Startup Institute Day 2

Startup is a mentality

Today was a pretty short session. Most of the day was filled with fireside chats from startup CEOs/Founders. Fireside chats are basically off-the-record stories/struggles of what life in a startup is like from a founder’s point of view.

Today we had Pavia Rosati from Fathom speak on the topic “You Don’t Know Start-up”. She shared many stories from her career in the startup world working in small startups like Daily Candy, to huge startups like AOL. One thing she mentioned was that startup is a mentality. No matter the size, it’s more about how a company thinks, stays lean and reacts.

The second guest speaker we had was Peter Chun from Swaag, who spoke on the mindset of working in a startup. There is a bunch of uncertainty in the startup world, which naturally produces fear, failure, or even fear of failure in an individual. One main thing he emphasized was to isolate those fears. What are they? What causes them? Understand your fears and find ways to eliminate them. Another thing he stressed was to think critically about each decision an individual makes in a company. What were the circumstances surrounding that decision? What was riding on the line?

After a lunch break at Chipotle, we regrouped around our last fireside chat: Avi Millman of Stray boots. Avi gave us a brief history of how he came up with the idea, to the struggles he faces as a nontechnical cofounder.

After the talk, we actually got to use the Stray boots product, so we broke out into groups and raced off to West 4 to complete the scavenger hunt. It took much longer than the anticipated 2 hours, but it was good bonding time with my group. The scavenger hunt was pretty long, with no end in site, but I’m totally more interested in the journey than the destination anyway.