The Exchanges

Q And what would you advise kind of working professionals who maybe have an idea and would love to start a business around it, but don't have that confidence yet? What would your advice to them be?

A I'd say immerse yourself in the entrepreneurial community. Um, just, just get into the mindset of talking about your idea. One of the scariest things I guess hurdles I had to overcome very early on was just being very, very, uh, secretive about my ideas because it was, I thought, everybody's going to want to take my idea and just, just, uh, implement it themselves. And once you hit that realization as a potential entrepreneur that your idea is nothing while it's still a thought or while it's still on paper, and that you're going to actually be able to test your idea, test whether it has any merit, test whether there are better ideas out there, or Test whether there are other ideas that can be combined with your idea to make it even that much more effective or sticky or sustainable as a potential business. That's that transformational point. You've got to embed yourself with the entrepreneurial community for that to happen. So from my standpoint, London's been an amazing haven of just entrepreneurial meetups, events, um, just, just different venues and forums that you can throw yourself into, whether they've been organized by the accelerators, such as, uh, Techstars, Waira, or where they've been organized as meetups, um, as well as there are certain, there are certain educational forums, uh, such as General Assembly, as well as, um, Three Beards that you can tap into to, to find…

AI assessment note: “I'd say immerse yourself in the entrepreneurial community.”

Q And what would you advise kind of working professionals who maybe have an idea and would love to start a business around it, but don't have that confidence yet? What would your advice to them be?

A I'd say immerse yourself in the entrepreneurial community. Um, just, just get into the mindset of talking about your idea. One of the scariest things I guess hurdles I had to overcome very early on was just being very, very, uh, secretive about my ideas because it was, I thought, everybody's going to want to take my idea and just, just, uh, implement it themselves. And once you hit that realization as a potential entrepreneur that your idea is nothing while it's still a thought or while it's still on paper, and that you're going to actually be able to test your idea, test whether it has any merit, test whether there are better ideas out there, or Test whether there are other ideas that can be combined with your idea to make it even that much more effective or sticky or sustainable as a potential business. That's that transformational point. You've got to embed yourself with the entrepreneurial community for that to happen. So from my standpoint, London's been an amazing haven of just entrepreneurial meetups, events, um, just, just different venues and forums that you can throw yourself into, whether they've been organized by the accelerators, such as, uh, Techstars, Waira, or where they've been organized as meetups, um, as well as there are certain, there are certain educational forums, uh, such as General Assembly, as well as, um, Three Beards that you can tap into to, to find…

AI assessment note: “I'd say immerse yourself in the entrepreneurial community.”

Q Absolutely. And you said there that, obviously, you passed a career as a banker. Was it difficult to leave the life of security for the riskier life of an entrepreneur?

A Uh, I'd be lying to you if I said it wasn't. It's, uh, it's one of those things where after 13 years of looking at a steady paycheck and basically sitting there and saying there's a, there's a structured and scripted route to success. Um, just, just Taking that leap into the entrepreneurial life and saying, well, I have to embrace uncertainty. I have to embrace a potential failure. I have to embrace the fact that, um, every area is a gray area, and all I'm trying to do is find elements of structure and coordinate some of that chaos and make it actually work for me. It's, it's a different mindset altogether, and, um, yeah, it was, it was definitely, you could say, uncomfortable to begin with, but I guess it's been an amazing learning experience so far, and I'm excited about what the future holds for both myself and more so for Squirrel.

AI assessment note: “I'd be lying to you if I said it wasn't.”

Q And how did it help you as a founder starting out the company?

A So what the, the Barclays Techstars Accelerator provided or the type of structure provided was, was pivotal in the fact that we see, we saw it as, as a transformational experience. It took us from what a product, that product phase of squirrel to more of that vision phase of squirrel, giving us a structure around which to build the squirrel value proposition from the ground up. So just, just to kick off, the program itself kicks off with What's known as mentor madness. You're thrown into one month of a hundred mentors asking you the same question over and over and over again. And the question is, why do you exist? Now, having, after being asked that question about 10, 15, 20 times, you have to drill into the core value of your proposition. The core benefit that you're trying to bring to the target market that you're trying to address. And with that question being repeated over and over, within one, a period of one month, you have an amazing feedback loop that starts helping you shape your value proposition in a way that I've never been exposed to before. And we're talking to mentors from the tech ecosystem. We're talking to mentors from the investor ecosystem. We're talking to people who've gone through that serial entrepreneurship role over and over and over again, where they've seen the factors. They've seen the elements of success. They've seen the different ways to increase…

AI assessment note: “giving us a structure around which to build the squirrel value proposition”

Q Absolutely. And you said there that, obviously, you passed a career as a banker. Was it difficult to leave the life of security for the riskier life of an entrepreneur?

A Uh, I'd be lying to you if I said it wasn't. It's, uh, it's one of those things where after 13 years of looking at a steady paycheck and basically sitting there and saying there's a, there's a structured and scripted route to success. Um, just, just Taking that leap into the entrepreneurial life and saying, well, I have to embrace uncertainty. I have to embrace a potential failure. I have to embrace the fact that, um, every area is a gray area, and all I'm trying to do is find elements of structure and coordinate some of that chaos and make it actually work for me. It's, it's a different mindset altogether, and, um, yeah, it was, it was definitely, you could say, uncomfortable to begin with, but I guess it's been an amazing learning experience so far, and I'm excited about what the future holds for both myself and more so for Squirrel.

AI assessment note: “I'd be lying to you if I said it wasn't.”

Q And how did it help you as a founder starting out the company?

A So what the, the Barclays Techstars Accelerator provided or the type of structure provided was, was pivotal in the fact that we see, we saw it as, as a transformational experience. It took us from what a product, that product phase of squirrel to more of that vision phase of squirrel, giving us a structure around which to build the squirrel value proposition from the ground up. So just, just to kick off, the program itself kicks off with What's known as mentor madness. You're thrown into one month of a hundred mentors asking you the same question over and over and over again. And the question is, why do you exist? Now, having, after being asked that question about 10, 15, 20 times, you have to drill into the core value of your proposition. The core benefit that you're trying to bring to the target market that you're trying to address. And with that question being repeated over and over, within one, a period of one month, you have an amazing feedback loop that starts helping you shape your value proposition in a way that I've never been exposed to before. And we're talking to mentors from the tech ecosystem. We're talking to mentors from the investor ecosystem. We're talking to people who've gone through that serial entrepreneurship role over and over and over again, where they've seen the factors. They've seen the elements of success. They've seen the different ways to increase…

AI assessment note: “starts helping you shape your value proposition in a way that I've never been exposed”

Q And there's a huge amount of accelerators around today. How can founders decide which one is right for them?

A So with regards to that, uh, the choosing, the decision of choosing the right accelerator, founders have to have a clear, a very clear idea of what they're looking to get from these programs, whether it's pushing traction, whether it's, um, just, um, improving the, the shape and the structure of their product, whether it's tapping into resources that they wouldn't have access to otherwise. The whole idea of going to an accelerator is you want to give your startup, you want to give your company an unfair advantage. You want to give your company that extra boost that accelerates it into effectively the hyperspeed while everybody else is, you know, just everybody else is working at a slower pace. So what you're doing with the accelerator is trying to evaluate what resources can I have access to? What resources are going to be crucial to my business at this particular stage is the network. Is it the, um, is it the access to funding? Is it the access to internal resources? And it's making a beeline towards the right people that you need to, that can give you the answers to what those resources are, and more so getting them to commit as you're going through that acceptance process, getting them to commit to be able to work with you through the different milestones across each of those business needs. That's going to be key.

AI assessment note: “founders have to have a clear, a very clear idea of what they're looking to get”

Q And is that when you know that you should be an entrepreneur and you should leave your job when it envelops you with passion?

A Most definitely. And then the other one is if your past job goes from becoming a job to a series of tasks, and you can't align your brand of happiness with the happiness that is tied to major success in your current role, just, just start taking a look at the entrepreneurial side. Embed yourself within that entrepreneurial community and just sink your teeth into it. The, the, the payoff for doing something that you're passionate about on a daily basis and, you know, just waking up at one or two o'clock in the morning and saying, Yes, I'd rather sit down and write a one to two page email to everybody I work with, because I just got excited about how I can make my value proposition better. It's, um, it's, it's an amazing experience, and I, I tell everybody to get involved, but it's, you've got to find the right thing to be passionate about.

AI assessment note: “Most definitely. And then the other one is if your past job”

Q And are there any red flags that founders should maybe look for when investigating accelerators?

A Um, most definitely. As in, um, in terms of looking at accelerators, it's making sure that you get the right attention or you get the right, the best term for it is acceleration services out of the program. You, you don't want to go into a program where you're giving up some very valuable founders' equity without, um, ensuring that you're going to get the right support or you're going to get the right, um, structure from a program. So, the red flags are, I guess, the best way to To look for the red flags is talk to somebody who's come out of an accelerator program or the accelerator program that you're looking to tap into. Ask them about their experience. Ask them about what type of support they got in terms of developing their product, in terms of access to investors, in terms of pushing traction, getting, having the right people come through to potentially be clients for you. So you're at a crucial stage in your startup where each of those elements, as well as talent acquisitions, another important one that I forgot to mention, Just, you want to make sure that startups that have come out of an accelerator have had access to each of those four elements. And, um, in terms of red flags, it's just any startup coming out of those accelerators saying that they didn't get the right amount of attention, or they felt that certain things fell short, or that the accelerator was more of …

AI assessment note: “any startup coming out of those accelerators saying that they didn't get the right amount”

Q And there's a huge amount of accelerators around today. How can founders decide which one is right for them?

A So with regards to that, uh, the choosing, the decision of choosing the right accelerator, founders have to have a clear, a very clear idea of what they're looking to get from these programs, whether it's pushing traction, whether it's, um, just, um, improving the, the shape and the structure of their product, whether it's tapping into resources that they wouldn't have access to otherwise. The whole idea of going to an accelerator is you want to give your startup, you want to give your company an unfair advantage. You want to give your company that extra boost that accelerates it into effectively the hyperspeed while everybody else is, you know, just everybody else is working at a slower pace. So what you're doing with the accelerator is trying to evaluate what resources can I have access to? What resources are going to be crucial to my business at this particular stage is the network. Is it the, um, is it the access to funding? Is it the access to internal resources? And it's making a beeline towards the right people that you need to, that can give you the answers to what those resources are, and more so getting them to commit as you're going through that acceptance process, getting them to commit to be able to work with you through the different milestones across each of those business needs. That's going to be key.

AI assessment note: “founders have to have a clear, a very clear idea of what they're looking to get”

Q And do you have any tips for founders in terms of how to get the most out of them, whether it be, you know, stay late, meet mentors in the weekends, go to Demo days every day of the week. What would you suggest to get the most out of it?

A So in terms of getting the most out of it, it's, um, it's just making that beeline to the resources that you've already profiled at the beginning, et cetera, et cetera. It comes back to doing your homework before looking, before saying yes to an accelerator proposition. It's, um, saying what do I need out of the accelerator, and being very clear with the organizers of the accelerator, the people who run the accelerator, about setting specific milestones that you can come back to every month, every couple of weeks with an accelerator. You have a period of three months over which you're seeing an acceleration of your business to the tune of between one and a half to two years in some cases. If it's up to you as a founder to say, I'm going to try to extract as much value as I possibly can. And that's going to be key for, for any founder looking at accelerators. Making a beeline to those resources, making sure that you tap into those resources in the most effective way possible, but more so setting key performance indicators that you can monitor with people who run the accelerator to ensure that you're getting the value that you want out of the program.

AI assessment note: “setting specific milestones that you can come back to every month”

Q And would you say that was the most valuable part of the accelerator program for you, the mentorship?

A The mentorship is definitely a key part of the value of the accelerator program. The access to resources within both the Techstars ecosystem as well as the Barclays ecosystem, uh, Barclays as a corporate, um, for a fintech startup that's still trying to get its, uh, I guess its hands dirty with their value proposition. Those just trying to find the right hooks to make sure that their idea sticks in a very relevant market. It's, um, that combination was phenomenal. The other parts that also, um, That Squirrel gained from significantly were the parts tied to and just making sure that we found the right message for, to bring different stakeholders on board. And for us, it was tied to making sure that we found the right, um, hooks or the right incentives or the right motivations that could bring people onto, ah, just, ah, just across the table from Squirrel and just say, we need to help you. How can we get involved? Whether it's in terms of providing insights, providing connections, or potentially even providing funds. So for us, there was a month worth of just going through the messaging, going through the value proposition, breaking it down to its core elements to ensure that we had the right hooks for each of those stakeholders.

AI assessment note: “The mentorship is definitely a key part of the value of the accelerator program.”

Q And would you say that was the most valuable part of the accelerator program for you, the mentorship?

A The mentorship is definitely a key part of the value of the accelerator program. The access to resources within both the Techstars ecosystem as well as the Barclays ecosystem, uh, Barclays as a corporate, um, for a fintech startup that's still trying to get its, uh, I guess its hands dirty with their value proposition. Those just trying to find the right hooks to make sure that their idea sticks in a very relevant market. It's, um, that combination was phenomenal. The other parts that also, um, That Squirrel gained from significantly were the parts tied to and just making sure that we found the right message for, to bring different stakeholders on board. And for us, it was tied to making sure that we found the right, um, hooks or the right incentives or the right motivations that could bring people onto, ah, just, ah, just across the table from Squirrel and just say, we need to help you. How can we get involved? Whether it's in terms of providing insights, providing connections, or potentially even providing funds. So for us, there was a month worth of just going through the messaging, going through the value proposition, breaking it down to its core elements to ensure that we had the right hooks for each of those stakeholders.

AI assessment note: “The mentorship is definitely a key part of the value of the accelerator program.”