A common mistake founders make is building a product and going after customers before they fully explore the problem, local leaders in Philadelphia say.
Before thinking about growth and scaling, founders need to step back and make sure what they’re offering is a logical solution for an actual problem people face, Sylvester Mobley, managing partner at Plain Sight Capital, said on a panel at Innovation Weekend’s Capital House last Friday.
“I see a lot of companies who build a product really well,” Mobley said. “They build an amazing product, but never ask if we were building the right thing.”
Hosted by entrepreneur support org 1Philadelphia in partnership with Ben Franklin Technology Partners, the fifth edition of Innovation Weekend brought four days of programming for Philly’s tech and startup ecosystem. As part of it, Capital House was a daylong conference focused on connecting startup leaders and investors and sharing tips for fundraising.
Mobley’s panel, titled “What Growth Requires: The Case for Capability,” focused on steps founders can take to build a solid foundation for their company. One of the most important steps: Come up with a clear problem statement based on research.
And it doesn’t have to be complicated, per Mobley, who invests in early-stage startups. A good way to start? Just Google it.
“That’s a really quick sanity check,” he said. “Should I be doing this?”
However, there has to be a limit on how long entrepreneurs spend on the validation process, added co-panelist Tiara Durham, director of commercialization programming at The Science Center.
Many founders spend too much time working on something that isn’t going anywhere, she said. One way to avoid that is by choosing an end goal at the beginning of the process.
“Motion for the sake of motion [means] you’re going to burn through your cash, you’re going to burn through relationships,” Durham said. “You want to have a defined endpoint.”
Flexible founders who grow with their company
Alongside research strategy, founders’ attitudes and personalities also factor into how successfully companies will work through the validation process, according to both Mobley and Durham.
Specifically, founders need “learning velocity,” Mobley said, meaning they should be open to information that doesn’t jive with their original idea, and be able to quickly pivot to align more closely with what the market is telling them.
Mobley looks for founders who are coachable. That flexibility means they are open to critique and willing to learn.
Even when a founder is eager to learn, they might not be the right person to lead a company, Durham said.
For example, life sciences companies are often started by researchers or scientists who have deep knowledge about the problem at hand. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they know how commercialization works, she said.
In that case, founders either need to build a team that can fill the gaps or step into a different role and let someone with more experience take the reins.
“Know what you know and know what you don’t know,” Durham said. “Surround yourself with people who can pressure test that.”
