
What I Learned from 6 Weeks in a Castle
For the past 6 weeks, I’ve lived in a castle that was both the former residence of Queen Elizabeth I and the film location of Harry Potter IV. To what do I owe this great honour? My startup was selected as 40 out of 100,000 teams to join the Hult Prize Accelerator in the Ashridge Estate. Each week, experts mentored us on a chosen topic in order to accelerate growth in our startups and ourselves. Despite the Friday open-bars, weekend trips to London, and the medieval castle, the learnings were still what stuck the most. Here are my key takeaways from this life-changing experience.
Week 1: Team
“ High performing teams are bonded together by a shared vision, are enthusiastic, and use their individual strengths to achieve common goals. This generosity of mind and spirit delivers the most rewarding successes.” —Sheryl Chamberlain, Chair of the Hult Prize Council
The biggest definer of a startup is the uncertainty that it faces — be it the business model, the product, or even the customer, these elements are subject to pivoting at any given data point. With all these variables, you find yourself searching for some constant basis on which to make all subsequent decisions. What, then, is this initial constant? For me, the answer has always been to look within. At the end of the day, I chose to be a social entrepreneur because of intrinsic motivators — the impact I would make, the flexibility of the lifestyle, the steep learning curves of each project. These motivators push me to work until 5am to rush deadlines and stay in crime-riddled communities to bootstrap on hotel costs. So whenever my team and I find ourselves going in circles with all the moving pieces of our business, we sit down to re-evaluate our competencies and motivators. With this as a starting point, we go back to the drawing board to consider our data points and pivot accordingly.
Given that the team is the only real constant in an early-stage startup, you can see how crucial it is to have a stable founding team. By stable founding team, I mean one which possesses high levels of competency and intelligence, a collaborative spirit, and similar outlooks on motivation and work. An early-stage startup means little pay, challenging work, and constant struggle, so there needs to be a team that supports and inspires each other to keep going. According to this legitimate source, over 35% of startups fail due to team-related reasons. Your startup is your baby, and your team members are the parents. Make a wise decision!
Week 2: Value Proposition

In the startup world, the customer is not only king but also the elusive meaning for existence. A lot of teams make the mistake of getting stuck on perfecting their product. In reality, the product is but a part of the entire value proposition (i.e. the unique value your startup brings to customers). Lumbrick’s product is a smokeless charcoal briquette made of organic waste. Our value proposition is providing affordable, user-friendly cooking fuel to Kenyan households while cleaning up waste and preventing deforestation. Making this distinction is the first step towards providing customers with something that they value.
Actually, getting stuck on the product is indicative of a greater problem for many startups, including my own: we assume that we understand our market. You can never understand your market — there are an infinite number of unvalidated uncertainties that could lead to a failed product. The point is to get as close to customer wants as possible, using as little resources as possible. This is best done using the lean methodology, which refers to value creation through an approach that minimizes resources wasted. The first reaction of an entrepreneur in a given situation is most likely not the lean approach. For example, when Lumbrick first started as an idea to solve the severe cooking fuel crisis plaguing 3 billion people around the world, we immediately dug into research on briquettes, created a logo, and made our first prototype. The prototype was made out of cardboard residue, which was abundant in our native North America but not in our target regions. After much prompting from mentors, we got on the right track by asking these questions: Which population suffers most from the cooking fuel problem? Are their current alternatives viable? What factors do they value most in their cooking fuel? These questions brought us across Cameroon and Kenya to understand the market before prototyping.
Week 3: Process
“ Don’t automatically assume a radical change is needed just because of some perceived flaw in the business model. Startups often have the tendency to overshoot away from their original vision due to pressure to show early success. If you discover a problem in your business model, make small pivots in a new direction and measure your outcomes.” — Scott Weiner, Serial Entrepreneur and Process Guru
For an entrepreneur, all actions should be driven by data. However, it can be challenging to reach this level of efficiency and question each task you’re doing to see if it really is the correct action that will contribute maximum value. Our team has found it easier to achieve efficiency through processes that force all change to start at the customer.
Iterative improvement means making incremental changes to a product or business model to test how the market reacts, and either accepting or rejecting the change based on the market reaction. Early-stage startups will get an overwhelming amount of data points (i.e. sales, customer feedback, expert advice), much of which is contradictory to each other. In this case, it is up to you to exercise your own informed and intelligent judgement on what is causing the contradiction and what data to believe. It’s also important to not make any radical changes which discard all of the previous progress which were actually beneficial to your success heretofore. A radical pivot means completely abandoning previous data points and beginning again, often leading to a false answer that is even further from the ideal solution.
We are also integrating the scrum process into our routine. At the beginning of the week, we list all of the tasks necessary for our current iteration and prioritize them. Then, we divide the tasks according to our competencies and track our progress each day. It’s really important that progress is not tracked in terms of time spent, but in terms of tasks accomplished (Asana is a really helpful tool). In this way, the entire team is on the same page regarding the bigger picture, and can make decisions accordingly during their daily tasks.
Week 4: Partnerships
“ Despite the stereotypes, companies are built upon multiple people cooperating to produce something larger than themselves. The more people you have successfully collaborating, the more successful your company is likely to be. A single act of kindness, compassion, or helpfulness today may very well pay off with larger rewards and favors in the future.”— Ryan Riegg, Serial Entrepreneur and Startup Attorney
Startups are about being as “lazy” as possible—don’t do anything you don’t have to do. As previously established, all iterations should start with the customer. Before diving into the prototype, ask yourself: Do I need to have my own product in order to test its value proposition? A startup is trying to implement an idea which has never been brought to market before. This means that all companies in this sector are struggling to prove similar value propositions in their own ways. If it is possible to collaborate instead of compete, do so. In Lumbrick’s case, one of our greatest miracles was finding entrepreneurs who were already producing briquettes in Kenya. Instead of regarding them as competitors, we reached out and discovered the complementary skills we had. Our Kenyan partners’ factory set-up and R&D saved us a couple years and thousands of dollars, so that we could invest our resources into testing the market, conducting R&D on technology, and attracting traction. This is the type of collaboration that is bringing value to both companies, and especially to the customers.
At the castle, we learned to best take advantage of partnerships by mapping out our key activities, then outsourcing the activities we don’t need to be doing. This mentality has saved us a lot of time and money that gives us speed in an otherwise slow and logistics-based industry. While some protection of IP is necessary, go for collaboration if you have value to offer each other and a common vision. Of course, trust is key in business relations. Even if somebody seems to have a lot to offer, do not conduct business with them if they do not invite trust and good will. Finally, make sure to set concrete partnership terms, recorded and signed, from the very beginning. As you develop in your commitments to each other, new contracts can be signed. We made the mistake of not documenting the specific terms of our working relationship with our Kenyan partners, leading to an unclear division of ownership which deterred investors. Even if partners work closely together, multiple events could trigger a break-down in relationship. In this case, it is important to have legal documents to protect yourself.
Week 5: Vision
Beyond a defined value proposition, it is the vision that will get people to support you and buy into your company. Our vision? A future in which waste is transformed into useful energy. It took us 5 full weeks at the accelerator to figure out a vision and integrate it into our strategy. This was a significant step for Lumbrick, as our value proposition became more valuable in the context of the vision. It also guides the direction in which our product and business model will evolve during future iterations. As long as your vision inspires people, all products and models which effectively achieve that vision will be embraced by investors and consumers.
A crucial way to convey your vision is through the pitch, which we have practically mastered after presenting weekly in front of different experts who then rank the 40 teams in the accelerator to decide who can go to the UN Headquarters in New York for a $1 million prize. From these pitches, I learned three key tips:
- Have confidence.
- Show through demonstrations and pictures instead of words.
- Make everything as simple as possible. The ultimate point of the pitch is to tell the story of your startup’s vision. Make simplify all details so they don’t detract from the story. (Caveat: Have well-prepared answers to back you up. Make a list of all questions that have been asked before and synthesize clear, concise answers).
Week 6: Sustainability
“Money is the blood and lifeline of a company. Without adequate blood supply, the rest of the organs start to fail.” — Shivani Dasani, Investment Banker and Venture Capital / Private Equity Expert
A tough decision we are constantly forced to make as a social startup is the balance between business and impact. Every action has both financial and social repercussions. Oftentimes, social startups try to be “perfect” in eliminating negative social impacts from their value chain. For example, we initially intentionally kept prices low on our product to make it more accessible for low-income households. However, these low prices resulted in less profit to re-invest into the business, thereby stunting growth. Prices needed to be adjusted to market equilibrium in order to grow the business and pursue the vision. At the end of the day, it is very hard already to ensure the survival of a startup and it is completely impossible to build a successful startup with absolutely no downsides. The best that we can do is maximize the good, minimize the bad, and ensure an overall positive impact on society.
Sustainability does not only pertain to the ability of your company to survive, but also your ability to continue as an entrepreneur. Burn-outs, impatience, and better job offers can all lead to founders discontinuing their startup. At the end of the day, if you are dreading waking up because of high workload or low finances, the drive to do good can only carry you so far. A social entrepreneur is not a martyr. You cannot effectively increase other people’s quality of life without being happy with your own. Take care of your mental and physical health, get support from the people around you, and have fun!
So there it is — 6 weeks, 6 lessons learned. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at judith.li@lumbrick.com.
Special thanks to Sheryl Chamberlain, Scott Weiner, Ryan Riegg, Shivani Dasani, and Dominik Campanella for helping with this article and Lumbrick’s startup journey.
