James Mitra, CEO of JBM and host of the 40 Minute Mentor podcast, this week, talks to Alice Bentinck MBE, co-founder of Entrepreneur First and Code First: Girls.
Alice speaks to James about the most important traits to look for when you’re investing in talent and how to shift culturally pre-determined career paths. Also, the many benefits of having a Co-Founder with a different skill set to you and how you can make the most of this relationship.
Explaining why she founded Entrepreneur First with co-founder Matt Clifford, Alice Says: “Back in 2011, there were clear career paths for ambitious graduates. When we started Entrepreneur First, we were focusing mainly on people who had just left university, and one of the things we saw clearly was that in the US and Silicon Valley, the aspirational career path was to become a founder. Whereas in the UK, the aspirational career path is to become a consultant, or a banker, or a lawyer.”
She says that their mission is to show the world it’s missing out on some of its most impactful founders because individuals who don’t know that they could be a founder don’t tend to think about it.
Admitting that Matt and her started out clueless, Alice says: “The Lean Start-up book that is now so ingrained in everything that people do, basically came out at the same time as the Entrepreneur First, so we were sort of learning on the fly as that whole movement was coming out.
“When we first started travelling to universities and asking people whether they wanted to do this, we were so shocked and amazed that they really wanted to.”
The problem was that there was such a strong status quo in the venture and start-up so you had to have known your co-founder since you were in kindergarten, or you had to have been noodling on this problem for the last decade, which is the case for a lot of people, but not for everyone and there wasn’t an offering for them.
40 Minute Mentor is available on Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, and all major podcast platforms.
