How to Be a Founder with Alice Bentinck (Part Two)

Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepard, brought to you by startupscience.io. Greg is an entrepreneur who has built and sold 12 businesses. He's a recipient of 4 private equity awards and is a featured TEDx speaker and Forbes author. Here's Gregory Shepard.

I'm back with Alice Bentnek, the co-founder of Entrepreneur First and the co-author of How to Be a Founder. We've been talking about how EF helps entrepreneurs build world-class deep technology startups from scratch. Now, Alice, I want to get into something I'm really passionate about. That's diversity in tech. As a co-founder of Code First: Girls, can you talk about the significance of promoting diversity and inclusion in the tech industry and the impact that can have on startups?

Code First: Girls was set up by me and my co-founder, Matt, and Even though it is an initiative that is focused on teaching women and non-binary individuals to code, in some ways, I do think it was super important that it was set up by a mixed gender team. And interestingly, when we have conversations about diversity at Entrepreneur First, for example, some of the most powerful things that we've done has actually been when Matt has been talking rather than when I've been talking. I think there's something about championing diversity from the voice of somebody who knows and acknowledges their privilege and is talking to the people who are like them. So, other, in his instance, white men who are also privileged. I think that's sometimes some of the most powerful things that we can do to make sure that the conversation isn't just within whichever group is marginalized. That said, I also think it's important that Codeverse Girls was founded by a woman, and our CEO and latest co-founder, Anna Brailsford, is an amazing both role model, and she really groks the problem. You know, she gets it. She understands why this is a challenge, having worked in tech her whole life. So, I think it's important to have a mix, that it's not just the individuals who are experiencing the marginalization that try and work on these problems, but the wider community as well. I mean, One of my big beliefs is that there are lots of amazing organizations out there that generate conversation around marginalized groups. But ultimately, my big belief is that you need to have more and more organizations who are actually doing stuff. And so, Code First: Girls, the premise is that it's not just a conversation about diversity, it's upskilling women for free, so that they are able to take on significant roles within the tech industry. And, you know, we're now getting to the stage where, because Code First: Girls has been running for, I think, sort of 9 years or so now, that the women that went through some of our first programs are now beginning to hire the next generation of Code First graduates as they become more senior in their roles. So, I'm a big believer in small but significant interventions that can change individuals' career paths. And one of the interesting things about the women who've been on Code First: Girls is that typically, they were pretty interested in coding when they were, say, an early teenager, But they went through the school system, and puberty, and teenagehood, and basically kind of realized that it wasn't cool or okay to be interested in technical subjects. And then see Code First Girls, which is largely focused on sort of university-age and later women and non-binary individuals. They see this as a way of returning back to something that they did actually really enjoy, but culturally didn't see it as something that they could follow.

I couldn't have said that better. I really couldn't have said that better. I come from a multi-diverse family, so my siblings are different nationalities. And but I'm white, right? I'm a white man. I'm privileged. But I've seen this perspective, right? And I always tell people, I'm like, the people that are privileged should be the ones standing up for the people that are marginalized. And that's how it should work. And so the fact that you stated that so eloquently, I can't even tell you. It's just beautiful. You're, you're almost poetic with your, with the way that you word things.

Thank you.

It's just beautiful. I want to ask you another question. How do you prioritize and manage the various challenges as a founder and risks that come with getting in and starting a business? And what advice would you have for the entrepreneurs that are currently navigating these challenges?

Oh, I mean, the amazing thing about being a founder is that— well, the amazing and challenging thing about being a founder is that Your learning curve is just insane. And I'm sure you found this going through building so many companies, but there's never a moment where you sort of sit back and think, yes, I've got it. I know how to do this. At the point where you're 6 people, you're like, gosh, managing 6 people is so hard. And the minute you think it's okay, suddenly you're 9 people, then 12 people, then 20 people, and 40 people. And the same for raising money, and managing customers, and all the rest of it. I think one of the ways that I think about managing this personally is to think about sort of micro-happiness and macro-happiness. And the reason I kind of frame it that way is that I think it's an important framing to drive resilience as a founder. So, I would say that on a micro level, being a founder can often be a bit of a crappy job. You are often pretty stressed. There's always something on fire. I'll tell you, you could take a beer Yeah, you take a real beating, and sometimes that's really hard. And I've definitely seen my friends and family sort of question, why am I doing this? Why am I putting my— there's lots of other jobs out there that I'm sure would be, on a micro basis, on a day-to-day basis, much more fun, relaxing. Maybe I'd go home at 6 and go to the gym and eat dinner with my family.

You think so?

But I think the thing that being a founder gives you is genuine macro happiness and satisfaction. And I feel so privileged that I've been doing this for almost 12 years now, and I'm in my— I started this when I was 25, now in my mid, well, late 30s, and I still feel so genuinely excited by what I get to do at work. The fact that I'm building something that I really care about existing, I want to have this impact in the world. I want to make sure that the most talented potential founders don't get caught up in hedge funds or at the big tech companies, and that their potential is unleashed on the world. They have the opportunity to build products and companies that we can't even imagine existing at the moment. That, I'm still just so passionate and excited about. So, yeah, the day-to-day of being a founder can sometimes be pretty crappy. But, you know, looking at my friends as they go into their mid-30s, there's often a moment where people realize they've invested a lot of time and effort into a career that they don't really care about. And I don't feel that I'm there. I would happily do another couple of decades on trying to solve this problem and feel that it would be an excellent use of my of my life and career. So I think this is why the idea that you end up working on as founder is so important, because if you have macro happiness, it gives you that long-term resilience because the day-to-day can be pretty challenging.

It's like Steve Jobs said. He said, if you didn't love what you were doing, you would have to be crazy and insane to be a founder.

Very true.

Right? I mean, I know that there's days that go by. I mean, I can't stop. I start companies and I sell them and then I go, okay, I'm going I'm going to retire and I tell my wife, I'm going to retire. And then I go to the beach and then I come back and start another company. And it just keeps going on and on like that for like 30 years. But to your point, it is so satisfying. I mean, you feel so good about what you're doing and about what you're accomplishing. And it's so much easier to work every day because you don't have the frustrations of the corporate, what I call peanut butter. When you work for a corporation, it's like running through peanut butter.

Yeah.

I think it's, you know, you get this ability to actually do what you want to do and it's just so fun. Let me ask you another question. I'm going to shift a little bit onto one of my favorite topics, okay? I really am passionate about why founders fail and trying to prevent that from happening. You're earlier in the stage, you're incubating these founders themselves, and then they're stumbling on the idea. It's beautiful. Really, really beautiful. I haven't heard this, uh, before. Um, but what are some of the common mistakes you've seen founders make? And, you know, when they're going from the phase of like, I think I could be a founder, and then you're, you're fostering them and nurturing them and getting to the point where they can be a founder. At that point and right after that, what are some of the mistakes that you've seen these founders make and how can they avoid them?

So, the first and most significant mistake is that when individuals are at that sort of just really early stage of thinking about becoming a founder, is that they just don't do it. They talk themselves out of it. And it's often that they are heavily influenced by other people in their lives who obviously really care about them, but who maybe aren't particularly startup savvy, and who say things like, maybe it'd be better if you got more experience, maybe it'd be better if you went and got more network, if you had more of a financial cushion.

Yeah.

decision. Think about the risks. What if you fail? And genuinely, the biggest mistake is that people say, yeah, actually, I'm just going to go and do 2 years in this big corporate and build up my network and experience and all the rest of it. And then they never leave because corporates are designed to ensure that their very best don't leave. The golden handcuffs are real. You're never 6 months away, more than 6 months away from your next bonus, your next promotion, whatever it may be. So, that's mistake number 1, is waiting to have all the assets that you need in place. It's a fallacy. You cannot have all of those things in place. And even if you did, they wouldn't necessarily help you succeed. I suppose one of the things I always encourage first-time founders to recognize is that you aren't— you don't need to be an expert to start a startup. You need to be an expert in your particular idea. And your particular idea, hopefully, is unusual enough and new enough that you can be the world expert in what you're doing and the particular problem you're solving. And that often comes from being at the intersection of different things. So, for example, one of the biggest companies in our portfolio, a company called Cleo, which does financial management for millennials and Gen Z, the founder, Barney, he had been working at one of the biggest fintech companies in London for about 6 months. And so, he had, like, a vague understanding of how Fintech companies worked, but he was by no means an expert. But he also was, I think, at that stage, like 22 or 23. And that intersection of being super young, so, having a deep understanding of that age group and that particular customer segment, and having sufficient knowledge, enough knowledge about how the finance world worked and how fintech startups worked, that positioned him really well to be a founder. And so, often, the mistake being made there is that founders are trying to almost get too much experience, whereas what you're looking for is sufficient experience and exposure that intersects with something else that you have, that might be knowledge of a different customer group that is currently underserved, or a set of skills that isn't significantly dominant in the particular industry you're going after. So, I'd say that's the next sort of myth that holds people back. And then, I think the final mistake, and just to reiterate the point I made before around Finding the right co-founder, not accepting a co-founder of convenience, really pushing yourself to find the very best co-founder that you feel lucky and privileged to work alongside is super important. It's so, so easy to settle because you're worried that you may never find a co-founder, but I would push and encourage you to take the time, explore different options, test out different individuals, and then commit when you get to the point where you feel genuinely lucky and impressed by the co-founder that you're working alongside.

I want to endorse what you said. My mom was a huge part of my life. I really didn't have a dad, so my mom was a major part of my life. And she used to say, if you're the smartest one in the room, you're in the wrong room. And I think that that's one component. Another thing that I always think of when I talk to original founders, you know, if I do a speaking event or something and they come up and they go, so how do I get involved? And, and I need to go into a corporate and get some experience from some, some Fortune company. I call it quicksand. You know, they go in there and they just end there in quicksand and they're never going to get out because the more they struggle, the more they're going to pull them down. So I agree with you 100% on that too. I just agree with everything you're saying. And that's not common, actually. Because I've been doing this for a really long time and I spend a lot of time researching, and, uh, but you are just so on point on everything you're saying. Let me ask you, how important is it, uh, for a new founder to build these relationships around their ecosystem and network and connect to other founders and supporters and mentors, etc., etc.?

Uh, So, I think this is, again, where it's both very important and also very easy to get it wrong. So, if you're building a network, you're building a network for a reason. And general startup networking, unless you're building a product for startups, probably isn't that useful. So, who do you need to succeed as a founder? I think it is useful to have peers, a small group of peers who are going through the same thing at the same time as you, which is why going through either a talent investing program like EF, or going through an an accelerator can be helpful because you're with a peer group who is experienced and struggling with the same problems as you at exactly the same time. It's useful to have mentors, but rather than doing generic networking, I would try and find introductions to the specific people that you're looking for, or even cold introducing yourself to them. I think there is two— most founders get, most first-time founders get hung up on trying to build too much of a generic network. Really, the network that you need is your customer network. So, For every hour that you could invest in general startup networking, I would much rather see that hour being invested into conferences where you would meet your customer, networking events that your customer hangs out at, basically just trying to become deeply entrenched with the customer that you're going after. So, I think it's a careful balance. So, I'd say that, you know, my personal experience, at the beginning of EF, we did do a lot of general kind of startup networking. I think we quickly found that there were probably more efficient ways to meet the people that we needed to meet. And once we had a couple of ins into the startup community, actually, it was much more effective to get introductions through people we'd already met, rather than sort of just trying to generally build a wide network. I'd say a deep network with a handful of individuals who are willing to introduce you to say, the investors you might need to meet at some stage, and a deep set of relationships with founders who are at a very similar stage to you is helpful. Otherwise, invest that time in your customer.

I agree so much. I have to tell you, when we did the initial research, and it was reaffirmed again in 2019, when I said that the number one reason was bad advice, or it was actually bad decisions, and under that was bad advice, a lot of the bad advice came from investors, came from mentors. It came from people that are, you know, one-hit wonders, or they're somebody that is involved in startups but never have done one, or they're trying to sell them consulting practices, attorneys, you know, things like that. So, I agree with you so much. I encourage them. There's a lot of push in the communities out there to say, oh, you need to be talking to other founders, and I think that's important, But to your point, the most important thing is to talk to the people that you're going to be selling your product or service to because they're the ones that are going to be paying you for those things. So, I agree so, so very much. You talked about the importance and resilience and perseverance in the journey of being a founder. Is there anything that founders can do that feel like they don't have that to prepare themselves for, for Foundership, even though they feel like, well, you know, I've never done anything like this. I don't feel like I have the guts to do it. Is there anything that you could mention to these founders that would maybe inspire them or train them to do something? I ran— I swam a marathon last year, and, you know, I trained for the marathon. I couldn't swim at the beginning, and then I swam the marathon. And so in that light, you know, is foundership, in your opinion, something you can train for before you go into it, or do you just jump into the water and just start swimming?

This is a great question because I think a lot of people train for foundership by doing other things. And my strong belief is the way you train for foundership is to start founding something, just start building something. So, if you're at university, if you're in a job, do something on the side. Start tinkering around with ideas, products. If you can't build, There are now so many tools out there that will allow you to at least throw up a website, hack together a simple version of your product, and maybe even just creating wireframes and getting them in front of customers to get feedback. Or if you can build, then go build and start trying to get people to use whatever you create. All of this will teach you valuable, vital lessons that you can read about in books, but really, they only stick when you have that embarrassing moment when you realize you've built something that nobody wants, and you've added far too many features. And of course, you can read that you should do customer development and all the rest of it, but I think sometimes you need to experience the pain of going down the wrong route. So, build your resilience, build your understanding of whether you should be a founder by getting started. One of the ways that I became so interested in founding was that at my school, they ran something called Young Enterprise, where you basically build build a startup with your friends. And I'd never been interested in business. I'd never— my family has no business background, but I did that. And it was just the most exciting and interesting thing I'd ever done. And I was immediately hooked and sort of didn't stop starting things up from then onwards. So, if you think you might be a founder, the best way to start testing it and the best way to see, to learn, is to just get going. There's kind of no excuse these days. You use a couple of hours a day if you're currently working or studying, just Just start trying things out. Speak to people about your ideas, get feedback, be open-minded. And yeah, probably the thing you do on the side is not going to be the globally important startup that you think you may have inside you, but at least it will show you whether it is the right career path for you.

Yeah. Yeah. And call Entrepreneurs First.

Yes. Yeah. For sure.

It sounds like that's a pretty good bet there. I have to say, this is one of the funnest podcasts I've done. And I am inspired that there is somebody before what I'm doing. You know, what I do is help them after they have an idea, but you're even before that, which is something that is a huge issue. And I'm so, so excited about that. I wonder, in closing, if you could share some final words of wisdom to inspire these founders to wake up and go after what what they want to do, the problems that they want to solve.

I suppose my final piece of advice would be, don't let anyone constrain your ambition. I think many of us grow up in families and cultures that have very set views of how ambition should be expressed. You get on a career path and you get really good at that particular career path, and that's how you impress your friends and family. It's such an addictive pathway. Many of us have had that drilled into us from when we were very young. So, I would encourage you to really think about what ambition means for you. What does it mean to have an impact in the world? What does it mean to have a career that deeply satisfies you? And if you think that founding might be in your future, to then think about what is the most ambitious version of that? Often, people try and avoid risk by starting a small business. It's as hard to start a small business as it is to start a big business, but that's a whole— Another, a whole nother podcast. But yeah, don't let anyone constrain your ambition. Pursue the career path that will enable you to be the most ambitious version of yourself and that will enable you to take on the most ambitious ideas that you are brewing on.

You're an amazing person, and I'm just honored to have you on the podcast. And I appreciate all your time and all your advice and everything. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

A real pleasure. It's been really great to share thoughts with you, and thank you so much for having me.

You're welcome. And that's it for another episode of the Startup Science Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, we would love it if you could subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you have a moment, a review on Apple or Spotify would be greatly appreciated. I'll see you next time. Namaste, my friends.

The Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepard is brought to you by Startup Science Founders can log on to startupscience.io and use code Forbes to get free access. To connect and find out more about Greg, go to gregoryshepard.com. The Startup Science Podcast is a production of Forbes Books.