Dennis: Corporate Experience Does Not Translate to Early-Stage Startup Skills
Kalam Dennis · Starting a Startup After Business School - Reham Fagiri and Kalam Dennis of AptDeco · Y Combinator · Dec 14, 2018 · at 16:29
AptDeco co-founder Kalam Dennis discusses transitioning from 13 years in corporate roles at L'Oreal to launching an early-stage startup.
0:00 / 0:22exact quote · 23.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“When we started as we said, listen, we have a lot of business experience. We work at great companies. We've worked at great companies. We can just apply that knowledge and start this company. And it's the furthest thing from the truth. I mean, we, you know, just what it takes to get from zero to 10, you know, is, is a totally different. Zero to a hundred is a totally different skill set than what we had acquired during our professional years.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Kalam Dennis
Dennis: Warehousing inventory breaks the used furniture marketplace business model
“You can't, in our opinion, build a business model A sustainable business model by having, by warehousing everything, because you're going to always going to be capped by the space. The cost to cover it, someone is going to have to pay for it, and ultimately to…”
Dennis: The focus on profitability easily gets lost in Silicon Valley
“There's this concept of building a real business, an idea, which means that it's a business that's profitable, it makes money, and that can surprisingly get lost, ah, in this Silicon Valley VC world”
Dennis: Early startups should scrap paid ads for free validation
“When you're starting a business, first of all, let's just scrap the advertising on Facebook and advertising on Twitter or wherever, and you really need to find out those scrappy free ways in order to see if your product is something that customers are respondi…”
Dennis: Startups Often Implode Due to Poor People and Conflict Management
“And that's a huge pitfall for startups is that they don't know how to manage people. They have a lot, you know, they implode because You know, because they don't know how to deal with conflict.”
Dennis: Operational execution reveals costs that financial models always miss
“I don't care how many amazing models you have, how much experience you have, there's, when you do it for the first time, there's gonna be some things that you're gonna uncover that you weren't expecting. And you gotta be able to, you know, modify and change fo…”