The Biggest Barriers Entrepreneurs Face Today
How Ethos Aims to Solve Traveling and Networking for People Shaping the World
Hello World.
This is my first ever post on Medium. My name is Janko Milunovic and this is how the story of Ethos starts. I’ve been hesitant to write my own posts because I thought publishing content should only be done by “professional writers”. However, I’ve been getting a lot of requests lately to share the story of Ethos and our vision. So here it is!
After leaving my corporate career at Sony in 2012 to start my own company, the very first unexpected obstacle I faced was traveling affordably and expanding my own network.
At the very beginning, I personally didn’t know a single venture capitalist, angel investor, or startup founder that had successfully scaled a business.
The first thing that came to mind was to travel back to London- where I formerly lived- and spend time there attending relevant meetups, entrepreneurial social gatherings, and events to grow my personal and professional network.
It seemed like a reasonable plan. Although for it to succeed, I had to overcome another challenge that inherently required me to have disposable income — where would I stay while in London?
Yes — I did have friends that could host me for a few nights.
Yes — Airbnb was an option (at that time, in its nascence).
But traveling on my own for business made it difficult to see the value of sleeping in someone else’s bedsheets, dealing with the hassle of picking up keys, or not knowing if the Airbnb host would even confirm the reservation. At the end of the day, for the privacy and professionalism I wanted, I was paying the same (if not more) for an Airbnb as a hotel room.
It struck me that without a corporation paying for my travel, I simply didn’t have an option to find decent and affordable lodging. Even today, cities such as London, San Francisco, and New York are the priciest hotel markets in the world averaging above $300/ night and selling at close to 90% occupancy rate throughout the entire year!
In 2016, while at the Berlin-based accelerator Startupbootcamp, I worked hands-on with dozens of founders and saw this issue as a widespread problem. Again, I observed the biggest recurring barrier these entrepreneurs faced in traveling and meeting any stakeholder was affordable lodging and access to the relevant business ecosystem in that city. I also noticed how the accelerator acted as a catalyst for entrepreneurs to build community, but I wondered how people created networks essential for success beyond their own social circles.
After pondering on this idea, traveling (a lot!), and constantly working with early-stage founders, I moved to San Francisco in 2017. I had the incredible opportunity to be part of Batch 22 at the accelerator 500 Startups, surrounded by a number of founders and entrepreneurs just like me. On the first day of the program, we were told,
“Look around the room. Your fellow founders from the batch are the biggest value you have. Make friends.”
Over the course of a few months, it clicked that my peer network at 500 Startups was everything to me. We all faced incredible emotional and business challenges together. As we all evolved, some lost jobs, some became business partners, some advisors, some investors. My fellow founders became close friends, which turned into a community that was always there for each other, and still is, more than a year after the program ended. It’s here that I witnessed the incredible importance of a closely-knit community that shares a similar mission, mindset, and relevance to each other.
In San Francisco, I realized it’s not just where you stay, it’s who is staying under the same roof and how you connect with them that is equally important.
Simply put, I determined that the problem preventing entrepreneurs most from growing and scaling is difficulty accessing:
- Places of power, such as New York, San Francisco, or London (where close to 80% of all VC funds are based)
- Networks of relevant people, which provide resources, connections, talent, funding, knowledge, and mentorship (at the end of the day, community is everything)!
Partially in an effort to free up my overcrowded couch, which had friends (and friends of friends) crashing (week after week), I dreamed about activating vacant building spaces by turning them into “sanctuaries” for self-employed creators and entrepreneurs.
FYI- If you didn’t know, when walking the streets of San Francisco one can see dozens of floors of buildings sitting empty in this priciest hotel market in the world, where Airbnb is sanctioned.
I imagined a place where one can sleep in a 4-star quality, private room in a space filled only by other ambitious, change-makers. It would contain a mix of locals and travelers- all of them sharing the same values and pursuing the mission of creating their own business with a dream to make the world a better place.
Seven years ago I asked myself, “Where can I find this type of accommodation and relevant network of people?”, and the answer was the same as it is today — nowhere, yet.
My company Ethos was born to tackle these two essential challenges every entrepreneur faces in an effort to take his or her business global. If you’ve tried to scale your business then you are not a stranger to the challenges we all face in affording not only traveling to business hubs but also meeting people relevant to our endeavors.
Ethos is on a mission to create a hotel and members club that provides affordable accommodation and access to a thriving community of professionals who want to positively impact the world.
Looking to the future, Ethos plans to launch its first flagship space in Spring/Summer 2020 in the heart of Manhattan.
I am excited to bring on its founding members and change people’s lives in a positive and lasting way. I’m a strong believer in good karma- the more positive things we accomplish, the more these achievements will shape the world around us and inspire others to do the same.
Even if Ethos is a springboard for just one person to achieve their dreams, then it will be a success.
I invite you to join our waitlist here if you’d like to be part of our movement. You’ll be invited to all our pre-launch events and updated on all our progress.
Please feel free to get in touch with me anytime at janko@enterethos.com.
— Janko
