This content was created by GHION.AI . This content was uploaded by GHION.AI . This is a YouTube interview excerpt titled "Founder-Market Fit - Michelle Lee (Medra)" (created 2023-11-15). An interviewer (Speaker A) asks Michelle Lee about different approaches to entrepreneurship — whether founders should build deep domain expertise first or learn on the job by assembling a team. Michelle discusses the concept of founder-market fit (the "why you"), the need to create a competitive advantage (through expertise or networks), and references her own path of gaining AI/computer-vision expertise and completing a PhD before founding Medra.
Chapters
At the school of business, I've noticed there are two different schools of thoughts around entrepreneurship. Some people have advocated that it's important to build expertise first and then use that to find gaps, and then you figure out kind of where to build a business to cover the gaps. And others have advocated that, hey, if you have the conviction or interest, you can build a team around you and you kind of learn kind of in the process. You have other people to kind of supplement your knowledge. Where's sort of your opinion on that? Spectrum, and can you kind of, in terms of starting a business, and if you can share details why?
Yeah, so I think there's something, you know, a lot of people talk about product market fit, but there's also something called like the founder market fit and a question of why you. So let's say I was someone without any robotics experience, it would be pretty hard to start Meddra because people will say, why me? Now let's say I didn't have robotic experience, but I had a great network in robotics. Like maybe I've worked at a robotics company as an operator, right? Then there's a bit more of why me? Because I now have the necessary components and the competitive advantage to be able to recruit a great team around me. So I think the main thing you would need to ask yourself is, Sure, you can have that passion, you can, you can have that drive, but you still need to create that competitive advantage. And it might take a little bit more time. And I think every market is going to be different. Now for me though, also, I, I did go into robotics, or at least the AI part of robotics, as a fairly new beginner. But I did then do a PhD. In it to become an expert in it. I don't think I could have started Meddra without having that expertise of the AI and computer vision. So I think the question is like, how can you create that founder market fit to make sure you are the best founder to be addressing this problem or building this product?
