One of the most important characteristics of being an entrepreneur is adaptability. While this can take many different forms over the course of your startup’s lifecycle, it’s especially important when you’re still building out your MVP or cultivating a customer base for your product.
Another characteristic that goes hand-in-hand with adaptability is being a good listener. By being receptive to feedback, you can pivot your solution to truly tackle the problem that’s at the heart of your hypothesis. This is critical because no one is going to want to buy or use—let alone invest in—a flashy technology that’s not actually deriving value.
Alina Guidu and Saleha Jaweid are two entrepreneurs who put value creation at the center of their missions, embracing a “fail fast” mentality to pivot their respective businesses and ensure their tools and services are driving maximum value to their target markets.
Alina and Sal join What The Tech as part of our Founders & Friends series, where we encourage a member of our network to invite a new friend on the mic to share their founder stories and get their take on building a successful startup in today’s market!
Joining us first is our friend Alina Guidu, CEO of Muze, a platform that enables Independent artists to release music and connect directly with their fans, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers in the music industry and ensuring artists get access to up to 90% of their work’s revenue. She’s an experienced entrepreneur with a demonstrated history of driving success in the media and Web3 industries, and I’m excited to learn how she’s putting these skills to use disrupting the way music is shared in the twenty-first century.
Joining Alina and me is Saleha Jaweid, who is a Toronto-based IT Operations Rockstar with a wealth of experience driving innovation across Canada, where she’s focused on creating highly productive technology teams. She’s currently DIrector of Operations, Product Engineering at Topl, the world’s first blockchain built for tracking, tokenizing, and monetizing positive impact. She has worked with many different companies and startups as both a tactical team member and funder—including as Co-Founder for F3 Ventures— helping them become operationally savvy and inculcate a Lean-Agile mindset.
For both Alina and Saleha, there is a lot of R&D and innovative tech involved in their current missions, and I can’t wait to learn about what they’re working on today, how they got into the startup space in the first place, and their goals for the future!
Fail faster and pivot
As Alina Guidu of Muze explains, startups need to be ready to iterate and “fail faster” so that they can pivot their product to drive true value and have a meaningful impact in the market. Simply put, there is no time to waste when building a startup, and waiting to evolve your product or solution could result in your business ultimately failing to launch.
No matter where your sources of funding come from, you need to be accountable to your investments and be able to explain returns and outcomes. This goes for both private investors and government funding, as the totals you receive will be dictated by your ability to drive results and deliver upon your hypothesis.
Watch the full interview with Alina and Sal on Boast’s YouTube Channel Here.
To understand how to tap into funding that can help drive innopvation at any stage of your startup lifecycle, download our ebook today.
