Setting entrepreneurial ambition on fire!
By: Irina Nikolovska
Tags: Startup, Founders, Startup Life, Bootcamp, Entrepreneurship

Setting entrepreneurial ambition on fire!

I come from Macedonia, a little country in the Balkans. It can sometimes feel a bit like an amusement park. We even have a pirate ship (for reasons nobody understands, the river isn’t deep enough to float a kayak down it 😜)

Skopje’s city center, which was rebuilt around 2014 to create what one could think of as the new Las Vegas 🤪

There are less than 2M people living there, so the rule is that if you don’t know somebody, one of your friends probably does, which made it pretty hard to hide what we were up to from our parents during our teenage years… 😉

So as you can imagine, the tech ecosystem in Macedonia, while surprisingly existent, is about as big as a peanut. And if you’re like a lot of other Europeans who grew up in that kind of ecosystem, where there wasn’t much education, resources or proper mindsets, you know how difficult it is to build a startup there. And even if you grew up in a bigger places like Ukraine, Poland, Croatia, or even France or Germany, you know that it feels like you’re starting from scratch every time you want to scale to another country.

The biggest reason for that is that there is no network effect that can help you fight a collective battle.

That’s why at The Family part of our mission is to help startups become truly European.

And the first step for some (maybe you?) is The Family Begins — a bootcamp to welcome ambitious entrepreneurs from all around Europe for a 3-day adventure in Berlin.

We just hosted the first session. This is how it went:

19 European founding teams, all with a working product and some traction

13 countries (Germany, France, Belgium, Romania, Croatia, Finland, Spain, Italy, etc.)

8 people from The Family

8 high-level external mentors

During the 3 days founders had the opportunity to (1) experience high-level ambition (2) get honest feedback and (3) build valuable new friendships.

At The Family we don’t believe in one-size-fits-all programs. We cringe at the thought of standard curriculums, supervised lectures and generalised talks. Our focus is on encouraging singularities and maintaining the importance of freedom in entrepreneurship. That is why the program of The Family Begins is highly focused on individuality.

Founders defined their own priorities and questions, which were then addressed during intense workshops and office hours.

Each team met with one of The Family’s Directors and got challenged on their next milestones and KPIs. It was all about pushing their mindsets and ambitions through the roof.

The workshops were kept small so that mentors could give individualised feedback to each startup. Nishant, Director of Product at Zalando, gave our startups valuable input on defining their product strategy. Karolina, Director of Product Design at Delivery Hero, kept pushing beautifully in that same direction.

Lisette, interim CEO of 8Fit, talked both about product and leadership. Sarah, COO at ultimate.ai, shared input on recruiting and ops, while Melinda, Head of Brand at 8Fit, helped the founders establish their brand strategy and taught them how to most successfully communicate it to the world.

Artem, CTO & Co-Founder at Billie, gave the founders valuable technical input. Edoardo, Head of Marketing and Sales, Habyt, revamped everybody’s sales strategies.

And then Mathew, CEO & Founder of unu, talked about growth and helped the startups revamp their next milestones while Valentin, CEO of Koudetat, helped with their UX/UI and also how to learn proactively and elevate their personal growth.

Our Family team was on fire as well. Blondy, our growth machine, shared his SEO secrets and took a look at everybody’s SEO strategies. Balthazar talked about fundraising, Alice explained to everyone what it means to discover your true startup identity…

And we got to meet amazing, inspiring teams like:

Nordic Oceanfruit, who are building the future of plant-based seafood by making eating seaweed just as normal as eating bananas — a habit that’s extremely delicious and full-on eco-friendly 😉. Founders Deniz & Jacob are launching their product in 650 supermarkets across Germany next month, so keep an eye out.

Companyon provide the best legal support for founding teams so they can focus their time and money on building awesome projects.

Soplaya is building a marketplace for high-quality restaurant suppliers, direct from farmer to chef.

AdScanner is bringing the data-driven approaches that are standard in digital advertising into TV advertising.

The objective of the bootcamp was to bring a diverse group together, strengthen intercultural bonds and promote a pay-it-forward mindset. And that’s exactly what happened.😍 People shared so much love:

As good as it was, it’s just the start! The Family Begins returns on Jan. 17–19. You can apply to join the adventure HERE! 💗

Thanks a lot team for the support: Alice Zagury, Hugo Amsellem, Balthazar, Mathias Pastor, Maxime Blondel, Valentin Richard, Gagan Bhatia & Alak 😍

And thanks Kyle Hall for the feedback 😘