Meeting Start-up Founders by Julie

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-24 08:52:31 UTC

Each one of you can meet 1 founder.

Each founder will welcome maximum 9 students.

As a team, try to meet as many founders as possible. Decide who will meet which founder.

Explore the founders’ organizations
Write down your name with the Founder you wish to meet
Prepare questions for your meeting. You may use this padlet to suggest questions

Founder EYEYAH!

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-24 08:55:30 UTC

Founder Ratio robotic cafe & lounge

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-24 08:56:03 UTC

Founder KindMind Experience Design

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-24 08:57:17 UTC

Founder Tsaa Laya

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-24 08:57:49 UTC

Founder Akadasia

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-24 08:58:20 UTC

Founder Design for Change Singapore

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-24 09:02:27 UTC

TEAMS

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:06:27 UTC

RURAL SCHOOL
SMARTY PANTS

TEAMS

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:06:40 UTC

SMARTY PANTS
'CHER

TEAMS

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:06:42 UTC

'CHER
KINDR

TEAMS

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:06:44 UTC

KINDR
LISTN

TEAMS

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:06:45 UTC

=CLASS
RURAL SCHOOL

TEAMS

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:06:47 UTC

LISTN (Jon Jon)
=CLASS (Gita, Jas)

Write down your questions

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:06:51 UTC

1. What inspires you to start this?
2. What is the greatest challenge when started out this business?
3. Is Eyeyah the initial idea/solution right from the start? If no, how did it evolve?
4. How did you ensure that it is a solution that will always in demand?
5. What lessons did you learn from Kult did you apply to EYEYAH?
6. How important is it to have the right business partner?
7. Who were the first few people you wanted to buy into the idea of EYEYAH?
8. Was there a time where you felt like EYEYAH might not have worked — what did you have to tell yourself to push forward?
9. Would you ever consider broadening your target audience for EYEYAH — for instance to the elderly? Why or why not?
10. Does EYEYAH have plans to eventually become more inclusive for visually impaired children or students as well?
11. What is the greatest impact that you want to see in this business?
12. How did you do the fund raising? Please share some experience.

Write down your questions

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:06:56 UTC

1) Why did you choose to focus on drink and food?
2) What did your first MVP from this look like?
3) What was your biggest failure and what was the best learning you got from this experience?
4) How has the response to Ratio been like?
5) What are the future plans for Ratio?
6) Who did you initially market Ratio to and what lessons did you learn from that?
7) Is there a reason why you opened Ratio Robotics Cafe and Lounge in China first?
8) What was your pitch to the investors? What is their profile? Why do you think that they invested in the cafe?
9) Is the Human interaction being replaced in the process?

Write down your questions

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:06:57 UTC

1) What was your initial vision, and why?
2) Best failures in terms of the learnings you got?
3) Why did you choose those 4 services?
4) What does the future look like for KindMind?
5) What was the founding team dynamic like?
6) Do you see the future of work (10 years down the line) being purely digital or an equal hybrid of digital/physical?
7) How did you raise money at the start?
8) How long did it take you to raise enough money to get started?
9) How long were you into the project before starting to get a salary?
10) Were there any specific challenges/opportunities in starting your business where you did?
11) How did you ensure that top management stayed aligned at the start?

Write down your questions

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:06:59 UTC

KINDR
Why did you pick tea?
What's different about starting a social enterprise? Was it what you expected?
How did you make your first sale?
What was the toughest part of your first year in business?
What's your team dynamic like / or was?
Where do you want to take the business now?
When you first started what was your vision? Has that changed, why?
What surprised you the most through this experience?

Write down your questions

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:07:00 UTC

1) What inspires you to start this?
2) What was your biggest frustration when starting this business?
3) Is Akadasia originally intended to serve Educators? If no, how much has Akadasia pivoted from the original idea you had ?
4) Did you start off with a single geographical location or multiple locations? What were your considerations back then?
5) Will your platform be inaccessible with a low internet connectivity environment?
6) How do you monetize your platform? How do you determine the pricing mechanism for your platform?
7) How do you reach out your service to the educators?
8) There are quite a few LMS platforms already, for eg. Edomodo, Schoology, what makes Freejoo platform stands out?
9) Is there a feedback mechanism to ensure that the quality of teaching is actually improving through the training?
10) What has been the experiences of those who used Freejo like? What were their transformation story?
11) non academia educators like art, music, martial arts teachers) could also up-skill? Their teaching usually require a much personalised mentorship.

Write down your questions

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:07:03 UTC

1) What are your key insights for scaling up your Sollution?
2) How do you monetize this? WHEN exactly do you ask for funding?
3) How do you recognise the tipping point? What/ When is too fast and too slow?
4) what are the watch-outs?
5) In your perspective would these type of learning work across all cultures?
6) When you where testing this what was your biggest failure and what did you learn from it?
7) Who is your biggest stakeholder eg who do you need to convince to get this implemented in the school curriculum..
8) What are your future plans for this?
9) When do you know that DFC Singapore has succeeded? Is it based on outreach or impact, i.e. proposed solution by students gets picked up for development?
10) Singapore dabbled in DT in the past and it did not gain enough traction then. It has seen a resurgence now but what were your “riskiest assumptions” when starting DFC Singapore?

Write down your session insights

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:09:21 UTC

1. There are no competitors, just potential collaborators.
2. Failure doesn't exist in her vocabulary — just small wins.
3. She started the business accidentally and calls herself an accidental entrepreneur.
4. Managing teams is a constant struggle.
5. Trust in your team members, knowing their strengths/weaknesses and what they can contribute is important.
6. It's necessary to find the cookie monsters who would pay, but they might not be the people who you would directly impact.

Write down your session insights

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:09:33 UTC

Write down your session insights

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:09:34 UTC

Trust your gut
have an exit strategy like a pre-nup
You don't have to exit your full-time job to be an entrepreneur..

Write down your session insights

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:09:35 UTC

Personally: Mental Health of the founder in the face of uncertainty. You need to create support systems for yourself in a state of uncertainty. Find your own peach and your own hope, through all the adversity. This was about creativity for me: Finding joy was what it was about in the beginning.

The person that loves it the most, the visionary, will carry the biggest burden. Don't compare, the ideas usually come from one person and your team plays a supporting role, that's ok.

Scaling up social enterprises is to educate and teach community partners. Look for investors to fund and distribute community partners.

Its always a calculated risk, what I want is to manage burnout. When I had to quit my job and transition that was the big moment.

Write down your session insights

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:09:36 UTC

1// Fear of sharing IPs and being copied and not having control -
"Keep innovating and that fear will go away because competitors will be busy copying you and not innovating." <-- EPIC 'you do you moment' IMHO

2// Remember the WHY/ the PURPOSE you're doing this and money will come.

3// REMAIN AUTHENTIC

4// TENACITY AND THE "I CAN" SPIRIT

5// BE 'Infectious'

6// social aspect and money aspect - twins with diff personalities

7// risk of scaling up

Write down your session insights

juliebeusmans — 2021-03-25 04:09:38 UTC

Replicate according to the market need - ask your customer.

Startup culture needs a lot of nurturing.

Gap between digital skills - meeting the middle ground of teachers who are not digitally savy and Gen Z who are savy.

Humanoid robot

mariamacosta — 2021-03-25 15:03:17 UTC

Some studies shows that human inclined to treat humanoid robot as living beings. Do you think that if you were using a robot able to speak the customers would react differently? Would that be better for business? Did you test that?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/13/please-do-not-switch-me-off-an-experiment-with-begging-robot-shows-people-hesitate-pull-plug/

Validating

mariamacosta — 2021-03-25 15:09:59 UTC

Can you share the experiments that you did to validate your idea?