Founder2be - Find a co-founder. Start a startup.

The fifth Founder2be event in Lagos was another smash-hit success. Double overbooked as usual, this time we were matching co-founders as part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week. One of the highlights of the event was the talk by the co-founder of one of our success stories – VacantBoards. Kicking off at 4PM, at the Oriental Hotels, Victoria Island, there was a 60 minute panel discussion on the topic – Starting and running a business in Nigeria. The panel was made up of business experts from different backgrounds. We were honored to have with us: Raphael Afaedor - Co-Founder and CEO of Supermart.ng, a grocery delivery service based in Lagos, Nigeria. Raphael co-founded Jumia.com.ng and led its tremendous growth in the capacity of co-Managing Director before resigning early this year to build Supermart.ng. As the co-MD of Jumia, Raphael helped the company to secure total investments of $50 million. Daniel Oparison - Head, Growth and Consumer Business at Paga – Nigeria’s leading payment company. His role covers Business Intelligence, Data Analytics Marketing Strategy, User Experience and Consumer Sales. Daniel has helped Paga grow to more than 2 million customers. Mimi Ade-Odiachi - MD/CEO, Omar Gardens, a leading horticultural company in Nigeria. Mimi has more 20 years’ experience in business and is a pioneer Life Member of the Enterprise Development Centre, of the Pan-African University. Segun Olukoya -  COO, Nextzon (a leading professional services company in Nigeria) and Administrator, Lagos Angel Network - an exclusive network of angel investors focused on supporting early stage start-ups in Lagos and its environs. There was a high level of interaction between the participants and when it was time to network, the place came alive.  Participants were asked to talk about their ideas and what they were looking for in a co-founder with people on their tables and after 10 - 15 minutes, tables were reshuffled. There was a lot of interaction and positive feedback around the tables as people bounced their ideas off others. Besides the panel and networking there was a session for co-founder pitches – where a couple of the attendees actively looking for a co-founder pitched themselves to others. The event came to an end around 8:30PM with a vote of thanks delivered by a member of the Entarado team (Founder2be Ambassadors) and a lot of requests as to when the next event would hold. The event which was part of the GEW 2014 events in Lagos was supported by Enterprise Development Centre, Nigeria and Paga - Nigeria's leading payment company.

The second Founder2be event held in Lagos was a success but the third event on the 25th of May was even bigger. The event was overbooked by 200% - a noticeable increase in interest than the first and second events.

See more pictures from the amazing event on our Facebook page.

The format of the event was quite similar to the last event. Kicking off at 4PM at Function Room 1 of Oriental Hotels, Victoria Island, there were short 15 min talks by some invited guest speakers coming from various backgrounds ranging from legal to information technology-but all partial to business creation. The speakers were: Mr Tomi Davies, the MD/CEO of TechnoVision, a Tech services company based in Lagos. He sits on the board of various organizations including Slimtrader, Strika Entertainment and MBO capital. He is the Chairman of Mobile Monday Nigeria and the Convener of Lagos Angel Network, an exclusive network of angel investors focused on supporting early stage start-ups in Lagos. Tomi gave a talk on the Lagos StartUp Scene in 2014. Mr Weyinmi Jemide, the Chief Client Officer of Weyinmi Jemide LLP. Through this entity, he influences organizations using coaching and training, and facilitates learning interactions across organization levels. He is a Certified Facilitator of The Leadership Challenge Workshops and a Certified Master Coach from the Behavioral Coaching Institute of Australia - the first Nigerian to attain both certifications. He spoke on 3 Questions for Entrepreneurial Minds. Also in attendance were start-up founders, Raphael Afaedor and Nwachukwu Onyeaso, who sat on a panel to answer questions from attendees. Raphael is the co-founder and CEO of Supermart, a grocery delivery service based in Lagos. Prior to starting Supermart, Raphael co-founded Jumia in 2012 and led its tremendous growth in the capacity of co-Managing Director before resigning in 2014. Nwachukwu is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Pushandstart.com, Africa's premier equity and debt-based crowdfunding platform. The networking session however was the highlight of the event. Participants got to share their ideas with one another. As well as talk about their challenges and what they were looking for in a co-founder. The event came to an end around 8:00PM with a vote of thanks delivered by a member of the Entarado team as the Founder2be ambassadors, however, many people stayed even longer afterwards and continued the networking. The event was supported by Forbes Africa, who sent a representative and also handed out copies of Forbes Africa and Forbes Africa Woman Magazines to attendees. Other supporters included ServiceDesk.com.ng, TechCabal.com and the Lagos Angel Network.

Founder2be conducted an interview with Marko Anderson and Jarno Koponen, co-founders of Random, an exciting Helsinki-based startup that is reinventing how we surf the web. Random is backed by Janus Friis (co-founder of Skype) and they recently launched their iOS App globally. We asked them to share their story of how they got started, where they are today, and what they have planned next.

Who are the co-founder(s) and what is everyone's role?

Marko: 

Jarno and myself were the original co-founders. We are both product people – we are inspired by creating new user experiences. Jarno's background is in design and the humanities, and my background is in product management and software business. We were responsible for the initial vision and product concept and funding. But we knew we couldn't go very far on our own because to make the vision a reality, we needed to build very complex and innovative artificial intelligence that hadn't been built before. So from very early, we put a lot of energy into finding the best possible data scientists and software people to join the team.

Jarno:

Due to the complexity of the technology we needed to build, we knew we had to be very selective and only work with world-class software developers. It wasn't easy, but we were persistent and patient and eventually connected with great people that shared a common vision and were a perfect fit. We are now seven people in total and no one has left since joining. Everyone is important and most have been with us since the very early days. In that sense, we view everyone as cofounder because we couldn't be where we are are without them.

What area are you working on or what is the problem are you solving?

Marko:

Random is an app for finding the unexpected. The web is overflowing with wonderful things, but the whole discovery experience has become stale and repetitive. Its pretty absurd that while the possibilities available to us on the web are ever-expanding, the current tools we use actually narrow our experience and lead us to same old places.

Jarno:

Random wants to inspire curiosity and allow people to explore the web more independently and anonymously. The app has a fresh interface that allows you to choose from a selection of topics and go as deep as you want into associated content. The playful combination of relevancy and serendipity offers you positive surprises. It never shows you the same thing twice. And its machine learning algorithms adapt to your interests and patterns over time so it gets better the more you use it.

How did you guys meet?

Jarno:

I was presenting my Masters thesis at Aalto University Media Lab and Marko happened to be in the audience. The topic of my thesis work was 'personal future simulation system'. I was exploring how our personal digital data could be used to create new predictive experiences and use cases.

Marko:

I was working at Nokia at the time, focusing on predictive analytics of smartphone data. I was really excited about how all this emerging mobile data could be used to make predictions and recommendations that would benefit people in new ways. Even though we hadn't met, we were essentially exploring the same ideas in very different contexts.

How did you come up with the idea for Random?

Jarno:

Marko approached me when I got off-stage after my Media Lab presentation and we had a really long and deep conversation right then and there. It was immediately clear we both had a deep passion around the same topic so we agreed to meet again a couple days later. We just started bouncing ideas and getting to know each other over the next month or so. As we were discussing and sketching out possibilities, the actual product concept started to emerge and became more clear. It also became clear how our skills would compliment each other. So when we had the concept for the first prototype detailed out, we just decided we had to figure out a way to make it happen.

When did you start working on your startup and what were the most difficult first steps?

Marko:

I had just given my notice to quit Nokia because I needed a change - but I had no concrete plans of what I was going to do next. Jarno was in a similar mindset after just finishing at Media Lab. After we discussed for about a month and the energy felt good, we set a date (about 1 month ahead) when we would both 'officially' decide if this was just an interesting conversation or if we were going to fully commit to doing this together. I think that was a very important step as it gave us time to step-back and evaluate personal factors and other opportunities. Full commitment is so important, especially in the beginning, that we wanted to make it as clear as possible if we were committed to going "all-in", or not. So we actually founded the company about 3 months after meeting. The fact that we didn't know each other very well was probably the biggest risk in the beginning. Cofounding a company with someone is like a marriage and making that kind of commitment with someone you don't know very well is a big decision. But you have to trust your instincts with people and its worked out very well for us.

Jarno:

Everything was difficult in the beginning. We had no money and we lacked the software capabilities we needed. We pretty much got laughed out of every meeting we had in our early days. The vision and product concept were very ambitious and experimental and not many people were able to fully grasp it. And those that understood it thought that it was impossible.

Marko:

We managed to scrape together the first protoype, start building a great team, and eventually did a real funding round. But nothing was easy. That's the thing with startups, its up to entrepreneurs to pursue something they really believe in, and then just find a way to will it into existence. Nothing worthwhile comes easy – and that was certainly the case for us. 

What have you been doing since and what are the steps you have been taking? (hiring, funding, team…)

Jarno:

We have been totally focused on trying to build the best possible user experience. Our seed round allowed us grow the team and give us the runway to continuously iterate the app experience and underlying technology. But we have been careful to keep everything very lean in order to preserve runway, and also because we think focus is so important for early-stage startups – constraints help propel the creative process.

What is the current status and your plans for the rest of 2014?

Marko:

We recently launched our iOS app in the App Store globally. The response has been amazing. We couldn't be happier about how much people are enjoying it. Also, we've got a lot of great feedback and suggestions and we're working hard to continually make improvements. We're also planning to launch the app on other platforms later this year. Overall, we've had a lot interest from investors and potential partners, and we're growing the team so we can go faster and do more.

Anything else you want to share with our readers?

Jarno:

I really want to encourage everyone to try out the app, leave a review in the App Store, and contact us directly if you have any feedback. We really think there is a need for a fresh approach to web browsing that combines relevancy and serendipity. And we really want to hear what you think.

Marko:

The other day I read this question on Quora and I felt like I should write an answer. So I took like 10 min to write an answer. Actually a very short answer but apparently it was well received. That's why I decided to go a bit more into details about this here.

How do you rationalize design choices to non-designers?

The short answer is: simply explain what the benefit of the design/UX change will be. This is the essence. Why, you ask? Because by doing so you can give rationale, so that people will understand better.

It's a bit similar to how you would (or should) treat children. They ask questions. They want to learn. You don't help them by just giving them an annoyed 'because it is like this'. Give rationale. 'Why can't I have dessert before dinner, daddy?' - 'Because then you would already be full and wouldn't be able to eat the healthy part of the meal.' See, easy.

It works like this with almost anything else. And design is no exception. So, for design rationales could be:

It takes less clicks for the user to reach his goal.

Benchmarking has shown that positioning element x at place y is common and the user therefore doesn't need to learn new behavior.

A/B testing has shown better click-through rate.

User testing has proven that the change makes task n easier for the users.

...

What will often happen, is that somebody else - often a product guy or dev, or even another designer - will come with a counter proposal. And often - especially in a review meeting, etc. - they will simply say what solution comes to their mind in this very moment (yes, the first thought often is the right one but some well invested hours of thinking about something can go a long way and in the end... well, this is a topic for another blog post).

What I usually do is thinking the counter-proposal through - right in this moment. Just go through it in your mind, step by step. I also consider edge cases.

The first Founder2be event that was held in Lagos and Africa on the 11th of August 2013 was obviously a big hit as reflected in the response to the second event on the 24th of November. The first event was fully booked in 5 days, after 3 days, you couldn't get a ticket for the second event. The first event was over booked by 100% and even though the capacity of the second event was increased by 40%, it was still overbooked by 120%. Those fortunate enough to get a ticket made for an amazing crowd as witnessed by in the event's pictures.

The first Founder2be co-founder meet-up in Houston kicked off with a special student edition. The event happened at RED Labs, a startup accelerator for the University of Houston community.

At 6 pm, the room was packed with college students of different majors. It was not difficult breaking the ice, interaction started right away and small groups were formed. Students introduced themselves to as many people as they could, grabbed some food and joined in small groups. The house activity for the night was the 1-minute pitching session. The format of the activity was to discuss a problem in 20 seconds, their solution in 30 seconds and what qualities they are looking for in their co-founder in the remainder of the time.

Many business ideas were presented and one of the best parts of the event was that many students agreed that they came up with ideas for a start-up at the event; once they saw the atmosphere, ideas started rushing in.

After that, everyone engaged in free casual pitching. As the night grew older, smaller groups were formed, common grounds were found and co-founders were matching.

The first co-founder finding event by Founder2be in Estonia was a huge success. We had around 25 people at the Garage48Hub co-working space in Tallinn: a mix of developers, designers and business/marketing folks. The evening kicked off with lessons learned from Riina Einberg, general manager of ZeroTurnaround and a true team building pro. At least half of the audience seemed touched by what Riina had to say about "lonely-wolf"-type people - this seemed like a topic worthy of a separate workshops. About a third of participants then chose to do a 1-min slideless pitch on their startup idea: we had everything from hi-tech electronics to a platform connecting artists to the business world. And the evening continued with semi-moderated speed dating, where people in groups of 3 introduced themselves to each other in 1-minute sessions. This fluently turned into the main part of the evening: good old networking. This continued for more than an hour and a group of 8 ended up having late dinner together in a nearby pub. It's too early too tell how many new partnerships got started, but good many people appeared to have good many good chats. A successful evening, then. Big thanks to everyone for coming, to Garage48Hub for hosting us, to Riina Einberg for sharing her observations, to Veinisõber for providing social lubrication, and to our MC Andrus who organized the entire event.

Finding the right team is one of the most important factors for any successful startup. That’s why every Startup Weekend begins with participants forming teams to work on the ideas being pitched for the next 54h.

We are now teaming up with Startup Weekend in Helsinki to get even more participants to join what will be an amazing weekend from Nov 22nd to 24th and turn ideas into projects and startups.

Attending a Startup Weekend is a great opportunity for anyone wanting to or even just thinking whether to start or join a startup. It's an event you should not miss.

And now you can start looking for designers, developers, marketers and many others already in advance right on the Startup Weekend Helsinki website. See someone you’d like to have on your team? Invite him or her to attend the event with you.

Several of the ideas that started out at Startup Weekends already turned into successful startups with team members we helped put together. Déjàmor, for example, reached six figure revenues in less than a year.

Register for Startup Weekend Helsinki today. And invite someone else to come along.

Good ideas can strike anywhere, not only when you are focused on trying to come up with a solution to a problem. The best ideas come to own problems whenever and wherever you encounter them. That’s why we decided to partner with Idea Growr.

Idea Growr is a great app for Android devices, which lets you quickly capture an idea wherever you are and jot down notes as you keep thinking about them. And as your idea matures, you might want to turn it into a project or even a startup.

Based on our experience with literally thousands of ideas on Founder2be, we decided to contribute the “Idea To Startup” question pack to Idea Growr to help you consider some things you might want to think about as you develop your idea into a startup. The question pack is available for free inside the app. And since ideas often lead to wanting to team up with a co-founder, we are glad to be contributing co-founder matching to Idea Growr as well. Idea Growr is published by the Applits App Ideas Competition.

Montreal's first Founder2be co-founder meetup was a great success! :-)

Notman House proved to be an ideal location. It is not only "the" location most associated with entrepreneurship and startups in Montreal, it's also a beautiful space very well situated, near the Sherbrooke / St-Laurent corner, always bustling with activity. The event kicked off around 6:30pm, with most of the attendees on site about 30 minutes later. The discussion was free and involved ever-changing groups of people: Developers with existing apps looking for a commercial partner, as well as people with past experience in investment banking discussing their desire to either join a project, or materialize their ideas with the help and partnership of a technical co-founder. The room's activity was briefly interrupted so that everybody could present themselves and their interests. This proved fruitful as new groups emerged immediately after this short break -- developers talking to business folks, UX experts talking to startup entrepreneurs looking for design and usability help, etc. All in all, about two hours of discussion amongst the many groups provided for a wonderful opportunity to learn about a tiny fraction of Montreal's busy startup life, and to meet a lot of wonderful, hard-working, enthusiastic people. Looking forward to the next one already.

The first Founder2be co-founder matching event in Shanghai was held in Tianshan park this Sunday. Nik and his team did a great job hosting the event, our first outdoors event, too.

For all Shanghai entrepreneurs who did not have the chance to attend, read Nik's summary of the first event and make sure to signup online and receive an invitation to the next one:

Not only did we have luck with the weather, we also attracted a great bunch of active attendees. I would like to thank all the people who came and took part in the event. You made all the planning and effort worth it.

We met up at 5pm in Tianshan Park, with some attendees dropping in later on. We also managed to attract a couple of China based incubators and people willing to invest in teams with great ideas. Two organizations offered us a place to hold our future events and the chance to use their channels to reach out to more people. Having a co-founder matching meeting while sitting on the grass might sound unorthodox, but it was the team’s idea and actually worked very well. You can consider that for your next Founder2be co-founder matching event in your city.

After a short presentation the organizers introduced Founder2be’s awesome platform to find a co-founder online and how it can help us on our path to entrepreneurship.

We had a great group of 25 people joining us which provided for a very friendly atmosphere where even the more shy of us had the chance to speak out and share their thoughts. There were people from a variety of industries and backgrounds present bringing with them a wealth of information and know-how.

Thank YOU everyone for making the very first co-founder matchmaking event by Founder2be in Africa a big success! A big thanks goes to all our dear speakers, everyone who attended to listen, share their experiences, ideas and skills, and, of course, Chinedu and Emeka, our ambassadors in Lagos.

With the official kick off at 4pm on the 11th of August 2013 the venue was packed with over 50 co-founder candidates eager to find their match. Zanzi Bar & Grill, a lounge and bar offering a laid back atmosphere on a cool Sunday evening in Lekki Phase 1, Lagos, Nigeria provided the perfect background for the event (see the pictures). To guide everyone and set off the mood, the event started with short 10 min talks by select invited guest speakers coming from various backgrounds ranging from legal to information technology-but all biased to business creation.:

George Akomas jr, who among other things is a strategist, trainer, and entrepreneur biased to start-ups. He spoke on ‘Conceive. Connect. Create: Ideas2Business’.

Bob Anikpo, a high-flying professional, who enjoys offering strategic management and leadership talks to young aspiring entrepreneurs. He works with Chevron, and has a lot of experience managing large teams on major capital projects. In his talk, he shared case studies of people locally who took advantage of changes in the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry to start up innovative companies.

Anthony Onyeoghene, a legal practitioner and investment banker who consults and advices start ups. His talk was titled ‘Before You Press Play: Legal Considerations’.

Dika Oha who is a serial IT entrepreneur. He helped start DealDey, a popular local deal site and acted as the VP Tech & Product Strategy for a while. He recently founded EOS (E-Commerce Outsource Service) Ltd, a company offering e-commerce services to retailers. He spoke from his vast experience on ‘Finding Your Co-founder’.

There were loads of questions! The talks got everyone buzzing and led into the networking games which were so much fun! The attendees were broken off into small groups for discussion and were reshuffled after 30minutes. A lot of them didn't want to change groups - they were bonding already!

The event was planned to end officially by 7:00 pm but carried on much later mostly because people didn't want to leave and everyone was so caught up in the networking, having a great time. As usual at our events around the globe, the #1 question as the evening drew to a close: When will the next event in Lagos take place? The answer is: soon!

Make sure you're among the first to get an invitation for the next event by joining our co-founder finding community online. Tickets for this event were all gone two weeks in advance.

Last weekend, we held our first co-founder matching event in Tijuana, Mexico. Leo, our local ambassador, hosted a wonderful group of software engineers, marketers, designers and folks from the non-profit field.

The evening was one big huddle of networking and everybody getting to know everybody in an informal setting. Even one of the venue's DJs participated quickly adding even more people with a diverse background.

We talked about the crazy adventures that working in a startup can be, and how you sometimes have this lingering stage fright every now and then. Everyone was in great spirits, having a blast.

Several people decided to team up for future projects and it was quickly decided to have another co-founders meetup soon. Register now for an invitation to the next event or find your co-founder online already now.

Attend one of our upcoming co-founder matching events around the globe. Host an event in your city and become an ambassador for entrepreneurship.

The first Founder2be co-founder matching event was held in Varna, Bulgaria. Around forty startup enthusiasts and founders gathered at the swanky Palm Beach bar for an evening of networking and idea sharing. Among the attendees were experienced startup founders with several ventures behind their back as well as aspiring entrepreneurs looking for the right opportunity and team to join.

In addition to local talent, some guests from as far as Prague, London and New York attended and shared plans about their business ventures. Our Varna ambassador, Daniela Stefovska, introduced the Founder2be platform to attendees and encouraged those entrepreneurs actively looking for a cofounder or team members to join. The feedback from the event has been quite positive and participants inquired about follow up events in Varna as well as in the capital Sofia.