The Network Effect: How Events Can Define Opportunities

Antler's Empowering Women Entrepreneurs workshop was a masterclass in building scalable businesses. Seven founders shared their journeys and expertise, which I’ve distilled into the key takeaways.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Your network is your net worth. At every event I attend, it rings true. In our increasingly digital world, we’re consciously prioritising face-to-face interaction at events, conferences, meetups. It’s even more relevant in web3, where the latest trends are centred around the importance of the physical — both in terms of our interactions and in terms of our experiences.

This week, I was at the most impactful workshop I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. My 25 pages of scribbled notes are testament to that. Antler’s Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: Building Venture-Scalable Businesses, hosted at the Google offices at Tottenham Court Road, brought together seven incredible speakers — each with a wealth of expertise, experience, observations, and advice.

There were endless pearls of wisdom over the course of three workshops, and even more insights in the closing panel discussion featuring four female founders (as an aside, I yearn for the day when saying “founder” is just as likely to conjure up an image of a woman or non-binary individual as it is a man). I’ve tried to distill the key findings below, though I’m very mindful that this is a tiny fraction of the knowledge shared.

Understanding Investment: Susan Lin, Partner at Felix Capital

Susan Lin started with a crash course in the different types of funding rounds and investment types, but most importantly, she gave us a glimpse into what the other side of the table is looking for. It’s not just about having a great idea, it’s about having product-founder fit. It’s about having a team passionate enough — and ultimately resilient enough — to bring the idea to life.

Susan explained how VCs consider market opportunities and product differentiation, which doesn’t necessarily relate to uniqueness, but could refer to a new means of distribution, a dedicated community, an strong brand, or a “cornered resource” like top talent or IP. She reflected on what product market fit means to investors, namely how many people are facing the problem, how much are they willing to pay to solve the problem, and what percentage of the market can be realistically captured.

She also offered practical advice to those of us in the audience actively pitching investors. Standing out from the crowd comes down to personalisation and targeting. It’s imperative we deeply understand why the investor or investment company we’re reaching out to would be interested in our product and our story. The pitch needs to tell that story in a compelling way, weaving in hard numbers on the size of the opportunity and the how of why we’re the right people to address it.

Solving Real Problems: Nicole Weder, Co-founder and CPO at Accelex

Nicole Weder opened with a quote that should be obvious, but rarely is: it’s a mistake to solve a problem no one has. After all, the market is over-saturated with products and services that aren’t addressing a genuine consumer need. And while I recognise there may be an element of education required in users recognising that they have this need, it still needs to tap into a fundamental problem they’re facing.

She walked us through how Accelex achieved product market fit by continuously speaking to users, but, most importantly, filtering this feedback to identify the features that are not only true to the company’s mission and ethos, but which are replicable on a larger scale. This approach ensured that the product could evolve to meet the needs of a broader market segment, ultimately leading to better scalability and success.

Nobody Cares: Dimple Patel, CEO at NatureMetrics

Dimple Patel brought a refreshing dose of realism with her frank statement that our default go-to-market position should always be that nobody cares about our product. After we’ve reached product market fit — in her definition, that’s when there’s a problem worth solving and people caring enough about it to pay to solve it — we need to stay pessimistic, anticipating a lack of market enthusiasm, identifying what can go wrong, and building a contingency plan.

She brought several high-profile examples of successes and failures among category defining brands. Uber changed the deeply embedded behaviour of not getting into cars with strangers. This then spread to other industries like hospitality through the rise of Airbnb. Google, meanwhile, failed to launch Google Glass. She pointed to many possible reasons, including a poorly defined buyer persona and the inability or unwillingness to action user feedback. In short, it’s about understanding user behaviour, pulling levers and rewarding change, and ultimately overcoming consumer inertia.

Another key insight was her observation that companies go wrong when they lose sight of the value they’re providing and focus on the product. What you’re selling is never the product, rather it’s what the customer is being offered. Is it more time? Is it direct profit? Is it respect or reputation? This then defines how the product narrative is told.

She also focussed a significant portion of her talk on emphasising the importance of the buyer persona. Who are they? How do you reach them? How do you build trust with them? This corresponds to the segmentation of the target market. Who comes first, but how do we then change a few parameters to reach more and more users? And, ultimately, how do we learn from market signals? If we’re providing an amazing service but not retaining users, that’s a clear problem likely requiring recalibration.

Dimple, like the speakers before her, placed great importance on user feedback, but she also reiterated Nicole’s point of validating how relevant the feedback is to your product. Her suggestion was to use product metrics to understand the granularity of how users are using the product and where they see value. She made the point to listen to negative feedback, as these users have identified something you’ve overlooked. She also talked about the limitations of customer feedback when it comes to pricing — it’s always better to be priced too low than too high, because no one tells you when it’s too high, they just don’t engage.

Learning from Founders: Panel Discussion

We were then treated to a panel discussion featuring Many Lin, Co-CEO at Odin; Lauren Ladd, Founder at Shareback; Jas Schembri-Stothart, Co-founder at luna; and Alexia de Broglie, Co-founder of Your Juno. The founders shared their journeys, discussing everything from nurturing self-confidence to building up a team to avoiding burnout.

Lauren and Alexia offered two contrasting approaches to defeating imposter syndrome. Lauren opted for identifying weaknesses in her knowledge and ensuring she knows everything she’s afraid to be questioned on, whereas Alexia reminded us that our experience is our strength — we’ve been through so many challenges already that we should feel confident that we can handle anything life throws at us.

I also appreciated Alexia’s candidness regarding time management — in entrepreneurship, there’s no room for perfection, it’s about ruthless prioritisation, ensuring our focus on the 20% drives 80% of the impact. The panel shared how they applied this to building their first product, having identified a gap in the market and validated bare bones MVPs with target users.

Jas shared how her tween audience shut down her idea of a platform they’d share with their parents or guardians. Lauren told the heart-wrenching story of her first co-founder deleting the entire codebase when she got an interview with Y Combinator after he’d already resigned from the project. Mary and Alexia remembered the sleepless nights building the first prototypes to validate their idea with real users and raise funding.

Alexia’s metaphor of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks was made even more poignant by her awareness that each of the thrown spaghettis needed to be a calculated bet. She found what sticks when she and her co-founder, her sister, began rewarding users with sponsored gifts for learning on the Your Juno platform. She reminded us that first principles don’t apply to everything — after all, if it works in other industries, there’s no reason it can’t be applied in yours. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel every step of the way.

Finally, all four founders stressed the importance of taking time out, recognising that life can throw curveballs, and our health — mental or otherwise — is the most important thing. Breaks can also help us hone in on the big picture, learn faster, and synthesise data to reach key insights that will ultimately drive our business forward.

Closing Thoughts

Throughout the event, I was keenly aware of how privileged I was to be in the room where it happens. The first step to success is believing we can. I hadn’t given much thought to the possibility of starting my own business before, but just by spending a few hours with the investors, entrepreneurs, and highly motivated individuals in attendance at Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: Building Venture-Scalable Businesses, it no longer seems out of reach. The resources are out there, we just have to learn where to look. And if we surround ourselves with energising, uplifting, inspiring people, we can achieve whatever we set our minds to.