Week 4 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 the first official week of sprinting which means self-scheduled sprints with those we think there’s a potential cofounding relationship.

Highlights from Week 4 🌈

This week for me was a combination of sprinting, coffees and group brainstorming sessions. Topics I’m exploring are predominantly related to income generation and community.

My highlights were:

Seeing crazy ideas lead to credible business ideas 🤪

This stage of the programme is about exploring. Exploring relationships, exploring problem areas and exploring solutions. One thing I’ve realised I’m good at is: coming up with crazy, infeasible ideas 🤨 But often these lead to credible, feasible ideas 👍 And that discovery process I’ve really enjoyed.

Founder Pitches in Friday’s Stand Up 🥹

On Fridays we have stand-ups where we share what we’ve been working on - at this stage most people are doing short, varied sprints so instead (credit to Priyanka) we did Founder pitches with a twist. Instead of pitching ourselves, we pitched someone else on the cohort. Thanks to Soma (check him out) for this insane (and generous) line

“Hannah currently plays football in the Sunday league but her CV is in the Champions League” 💅

Coffees! ☕️

I’ve been intentional this week at meeting and talking to as many people as possible. My concern last week is that I was tunnelling in too early and talking to others, hearing their passions and ideas has really helped.

Win of the Week by Teddy 🏆

This was one of the best things I’ve witnessed.

In our Founder pitches, Teddy pitched Aviv by RAPPING to the cohort. Seriously incredible. Teddy has kindly shared the rap with me so you can see how amazing this was.

A commercial guy with entrepreneurial flair

Quick thinker, learns fast, with product skills to spare

He lived in Hong Kong from a young age

And ran an import/export business, all the rage

Aviv, Aviv, a man with a plan

Economics background, and an MBA from Oxford, damn!

Go-to-market strategies, he knows what to do

Identifying business opportunities, Warren Buffet, who?

Looking for something scalable, profitable, and big

Positive social impact, that's only part of his gig

Aviv’s intelligence is criminal, his vision artisanal

Leading business and product decisions

He iterates fast, no revisions

If your vision is bold and your ambition is true,

Aviv's the man to talk too, he'll make it happen for you.

APPLAUSE, CRYING, STANDING OVATION 😭

Thoughts from Week 4 💭

Last week the main thing on my mind was whether I had narrowed on the problem area too soon. This week I definitely silenced those fears - I had lots of coffees, spoke about lots of other problems and got excited about other ideas. So my mind is relatively calm (a first on this programme!) I’m looking forward to the sprints I have planned for Week 5 but feeling excited about how my existing ideas are progressing.

Throughout the week I put some notes in a braindump to help writing this post and this week I only had two bullets:

• Stressed and confused
• Actually everything is okay

So… everything seems fine 🤷‍♀️

I’m still working on finding a good routine for the week but definitely feeling a lot more relaxed and confident in what I’m working on (yay!)

How You Can Help 🙌

I’ve been incredibly overwhelmed with how many have reached out over the last few weeks to help. As a consequence, I’m struggling to find time for further calls! So nothing specific this week but, as always, if you have thoughts/questions after reading this post, get in touch!

Thank Yous for Week 4 🤗

• Nico for my first Zinc dinner
• Ash for great conversation on the creator economy/startup world
• Soma for his kind and thoughtful pitch
• Josh for the drink (and padron peppers)
• Max for leading a brainstorm on community building
• Laura for leading a brainstorm on income generation

What’s Coming Up 👇

Next week I’m doing lots of half-day sprints on a range of topics including crowdfunding (who’d have thought), support for the self-employed, repair marketplaces, community finance solutions and supporting underrepresented entrepreneurs.

I didn’t take many pictures this week so I’m going to round this post off with this picture of a pepper with quiff I cooked with this week (Elvis Peppersly)