Week 7: We’re solving human motivation!

Time to read: 3 mins

This has been a super exciting week! As most of you already know, I’ve applied for two startup accelerators that help you match with a co-founder, fundraise, build, scale and a lot more. Last week I’d had an interview with the India Head of Entrepreneur First – Rahul Samat. Crazily, the co-founder and CEO of EF, Matt Clifford, was visiting India this week and Rahul invited me over to a dinner in Bangalore to meet the EF team, some other super interesting founders and Matt.

A very interesting things happened in the process:

I obviously had to explain in a lot of different conversations what I’m working on building, and as I did it more, the pitch started to work itself out and get better. Happy to announce I now have a clear statement on what I’m trying to solve. It’s human motivation!

My work in the last 8 years has been around motivation – first in politics to figure out what gets people to vote a certain way or support a certain side, then in the information warfare domain, exploring if people could be primed to even act against their own interests. This startup in a way is an extension of that. Its primary objective – figuring out what motivates people to stick to goals!

There obviously are nuances in there, but this seems like a great, huge problem to be working on that I’m super excited about!

It was also amazing just getting to experience Bangalore’s entrepreneurship space! The energy, the vibe, the exchange of ideas… you experience it and the value of your surroundings and environment become instantly obvious. No wonder huge startups are built in such specific and concentrated areas around the world – Silicon Valley, Shenzhen, Bangalore… an insight that’s also relevant to what helps motivate people in doing things.

PS: I got seated next to Matt at the dinner! Still wondering why – it was assigned seating with name cards, so not by chance. Super insightful dinner. Learnt a lot about his experience helping startup founders in so many different countries and how founders differ from one country to another. In case you’re wondering, his observation is that founders are more similar to other founders in different countries than they are to the average cultural norm of their own country!

Potential reason for the seating arrangement – Matt’s book just came out! Co-authored with EF co-founder Alice Bentinck, How to Be a Founder: How Entrepreneurs can Identify, Fund and Launch their Best Ideas, explores just how to get started on the startup journey. I’ve just picked up the Kindle version.

Takeaway:

If you’re working on a new idea, talk to people about it. I often write down what I’m thinking, and that helps clarify ideas in my head, but talking to people – it often brings new insights and actually makes your ideas better!

Also, since EF flew me out for this event, I’m hoping that means I’m getting selected!🤞 😅

Craziness continues:

It’s about to be another two weeks filled with a lot of travel! Leaving for the US tomorrow (Saturday) night. The build shall continue there, and ideally on the way too! More confident than last week that FlutterFlow is the way to go for the MVP!

A Thank You:

A huge thank you to Rahul and the entire EF team for flying me out to such an amazing evening!

If you’ve wanted to start a startup or even thought of the possibility, definitely do explore the program. The value of a program like EF are super clear to me – especially if you aren’t already in the startup ecosystem with existing networks.

Until next week,

tchau