Lois Oluwaseun Adeniji’s Post

The burning question… 🤯 Over the past year I have spent hours chatting to both VC’s and Founders about their experience of life in the startup trenches. And the question I have always asked is this…. Why do co-founders fall out? So here are the top 10 reasons (in no particular order): 🎯Equity split and expectations of what fair looks like. 🎯Misalignment of values. Our values guide and steer our belief system and decisions. When these feel challenged they can grate and provoke heated debates and disagreements. 🎯Misalignment of vision or change in direction of the business which means expectations of success or exit strategy will be off kilter. 🎯Finances which include decisions about salaries, what financial success looks like, how much is enough to exit, spending and funding. 🎯Roles and Responsibilities can be tricky and if these areas are not clearly defined, co-founders will cross boundaries and step on each other’s toes. 🎯Communication is not just what we say but how we say it, the language we use, our verbal and non verbal behaviours and our written communication. It offers the opportunity for misunderstandings, confusion, assumptions and toxic behaviours. 🎯Titles and Status are often driven by ego but represent our identity and mean more than just a name or position. 🎯Risk Appetite: A startup is a risky business so founders attitude to taking risks must be aligned. A cautious founder and a risk taker will always be a problematic relationship. 🎯Personality Clash: While founders may share vision and passion for their venture, if they clash and are constantly fighting, the chance they will succeed together doesn’t fare well. 🎯Change in personal circumstances: Founders might start their journey in the same place but sometimes life can take them in a different direction and that can mean their time and commitment to the venture might change too. Founders and VC’s …what else would you add? #cofounders #conflict #cofounderfallouts

One of the biggest challenges for founders is accurately predicting the timeline for building a strong foundation. Factors like product-market fit, fundraising, and pivoting based on market needs can significantly impact the journey. Here are 5-7 considerations for founders navigating this path: 1. Embrace Uncertainty: The startup landscape is dynamic. Be prepared to pivot and adapt as needed. 2. Prioritize Product-Market Fit: Continuously validate your product with your target market. 3. Build a Strong Network: Relationships can be invaluable for fundraising, mentorship, and customer acquisition. 4. Secure Adequate Funding: While it's important to raise funds, avoid diluting your equity too early. 5. Focus on Customer Acquisition: Building a loyal customer base is essential for long-term success. 6. Measure and Iterate: Track key metrics and use data to inform your decisions. 7. Foster a Positive Company Culture: A strong company culture can attract and retain top talent. 8. Build a Support Group of Founders: Surround yourself with other founders who understand the challenges and can offer support, advice, and camaraderie. Remember, building a lasting company is a marathon, not a sprint. By focusing on these key considerations, you can lay a solid foundation for your startup's future." Enjoy this? Repost to your network and follow Ginger Menown for more. https://lnkd.in/gWbc8a_P Want to grow a profitable business and design your dream life? Book a discovery call with me at https://lnkd.in/gaJqNAwQ Join thousands who follow Insights & Inspiration Newsletter lnkd.in/gvPEGJcb

I've been there before, creating a product and looking for investors for my idea. Let me tell you a few things I found. Though my venture failed majorly because of being too tech-focused and not considering other aspects of what makes an idea a business, I discovered a thing or two about investors. Speaking to more aspiring tech founders, a major challenge they face is funding and they tend to make the same mistakes. Here's a brief summary that should help you as you embark on your journey. 👇👇👇👇 Avoid These Mistakes ➡️1. Lack of Preparation and Clarity Mistake: Failing to articulate a clear business vision, financials, and growth strategy. 🔑Fix: Prepare a detailed pitch deck, understand your financial metrics, and practice your pitch. ➡️2. Targeting the Wrong Investors Mistake: Approaching investors who don’t align with your industry, stage, or goals. 🔑Fix: Research investors thoroughly and tailor your pitch to those who have a track record of investing in similar ventures. ➡️3. Overlooking Relationship Building Mistake: Treating the investor relationship as purely transactional. 🔑Fix: Engage with investors early, maintain regular communication, and focus on mutual value creation. ➡️4. Overvaluing Your Company Mistake: Setting an unrealistically high valuation without clear justification. 🔑Fix: Use industry benchmarks, comparable startups, and solid financial projections to set a realistic valuation. ➡️5. Focusing Solely on Funding Without Showing Commitment Mistake: Emphasizing the need for capital without demonstrating personal investment or progress. 🔑Fix: Showcase traction, milestones, or personal investments you’ve already made to prove your commitment to the business. 🗣️Which of these have you been getting wrong? What has been your greatest challenge yet with investors? #techfounders #startupfounder #productowner #softwaredeveloper #techinnovation

💀Why Tech Founders Face an 80% Failure Rate 💀 I spent some time today with a true OG in the tech founders space, and what he told me was pretty shocking. He told me, “Travis, 80% of all founders fail…” It was truly intriguing to me. I mean think about it, 8 out of 10 founders & their companies will end prematurely, not reach the finish line, heck maybe not even get out of the starting blocks…8 out of 10 fail. Here’s a deeper dive into the reasons behind this high failure rate, focusing on a professional perspective: 1. Lack of Alignment with the Right Investors: The foremost reason for failure lies in not securing the right investors. Finding those who truly understand and believe in your vision is crucial for foundational funding and support. 2. Inflexible Business Plans: Having a robust business plan is essential; however, the ability to adapt and pivot based on market feedback and evolving conditions is equally important. 3. Customer Engagement Oversight: Engaging with your customers provides critical insights that can drive your product’s success. Ignoring this feedback loop can be detrimental. 4. Financial Planning Challenges: Proper financial planning and management are cornerstones for sustaining business operations and growth. Missteps here can quickly lead to a startup’s downfall. 5. Market Need Misalignment: Developing a product that doesn’t meet a strong market need is a common pitfall. Validating your business idea against actual market demands is fundamental. 6. Team Dynamics and Hiring Decisions: The composition of your team can make or break your startup. Prioritizing skill, diversity, and a balance between culture fit and expertise is key. 7. Customer Retention vs. Acquisition: Focusing solely on acquiring new customers without nurturing existing ones can undermine your startup’s potential for sustainable growth. 8. Unique Marketing Propositions: Your startup must differentiate itself through its unique value proposition, not by merely emulating competitors’ marketing strategies. 9. Adaptation to Feedback and Failures: The path to success is paved with failures and the ability to learn from them. Embracing these lessons and being willing to pivot is essential for longevity. It’s a sobering reality but also a call to action for current and aspiring tech founders and investors alike! Reflecting on these points, how can we ensure our founders have a better launch? Share your thoughts below! #TechFounders #StartupSuccess #Entrepreneurship #InvestorAlignment #BusinessStrategy #WolfAndIron

The founder’s blindspot: Chasing every KPI. Most startups track a dozen metrics, running in every direction without a clear focus. They think it’s the path to scale. It’s actually the path to chaos. • 50 KPIs don’t equal success • Teams can’t align behind a cluttered dashboard • Investors want results, not reports True growth? It comes from clarity, not complexity. If you want to build a focused business: 1️⃣ Pick one to two metrics that drives impact 2️⃣ Make every decision with that metric in mind 3️⃣ Align every team member around it At Amenitiz we looked at ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue), and NRR (Net Revenue Retention). That's all. That was enough for 4.7x YoY inbound growth to hit €10M ARR. All decisions were funneled through these two metrics. Remember: Growth doesn’t come from noise. It comes from focus. Whether you're at €1M ARR or €100M ARR, simplicity works. Choose your North Star, and let it guide you.

Going from a pre-seed to a seed business has been a HUGE mindset shift for me as a founder and our team as a whole. 🤯💰 At pre-seed, preserving runway is constantly top of mind (understandably, as you’re a lot further from PMF!). Now, having raised a $7M seed round, it’s a different ball game… On Monday, we held a full-day strategy session with the whole team. The goal? To discuss how we’re moving forward. We spent a lot of time talking about our ethos on how we spend money now that we have it. And what does it mean to be a cash-rich business (that still prioritises high margins and REFUSES to spend foolishly!) So here’s the mindset shift: TIME is our most valuable asset ⏰ This means ensuring each team member’s time is spent on the most IMPACTFUL things. And building the system around them so they can perform at the highest level. Essentially, we want our people to feel like they’re high-performance athletes. 🏃🏼♀️💨 So if there’s a £1,000 SaaS tool that’s gonna make someone more productive - buy it. If there’s a high-ROI event that costs more than we’re comfortable with - let’s just do it and learn from the outcome. We’re NOT here to agonize over small decisions, because it’s that hesitation that will hold us back. And we’re certainly not going to throw our money into a pit and light it on fire by hiring 30 engineers. But we will invest heavily in the 3 or so we do hire, ensuring they have the: 🔨 Tools 😌 Environment 🧡 Support to perform at their highest level. Bottom line - we will not be shy about spending money on things that set our people up for success!

If you're an early-stage startup founder… Know that "your business" is not all about where you want to be in the future. You must establish a solid foundation in the present first. A common challenge with founders is prioritizing growth goals without a clear financial foundation. And it often looks something like this: → Strong initial product → Rapid growth goals → Gaps in financial planning along the way Sustainable growth requires more than just a vision. You don't really want to learn this lesson the hard way. If you want to scale efficiently, you need a repeatable, well-structured financial strategy. Here’s what that means for early-stage founders: 1️⃣ Prioritize cash flow clarity and discipline 2️⃣ Align your growth strategy with financial stability 3️⃣ Build a financial framework you can trust at every stage A solid financial foundation today can set you up for stable growth tomorrow.  And know what? Startup CFOs - on a fractional basis -are perfect for this. Reach out to get started. -- Hey! if you are an early stage startup founder, we have the financial solutions you need. 

Hot take: Sharing bad customer quotes with investors is good. So many first time founders just share the good stuff with investors. Investors know things are going wrong. Investors assume things are wrong. Because no startup is perfect. So if you say everything is going great, then you know you are lying, and they know you are lying. It’s hard to build a huge enduring company if you can’t admit the truth. I just sent off our Q2 investor memo at Puzzle 🧩🚀 and I wanted to share a little bit about how I think about writing these. p.s - If you like our template, I'll put the notion link you can copy in the comments!

I meet a lot of startup founders and initiators who are most comfortable when they’re building. I get it, you feel like you’re making progress and that feels good. Don't get me wrong, there are many times when this is the right approach, but when you’re building based on untested and unproven assumptions you risk wasting time and resources on solutions that may never work. Though it may feel uncomfortable to slow down, spending time upfront to identify your riskiest assumptions and design lean ways to test them is a more effective way to build. The right mix of foundational research, assumption mapping and lean experimentation ultimately saves you time and precious financial runway, uncovers the unknowns and increases your chance of success. So if you’re working on a purpose-driven mission and could use some outside perspective to navigate this process, identify potential blind spots and test your key assumptions - drop me a message! ––– Thanks to Jeff Humble, Hannah Baker and the great content from The Fountain Institute who inspired this post.

💊 Here's a harsh truth (That took us a while to figure out too) Some startups are not fundable... yet. Sometimes it’s obvious, other times, not so much. That’s why we’re strict about who we work with. We want to save founders time (and stress). But hey, we’re not perfect. We learn something new with every project. 👉 Take this example: We reached out to 1221 investors, got 56 replies, and 1/3 asked for more info — solid numbers for ANY cold campaign. But only 1 in 19 wanted a meeting. Turns out, there were too many red flags once investors dove deeper - which they were happy to explain. We didn’t sugarcoat it either. We gave the client the raw feedback so they could pivot and improve. B Found will get you in front of the right investors, but your traction, runway, and story? we can’t control that. Regardless, I genuinely believe that, in some cases, we’re the best shot our clients have at not just meeting investors but also getting real, unfiltered feedback. With this client, we’ve paused, and already planning to work together again in a few months—once they’ve made the necessary changes.