberg’s “Traction.”
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My co-founders are my anchor in work-related topics. Having an environment where failure is welcomed with a helping hand and where weakness is valued as openness, once you are down those people will drag you up.
When I was 16 (way before the internet) I founded a travel-partner agency to connect people from different backgrounds seeking travel companions. After a year, I had to close the agency due to a lack of customers and the confusion some callers had regarding the nature of the “service.” Despite this setback, I gained invaluable insights into sales, communication and people’s needs, solidifying my desire to run a business that helps people.
After graduating, I worked for an extremely well-paying automotive company. But I always had the feeling that there was more out there. So I quit and went into research with the aim of becoming a founder.
One of our core values is experimentation. Rather than get stuck in arguing about what solution may best solve a problem or play to our ego, we focus on the smallest step we could possibly take to learn whether that’s true. It moves our minds away from thinking too big without sweating the small stuff and from getting stuck in discussions rather than actually doing something to understand the possible solutions better.