One Breakup and a Pivot Later: The Transformational Effect of Entrepreneur First
About a year ago, I was leaving Google in Mountain View to move back to London and start a company. The move was “risky” according to my friends and colleagues, “incomprehensible” according to my mum, and thrilling to me. As much as I enjoyed working on products used by hundreds of millions of users, and collaborating with all the smart minds at Google, I was missing something: a deep sense of purpose and personal growth.
The last year has been a rollercoaster: from building a team and developing a complex product, to meeting with investors, being featured in WIRED and Forbes, winning global awards, and speaking about healthtech in front of hundreds of people–to say I got out of my comfort zone is an understatement.
Another understatement would be to say I succeeded at what I set out to achieve: building a company that one day could positively impact people’s health at scale.
After a few months working together, we started realising with my co-founder that our visions didn’t align. Because both of us are problem-solvers, we failed to acknowledge the issues we had, and instead tried to fix them so we could move forward. But there is no point in pushing forward when you’re standing on quicksand.
The art of breaking up
That’s when I met with the team at Entrepreneur First.¹ They shared some of the advice they give founders joining their accelerator. In my specific case, it boiled down to one: if you’re not aligned on a fundamental level with your co-founder, break up. They also suggested I applied for the next cohort.
I did both.
I applied to EF and went to their office in Bermondsey for face-to-face interviews. When I got the offer letter, I was both excited and anxious–which was a welcome improvement over feeling mostly anxious over the past few months.
The conversation with my co-founder wasn’t an easy one, but it was necessary, and it left us both feeling much better afterwards. We decided to sell the technical framework to one of two companies that made an offer. We recently had lunch together and he’s working on a new, exciting e-commerce project.
Embracing failure
What have I learned from this failed venture?
First, people matter more than anything. You can have the best idea, the best intentions, the best skills; if you don’t have the right team, you are bound to fail. Conversely, a great team can overcome lots of obstacles you didn’t predict.
Second, don’t believe the hype. You can be featured in the national press, be invited to speak at events, meet with and/or be funded by high-profile investors, win awards, etc. and actually not have the impact you set out to have. Don’t envy other founders that are seemingly successful: lots of us are struggling, and that’s alright–at least we are trying our best.
Last, take care of your mental health. In my case, that meant getting out of my bubble and travelling for a while. For you, it might mean hanging out more with your friends and family, exercising, going to the theatre, doing yoga, or taking cooking classes. I took a consulting job in Singapore for a month, met with my sister in Taiwan (she lives in South Korea), then travelled to Vietnam with my boyfriend. Discovering other cultures never fails to bring me back down to earth–in a good way.
Starting anew
The last couple of months at EF have been incredibly intense. From meeting 80 potential co-founders — all incredibly smart, driven individuals with track-records designed to bring your Imposter Syndrome back — to meeting the one, and starting a company together, it’s been a rewarding, exciting experience.
Thanks to EF, I’ve met the best co-founder I could ever hope for. Beside our skills complementarity, we share deeply-rooted motivations, with both of us having family members suffering from obesity and diabetes.
We’re using methods we studied at EF to stress-test our assumptions and pivot when necessary. We’ve had more than a hundred phone conversations already, not including face-to-face meetings. Coming from a B2C background, it’s extremely unnerving to chat with a potential customer when you’re in the discovery phase. It’s also rewarding to feel like you’re going in the right direction. EF has taught us to leave our egos at the door and to go through this process–fast.
Data-driven healthcare
So, what’s next?
My previous company was all about delivering the right information in the right context so users could make better health choices. But getting the right information doesn’t equal changing your behaviour.
Because health interventions do not happen in a vacuum — especially in the case of obesity and its associated conditions such as diabetes — I want to take into account behavioural, social and environmental factors, which all have an impact on health outcomes.
The effect of interventions vary greatly based on ethnicity, gender, age and compliance. Beyond the clinic walls, real-world performance matters: rather than sharing personalised lifestyle advice to patients, I want to design data-driven solutions that actually result in better health.
This will only happen by fostering collaboration between everyone in the industry, including researchers, health advocacy groups, and healthcare companies.
So, if you’re interested in how we can apply Machine Learning to real-world, everyday data from people suffering from obesity and its associated conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, or asthma, please get in touch. I’d love to chat with researchers, employees at innovative healthcare companies, and people suffering from any or several of these conditions–so together, we can create better health outcomes.
¹ Entrepreneur First is a top startup accelerator backed by Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn), Greylock Partners, Mosaic Ventures, Founders Fund and Lakestar.
