Lessons from a revenue-stage startup founder

by Diane Eustaquio, Executive Director, Ideaspace

When she applied and made it to Round 3, I was surprised to find her on the list. The lady whose husband said she was the key to his success was right before my eyes. He said this when I met him in 2012, since then that thought stuck in my mind, what a lucky guy and what a lucky gal.

Why would an experienced entrepreneur like her come to us? She started a brick and mortar business with her husband called Ink-All-You-Can, built a technology company called PerxClub and closed it, then built 3 more technology solutions for SMEs, why? She convinced us that it wasn’t the money part she was after, her answers to our questions were honest, smart, well thought of.

When she and her team made it to the top 10, they proved that experienced entrepreneurs like her keep learning and unlearning, their humility is tops. Their integrity was tops — every single peso they got from the IdeaSpace package was well spent and accounted for, nothing for themselves and all for the growth of the company. She and her intelligent team are tops! After AIM classes, the lessons applicable to their business were immediately applied — they had their customers always in mind and how the organization should be to support its growing customer base. Focus on TEAM, PRODUCT, CUSTOMER, ACCOUNTABILITY to investors — this team has it.

Her post says we pushed them to aim higher and dream bigger. The truth is the Tarkie team taught us the same too. They also helped us gain more confidence that our program could help more experienced entrepreneurs like them. That the questions we ask startups at the idea stage, are the same questions you can keep asking yourself at every stage of development. Why? How? What?…Why? How? What?

Why? How? What? The team is not just a team of innovators, they are a team of doers, they execute, think, iterate, execute…think, iterate, execute… As my colleague Goldy quoted from Startup of You, “life is in permanent beta”.

This post is part of the Burn Story Series, from the perspective of the IdeaSpace team on working with the current batch of startups.