7 weeks have passed since the beginning of Entrepreneur First BE9. While iterating over the product idea and testing our core hypotheses there are moments in which the direction we are heading into seems very blurry. These unknowns have definitely made it harder to fall asleep at night. This time I will tell you again about parallels to my time as a rower.

For those of you who are not familiar with rowing, take a look at the cover picture again. The crew in a rowing boat is facing against the direction they are moving in. The majority of people think there is always someone holding a steering wheel seeing where the boat goes, but truth is the majority of boat classes do not have a so called coxswain. In fact at Olympics the Eight is the only boat class with a coxswain, all the others race towards the finish line without ever seeing the finish line before crossing. The only way to make sure the crew is not heading into the lane of the competitor is to see the buoys that were left behind and make sure the trail left by the boat in the water is as centred between the buoys as possible. To take it further, when rowing on a lake only landmarks can be used to stay oriented. Sometimes the person sitting at the bow seat has to turn around and make sure nothing is coming in the way. Sitting in a rowing boat knowing that I don’t see the direction I am heading into has become the most natural thing for me. 

On the journey of starting a company the unknowns of where we are heading into feel not yet natural at all. At the beginning, when joining EF I did not even know who the co-founder will be, then whether this team is going to hold or break up quickly again. After coming up with a joint belief and hunch we did not know if any of our thoughts hold true. When we started customer exploration we tried to be as vague as possible with our product idea and only explore their problems and needs without having a clear tangible product idea. Now we do have a more tangible product idea but whether we can prove product market fit with it is unknown. Potentially we will pivot and change our direction. But we cannot slow down just because we cannot clearly see the way ahead. We need to go full speed, learn from what we leave behind and then correct our direction whenever necessary. Even though I am aware of this, the biggest mental challenge for me is to also be comfortable with the unknowns.

When moving at high speed into a direction you cannot see, the chances of hitting into something are pretty high. As a rower I crashed into swimming tree trunks, other boats, stand up paddlers, etc. Were these crashes my fault? Not all of them, but definitely a significant number of them. Did I cause some costly damages? Boats are made out of special carbon fibre and I destroyed material worth thousands of euros. Was it painful? Most of the time I got away with just a bit of a shock, but my back has also hit metal rigs of other boats at pretty high speed already. Have I ever thought about quitting and giving up my dreams because of the risk of crashing? Never. Such f*ck ups happen to every rower and even though everyone tries to avoid them as good as possible they are part of the game. 

As startup founders we know that we are going to hit walls. In fact that is part of the learning curve. In weeks 5 and 6 of the EF program we were trying to navigate the direction with a lot of different feedback and input coming from various different people. It felt like various people standing on the riverbank trying to make us aware of what we have to do to not hit another boat. While everyone is having good intentions of helping us too much different input can also be confusing and in our case made us overthink and we slowed down to not hit a wall. We agreed to speed up again and if we hit a wall we hit it. Might be painful. Might be costly. But is definitely not going to make us give up.

As said in a rowing boat without a coxswain the only person who turns around from time to time is the so-called bow(wo)man. Turning to see the water in front is bad for boat balance and speed, thus one tries to not turn around every other stroke. The person at bow seat tries to get a very good overview of the next couple hundred meters quickly to see if anything could potentially cross the boat’s way. Nobody else in the boat turns around. Either the bow(wo)man sees the issue or nobody does. It requires literally blind trust that (s)he is having everything under control. What is more, very clear communication in the boat is vital. On the one hand to make sure nobody gets nervous about any obstacles, on the other hand because in case of necessary changes to the direction (or in the worst case to stop the boat) the whole crew needs to act fast and together. If there is confusion in the crew the obstacle is going to be hit and damage caused.

In a founding team with different skills and responsibilities we also have to trust each other and communicate well to make sure we are on the same page. Amine is focusing right now on everything technical and I try to get potential customers to speak to us. It is important that we both are on the same page of where we are right now, what the trail is we have left behind and what we believe the direction is we should chase next. We operate in sprints organised in tasks and have regular check-ins every week to update each other in a structured way. And on top of that we of course also speak ad-hoc daily. The number one activity we do is to inspect and react. If we stop doing it confusion arises and if the inspection is wrong, we will f*ck up, shrug it off and the next day is a day to kick ass again.

PS: the bowman (person on the very right) is me 👋 , 10 years ago in the Austrian junior quad 😎. I believe we never hit anything serious in that crew 🤞.

7 weeks have passed since the beginning of Entrepreneur First BE9. While iterating over the product idea and testing our core hypotheses there are moments in which the direction we are heading into seems very blurry. These unknowns have definitely made it harder to fall asleep at night. This time I will tell you again about parallels to my time as a rower.

For those of you who are not familiar with rowing, take a look at the cover picture again. The crew in a rowing boat is facing against the direction they are moving in. The majority of people think there is always someone holding a steering wheel seeing where the boat goes, but truth is the majority of boat classes do not have a so called coxswain. In fact at Olympics the Eight is the only boat class with a coxswain, all the others race towards the finish line without ever seeing the finish line before crossing. The only way to make sure the crew is not heading into the lane of the competitor is to see the buoys that were left behind and make sure the trail left by the boat in the water is as centred between the buoys as possible. To take it further, when rowing on a lake only landmarks can be used to stay oriented. Sometimes the person sitting at the bow seat has to turn around and make sure nothing is coming in the way. Sitting in a rowing boat knowing that I don’t see the direction I am heading into has become the most natural thing for me. 

On the journey of starting a company the unknowns of where we are heading into feel not yet natural at all. At the beginning, when joining EF I did not even know who the co-founder will be, then whether this team is going to hold or break up quickly again. After coming up with a joint belief and hunch we did not know if any of our thoughts hold true. When we started customer exploration we tried to be as vague as possible with our product idea and only explore their problems and needs without having a clear tangible product idea. Now we do have a more tangible product idea but whether we can prove product market fit with it is unknown. Potentially we will pivot and change our direction. But we cannot slow down just because we cannot clearly see the way ahead. We need to go full speed, learn from what we leave behind and then correct our direction whenever necessary. Even though I am aware of this, the biggest mental challenge for me is to also be comfortable with the unknowns.

When moving at high speed into a direction you cannot see, the chances of hitting into something are pretty high. As a rower I crashed into swimming tree trunks, other boats, stand up paddlers, etc. Were these crashes my fault? Not all of them, but definitely a significant number of them. Did I cause some costly damages? Boats are made out of special carbon fibre and I destroyed material worth thousands of euros. Was it painful? Most of the time I got away with just a bit of a shock, but my back has also hit metal rigs of other boats at pretty high speed already. Have I ever thought about quitting and giving up my dreams because of the risk of crashing? Never. Such f*ck ups happen to every rower and even though everyone tries to avoid them as good as possible they are part of the game. 

As startup founders we know that we are going to hit walls. In fact that is part of the learning curve. In weeks 5 and 6 of the EF program we were trying to navigate the direction with a lot of different feedback and input coming from various different people. It felt like various people standing on the riverbank trying to make us aware of what we have to do to not hit another boat. While everyone is having good intentions of helping us too much different input can also be confusing and in our case made us overthink and we slowed down to not hit a wall. We agreed to speed up again and if we hit a wall we hit it. Might be painful. Might be costly. But is definitely not going to make us give up.

As said in a rowing boat without a coxswain the only person who turns around from time to time is the so-called bow(wo)man. Turning to see the water in front is bad for boat balance and speed, thus one tries to not turn around every other stroke. The person at bow seat tries to get a very good overview of the next couple hundred meters quickly to see if anything could potentially cross the boat’s way. Nobody else in the boat turns around. Either the bow(wo)man sees the issue or nobody does. It requires literally blind trust that (s)he is having everything under control. What is more, very clear communication in the boat is vital. On the one hand to make sure nobody gets nervous about any obstacles, on the other hand because in case of necessary changes to the direction (or in the worst case to stop the boat) the whole crew needs to act fast and together. If there is confusion in the crew the obstacle is going to be hit and damage caused.

In a founding team with different skills and responsibilities we also have to trust each other and communicate well to make sure we are on the same page. Amine is focusing right now on everything technical and I try to get potential customers to speak to us. It is important that we both are on the same page of where we are right now, what the trail is we have left behind and what we believe the direction is we should chase next. We operate in sprints organised in tasks and have regular check-ins every week to update each other in a structured way. And on top of that we of course also speak ad-hoc daily. The number one activity we do is to inspect and react. If we stop doing it confusion arises and if the inspection is wrong, we will f*ck up, shrug it off and the next day is a day to kick ass again.

PS: the bowman (person on the very right) is me 👋 , 10 years ago in the Austrian junior quad 😎. I believe we never hit anything serious in that crew 🤞.