The Breakdown

Four Biggest Startup Myths

Myth #1: founders come from wealthy backgrounds

Jan Koum (Co-founder of WhatsApp), grew up in Ukraine without electricity or hot water. In 2009, he co-founded WhatsApp, which initially struggled but eventually became a global phenomenon. In 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion.

Rags to Riches Timeline

You don’t need to come from money to make money.

Myth #2: founders can do it alone

Jack Ma (Alibaba Group) was rejected by Harvard ten times and even by KFC when they first came to China. It took him a long time before he created Alibaba, one of the biggest e-commerce giants out there. He found along the way that working with other people and building his community was the secret to his troubles.

Rejection to Acceptance Timeline

1. Showing Resilience:

2. Seizing Opportunities:

3. The Birth of Alibaba:

Today, Ma’s legacy is as a visionary entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Myth #3: founders don’t spend their own money

We hear about genius founders raising millions for their startups.

Some of them just kids out of college. Never had a job. Never had a boss.

*VC investor immediately wires $3m*

Not always. Sometimes, they put their money where their mouth is.

Enter Founder of Under Armour, Kevin Plank.

1. Early Life and Athletics:

2. The Idea Takes Shape:

3. From Basement Startup to Business Success:

4. Overcoming Financial Struggles:

Revenue in Q3 of 2023 was $1.5bn…

Not bad for a college athlete from Maryland.

Myth #4: founder get’s the easy jobs

Sometimes, VC backed founders get the reputation that all they do is:

But, in most cases, they are doing things that don’t scale to test customer behaviour.

Here’s Christina Cacioppo, the CEO and Co-Founder of Vanta 

Vanta is a company that specializes in security and compliance automation and today’s sponsor. Download their compliance checklist here for free

Five years ago, Cacioppo received a message from a customer alerting her to a small glitch in their automated email system. The email, meant to provide daily updates on the customer's Vanta account activity, had mistakenly featured the wrong company name. Cacioppo responded - “Sorry we have a bug, I’ll fix that now”.

What the customer didn't realize was that the supposedly "automated" email had actually been meticulously crafted by Cacioppo herself in the early hours of the morning. Rising before dawn each day, she set her alarm for 5:45 a.m. to craft these emails by hand, ensuring they met the standards of excellence she envisioned for Vanta's customer experience.

Sometimes you have to be willing to get up at dawn each day to write dozens or hundreds of handwritten emails to set the tone of customer experience in your company.

That’s it for today! Reply to this email at founders@ideahub.tech with any questions!

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