Dec 2018 — Update Letter
Insights Into Our Progress
It’s our pleasure to share our second update letter with you. It outlines our achievements, insights and our direction going forward. November was a great month for us. Here is why.
Our reach-out and interest so far
“I would be honoured to enrol and provide any sort of insight that I have gained experience in so far.” — said, one applicant.
We spread the word through several online groups and with direct messages. This brought in over 3.5k viewers to our website during the last 30 days. On average our website had 28 daily unique visitors. Our ‘Founders Platform’ page had 2k view to-date. Our ‘November Update’ page had 357 views.
Who responded? Insights into the applicants
To date, we have had almost 100 applications. Founders continue to apply now every day. We look forward to opening up our platform to a large number of founders early next year. Here are the statistics:
The numbers
The founders’ demographics
- Diversity: Nationalities from across Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and North America.
- Coverage: 26 countries including Germany, India, Israel, Singapore, UK, USA, etc.
- Experience: 41% serial founders.
- Gender: 27% are female.
- Generation: Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers.
Their tech companies
- Stage: 42% already started scaling.
- Investment: €65+ million in total attracted capital disclosed to us.
- Industry: Products in 20 technology sectors, e.g. CleanTech, EdTech, FashionTech, FinTech, FoodTech, HealthTech, InsurTech, RetailTech, PropTech, PetTech, TravelTech, HRTech, etc.
- Technology: Leveraging groundbreaking tech such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Biotech, Internet of Things (IoT), Virtual Reality (VR), etc
- Size: Companies vary in size with the largest being between 50–99 people.
Why did they apply?
“I’m curious to meet similar minded and different minded people and share similar experiences as sometimes it gets so lonely being a founder and pretending how everything is super awesome ;)” — said, one applicant.
“… I will bring my experience and stories from a different part of the world and help other find solution to their prominent challenges while learning how to better deal with my challenges. It would be great to learn these things without making all the mistakes first hand.” — said, one applicant.
Who is in our platform? Our Platform Insights
It is with great pleasure to announce our first set of founding users:
The members shared their awesome profiles. Bold visions daring to imagine a different world ahead of us.
- Cultural Diversity: Nationalities are American, British, Dutch, German, Greek, Italian, Indian and Ugandan.
- Geographical Coverage: Germany, Italy, India, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the United States. More than half of them live now in a different country than their nationality.
- Business Stage: 50% are startups and the other 50% are scaleups. Split between validation and growth stages.
- Tech Diversity: We have representatives of HealthTech, EdTech, RetailTech, InsurTech and Serious Games, PRTech, Localisation, SpeechTech, FashionTech, PeopleTech and HRTech.
- Professional Maturity: 79% of our founding members are CEOs. The others are CTO’s or COO’s. Many of them have previous experience as founders and C-level leaders.
- Bold Missions: Members have shared with us and each other their inspiring missions. Here are examples of two missions from the HealthTech area:
“Improving individual health and wellbeing through technological innovation.” — said, one member.
“Closing the gap between communities and healthcare access.” — said, one member.
Ada, our AI, has welcomed founders. Focused on understanding their needs and support their interactions with the platform. No matter where one is on the founder journey, challenges are there. Visible and invisible. We are creating a platform to share challenges and perspectives. Here are two of the founders’ challenges that were recently shared:
“How to sell products with delayed gratification?” — said, one member.
“Doing B2B business isn’t easy and we encounter long sale cycle period within our corporate customers list” — said, one member.
If you want to read the perspectives on those and other challenges, apply to join our platform.
What’s next?
The first twenty founders who sign-in to our platform will become our founding users. If you are a founder of a tech company with an amazing tech product, apply here to join the next version of our platform.
Our Team is Growing — Thanks and appreciation
Our team is growing and new people keep applying to join us. We have laid down a scalable foundation. A great culture and a great team focused on fulfilling its mission. Our featured team member this month is Steph. She joined us at the beginning of November as a community expert. We’ve known Steph for several years and we have always loved her passion and dedication. We are happy she decided to join us. Born in South of France, living in London, Steph adds to the character and zest of our diverse team.
“I believe that we are all entitled to be happy and fulfilled at work.” — Steph
A big appreciation goes out to the Founder8 Team. Working hard to build a scalable platform and realize our vision. True founder zest in service to Founder8’s mission and its members.
Follow us on Medium, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and join Facebook Group or LinkedIn Group to receive updates. We encourage you to share this page with your network. Sharing is caring.
