Take the Risk to Blossom!
Entering the entrepreneurial space and the world of start-ups as a female founder requires a lot of hustle, heart and determination because the journey is seldom a defined path . Luckily, there are women like Danielle D’Agostaro who have made it their work and mission to help and accelerate businesses with a clear vision and strong leadership team to make the transition of scaling their businesses to companies with a big world mentality. With over five years experience as the Managing Partner and COO of Alchemist Accelerator, she took the time to share her insights of what it takes to position a company in the venture capital arena.
Danielle reflects that one of the best career decisions she made was transitioning from a Media Studies graduate eager to work in marketing, to falling in love with the world of start-ups. Being able to make a difference in so many entrepreneurs’ lives as Alchemist guides them through their six month curriculum, or ‘mini MBA’, has been exceptionally rewarding, humbling and inspiring for her.
Alchemist focuses on teaching their successful applicants how to accelerate their sales and fundraising processes as well as detailing horizontal learning applications that support building a start-up around product leadership business models. Central to their program is providing entrepreneurs with a support community of like-minded individuals; those who understand the lonely and stressful path of what it means to have given up so much in the pursuit of a dream.
“The people we work with have given up everything. They’re hustling everyday to make this dream a reality.”
Successful entrepreneurs share a number of unique characteristics that stand out to Danielle: hustlers that won’t take ‘No’ for an answer, who exhaust any and all avenues of getting to the goal that they want and people who put 200% into their companies.
“We are looking for people who are going to go above and beyond to make it happen.”
Evaluating and selecting applicants for the accelerator program also involves considering whether a company is differentiated enough and if there is a large enough market opportunity to warrant the interest of the top VCs from an investment perspective. One of the biggest shifts she has noted in recent years is that there are a lot more female investors who want to support women entrepreneurs and the growth of female-led companies who are influencing the broader investment community.
There is also an encouraging, organic resurgence in acceptance for those who choose to prioritize creating and spending time with their families, whether they are customers, investors, or team members.Women increasingly run less of a risk of being discredited or not being taken as seriously for having a family and Danielle is “ finding people [who] are trying to level the playing field and so that they’re given a fair chance”. This increased awareness and visibility of women in leadership roles make taking the plunge as a female founder more possible and achievable.
Danielle does make the point that co-founder issues are probably the biggest start-up killer. Picking the right person that you are essentially going to be married to for the next seven years through such a demanding professional and personal journey is critical. Central to this relationship and the startup succeeding is having to have the hard discussions as detailed in Ben Horowitz’s book, ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers’. Conversations about money, equity splits, titles, decision making and visions are essential to have right in the beginning as well as different crossroads along the way. As Horowitz himself says in his book,
“‘Life is struggle.’ I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle”. Choose wisely who you decide to struggle with.
Another huge derailer in Danielle’s opinion, especially on the B2B side, is finding product-market-fit and doing proper customer development before you build anything. If customer development is done well it can actually serve as a basis for a list of potential sales customers and save the start-up a lot of time and energy. Being patient with your customers and working with them as they get to the vision that you have for the business, you are then able to bring to the market what they need at that time, but recognize that that may not always be right at the beginning. In order to be productive and efficient while prioritizing, Danielle suggests staying focused on what is in front of you because “if we keep thinking about the future too much, we will never get anything done in the present”.
Ultimately, Danielle is optimistic and confident that the time has never been better for women to start their entrepreneurial journey.
“For any human’s life there is only so much time and if there’s something that you want to do, you should just go and do it.”
Anything that you try offers a multitude of learning opportunities and there is hardly ever chance of failure when gaining knowledge and experience. So if there is something you are truly excited about, now’s the time. Just start.
“And [so] the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
~ Anaïs Nin
Tune in to this informative and exciting conversation to learn more about Danielle’s thoughts of what is required to grow and scale your business.
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