Predicting the future and why Harvard says founders barely matter in start-up success
Your weekly guide to start-ups and venturing
Welcome to Heroa, a weekly newsletter for women in start-ups and venturing. If you enjoy what you read, please do share this newsletter with friends and like it above!
Here’s what’s covered today.
How you can use Future’s thinking to win in your personal and professional life
Why founders barely matter in start-ups success according to a new Harvard study
The future of online shopping and bringing VR shopping to life
This week I’ve been researching Futures thinking. Thinking about the future isn’t new. In fact, research suggests that thinking about the future—a process known as prospection—can help us lead more fulfilled lives in both our personal and professional lives.
Short-term thinking is, however, the primary focus of both the private and public sectors. Businesses are focused on quarterly performance metrics and governments are focused on the next election.
Futures thinking offers ways of proactively addressing, even helping to shape the future. It isn’t about looking into a crystal ball. Ultimately the future cannot be reliably predicted. What we can do is to foresee a range of possible futures. Perhaps the most pertinent action of all is to understand and focus on what is most likely to unfold and to plan business actions based on these. Some possibilities as to how the future will unfold are predictable or obvious, such as the reduced possibilities to live and work abroad in Europe for UK citizens, following the UK’s departure from the European Union.
More recently a variety of thinkers have argued that Futures thinking delivers meaningful impact when built into the design as a mind-set. Futures thinking is then an approach with a set of principles that can be integrated into new ventures.
Below are the key principles.
1. Building an understanding of the changes that are shaping the behaviours and needs of the business and the people the business serves
2. Building resilience into strategies and product designs by considering the unexpected consequences that might affect us in the future.
3. Using future scenarios to communicate and share a future vision.
Round-up of the news this week
Crunchbase dug into the rise of venture debt. Only 2% of start-up’s capital base is debt compared to 30% of the capital base of companies on the S&P 500. Yufeng Capital - Jack Ma’s investment fund is raising a new $3Bn fund. Venture fund M13 names Anna Barber as its newest partner.
From the investors
Construction tech doesn’t get as many headlines as some of the trendy start-up areas but they are operating in a disruption ready trillion-dollar industry. Allison Xu of Bain Capital Ventures shares the main opportunities in construction tech.
June Angelides of Samos VC has launched a podcast which is a series of conversations exploring the belief systems and mindset of founders. Her letter to her younger self episode is particularly enjoyable. Check out Believe it Achieve it.
Advice on how to pitch to investors - from VCs to corporates and why Megumi Ikeda of Hearst Ventures believes communicating passion when pitching virtually is so important.
From the operators
A Harvard survey of 470 start-up founders and CEOs shows that founder attributes had no significant connection to the valuation of early-stage companies. The “start-up founder” as a metric has always been hard to quantify and this is a worthwhile attempt to do so. Amy White of the Institutional Investor reports.
'Investors Are Not Your Friends' - a podcast episode with Kombucha CEO Daina Trouton on how you can work more intelligently with venture capital investors.
Obsessed with “Obsess” the new company bringing VR shopping to life and the future of online shopping by Mallory Stempfley on the Modems
Events
Tuesday, December 1st @5pm GMT
Amali de Alwis MBE of Microsoft Ventures on how start-ups can work with large corporations. RSVP here.
Tuesday, December 15th @10am GMT
Ascension Ventures host this event which sees 4 early-stage start-ups pitch to VCs in the UK for the chance to win a £100,000 SEIS investment. This will then be followed by interactive discussions on term sheets and investor decks. RSVP here.
Starting on the 25th of November. Innovating for Growth: Startups at the British Library
Interested in starting a business? The British Library's Business & IP Centre is running a free 12-hour interactive online workshop program. RSVP here.
Job opportunities
Omers Ventures is hiring an analyst and associate. They are interested in candidates without investing experience (rare for a VC to acknowledge).
SEE YOU NEXT SUNDAY!
If you have any comments, questions, or just want to chat about venturing then do drop me a comment.
Written by Alexandra Wyatt, Venture Lead at Deloitte. Based in London but a global traveler. You can also reach me on Twitter and Instagram.