A PATH THAT LED TO MENTORING AND GOOD RESULTS
Tags: Startup, Entrepreneurship, Cesawards, Storytelling

A PATH THAT LED TO MENTORING AND GOOD RESULTS

We are all aware of the concepts that differentiate one startup from any other enterprise. Usually, they must be young, innovative and aim to scale. Maybe, for this reason, 88% of the European Startups that are constantly expanding consider internationalizing their business, according to the 2018 EU Startup Monitor.

The growing process seems easily solved on paper, but the reality is much more challenging. Scaling was the main topic of the CESAwards 2019 Summit that took place in Romania and enlightened many common questions. In order to scale, it is essential to have good planning and to be prepared to deal with adversities.

We invited dr. Karola Kassai — who integrated CESAward jury board this year — to talk about her vision about the mentoring exercise. She started as an entrepreneur and today she is also an advisor, managing KassaiLaw.

Through her diversified point of view and valuable experience, she guided us towards major success keys, attention points and important tools to help growing and thriving.

When have you decided to become an entrepreneur?

I already come from an entrepreneurial family: my father is a serial entrepreneur, with a number of successful projects and businesses behind him, so the mindset and the lifestyle have always been very natural to me. Still, however, it wasn’t my first choice. The big turning point came during my years as a trainee lawyer: I was working at a big, classic international law firm at that time and I quickly realized that I never could be onboard with that environment for many reasons so I was actively searching for new directions the entire time.

One day I saw a movie at an event organized by an accelerator. The movie took the viewer on a journey throughout a startupper’s life, and I was captivated and inspired by the dynamics, creativity, flexibility and challenging nature of being an entrepreneur to the point where I knew there was no turning back: following my father’s footsteps, starting my own firm is the only way for me. In other words, building my own dream so that I can help others realize theirs. That is how KassaiLaw was born.

What are the most common mistakes startups usually make?

Even though there is a lot of public talk about the reasons why startups fail, an enormous recurring mistake amongst founders is being so absorbed by their idea that they blindly follow it, forgetting to pay attention to the actual market need and they either try to make something extraordinary or something completely not in line with the customers’ expectations.

They think that what they’re making is what the customer wants, but it’s not true. Creating the need is hard; it worked for Steve Jobs but a success story like his is not going to happen on every corner. You need to know your customer so that you can make the right product.

Another core topic which might seem very boring but for some reason, we still have to talk about it over and over again is pitching.

I have seen many teams who get upset and basically offended when we suggest that we should do a pitch training together and they say: oh no, not that again, we know everything about pitching, we don’t need that. Then you make the pitch and it doesn’t work. On the other hand, when a team knocks on your door at 8 pm that they are going to attend the yearly Forbes competition tomorrow and they would like to ask for your help with their pitch, then you burn the midnight oil together and you get the message the next day that “we won!!!” worth all the struggle.

What challenges do you have to overcome while mentoring startups?

Since the teams still frequently become overly focused on a specific idea and ignore feedback from the market as mentioned above, they become discouraged when things get a little difficult and want to throw out the entire idea and start over. As a mentor, you need to know how to bring the team back to their objectives and remind them why they even started in the first place so that they don’t get too caught up in the challenges.

Another interesting tendency is that a huge percentage of startups immediately want to go to a VC for money, at the very beginning of their whole entrepreneurial journey, even though the VC-model seems to be broken. It is very interesting that there are US statistics which show that only 0,107% of American startups succeed with VC, i.e. produce any positive return on investment to investors in 10 years.

A VC is not necessarily the best solution for your business and before jumping into something, you need to think about what really the best financing solution in that particular case is. This problem has come up so often that we devoted an own blog article at KassaiLaw to provide some guidance on the aspects to consider when thinking about VC-financing. Trying to sway the founders in the right direction when the VC-model is engraved into their minds is challenging, but that is why a mentor’s life is never boring.

And then there’s the obvious one: when teams forget to listen to what their advisors tell them and ignore all suggestions — which often leads to failures. Sometimes you have to fight against the urge of wanting to ask the question: why did you even hire an advisor if you won’t listen to what they say? Of course, we as mentors also understand that it is very difficult to deal with potentially conflicting advice from different mentors. That is one of the first lessons you have to learn during your journey so we have decided to cover the topic in another blog article very soon.

How do you turn a failure into a learning opportunity?

You face it. There’s nothing shameful about making mistakes, it’s completely normal.

There’s still a tendency in Europe to be particularly secretive and ashamed about mistakes and failures, however, there are more and more initiatives promoting the exact opposite: that we need to speak up about them. I agree with that mindset. I usually tell my clients that the reason they hire an advisor is to help them avoid mistakes that others have already made.

Even though mistakes don’t always necessarily turn into a learning opportunity immediately, but they will certainly prove to be very useful in the long run and that is what we all should aim for, don’t we?

When did you realize that you were making an impact?

It’s honestly really hard to choose a certain point of realization. I guess, if I really had to, I’d say it was when the first company we built up from an idea hand in hand with the founders made it to Forbes Magazine in Hungary. It’s always fulfilling to see the first coffee meeting turning into something real, something big, and knowing it is the result of us working hard together. I couldn’t be prouder of all of these successful founder teams, and I’m happy to guide them through the challenges and celebrate all victories together with them.

Tell us about an accomplishment that has shaped your career.

One of the biggest in this category definitely has to be my first startup weekend. I was just starting to set foot in the whole ecosystem, I didn’t know anybody, had no network, or startup experience. In short, I was a total rookie. Well, everybody has to start somewhere, right? With that thought in mind, I acted on my dream and applied for an American competition hosted in Budapest at an early summer weekend.

I quickly formed a small team and took an idea that we have talked about a week before with some of my friends. With my first pitch ever at the end of the event, we won the competition, despite the fact that the field was packed with startup veterans. It was a huge success with media coverage, investor meetings and lots of friendship requests on social media. This was the best validation for my gut feeling that this is my way.

What do you wish to accomplish within the next year?

I like to be ambitious but still realistic.

The truth is, since I’m originally from Budapest, Hungary will always have a special place in my heart, but because I work with startups all over Europe, especially the Nordics, I see that the whole regional startup ecosystem in the CEE has still a lot to do in order to be able to successfully compete globally, or even within the EU. My goal for 2020 is to help move forward this process and better the CEE and especially the Hungarian ecosystem. Some great things have already happened: it was a real honour to be invited to be part of the CESAward Jury board this year and I’ve also been approached by Hungarian angel ecosystem builders to brainstorm together. Hopefully, something great will come out of that cooperation.

My other goal is to fulfil all the requests from universities, accelerators and other entities we get regarding KassaiLaw Entrepreneurship Academy which we launched during the fall this year. The Academy was created as an answer to the increasing number of invitations from different actors of the European startup ecosystem to make workshops, presentations or panel talks in order to share experience and knowledge together. Now we concentrate on the early-bird education in the form of travelling workshops, but later on, we will introduce courses for entrepreneurs in growth and mature stage. We are all super excited about this project.