The Early Stages #1: The Puzzle Pieces
Building a business can feel like a puzzle at the very beginning. It’s like staring at 10,000 small pieces that hardly seem to fit together.
Our podcast series “The Early Stages” walks you through the “Startup Journey” in six episodes — from founding to funding and growing your startup. In each episode, host Julia comes together with founders and an APX expert to discuss one stage in the process of building a company, sharing their personal experiences, learnings, and advice for other up-and-coming entrepreneurs.
In the first episode, our host Julia meets Eliza-Marija Hirvensalo, Co-Founder at Dogo, Linda Ahrens, Co-Founder of UNOWN, and Yoni Goldwasser, APX advisor, to talk about the earliest stage of the startup journey: the ideation phase.
How puppies and winter jackets can make you quit your job
The original inspiration for Dogo is Udra, a puppy Eliza’s co-founders Rasa and Tadas took from a shelter. She, like most puppies, was active and needed training. Her new parents enrolled her in a dog school, read books, and watched YouTube videos on how to best take care of her. But the founding team saw an opportunity for an app that would help track your training progress and make dog training as fun as a game. This is how the gamified dog training app was born, which has now about 200,000 active users and is growing rapidly — especially since Apple introduced it as “App of the day” in about every App Store worldwide this May.
For Linda, it was a winter jacket that set her on a path to founding her own company in 2019. She has been a fashion lover for a long time, caught in the quandary of changing styles and sustainable consumption. This is why she co-founded UNOWN, an online leasing service for premium fair fashion that makes it possible to own less and still have variety in your closet.
So, what does it take to turn an idea into a company? Yoni Goldwasser, who once was a founder himself before joining APX, says: „You need to have a certain appetite for risk.” A risk that both took: Eliza-Marija and Linda both quit their jobs as HR managers and digital strategists to take care of their young companies full-time.
There are many pieces to the puzzle — and you don’t have to solve it all in the beginning
However, it’s not only about personal attitude but also about hard work. And that takes time: A report from Startup Genome shows that it takes about two to three times longer to validate a business idea than founders expect. Getting to know the competition, finding the true USP, and letting potential customers challenge the idea, all this leads to a continuous process. Entrepreneurs have to listen, adapt, and focus over and over again.
But one thing Linda learned in her personal startup journey is to not be too perfectionistic. Advice, she’d give to every young founder. „You think everything has to be super polished — it actually doesn’t“, she says. Not all pieces of the puzzle have to fit together perfectly in the early stages.
Team trumps idea
Even the idea, what may sometimes seem like the holy grail, is not the most important thing, Eliza-Marija claims. The initial idea develops over time to meet market and customer requirements. What’s more important is who you take on your journey. „People always matter more than the idea.“
And this is where we’ll continue in our next episode. First, check out episode #1 and dive into the start of the startup journey.
“The Early Stages” is available on all common podcast platforms. We hope you enjoy it!
About APX:
APX is Europe’s leading pre-seed VC and accelerator program for very early-stage startups. Based in Berlin, we invest across industries in great teams building digital startups — often as their first investor — and support each team with EUR 50K, access to an extensive network, and a tailor-made growth program to secure follow-on financing. Send us your pitch deck today.
