The material reflects the latest collaboration framework and it consolidates 20+ years of entrepreneurial experience ranging from a sole entrepreneur position to early-stage investor. Much of the content has been applied in my roles as Entrepreneur in Residence with companies like Asics, Google Campus, and London Sports.
Notable alumni: Rei do Pitaco, Freeze, and HomeThings
<aside> 🥇 “Having Daniel as a mentor is more like having an extra co-founder, he’s always there to help us and extremely focused on the solution of the problems, hands-on and ready to tackle any problem that we might be stuck, not only that but also connecting us to the right people in any area needed.” - Kiko Augusto - Co-founder Rei do Pitaco
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<aside> 🌎 “Dan has been a huge help to our business. We’ve had lots of really great intros and advise from him, but most importantly he challenges how we think about and approach problems, making us a better management team” - Matt Aubrey - Co-founder HomeThings
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<aside> ☎️ “As a serial entrepreneur, Daniel knows exactly how to help us when it matters the most. He is the type of guy who always knows another guy, whether it’s an investment, system referral, knowledge, or even client referral. For Frezze, his connections with the right investors were substantial for the company’s next step” - Elson Soares - Co-founder Frezze.
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We design our collaboration with founders around long-term goals and short-term milestones. It starts with a clear target in place which could be a vision for the next 5-10 years.
Once the vision is in place we break it down into cycles and each cycle will have its own set of milestones from which we start to create the OKR's. A way to imagine this is that we define what success looks like at the end of the cycle and then we measure our trajectory towards this success through the OKR’s. For a VC-backed company, the end of the cycle might represent a new round of funding.
Now that we know where we are heading it's time to prioritise what's truly important at this stage - which I believe to be the most critical challenge for early-stage founders.
We build a company profile with all the key data, insights and ideas. We explore the problem they want to solve, the thesis behind the business, and map all the core assumptions to be validated.
It's also very important to know the team, spend some time with them, and understand how they fit together - throughout the early days they will be challenged on their ability to recruit, develop and lead people.
From a very personal angle, I suggest exploring the human psychology space, leadership literature, and growth mindset - all the best founders I have collaborated with are curious, driven, and willing to rethink their assumptions when challenged.