Hattie Willis | Co-Founder @ IfWeRaise, Host @ Not My First Guess podcast, Founder @ GuessWorks | How To Challenge The Odds When They’re Stacked Against You

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded podcast we talk to Hattie Willie, who is deeply involved in the ongoing support and development of founders navigating the early stage ecosystem from a capital, personal narrative and wellbeing point of view.

 

Drawing on that broad experience, we explore how a typical founder has to experience and endure wave after wave of rejection. Which means that psychologically they to have a degree of resilience that is too commonly unacknowledged let alone understood, when charting a course to launch their startup and navigate trying to secure early stage venture.

 

Added to that, we discuss when you enter that investment room and deal conversation say as a woman or from a minority background, those odds are often inherently and substantively stacked against you. Where long held confirmation biases unfortunately still hold much influence and sway on deal flow and decision making.

 

We try to reframe one of the key assumptions that puts strain on founder and an expectation that is baked into most investment conversations. 

 

To suggest that we need to understand that the founder that charts a complex path into launching a venture, is very often not the same founder to operationally grow and scale that venture - and more often than not should not be expected to be so.

 

Building on this, we question is it time to redefine a different version of and model for what constitutes and successful founder and if in doing so, could we collectively unlock and tap into the current latent 'idling capacity' of the venture ecosystem as a whole.

Connect further with Hattie:

> https://www.ifweraise.com/

> https://www.linkedin.com/in/hattie-willis-she-her-2b47b376/

> https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/fundraising-as-a-diverse-founder-with-guests/id1622164990?i=1000584583714