How to Launch & Scale Your Startup | Founder Institute Alumni Share Their Insights

Good evening, afternoon, during the day, wherever you're at. This is Chris Foltz, Global Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Founder Institute, and I'm so excited to have two amazing guests with us here. You know, our alumni panels are one of the opportunities where you really get to ask people the tough questions, right? You know, it's very easy to say you graduated from an accelerator, but what do you do after that? And we're going to find out exactly what the case is with that with two amazing leaders tonight. Now, I really enjoy doing these interviews, but I particularly enjoy the awesome two leaders that we have tonight. We've got one individual I'm just going to start with, Thomas, Dr. Thomas Sulek. I asked him in the back if I pronounced his name correctly. He gave me some grace on it. So we're good there. But, you know, I've taken a lot of time to look into both of these companies. And Thomas is a university professor, first and foremost, which is an exciting thing to have in the startup ecosystem. But he's discovered some interesting things around habit-forming. And he created 21 Habits out of Hamburg, Germany, a graduate of our Founder Institute Germany program, which is one of the greatest startup ecosystems in the world right now. But he's discovered the important things about how changing your habits as a team actually changes the outcomes that you can have in life, both in business, as humans. And it's a fascinating business. I know he's worked with over 10,000 teams. So I'm gonna ask him some questions about that tonight. And then Raj, my buddy Raj Sahu, um, from— we'll call it one of the coolest new experiences that I've seen when it comes down to solopreneurs being able to actually monetize and do things with Utobo. Uh, you know, we've all used systems online. Matter of fact, at Founder Institute, we've even graduated some of the best online education experiences that exist, like Udemy. But sometimes it's hard when you're a solopreneur to actually monetize all your knowledge all your experiences and actually do something with it that matters to help the rest of the world. And my buddy Raj has figured out how to do this. So I welcome both of you here tonight. I'm going to start right in with questions. At first, I'm going to have you both kind of describe what it is that your companies actually do that matters, right? I know I've said some interesting things here, but you both do amazing things that matter. Then we're going to talk a bit about your Founder Institute journey. I've got some questions for you. And I encourage all of you that are listening in today, if you have questions, get them into the chat. We'll make sure we address these questions directly. Dr. Thomas, we're starting with you, brother. I went with your first name just to make sure we had no challenges here. I'm a huge fan of 21 Habits. I love what you're doing. Why don't you tell all the listeners a little bit about 21 Habits and how this even happened and what it is you do?

Okay. Thanks a lot. And well pronounced my name. So very perfect. Even better than I could do it myself. I'm very glad to be here. Thanks a lot for the invitation first, and happy to, to forward what I have learned during an exciting entrepreneurial journey that started in 2020 when we first actually built something else. It was a marketplace for— we called it Soul Services— services that connect with the soul, like mindfulness services, creativity workshops, coaching services that support your soul. We later turned Soul into personal growth, so we had a marketplace place for personal growth. And once we had first revenues, we actually did a strategic pivot, um, because we wondered, do we actually have an impact on personal growth when selling, let's say, a service like mindfulness service? Um, one try— one-time training does not help you most likely too much. So then we, um, made a workshop with all the coaches that we had on our marketplace place as well with the key question: what helps for personal growth the most? And then we had one, one sentence from a coach, uh, that actually made our second business. Um, it, it was said, you become what you repeat. And here we are in the habit, um, business. You become what you repeat means you really have to repeat, repeat, repeat until what you've learned becomes actually productive to you. And that's what actually very often is over Overseen, the learning industry is very big. There are a lot of suppliers offering great apps, or let's say they offer apps, but the main problem is you forget what you have just learned and it will not become productive. So then we move to an app. What you introduced very nicely, Chris, it's an app for personal growth and we go through habit building for the most important skills that you can, let's say, have. Um, like resilience, communication skills, um, or stress management, creative thinking, communication skills, as mentioned. So this is our mission now, to, um, build the most important skills for productive and healthy work. And we do this through a habit methodology so that you actually build new habits around these.

You know, I think it's absolutely fascinating. And, you know, I've really noticed a lot in the startup ecosystem that you can really tell how successful a founder is going to be based on their habits. You know, at Founder Institute, we have something we call the entrepreneurial DNA, entrepreneur DNA. This was a tried and true test that we use every single day for thousands of people around the world that actually helps identify the kind of formula that they are as a, as an entrepreneur. And one of the things that we're actually looking for in there is the propensity to form bad habits as, as a founder, right? So it's amazing to hear that. I'm gonna jump over to Raj here. You know, Raj, Once you get your habits in order using Thomas's program and you're finally ready to actually be an entrepreneur, right? You've got some great knowledge, you've got some content, uh, just to use the word content since that's what's popular to use these days, and then you don't know what to do. And if you do know what to do, it's a tedious task to get there. So I checked out your website, your app, right? And I've never seen a more straightforward way. It's like, here, put stuff here, start selling it today. Get Results, Create Your Entrepreneurial Pathway. Tell us a little bit about what you got going on here and why this even came about.

You, um, thanks for having me first of all, and you are really, really on point there. So what I've experienced, if you go to Instagram or Twitter, anywhere, right, um, creators like Thomas, creator entrepreneurs that deliver value up front So you see a lot of like Instagram videos where people really in 60 seconds, they really give you the value, right? And they keep giving you value for free for a substantial amount of time. And that's why you follow them. And when they have 100,000 followers, 200,000 followers, so many times I see they put a lot of efforts in the background, like crazy amount of efforts, getting up every day, creating a habit, creating content, posting. It's a lot of work. In the background, right? But they barely make any money unless there is a brand that is paying them. It's very difficult to monetize. At the end of the day, they, you know, sell courses or sell something digital, but they have to use like a lot of products, like a lot of different tools. And this is where I was like, okay, how we can make their life simple? They're go-getters, uh, they are building business on a rented space right now, right? Instagram owns their audience or Twitter owns their audience, X now, right? So all these big social media platforms own your audience that you're building your business on a rented space. So I say, okay, if we can show, if we can give them a very straightforward platform where they go create their link in bio page and they just share those link in bio page on your Instagram profile, and/or, you know, X profile, and then you start monetizing instantly. It takes 10 minutes to set up the whole thing. You get a fully functional e-commerce store. You launch your courses, eBooks, newsletters, anything digital, one-on-one sessions, calendars, everything in one place. And there is a tip section as well at the bottom of the page, right? So if you have 100,000 followers, 200,000 followers, and you are not making any money or not able to monetize anything, People just want to support community so many times and they don't know how to basically. They can just go and simply tip you. It's extraordinarily simple what we have built basically.

I think that you nailed it right on the head. It's about the ease and being able to come as you are and leave from setup in your app as you've always wanted to be. I just really appreciate this. I'm going to jump back to Thomas here for a moment. I spent some time looking online. And I looked at your resume, Thomas, right? You have a PhD in marketing. You know, you have all sorts of interesting experiences. You're currently a professor, and you decided with all of that amazing stuff going on to create a startup, right? One of the toughest things in the world to do. With that PhD in marketing alone, you could probably go jump to a global Fortune 100 and just do something that really matters. Why is it that you dedicated your life to kind of embrace the challenges of startups when you have what some would argue to be a safe career in academia?

Yeah, that's a great question, and thanks a lot for the compliments. Sounds very good as you say it. It just happened to me. I mean, in general, I'm a curious and open-minded person. Maybe these are the characteristics that were there, and once you're open, curious and have a little bit of resilience, then you get into some, some new projects. Um, and actually, the, the startup I built was found at the university, so it was a student who inspired me, um, having a business idea. And then I was kind of open to, to listen to this and, and open to build it because we saw some potential. First, it was just an idea. We didn't intend it to, to, um, create a a startup and collecting investors as we have now and to grow this thing. First, it was just an idea where we thought, well, this, this may be a good opportunity for, for, um, for the market, for clients to satisfy needs. Um, and then one came to, to the next step. So somehow this, this startup just— nobody stopped us, I, I would say.

I think that's one of the best answers ever. Nobody stopped you. You know, I mentioned in the green room, I spend a lot of my time at this kind of intersection of artificial intelligence and human intelligence. And I'm a pro-human intelligence person, not that I'm an anti-AI person. I run an AI lab as well. But at the Human Intelligence Movement, humanintelligencemovement.org, we often talk about these uniquely human characteristics, right? Resilience being one of the most important ones. And we preach things like adaptability. So I spent some time over the last week just looking Thomas, like, how do we, do we measure adaptability? Right. And then I'm thinking about it is as you start to form the right habits in life, the things that make you resilient, it probably makes you more adaptable. Is this what you're finding as well?

Yeah, I totally agree. Once you have good confidence in that, you can go through some challenges that, that makes you a lot more adaptable, I believe, because you don't struggle and fall once challenges are there, but you are still up. You stand up and then prepare for the next steps. So I think resilience is a key ingredient for adaptability. And I think the best thing you can do to really train your adaptability is then also founding a startup and then going out to the market because once you go out with a product, um, it can happen that a customer punches you in the face, and then you better adapt. I think that's the, the hard way, but maybe, maybe the best way. Really go— this is going out of the comfort zone. If you go into the market and speak to the customer, and if he doesn't pay, and if he is not happy, um, that gives you sleepless nights. And then there is no other way as adapting.

It's amazing. You know, I'm going to jump over to Raj. You know, I know many sleepless nights come from people that have amazing ideas and don't know what to do with them. Now Raj, when I was checking out your history, which is just as amazing as well, I went back and I looked at this, uh, video from 2022 of you, right? You were talking about crowdfunding and starting. And then I looked into your background and I noticed that you've successfully launched about 250 apps out here. Through your work and creating apps. And, you know, through all of this, you've touched basically about 10 million users, right? So you could have continued down that path, fairly certain, just kept building apps for people for private contracting until you're sitting on a billion dollars. But you decided to create this platform, right? And why is it that you felt that this was the right time and place with all the competition that's out there? Why did you create this? What was the thing that made you say, I'm doing it?

Yeah, I just start with the adaptability stuff, which we were talking just now, and then I come to this. So there is a saying that it's not the most strongest who survive, it's the most adoptable who always survive. Right. And I think that's the entrepreneur DNA that you have to always adopt to what is going on in the ecosystem. Or what is going on in the world, right? So what if you notice now, like, if you go to QuickBooks, there's a, there is a new segment called QuickBooks for solopreneurs, right? Now solopreneurship is defined as a new category itself. Most of the creators are— now the, the scene has changed. People build their brand first and then they build the product. And then they sell it and they make money. It's not the other way around, like you build a product and then you build a brand, right? It was happening like that before, but now it has changed. So what I figured, even Sam Altman has said with all AI tools right now, one person would be able to build a billion-dollar company. So next billionaire you'd be seeing probably would be sitting in some sort of, I don't know, like basement of his or her parents and we're creating a billion-dollar company. And I was like, that makes sense. That definitely makes sense. So I thought if we can build a system for one person to build a billion-dollar company, that's our vision, right? Using just one simple tool and no coding involved, that would be awesome. And this was like, oh, this idea is really, really going to take off. And what I like about one-person business, is that like I was running one-person business for a very long time, right? And what I figured is that I lack a little bit of patience, you know, when dealing with people. Like what happens is that I'm working right now at 2 AM, like I mostly sleep at 3 AM, right? And I was like, I want this shit to be done right now. Like now, now, like I'm very impatient. And then you have to wait for other people. You have to wait for, someone to respond. And it was like, okay, why can't I do everything, right? So a lot of people are there. I'm not saying you have to do everything, but what I'm saying is, uh, the solopreneurs breed want to own their time, want to work when they want to work. They don't want to, you know, respond to anyone. And they are the people who adopt to new tools quickest. And this is why I was like, okay, this category just resonates with me.

Very interesting. You know, and I, I, you know, as you're trying to solve problems for these solopreneurs, here you are, an entrepreneur yourself going into the gauntlet. One of the, the toughest Founder Institute programs is out of Toronto. Great leadership up there. And, you know, I could imagine with all the experience that you've had in the past that why would you need an accelerator, right? Like, why, why come to Founder Institute? So I'm interested as to what caused you to join an accelerator to undertake this since you've already had so much success actually helping launch apps and stuff in the past?

Yeah, that's a brilliant question actually. Honestly, like when I was running company, I was running out of Bangalore, India, right? I had zero connection. And when I say zero connection, it's not that, you know, like I graduated from there, I had some sort of background or family members living there. I literally had zero connections in the US. And I was like, okay, I'm like, if I want to build something there, you need some sort of like baseline to start. You need some sort of people who have, who have been there countless number of times and help people succeed. People who you could trust, people who would be matching your pace, you know. So I tried looking at different sort of like accelerator programs. This is why I was like, what fits in these criteria? And this is why I was like, oh, Foundry Institute is there. And I saw, saw Udemy's logo there. And what we were building was in education space. And I was like, okay, this is a program I want to do, right? And I, then I, I looked at the whole testimonials and all the stories which these guys are doing. And one, one thing is specifically sort of like, I also felt the same thing actually. Like, it was like mind-blowing, uh, testimony. Um, when I attended the event Founder X in San Francisco, so I think a co-founder of Udemy told that they could have not raised a single penny if it were not a Founder Institute, because of Founder Institute. So it's like, okay, like if someone is saying something like that, I mean like there has to be a weightage, you know, to that accelerator program, or there has to be some sort of like playbook which I can get my hands on and that can save me substantial amount of time and effort. And that's why I was like, okay, I gotta go. And if I'm playing on the product and a whole different market, I need connections, I need people who can help me out, I need playbook. And this is why I was like, okay, let's go to Accelerate Program.

That's amazing. I'm so thankful that you did, right? The impact you're making. Jumping back to you, Thomas, most I don't wanna put you as a, in the academic bucket, but most academics that I've worked with have two general problems. They often have so many words trying to describe their stuff. And then I looked at 21 Habits and every word meant something, right? So it's the perfect amount of words. And then I also know basically everyone I know with a PhD in marketing thinks that they already know everything when it comes down to business. And here you are a professor, right? And you decided to become a student at Founder Institute during your cohort in the FI Germany program. What caused you to make that decision, right? I mean, you've got the pedigree, you know a bunch of stuff. Why did you join the accelerator?

Ah, good question. No, I think, um, I had to learn still a lot. Um, yes, I had academic education, um, but I think building a startup is, is something different, um, and you need some additional skills, like thinking very much in terms of problem solution, um, becoming creative all the time to solve challenges in a rapid speed, motivating people to follow you, leadership, very important. And, and these are things that, um, where I would say it's not at the core of a professorship, um, to, to lead people and think in, in these terms. So I think the program from Founder Institute was a very, very valuable experience, uh, for me that I was totally lacking, um, despite, let's say, the titles that I had at that moment. I think this is a very fascinating, um, a world for me, the startup world, that was actually outside of what I learned before. So maybe there is a good combination of having, um, being able to connect both worlds. Like, I still believe that in the startup world, some conceptual foundations, um, and, and meta-level thinking, um, can help in order not to drown into daily activities. But I think the startup world and the speed, the innovation, innovation is— and doing this together with, with mind-like people is a very fascinating thing.

I agree 100%. You know, I at one point taught university-level entrepreneurship, both undergraduate and graduate school, and I'm sitting here that there was a lot of students where they had zero intention of ever starting a business, but the undergrad program was compulsory. Everybody needed to take entrepreneurship class. And the things that people learn about life that you learn through the lens of entrepreneurship is super huge. And one thing I noticed when I was watching previous videos of you, Thomas, is that one point in your brand's history, it was called 21 Done, and now it's called 21 Habits. That is a major change. It's one word. But you know how many founders have like a fear, oh my goodness, I'm making a change at this level. Everything's over. I'm starting over. Tell me a little bit about what happened there and, and that kind of journey as to why you did that. I have no knowledge, so I'm asking you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So yeah, actually this, this was something where we had to solve a problem. So we had been sued from, from another company. In Berlin having a similar name, and they were a few months before us and in the same industry, let's say, officially from a brand naming, a legal perspective. They did something completely different, but also in the HR industry, and you know, the HR industry is huge. So legally, they could say we are competitors, and they wanted us to get rid of the 21DUN because they had the DUN in their their brand name. And for us, this was quite a challenge because it involved a little bit of cost. We didn't have too much funding left, um, and a lot of changes in the IT area, like links replacement. So a lot of our capacity needed to be switched, um, to renaming. Um, sometimes it was like 50% of our company capacity went into this project, which is a stupid project because we liked our brand name of 21DUN. We wanted to keep it, but we needed to. So in these, um, times you have to be very pragmatic and resilient. So yeah, maybe pragmatic— I didn't mention before, this is something that professors are not famous for being, pragmatic. They are more theoretical. But, um, as a startup founder and on an entrepreneurial journey, you have to be very pragmatic, uh, and yeah, go through these kind of challenges that come consistently, especially in the beginning of of a startup life when things are not yet stable.

Well, you're already one of my favorite professors, and quite frankly, I love the 21 Habits branding. I love the name. I think it makes sense. I think it tells a story. But I think— I thank you very much for sharing that story. You have no idea how many founders across the world face similar challenges. And I've seen some of the greatest ideations, solutions for things, die because people were not willing to actually find their perseverance and solve a situation like that, Thomas. So that's amazing. Jumping back to you, Raj, you know, you brought something up interesting when I was talking in the green room. I was comparing what you're doing to Kajabi. I mean, I've used basically every platform that there is out there. And you said favorable things about Kajabi, but you said that their market is basically the enterprise customer. Now I could imagine for people that are solopreneurs that are starting out their career, launching whether it be some sort of product or a course or something, you probably have some that have a long history of experiences with other platforms. They've got their courses all defined. And then you have some people that are like, wow, this seems easy enough. I'm gonna do it for the first time. How do you know what decisions need to be made to balance features between those two types of individuals? The ones that are starting out with nothing and the ones that have experienced, we'll call it trauma and lack of results from other platforms. How do you know what, what to focus on?

Yeah, that's another brilliant question, I guess. Again, it's really hard to balance and figure it out, honestly. Like, when you're building, so many times as a founder, you fall in love with your own product and you'd be like, oh, this feature is really awesome, it's gonna definitely blow up, it's, it's like everyone is going to use it. And then you launch it and no one is using it, and you'll be like, what went wrong? You know, like, am I crazy for thinking this? Right? So what I figured, like, it's just the interaction with the customers. That's, that's how you learn. So I, I literally had conversations with at least over 500 of our customers and I was like, okay, what is one or two things that can make your life easier? Is the question I asked, right? If you are, a lot of our users, by the way, have used multiple products. Right. And I was like, what is that one thing which you felt is lacking? What do you think, you know, is one feature if we add it would just like, I don't know, like 10x your business. Right. And this is how we figured it out that, you know, it's, it's, it's, I'll kind of like draw a parallel so that people can understand. If you are a small team, uh, you don't want to use big tools like Salesforce or HubSpot, right? Like a bit big CRM things where you have to do multiple setups, right? If you're a small team, probably would go with Pipedrive, right? And a similar way, if what I figured that if, you know, you are just one person business, you want to go with a platform that is specifically designed for you and you don't have to— the, the major thing, because you are doing 10 other things as well, Like you want to save time and have a product that understands you, that is specifically designed for you, and that kind of like helps guide you as well on how you can make money out of it. So this is what our prime focus is basically. Like, and what I figured out, a lot of like solopreneurs, a lot of like SMBs, they burned a lot of money using Kajabi and other platforms because it's really costly as compared to us, right? So they paid a lot of money because see, Every New Year, January 1st, which is coming, you know, after, you know, Christmas, everyone would have this pact, right? I would launch this course, I will make at least 10,000 sales and make a million dollars or $2 million. And you're in February and that dream is gone, but you already paid annual subscription. And they'll be like, oh, I lost like $2,500 or $3,000. We all, we all have been there, right? And this is where it's like, okay, you know, they understand it and they don't wanna lose, they don't wanna do it again. Right? So there has to be some sort of flexibility where when you, it's not just when your motivation is up, it, it has to be like constantly pushing you to do things, but you don't have to invest a lot of time in figuring things out. It has to be straightforward. You do your stuff, automate things, start making money and enjoy your life. That, that's what's the whole point.

Basically, that's amazing. I, I mean, I think you bring up such a, such a fascinating point about the decisions, right? So I've had plenty of those New Year, New Me type moments where I spent thousands of dollars like, this is the year to do it. And quite frankly, like so many people have come to me for the years, like, when are we dropping the Chris Foltz meetup or the Chris Foltz class? And frankly, I have analysis paralysis on decision making of which platform to use. It's like some sort of inherent trauma, right? So I'm going to make the commitment, right, come January 1st to use your platform. And I want you to chase me down come March to make sure it's still happening, right? So I'm going to hold you to that. Thomas, I'm going to jump over to you real quick. You know, I got to say, you know, you had customers at the beginning. I'm sure your pathway at the beginning to get customers is probably different than, or at least you've learned a lot about your customers. Now that you've reached over 10,000 teams, right? So tell me a little bit, Thomas, about what's different. What do you know different about your customer now that you didn't know at the beginning when you launched this 21 Habits?

Yeah, very good question. What do we do know now? I think we learned a lot because, you know, this kind of startup was founded because the student inspired me. It was not because I had the deepest knowledge in this industry. So actually also I had to learn a lot myself how to build educational products and learning journeys, because in the beginning we realized that the engagement was not as high. So it was an app. Apps very often have the problem of having low engagement, and especially this is true for education sector. The learning has the disadvantage that the benefit comes very much later, a lot later. The benefit is coming and people prefer things, as you know, like Instagram, for example, with quick dopamine. So the question is, how could we build things that are more engaging? Like gamification, for example, was something that we needed to implement. Because people like it for the pure sake of the gamification, getting rewards, getting animations, leaderboards, for example. When you see your name on the very bottom of a team in a company, that's not what you want. Then you have a motivation to engage and to do more to go up. And then other things and features like team features so that you can do it together because of the social component that was also a very crucial thing that we needed to add in order to have higher engagement, because engagement is crucial for learning. And then ultimately for us as the business people, for having extended contracts as a subscription business, you want— you don't want cancellations, but you want one is monthly recurring revenue, but this for a long time. So we needed to prove to the companies that their employees actually engage and create habits using our platform. And as mentioned, all these things had to be added because we came in a little bit naive as industry non-experts, which has a pro and which has a disadvantage. It has— the disadvantage is quite obvious: you don't have the deep knowledge to have the concepts and ideas already in mind. We needed to learn this, but it comes also at an advantage because you come into this industry with a fresh view and you are able to make things different because you don't have these habits already created. So I think there's this pro and con. There's one app, one compa— we cannot call it competitor because it's such a big player, and it's actually learning for language skills, not for future skills and soft skills as we do, but Duolingo had this one feature that led to big engagement and it was the streak thing. So maybe a lot of you guys know about this app and about this streak. Once you are on the daily streak and rewards are associated with these, you don't want to lose these. So it's super strong and it was mentioned to be this one feature that made Duolingo so, so big.

That's amazing that you brought that up. You know, my business partner's an MIT genius, Cal Berkeley is where he went for graduate school, and he often cites the Duolingo streak example as one of the best psychological things for the positive that a brand ever does to cause outcomes. When it comes down to it, are your main customers, Thomas, corporations, businesses, who engages with 21 Habits?

Yes, that's our, our main target group. So we actually offer it to both. So we are experimenting a little bit with B2C at this moment, um, while it was actually at the very start of our, of our journey. So when we first launched our app and we offered it to B2C users, but for the own only, um, The only thing was we wanted to collect quick feedback because once you go to B2B companies purchase from you, your product needs to be a little bit mature to have an access into the companies. So we started with B2C to get feedback because we also believed very early that the product does not need to be very different for private users versus employees. Employees nowadays want to grow as a person. And are allowed to grow as a person. And on the other side, private users also want to grow in a professional way, and especially in the soft skill area like resilience, communication skills, creativity, leadership. These are skills that you need in both private and business life. So actually, our product is suited and has synergies for the two markets. So we started with B2C to collect quick feedback. One of the things I learned at Founder Institute I wouldn't have known from a professorship or being a business consultant. So these kinds of things, how to collect feedback with what intention. And, but we believe that the bigger market is in the B2B area.

You know, I can generally tell within 5 minutes how successful an organization or a business is going to be by how well they understand their stakeholders. And it seems like that is something that you're encouraging your customers to do. To have better understanding of their team, which I think is just absolutely brilliant. Raj, jumping back to you, you know, I think a lot of people think the startup journey is easy. They see television shows like Silicon Valley or they see the, the positive stuff on LinkedIn. But we know that 92% of startups fail and oftentimes they fail because they don't understand their customer. Russell will always say he can tell within 5 minutes how successful a company is going to be based on how well they know their customer. So I imagine some of the things that you first started with, what you launched with when you launched your platform, you probably made some changes to where it's at today over the years. What would be an example of some change that's been the direct response of, of what you've learned from your customers?

I would cite, uh, link in bio tool to be the best example of I guess like the feature or change which we did, um, and why we did it. I, I've interacted, as I said, like I've interacted with more than 500 creators or solopreneurs or educators, and I found one challenge which is common amongst all is a lot of them are PhD holders, a lot of them have like 20 years of experience, a lot of them are professors, they, they, they're really geniuses, right? What they did, they could not do is market it. I have this amazing product suite that can really help people, or I have this amazing stuff that can really help people, but if people can't find you, how you're gonna sell, right? Like, if you can't reach out to people, then whatever you are doing is, is, you know, like worthless. And this is why I was like, okay, what is the best way now we know for people to reach out to their audience? Everyone has social media profile and some sort of like followership there. And I feel if there's something like link in bio where you have all of your socials, all of your courses, newsletters, people can subscribe, people can talk to you, and it's common amongst all of your platforms, then I feel like you are, you are showing your product to everyone, you know, instantly, plus you start monetizing it instantly as well. You're not waiting for your followers to grow a million, you know? Like you are monetizing it when you just have like 100 followers. So that's what the major change was.

So you're telling me that the link in bio feature, like the thing that's literally marketed on the front of your website, link in bio tool on steroids. That was not in your first thought iteration of this brand?

No, absolutely not.

That's powerful to know. You know, I think a lot of people just assume that, you know, things pop right up. It's the idea that, but this is like a center premise of your brand. Um, and I think it's interesting that you drew attention to the fact that this came as a result of actually asking real humans, right? Like, and noticing what real human, I think a lot of people in customer discovery just assume, all right, I'm gonna make a survey, I'm gonna buy a list, I'm gonna send it out. But you're not gonna get that kind of actionable feedback, which is great. Let me ask another question. You know, I think oftentimes when it comes down to it, people think they know everything when it comes down to their business and brand. What is something that you did not know at all that you learned from your accelerator experience in FI Toronto about launching your startup? That's to Raj. Don't worry, you're getting the next one, Thomas.

I guess one of the most important stuff like that I've learned, you know, when, when, when you're an entrepreneur, uh, if, if you are someone like me, you are mostly hustling through a lot of stuff. You're just trying to do, uh, and trying to kind of like find out your niche, or trying to pivot, or just like keep on doing stuff without— and I would say shooting dart randomly at, at night. Like, you know, you, you don't know, like there are two ways of doing things. One can be extremely hard and it would take a lot of time and would consume like all of your times, and like you have to put in a lot of effort. And what I figured is there is someone that already has that playbook and that can just like change your life. Like it would save countless hours and efforts. And that's what I've learned. Like, that's— I, I think the most important thing with the Founder Institute is that they have the set of practices. Like if you go to Funding Lab or Founder Institute, they would tell you exactly what works, you know, like in fundraising process, like that playbook, I could have not raised money if it were not for that playbook. And that, that was the major sort of like value addition, I would say.

I think that's great. You know, one of the tools I tell people to always go check out is fi.co/benchmarks. And this is constantly updated, right? These are, benchmarks of, of where the kind of climate of the industry is when it comes down to funding rounds. So many people think that, oh, I'm ready to ask for $1 million in funding. But then when you go look statistically and see, all right, here's what people that have recently got $1 million in funding have in common, and you don't have any of those things in common. You know, that's a challenge. And, and, you know, I think oftentimes we update these things so, so often, you know, the, the whole notion of people can go out here and start the billion-dollar brand by themselves. Now, I believe that. I truly do. But the statistics also is something that people need to follow because that's the actual— it's like when somebody goes on eBay and they see somebody is selling an item for $2,000 and you think you really came into it, then you go look at, well, what did this item sell for recently, and it was $35, and you have this kind of rude awakening. It's the same thing when it comes down to starting your business. Thomas, let me jump back to you, right? You know, so you have these 21 habits, you have these things What are the things that you learned about yourself through the lens of your own habit-forming technology that you actually apply every single day towards running your business?

Good, good, good. Another good question. Yes. Yeah, maybe I learned that I don't know enough to run a startup. We struggled in the beginning and found out it's The playbook that Rush is mentioning was super helpful, and I needed to learn this. So knowing that there is a lot that you do not know is, I think, very important, a very important learning experience. And also at the same time, it's crazy how much you learn when you move fast and talk to other people. The more often you do it, the more often you will see, oh, that's great advice. I did not know this, or I did not consider this. And I think after some years of repeatedly doing this, because you need to do it, right? Because you go out with products to the market. So in the end, you will end up with feedback. There's no way around us. As a founder, you collect feedback constantly from the market but also internally. And I think the more you do it, the more you will see that this was not on your mind, and this experience will make you do it more often for everything.

Would you say that your technology, your innovation here, does it have other places outside of the employee-employer relationship? Like, is this something that would be beneficial teaching people younger in life and in college going to your platform to prepare for their careers, even younger ages, because I think habit forming is so darn important. Yeah, it's something that is so human, right? Where do you see this going next? Is it— can we go to younger ages here?

Yeah.

So I think it should be actually integrated into education. I don't know the education plans in all countries, but I can tell you that in Germany for sure it's not integrated enough. Like these kind of social and life skills we were talking about, like resilience, stress management, communication skills, creativity— there's not enough room for training these at young ages. In Germany, it's problematic to advertise at schools So we are not doing it to advertise, but I believe actually, and also the younger the person is, the more open they are to create new habits. Once you're old and have created a lot of habits, uh, it's not, not that easy to, to change habits. So I think, um, in earlier phases, um, the impact of our app would be even more helpful. Maybe the content needs to be adapted a little bit because at the moment it's like, um, these kind of skills you would learn in a business context. So the framing is sometimes, not always, the business context. But I totally agree, it's a great question. Maybe some of you have heard about the inner development goals, where we have a strong match redundancy between the skills that are in this group and the ones that we form. I believe society needs more of these kind of skills, like also mindfulness, also in management. The more mindful you are, the more empathic you are towards your employees, towards your customers, and the less stressed. This can only help to build resilient and companies that are more lasting in the market.

I think that's amazing. You know, I think one of the things I have going on right now is I have STEM programs in various schools. I also have an entrepreneurship program that's in place for 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. And I, and the Human Intelligence Movement, as I brought up earlier, I think may be an ideal place for us to have a conversation about some sort of collaboration so we can start testing some of these things. Because the moment that I saw what you're actually looking at changing, right, it made a lot of sense to me. It's these minor tweaks early on in life in a non-confrontational way that will actually make stronger leaders. I'll come back in just one second, Thomas. Raj, Same question over to you. You know, like, I see a lot of educators now, some of the smartest people in the world who have spent their entire careers working in the classroom, right? In classroom education, they're there teaching people, they're inspiring minds, but how things are done in the classroom are entirely different than when it comes down to getting in this kind of private world. I got a leadership development class I wanna launch. I've got my own course on being a better English student, whatever it may be. Right. What would be the process of actually considering setting up some sort of pilot with you to actually test this with some teachers? Is that something that you're interested in potentially doing?

Yeah, of course. Like, I think moving forward, we definitely want to open up for, for, you know, like school programs as well. And we'd probably make tie-up with district they have some sort of like, I would say, district programs, you know, as well to, to do testing.

Um, I think we go to some of the retired teachers that are, that are just now entering retirement who still have the ability to teach in classroom a certain amount and say, listen, what you have to teach the world, we'll help you set up the business so thus you can focus on the actual elements that you want to teach. Um, so it's not necessarily to focus into the school But then I'm also seeing a lot of kids in these entrepreneurship programs that are coming out with some sort of class they want to teach and some sort of product they want to launch. So perhaps even in one of our Founder Institute programs that we have that's at one of the schools right now, we can figure out a way to test this with an actual educator and with actually a younger audience than maybe using it, because I think you're on to something awesome here, Raj. The, the ease of entry is amazing. Go ahead, my friend.

I guess, like, again, that's a brilliant point. Once again, what I would say, people are not like— literally no one is shy right now. Like, most of the people are just like taking up their smartphones and shooting whatever they're doing, right?

Yeah.

Like, I'm eating this, I'm doing this, and I'm doing this. And they are massive followings as well. So the next generation, you're gonna— 86% of Americans today wants to become an influencer. 86%, right? So that— they, they don't want to become astronaut, they don't want to become, you know, an engineer. Like, most of them, the dream job now is an influencer. So that explains the, the amazing thing. And I'm— again, like, when I was growing, you know, and growing back, like going to schools, um, in India. So, um, one thing which I noticed is changing now is specifically like, you know, in the US I think it's, it's more, um, there's two-way conversation. Students also can teach something to you. Like, there are a lot of students, there are just brilliant in a lot of things which is super unknown to people. Like you would have kid who can teach you how to use AI tools perfectly well. And you know what, teachers probably are not that expert in that domain because it's a newest technology and they're living and breathing it. So I feel our tools can be helpful for people who are say, you know, in grad school teaching, I don't know, like people in 8th or 9th class. you know, so I, I would more see our platform in a way that you can have a smartphone, record whatever you're doing, um, and upload it on your platform and start selling. So you monetize it instantly. And, you know, you— we are giving platform to people to kind of like share their knowledge without any, any sort of like, um, I'd say obstruction. So yeah.

That's amazing. My final question is going to both of you. I'll start with you, Raj. I was looking over some of the questions and I tried to touch on as many things as I could from the audience here. But one question that seems to be resounding from both is advice, right? As, as a founder, looking back at your founder journey during the time in the accelerator through the time prior, Raj, what would be that one bit of advice that you'd give yourself as something to do that, that perhaps you didn't think of at first? And then follow that with what's the one bit of advice of something not to do as a founder in your accelerator journey and as in your founder journey that you've learned throughout your time at Founder Institute and beyond? Start with you, Raj.

Sure. I guess like don't do wishful thinking. It's definitely something which I guess like I'm guilty of and most of the entrepreneurs are there, some sort of imagination which is running in your mind and there's like literally wishful thinking going on and you're not acting on it. Don't do that. Um, the things to do is be absolute determined, you know. I mean, like, just be focused and be determined on what you want to build. Like, I'm not saying don't talk to your customers, don't listen to everyone, but I'm saying like your vision has to be unshakable. Like, just no matter what happens, you know, world is falling apart, just like Focus, focus, focus, focus, and be determined. That's the only, you know, two things which I'd say.

That's amazing advice, Raj. I really appreciate all of your comments tonight and the great feedback and advice that you've given. And I look forward to checking out your platform a little bit more. Obviously, I have, but thank you so much. Thomas, I'm gonna jump over to you. You know, obviously, you've got a lot of experience in the classroom. You've got a lot of experience outside. You've got a lot of experience changing people's habits or making them better. Um, the advice that you'd give to yourself and other founders, followed by what it is, uh, that they should not do, I think would be super great from you. Let me hear that, brother.

Yeah, um, good, good final question. So I think, uh, my advice for, for doing is, um, as I said before, I think it's crazy how much you learn once you go out and speak to customers and bring a certain level of openness with you. So the more you do this, the more you will learn. And at the same time, watch your habits. So be aware of what you are doing and then think about these things. Do you want to repeat or is there room for change? What I would not do is follow— similar as Rush, actually— don't follow every advice. So yes, be open, read, listen. Um, the playbook of Founder Institute is super, but there, there needs to be a room for— if you feel strongly negative about following this advice, there may be something wrong with it. Because in the end, it also depends on how unique and innovative your business is. And if you just follow others, maybe the level of innovativeness is, is not high. But in the end, if you have a strong vision and convictions, give this also some room.

That's amazing. You know, I think that you both summed it up so well. Thomas, thank you so much for joining again. 21 Habits is, is just a phenomenal bit of information that I garnered just from spending time viewing your website, watching videos. So I look forward to see how this progresses and how you change The prospects of humanity for the world. Um, you know, I, I think one of the bit advice that I'll get on this to everyone is, is, you know, somebody, so many people are obsessed with investors and I think everyone tries to spend all of their time trying to get investors to say yes. The best advice I can give to everyone when it comes down to getting investment is, is to focus on making it hard for people to say no. Investing's all about de-risking. And the best way to de-risk your company for investors is to actually get customers, right? You know, customers are the most de-risking element for an investor because growth is measured in many different ways. I mean, Raj even has a free offer on his website, for instance, right? Although nothing's in free, but it's structurally set up in a free element that is a growth number. Everyone. So if you're gonna spend the next 1,000 hours doing anything from chasing investors or chasing customers, I implore you to chase customers the right way, which means actually talking to human beings and actually getting it done. There's a difference between doing things and getting stuff done, and the startup world is all about getting stuff done. So again, this is Chris Foltz on behalf of Founder Institute, Global Entrepreneur-in-Residence. I really appreciate all of you for joining tonight. For those of you that want to have additional conversation with the founders. Make sure you find them on social channels. Make sure you utilize their technology. Go out there and watch other videos about their founder journey. Trust me, they're out there. I've watched them, and there's amazing information. For those of you that haven't had the opportunity to go to fi.co and actually take advantage of the Entrepreneur DNA, I promise you, this was a game-changing test for me personally. I recommend for everybody to take this assessment because it really helps you understand where you're at as a human, right? And for those of you that are out there worried about things like, well, did I get an appropriate score, whatever, there's no way to measure what you learn about yourself. The actual learning is the measurement. So take advantage of that opportunity. I appreciate all of you. If anybody has any questions, find me or our guests on LinkedIn. Any additional questions, visit fi.co. I look forward to seeing all of you in office hours in our accelerator. and I look forward to continuing the conversation with both of these great leaders, leaders in the future. Again, this is Chris Bolts from Founder Institute. Have a great rest of the day.