PRODUCT PIONEERS - Part Three - Paying It Forward To The Next Generation.
Part 3 of a 3 part series offering a peek inside the minds of the builders behind Australia’s most iconic startups.
This is the final article of a three-part series on starting and building your business, with Rampersand’s product counsel leaders.
Did you miss part one? READ IT HERE.
By Rod Hamilton, Venture Partner at Rampersand
If you could start all over again, what would you change? It’s a question that every founder inevitably asks themselves. If they’re being honest, the answer would be “a lot”.
When I asked Sam Kroonenburg, Kirsten Mann, and Adam Jacobs how they would rewrite their startup story, a common theme emerged: the necessity of letting go. Of perfection, rigid plans, outdated notions, and missed connections in favour of rapid iteration, customer feedback, founder collaboration, and challenging assumptions. I can relate to this.
If I were to do it all again, I’d hesitate less. Sometimes you spend so much time and energy researching and thinking about the best thing you can build to help your customers that you don’t build anything substantial. I’d focus more on getting good ideas into customers' hands faster and worry less about those ideas being perfect.
Great momentum in 80% the right direction is better than slow momentum in the perfect direction.
Having a group that understands what you’re going through can help with letting go. In this last instalment, I asked Sam, Kirsten, and Adam why it's essential for them to pay it forward to the next generation of founders and builders and added my reflections.
What would you do differently if you had to start all over again?
‘It's easy to overthink everything, but you learn regardless - whether things go well or not,’ Kirsten Mann, the Chief Product Officer at healthcare data analytics company Prospection, reflected.
‘In my 30s, I realised the power of letting go of perfection and getting products into customers' hands as soon as possible. If I had to start over, I’d put just as much focus on pricing, go-to-market strategy and sales discussions as I would on solving the problem itself. You can have a great product that solves a real issue, but if people aren’t willing to pay for it at a sustainable price, it won’t work as a business.’ - Kirsten Mann
For Sam Kroonenburg, co-CEO and co-founder of AI advertising platform Cuttable, he would have stayed more focused on a single goal, such as building one core product to $100M ARR.
A few times, we got distracted trying to add additional businesses to the core business. I would have also spent more time with fellow founders and looked for meaningful relationships with folks on the same journey. For example, Jack Zhang (CEO of Airwallex) and I started businesses in the same city and the same year, but we didn't meet for the first time until 2022. We would have been going through many of the same things.’ - Sam Kroonenburg
‘At THE ICONIC, I was young and made many mistakes,’ admits Adam Jacobs, co-founder of THE ICONIC and now co-founder of Hatch.
‘One big thing I would have done differently is to be more thoughtful around team hiring. When we were growing quickly at THE ICONIC, we thought we needed “grey hair” leadership experience. But when you’re growing fast, you need more than paper skills and experience. You need people who are attitudinally the right fit for the stage of the company, people with a “fire in their belly”. - Adam Jacobs.
When building Hatch, Adam learned to let go of certain "sacred cows" or preconceived ideas about how the company should operate. There is so much you need to relearn in a second venture. Adam reflected that “I needed to think more like a first-time founder and be way more open-minded about what I didn’t know.”
What kind of community did you wish existed when you were starting out?
One thing that can shorten or speed up your learning curve is a community. When we started Culture Amp, we joined the Inspire9 coworking space in Richmond, which meant we were around other entrepreneurial people and businesses. We even hired several of our early people there.
But the reality was that we were making it up as we went. At the time, there weren’t any communities or groups of people who had done the journey of scaling a tech startup. It’s incredible the difference it makes to have someone tell you “oh yeah, I’ve dealt with that situation before”, or “I made this mistake,” and “ the thing that helped me was…” or “you should talk to….”
‘I would have loved a network of fellow product-focused founders to trade notes with. Access to people with similar skill sets to mine, so I could learn how they solved problems outside their skill sets. A community of founders at the same early stage, to help you not feel so small/insignificant when it felt like almost everything was a barrier.’ - Sam Kroonenburg
Sam points to the value that building a network of “first wave” employees, not just founders, would have added. ‘It would have been great to have a single network of experienced operators who wanted to be in the first 1-20 employees of a startup… not the founder types, but the "first wave" - it's always super hard to find these folks and was much more challenging when I started in 2015.
Kirsten can relate, stating: ‘I would have loved a space where people openly shared their wins and their struggles, missteps, and the hard lessons they learned along the way. A community that embraced raw, honest conversations about what happens when building a product and a company.’
Why is it important to support the next generation of founders?
We’ve always punched above our weight in Australia and New Zealand and are now at a point where we’ve built some phenomenal businesses. The reward for our success is that the next generation of founders has even higher expectations than those who came before them.
Adam also sees this as an opportunity and privilege, stating: ‘I genuinely believe in the opportunity for technology to shape our future society positively. There is a sort of rising tide lifts all boats effect here, where if founders can help founders, then those technology companies can get stronger and can do a better job of solving the social problems they want to solve.
‘It’s a privilege being able to provide some hindsight and bigger picture clarity and wisdom to first time founders who are putting their heart into a big and scary endeavour. - Adam Jacobs
Kirsten believes giving back is essential, particularly in the age of AI. ‘The next wave of founders will need to navigate this changing landscape with strong problem-solving skills, commercial acumen, and the ability to build teams that challenge the status quo. Sharing knowledge and experience ensures they don’t have to start from scratch every time.
‘I love Australia, it is a beautiful country, but it doesn't stay that way without working hard. The world is full of talented people working hard, and we must compete. I want Australia to be a place of innovation, excellence, science and progress.’
‘I had to leave Australia in 2005 to find interesting tech jobs. I love to see that already now, 20 years later — there is a growing and thriving industry and people with ambition don't need to leave to succeed. We must build on this and go from "decent industry" to "one of the best in the world".’- Sam Kroonenburg
Did you miss part one? READ IT HERE.
At Rampersand, we genuinely believe that Australia is entering a golden decade for tech and innovation. If you’re a founder wondering what’s going on in the minds of modern VCs, this next post is for you!
Want to connect or get in touch to talk about funding for your early-stage tech startup? Get in touch! Our inboxes are always open.