Taj Adhav, CEO of Leasecake Answers, went through the Founder Institute program while commuting weekly from Orlando to Palo Alto. He incorporated his company, built a pitch deck, and learned humility and trust. A year after graduating, his cohort's progress has been "nothing short of astounding."
It is definitely probably one of the best experiences you'll ever go through as an entrepreneur. Whether you have the confidence that you will crush it or whether you have the insecurity that you will fail, you will gain a tremendous amount. And I think it's really, it's a reckoning, right? It's a reckoning of humility to say, holy cow, I really thought I had it together. By the end of it, or certainly the middle of it, there's these checkpoints. You've got to have the technology kind of behind the scenes while you as the founder and the leader are going through this to successfully launch the business and take those learnings back to the team. Uh, you know, for us it was, you know, there was the screening test of what makes you a good Founder Institute candidate. Um, I waited for a year because we were building the technology and the team that allowed me the freedom to fly out from here, Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, every week out to Palo Alto. And it was, you know, it was a huge burden that was lifted off of me because there's no way I could have done it kind of simultaneously. But the team back home was there to support the biz. And how far we moved the needle every week was tremendous. Just kind of saying, okay, look, we've already incorporated, look, we've already kind of have our go-to-market strategy. Yes, it needs to tweak. Yes, we've got a pitch deck. Holy cow, we gotta throw that thing out. All of those little parts and pieces really made us stronger. And I think we grew, right? It's not just, oh cool, you launched a cool company. I think we grew as human beings. I think we, we learned a lot about ourselves. We learned a lot about trust, humility, and what it really takes. Um, so thankful for that process. And, you know, ultimately having a mic in front of you, every one of our team members, some were shy, some super confident. It's just a matter— it starts to become this equalizer. The growth that we've seen even a year out from graduating last year of all of our cohort has been nothing short of astounding.
