#NEXTFounderChats: Farbod Mansorian

Tell us a bit about you and your venture! What was your inspiration for creating unilingo?
A few months ago, I found myself wanting to share a Ted Talk on YouTube with my mother but she does not speak English very well and I had to turn on the Farsi subtitles for her. After discussing the video, I quickly realized that the subtitles did not help her understand the talk. I started to wonder whether this was a problem that many others had too so I called up my friend and we started to analyze thousands of comments made by fans on YouTube videos and it became evident to us that language is a massive barrier to access video content.
How has your background in mechatronics engineering contributed to your success as an entrepreneur?
Engineers are many times faced with challenges they have never encountered before but it is important to be able to systematically break down a problem and find a solution based on a set of skills that we have acquired as part of our training. This has helped me as an entrepreneur to find ways to solve complex pain points.
What was your first taste of entrepreneurship?
When I was 12 years old, I would see my dad get up at 3 am and go to work. He sold home appliances and had to sacrifice many things to make his business successful. I worked at his store during one summer, and instantly fell in love with sales.
What was the biggest lesson you learned from your first venture?
Don’t be reactive, be proactive. It is easy to sit around and wait for things to happen and react when the venture is headed in the wrong direction and that would be a reactive approach. However, when founders take things head on and do not wait for the right moment, they set themselves up for success. For example, when someone in the team is supposed to hit a milestone but they are struggling, other team members have the obligation to jump in and prevent the plan from getting delayed instead of reacting to a negative outcome.
What do you think is the most important innovation of your lifetime?
The invention of Fiber-optic communication has allowed for the creation of the Internet. Without the existence of the Internet, our lives would have been very different from how they are now.
What are 3 books, blogs, or newsletters you recommend for aspiring entrepreneurs?
- Loving What Is — Byron Katie
- Wait But Why — Tim Urban
- Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
If you’re feeling drained, what do you do to recharge?
I am an extrovert so naturally I like talking to people, therefore every time I feel like my “energy tank” is low I make the effort to get up and talk to other founders at iBoost, an incubator at Ryerson.
If you could talk to one person from history, who would it be and what would you ask?
Alexander the Great — Why did you burn the city of Persepolis?
Now that you’ve completed Next 36, what was your biggest takeaway from the program?

I came into Next 36 with this idea that I’d rather be the dumbest person in a room full of smart people than the smartest person in a room full of dumb people. We had a very strong cohort, and everyday I was pushed to my limits which was a very beneficial and humbling experience.
The Next 36 applications for the 2018 cohort are now open! Apply here.

