Something From Yele
Hi Tribe
It’s a new week and we have a new one for you from the founding partner of Microtraction, Yele Bademosi. Yele studied medicine at King’s College London before opting out to focus on technology entrepreneurship. When he is not working, you can find him reading books, listening to podcasts and watching documentaries.
Here are a number of tips and areas to focus on as a founder
Stay Curious
I use the phrase “Intellectual Curiosity” a lot which means being very aware and alert of what is going on around you. This is important because, for anyone working in technology, it is super difficult to predict the future or know what the next big thing is going to be. Five years ago when I was in Medical School, there was no way I could have predicted that I would be investing or will be interested in blockchain or crypto and so it’s very difficult to predict the future.
So my simple advice is to stay curious, spend time researching and talking to people who are doing interesting things around you because that’s where inspiration and good ideas will come from.
Have a Sense of Realism
Starting a company is one of the hardest things that you’ll do and so you need to make sure its something you are genuinely passionate about and something that you can see yourself working on for a very long time.
A lot of people have watched movies like “The Social Network” where it seems like starting a startup is so easy, you go from 0–100 quickly, there is money chasing you and everything is going well but most times that’s not the case. You need to make sure you are really passionate about the problem you are trying to solve and the market you are going after, so you can weather through the storms and difficulties of starting a business.
Understand Venture Capital
If you are going to start a company and aim to raise venture capital for it then you have to understand what venture capital is really about. Most businesses that seek funding are not venture-backable and this is the biggest reason why most companies never raise venture capital.
Focus on What’s Important
You can spend your week being busy but when you look at your calendar or to-do list at the end of the week, you’ll realize that you have not been productive.
It’s super important to segment your day and filter what’s important and what’s not. Everyone who works with me knows how I am with emails wherein I don’t rush to reply emails because emails are basically what other people want you to do whereas your own to-do list is what you want to do and your calendar is how you actually spend your time.
The impact of how you spend your time on a day to day basis compounds over time, so I plan my day and focus on what is really important. At the beginning of every day, I spend 15–20 minutes where I think about what I want to get done that day and make sure I get it done.
Book Recommendations
For someone just starting out, How to Start a Startup by Sam Altman is a good read and you can find the E-book online. It covers the best practices for starting a startup.
The book that sort of got me interested in entrepreneurship is called The billion-dollar bet by Brett Pulley and it’s about the founding story of BET and it was my first time reading about a black person starting a company that exited for a billion dollars.
Don’t Dwell on Mistakes
I make a lot of mistakes so I don’t dwell on my mistakes but try to learn from them. I have built and use a lot of mental models to help me on a day-to-day basis. The mental model I use focuses on decision making as opposed to mistakes themselves and I got this from Jeff Bezos.
He has this idea of two-tier decisions; Type-1 decisions are those that if you make a mistake and find out that you are wrong you can always correct it and the impact of being wrong is not detrimental to you, your relationships and doesn’t kill your business, so I spend less mental effort on these types of decisions and move fast on them. Type-2 decisions, however, require a lot of thought process because if you are wrong, the consequences could really be detrimental to your business, personal well-being or family. So when you have to make some decision, first determine if it’s a Type-1 or Type-2 decision then allocate the right mental resources towards trying to be right.
However, when you do make a mistake, your first reaction is that “it’s fine, everything is going to be okay in the long-run”, you just have to reflect and try to make sure you make a better judgment in the future. So I don’t dwell on mistakes as it’s part of my life.
Think Long Term
It’s more important to identify your long-term goals or purpose, some people call it their “North Star”, mine is accelerating Africa’s economic development.
I think in three months, 12 months and 3 years and anything beyond that is impossible because I have no idea what will happen after three years.
Operationally, I try to think in quarters so I ask myself questions like what do I want to achieve in the next three months?
Source: https://opentraction.com
Here you go
Be passionate about the problem
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