I am building my second technology company and, this time, I’m far less patient.
Experience changes your tolerance for things that aren’t working. I want decisions to happen faster, I question assumptions earlier and, when something is clearly wrong, I am less inclined to wait and hope it fixes itself.
I think of it less as impatience and more as immediacy.
The first time you build a company, many lessons only become obvious after you have paid for them in time, money or lost momentum.
The second time, you still don’t have all the answers, but you recognise the patterns sooner.
The biggest lesson from my first company, iVendi, was about people.
I made some excellent hires, but I also made appointments that weren’t right and took too long to address them.
In an early-stage company, every hire has an outsized impact.
Startup leaders need to make decisions with incomplete information, stay close to the work and take responsibility for outcomes.
I want people who behave like owners
This time, I look harder for people who behave like owners.
Experience matters, but only when combined with adaptability, pace and personal accountability.
I’m also quicker to have an honest conversation when something isn’t working.
And sometimes the person is not the problem – the role, expectations or support need to change.
My first business expanded from the UK into Europe, but internationalisation was difficult.
The product required significant localisation and customisation, meaning every new market demanded considerable time and capital.
That experience shaped an early decision with Yoono. I wanted to solve a problem that existed internationally without reinventing the core product for every new jurisdiction.
Some principles have carried over from my first company.
I still favour recurring revenue, regulated markets and problems with a clear imperative to solve, all of which influenced the kind of opportunity I looked for when starting Yoono.
But this time, I have also paid closer attention to the potential value of each customer. It sounds obvious, but experience taught me how consequential that can be. A large market is not necessarily an attractive one if the economics of serving it do not support sustainable growth.
One thing I was determined about right from the outset was technical leadership. A startup needs someone who can be hands-on when resources are constrained and priorities move quickly, while also building the architecture, team and standards required for a much larger organisation. Those capabilities do not always come together.
The person who can create a brilliant first version is not automatically the person who can develop a global organisation.
When the ambition is to move quickly, technical leadership affects product velocity, recruitment, architecture and culture.
Experience has not made me pessimistic, but it has made me more interested in what could go wrong. What if an incumbent responds? What if the main route to market stops working? What if capital becomes harder to obtain? What if the capability we consider distinctive becomes commonplace?
You can’t anticipate every shock, but you can avoid unnecessary dependencies, preserve options and understand where the business is genuinely vulnerable.
The founder’s job is to understand which game the company is playing. That is the biggest difference for me at Yoono.
I recognise the questions earlier
I don’t feel I have all the answers, but I do recognise the questions earlier.
Is this creating real customer value? Can it scale internationally? Are we properly funded for the opportunity? Can we build distribution faster than others can copy the technology? What happens if one of our central assumptions is wrong?
And, above all, are we moving quickly enough?