eChai Ventures’ Post

We’ll be hosting an online session on 'Building Your Founding Team' this Thursday evening. If you’re looking for co-founders or early employees, this will be the right fit for you. You’ll discover others who are also looking for co-founders and founding teams, while experienced founders and mentors share frameworks and stories of how they found their co-founders and built founding teams. Want to join? DM me or drop a comment, and I’ll send you the details. #TheStartupCode

tl;dr: Free Jam Sessions/Office hours for startup Founders & Chiefs of Staff One of the things I've missed is working daily with founders (and being kaypo about what you're building). I'd therefore love to swap some of my time to help you crack some challenges you might be facing in exchange for fun conversations! Will be setting aside time each week for a few jam sessions, best for founders and other senior generalists (like chiefs of staff). We can jam on anything from growth hacks, to implementing your analytics strategy, to figuring out your hiring plan, to setting & tracking targets/workflows for your org. Other great conversations have been more meta in nature, like how to lean into cross-functional portfolios, or transitioning into being a manager (and manager of managers). I've done this with a bunch of you, looking forward to jamming again. And for folk I've yet to meet - I'd love to be your generalist workhorse for a bit! 🤣 Priority will be for Southeast Asian teams, but happy to also talk to entirely remote teams - have got a soft spot for you.

Some of the most game-changing ideas I’ve worked on came from founders who didn’t know a thing about code. One founder came to me with nothing but a bold vision. No jargon, no fancy prototypes, just a raw concept. But what they did have was clarity of purpose and a deep understanding of their audience. That’s when I realized something: it’s not about speaking tech fluently; it’s about asking the right questions and surrounding yourself with the right people. With some strategic planning and collaboration, we turned their idea into a product that customers couldn’t stop talking about. Being a non-technical founder is an opportunity to think differently. You bring the spark, and with the right team, the fire takes care of itself. Also, a quick favor, folks! As I work on growing my presence here on LinkedIn, if you find this inspiring or helpful, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could share it with your network. Thank you so much for your support! 🙌 #EmpoweringFounders #InnovationUnleashed #ThinkBig #EmpoweringFounders #NonTechLeadership #StartupJourney

Who’s in your starting lineup? Oh man, let me tell ya, back in the day, my team and network were more like a motley crew than the dream team I’ve got now. If I had just a crystal ball or something to show me how crucial it was to have my vision locked down tight, maybe I would’ve picked my squad with a bit more finesse from the get-go. But hey, we’re all geniuses in hindsight, aren’t we? Now, when you’re strutting your stuff in front of investors, showing off your startup team, it’s not just a meet and greet. You gotta dive deep. Talk about what each player brings to the table - their skills, their war stories, and how they’re gonna help you conquer the world. And it’s not just about throwing resumes and headshots at investors. You need to paint a picture of a well-oiled machine. How do you all click? Who’s got your back from the advisory board? Toss in some visuals to keep it interesting, and don’t shy away from talking about where you’re still beefing up the ranks. This isn’t just about bragging rights; it’s about showing you’ve got the right folks to turn your big ideas into reality. Get investors excited about your team’s mojo, and you’re halfway to getting them to open their wallets. #startuptips #thecfoguy #team

As a solo founder, I always felt the weight of responsibility on my shoulders.    The founder journey is tough, demanding reliability and resilience at every turn. That's why, when starting Checkfirst, having #trustworthy technical co-founders was non-negotiable for me.   Being business-minded, I was well-versed in market analysis, modelling, sales strategies and even some early prototyping stuff as I loved to dig into the product and customer needs. However, the technical aspects of building our product overall were a bit of a black box for me. I knew I needed a partner who could not only speak the language of code but also lead a team of developers.   I was lucky enough to find not one, but two: Oyvind, our product leader who is passionate about building great solutions and really gets what our customers need, and Rami, our technological leader who often challenges through critical thinking, makes things happen and keeps the tech team on track.   We try to meet up in person as often as possible and create yearly traditions (as pictured here) where we go deeper and spend focused time together as being remote from each other makes that harder to do always. We all bring different skills to the table and we all think differently, which is awesome, but making sure we were all on the same page was just as important.    We didn't leave anything to chance. We took the time to thoroughly vet our compatibility and alignment, going back and forth on tough questions to make sure we were all in this together. We wrote this all down on a document that we used to ensure we were aligned.    I've seen too many startups crumble due to co-founder conflicts, and we were determined to avoid that fate.   Choosing the right co-founder goes beyond skills and experience. It's about finding people you trust implicitly who share your values and commitment. People who you respect and stick by. Because when the going gets tough, and it will, it's your co-founder(s) who'll be standing beside you, ready to weather the storm. At the end of the day, startups aren't just about having a cool product or fancy tech. It's the people, the trust between us, and our shared passion that make all the difference. Thank you Oyvind and Rami for being there for me and Checkfirst. Excited for what's to come.

What a wild two years it's been. 2 years ago (April 2022) - I watched Kelsey Behringer do something amazing as a leader, asked her to get coffee the next day, and posed the question: "so, uh, do you think you'd want to be CEO?" ...I was feeling that "itch" you hear founders talk about. 2 years later (March 2024) - Packback gets acquired, with Kelsey at the helm as CEO. In between those bookends was a rollercoaster that landed me where my heart wanted to go: back to the startup trenches, scribbling on white boards at 1871. In a nutshell, the play went like this: Later that Spring 2022 - sat down with my PB co-founders Nick, Kasey, Jessica, and they were heartwarmingly supportive of my thoughts for a transition plan. April 2023 - I went on paternity leave, KB took the reigns at Packback, and upon watching her leadership the Board voted *unanimously* that she was the CEO of the future. Summer 2023 - I came back, we announced the transition, I had my last "official" day at Packback (although I'm a lifer, really) on Friday June 9th, and on Monday June 12th I went to work on founding my next company, Impruve. Fall 2023 - Danny Shannon tags in as co-founder/CTO (while our friend Gang Wei got the V1 MVP off the ground as Danny warmed up), my longtime partner-in-growth Eric Hogenkamp injected ideas & energy into the mission, and we launched the first test with a few friends -- ✅ 132 days to first user. Spring 2024 - as Packback gets acquired, Impruve gets a product rehaul, accepted into the App Store, and (you're not officially hearing this yet) a badass Slack integration, all while kicking off our next cohort of co-building team managers on a mission to "make great coaching a habit". This time around, I want to share the journey of building Impruve more openly. Much more to come! (+ newsletter at: www.MikeShannon.co)

We talk a lot about what to do leading up to a pitch, and less about life after Pitch Day 🤔 While pitch competitions can be monumental milestones, the steps you take after can be just as important! Here's what small business owners and tech startups can do after a pitch competition to keep their business moving forward post-pitch day: Am I missing anything? --- More insights available on floreolabs.org/insights This month we'll be diving into the topic of hiring and product teams 🚀

In the startup world, the "co-founder" title carries significant weight. It signals our commitment and credibility to investors and customers, which is crucial for our success. However, within our team, I've often felt that the title can overshadow the contributions of other key members who are just as, if not more, important to our success. Maybe it's just me. But there are definite rockstars who are critical for our business, and at times more critical than us co-founders. Kamryadi Arifin, Mita Ariani, Muhammad Yusuf Maulana, Bonita S., Fajar Andi Patappari, Dwikky Maradhiza Yudakusuma come to mind, but we are lucky in that we have many in our team (some that I might have missed to mention). Of course, we need to do our best to compensate them fairly (not just as team members, but also as co-owners of the business), but here's the thing: - Equity isn't just shares; it's about recognition. - Contributions > Titles. Hoping we can get Fr8labs to the next stage when hopefully the co-founder title is less required, and we can remove it. OR maybe we should experiment with flexible titles for everyone else? Closing Thought: Titles are just labels. True success is a team effort where everyone is a co-founder of our dreams. 🌟 Week 20 of 26 Weekly Posts Challenge (https://lnkd.in/gXTFNTHT).

We have a few slots for non-portfolio founders for the next online "Founders Meet & Learn by Geek Ventures" on 5/23. This one will be on addressing two typical problems we see most founders encounter: 1. Too much of administrative "busywork" that they can't delegate to anyone 2. Few open positions are targeted only for highly experienced people that have significant cost Comment & DM about your startup and stage if you're interested in joining.

Looking to connect with Bootstrapped Founders to highlight their journey and contributions! The past few weeks, I have been working with a few VCs to help identify bootstrapped founders who have built great technical products and had some traction, yet they haven't been in the limelight yet. The idea is to connect and build a community/platform to help founders with GTM strategies, warm introductions , legal advice and infrastructure discussions. I'm not looking for any monetary benefit, just feel like we need to find each and share our stories and learnings. Being a founder can be really lonely. If this post resonates with you, please reach or tag some of your friends who are building great products. P.S. if you're in the early stages of your journey and unsure if you should continue , definitely reach out.