Defeat Your Imposter Syndrome
Last year, I took over the MD position at the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC) with a view to helping shape how Ireland as a whole can better support high growth founders. We are recruiting again for the summer accelerator cohort and I wanted to pull back the curtains for a trailer on what happens inside the programme for anyone considering it.
An obvious and interesting angle would be to go through the previous programme, highlighting the people involved and how they added value to the startups. Then I stopped and wrote down three questions.
1. Who is this for?
2. What do they care about?
3. What are they worried about?
Who is this for?
Founders. Actual real people who are building interesting and ambitious things. Products that can have a real impact on a global scale. It’s a highly competitive programme with almost 400 applicants for only 7 places in the previous cohort. The odds will be similar this time around so it is important to get across what you are building succinctly and with high ambition at the core.
We invest in the successful applicants so while we are your biggest supporters, we review applicants through a venture lens. At this stage of a company there are two things that stand above all others:
Is there a big enough market? Venture Capital requires an outsized return on investment so your market opportunity must be of a scale that could give venture style returns. No-one will get their market right. The product will change, the customer segment will change and your market size will evolve the further you go. All we need is an insight into why you believe there is a big enough opportunity to explore.
The Team. Is this the right team to execute into this market quickly? All things being equal, software companies are best suited to venture returns so without technical resource on hand it is difficult for us to make an investment as the team cannot move as quickly as is necessary to get to market. This is not a hard and fast rule. You don’t have to have a technical founder in the co-founding team (it helps), but it does mean you have to be explicit in how you are going to leverage your resources to deliver the product quickly. Speed almost always trumps everything.
We also consider the cohort as a whole. Who are the best mix of people, what to they bring outside their core skills and will they have a positive influence on each other and each others businesses. The cohort effect is one of the most under-appreciated and beneficial part of joining an accelerator programme.
”By lunch time on Monday on core week 1, I felt an energy and buzz between the founders that I hadn’t felt before. This only grew as the weeks went on and I put this down to the amazing people you’re surrounded by,”
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What do they care about?
Building. Customers. Success.
One thing I hear time and time again is that early stage founders feel a kind of imposter syndrome. You are engulfed by the startup twitter bubble which is full of announcements on successful funding rounds, acquisitions, customer highlights, endless growth hack threads and self promoting aggrandisements. Most of this is so detached from where you are so there is an inevitable self reflection. We can help.
Through the programme we introduce you to hundreds of founders, mentors, investors and entrepreneurs-in-residence who will demystify the process of building a company. These are all people who have been in your shoes. They help explain how even seemingly successful entrepreneurs hacked together the MVP, ignoring conventional wisdom and trusting their intuition combined with a customer obsession. They tell their stories on the realities of raising capital and the horror stories of what happens when things go wrong. It is a real life understanding of how a startup is actually a complex system of moving parts and there is no one way. This exposure helps you focus on what really matters and gives you a roadmap on how you go from where you are now, to where you need to be. Building. Customers. Success.
”We learnt about the journey, the struggles and sometimes the dark moments on the way to their massive respective successes. I was always left feeling more motivated with the occasional dose of imposter syndrome. Never change the no recordings rule.”
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What are they worried about?
Cashflow. Equity. Sales. Product. Hiring. Investment. Go to market. Forecasting. Pitching. Everything.
”Being a founder in a startup means constantly coming across new challenges and thinking, “how the **** am I gonna do that?”, all whilst being barely perceptible to the fact that there’s many more challenges outside of your current skillset that you aren’t even aware of yet.”
I have been a founder. I know what it is like to be sitting at a screen at 4am trying to work out why an entire system has crashed and none of our customers can access their data. The all encompassing nature of building a company is not easy to explain to non-entrepreneurs. You think about it when you wake up and you think about it before you go to sleep. Looking after yourself is incredibly important for success but you can never switch off completely.
Doesn’t participating in an accelerator programme add to the chaos? Isn’t it a distraction? Is it worth it just to get €100k?
When I ask at the start of a programme “why did you apply”, the honest answer is usually “€100k”. When I ask at the end “what was the most valuable part of the last 3 months, “€100k” is NEVER the answer.
The NDRC was fantastic. The value of it is so much more than the €100k investment (even at such friendly terms) — it’s the access to Ireland’s most intelligent startup minds, the peer group of other startups, the dedication of the NDRC team, the experience of the EIRs, and the connections to almost anyone in the Irish startup scene
Yes there are times, particularly during intense core weeks, where you feel like some of the content is getting in the way of working on the business. However this is only for 3 weeks out of 12 and it gets baked in to your operating mindset — you allocate time accordingly. Its important. We expect 100% commitment and the rationale is that you need immersive exposure during small windows to get the real benefit. Ask any founder that has been through the programme if they felt it was worth the experience.
As for all the other worries, that’s why we are here. You will be guided through the programme by the core NDRC team in partnership with the Entrepreneurs in Residence who meet with you weekly, often dealing with different issues while keeping you accountable and on track. We will help you set stretch targets and always be pushing you to move faster and further.
Yes, we invest €100k on founder friendly terms but I am a firm believer that human capital is much more powerful than financial capital. If you are thinking of applying for the next programme rest assured that we will invest much more than just money. It is our time, our network and our experience to help every one of you.
So if you believe you are building a company which can have an outsized impact, that you are the team to do it and that we can help, apply now.
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