Icebreaker Community Stories — Talbit
With the Icebreaker Pre-founder Project Online coming up on the 15th of May, we thought it would be a good time to showcase some of our community case stories! Whether through finding co-founders, developing ideas, or bringing together business partners — we want to highlight some of the success stories which had our community act as an intermediary for people to connect and found their companies.
Earlier this year we sat down with Kaisa Savola and Aleksi Meldo, the founders of the visual goal setting and progress planning tool, Talbit, to get some insights onto how our community acted as a catalyst for them coming together and forming a team!
Our first community case story is Talbit. Talbit is a visual goal setting and progress planning tool. Their aim is to develop an individual talent development software and the idea came from the belief of the founders that if you are able to build the right growth trajectories for each individual, tying in company and team level objectives, you will be able to build a better organisation.
Kaisa Savola, Aleksi Meldo and Turo Simolin are the founders of Talbit. Kaisa and Aleksi first came into contact in 2017 at our very first pre-founder project where they started sparring ideas.
Before founding Talbit, Kaisa worked in IT, developing and consulting an ERP -system called SAP. Her own frustrations with personal development led her to found Talbit. And it was this shared frustration that got Aleksi and Kaisa talking.
“I think I saw an advertisement for the first Pre-Founder Project on LinkedIn, and because I already had the idea of Talbit brewing in my head for some time, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to learn and network, especially since I didn’t have any prior experience with startups.” — Kaisa Savola, CEO and Founder of Talbit
It was exactly for this reason that we wanted to start the PFP. When people have spent enough time in their professions they start to notice the main pain points in that domain. We want to help unleash individual potential by bringing interesting people together. Our network of hundreds of professionals from different industries, all willing to build or join strong tech companies, is full of exciting opportunities and people from various backgrounds.
“I heard about Kaisa’s idea when I came to the Pre-Founder Project and believed that my own idea would have some difficulties in its development, so I thought this would be a nice opportunity to join Talbit because I shared the same frustrations with inefficient personal development discussions in corporations”. — Aleksi Meldo, Head of Product, Talbit
This type of story of founders finding each other due to shared personal frustration is a tale as old as time in the startup scene. The Pre-Founder Project is a great grounding tool that we have kept in our arsenal for almost four years now to connect the individuals in our community who would be able to collaborate, share their industry knowledge in order to create great founding teams, as well as giving people the confidence in dipping their toes into the world of startups.
“I would say that everything is possible. If you just persist; it’s your mindset — that’s how reality starts to bend.” — Aleksi
We want the people joining the PFP to be a solid group of talented individuals so that they have a chance to discuss and validate their startup ideas with people who can make a difference. Having pre-founders with 5+ years of relevant work experience in a specific domain allows for this.
This was something that has paid out for us and the people who have joined our PFP. So far we have invested in five companies whose ideas have come to fruition because of their own agency for innovation and their own willingness to join the PFP.
“You can’t overstate the fact that you’re going to have to work hard. You’re going to have to survive quite a few fights, setbacks, people underestimating you, under evaluating you, and you just have to have a way to turn that into power and strength.” — Kaisa
Via the PFP they gained access to experienced organisers with 100+ companies under their belts, a strong community of 1000+ experienced individuals from which they could find strong talent, and gained insights from experienced investors and founders.
Our next PFP will be run online. Over the course of three short online sessions we let you dive headfirst into the basics of starting and building a successful startup. You’ll also be given the tools to share, validate, and improve your ideas in between sessions as you get to know your fellow pre-founders.
