Emmanuel Orozco

Learnings after breaking up with my cofounder

May 03, 2024

A few weeks ago, I joined Antler, a pre-seed/pre-idea start up accelerator based on Paris.

It’s a 3 months cohort where the main idea is to group up and start building companies together.

For me, it was an amazing idea. I’ve never found a cofounder so I group up and started a company together.

That’s how I found my cofounder.

It was a 5 weeks process of discovering things together.

Unfortunately, the relationship did not work. But the process lead me to the following learnings:

A CTO can also been a CEO. I’ve always considered myself a tech guy. How ever, while building a product in a sector that I have experience and I am very passionate about (education), there is a gut feeling that just tells you where to go. Listen to it. Don’t debate. Product CEO is called.
Chemistry is not enough, complementary skills it’s what matters. With my co founder, we both had a very strong vision on where we wanted this company to go. Which lead to continuous arguments (and blockers) and what steps to take next.
Building > Customer Interviews. One or two customer interviews are ok to understand an industry processes. But after each interview there is this 3 second silence: “Then what?”. This is where you should have something to show. Measure interest from there.
Finding urgent needs. Having a product that is a “nice to have” will lead to zero sales. Finding that needs to be fixed/done right now is what will bring you from 0 to 1. i.e. We focused on corporate upskilling learning. Companies want their employees to learn new stuff right? Is it urgent? Is it a business priority? Then, the story is different.
Group learning is the key. I’ve always struggled with discipline to keep building. But when I found a cohort building the same stuff as me, it just worked. I woke up in the morning, went to the office and started working. It just worked. Even if you are solo. You are not alone.

So what’s next?

Keep building things.

I am tired of taking to customers to see what they need.

I want to have some assumptions and build something fast, test, take what it works and discard the rest.

Start Up way the say