Vijay Solanki🦄🚀🏔️’s Post

"20 Lessons From 20 Different Paths to Product-Market Fit — Advice for Founders, From Founders After more than a year of showcasing dozens of founders in our Paths to PMF series, we pulled together a list of the biggest lessons that stuck with us from these winding startup journeys." https://lnkd.in/eZMSFhcS

🔔 It’s Time for a Discussion! 🔔 Juggling multiple roles can be both rewarding and challenging! Between leading the quality department and working on my personal startups, I often find myself balancing between growth and overwhelm. For those of you managing several projects or wearing multiple hats: 👉 How do you stay productive without feeling overwhelmed? 👉 What strategies do you use to prioritize your tasks? I’d love to hear your insights and tips! Let’s share some advice on how to stay focused, grow, and still make time for personal projects. 🚀 Something exciting? I’ll be sharing more about my startups soon, so stay tuned for how I turned my ideas into businesses! 💡

The Techstars Cliff: 4 month update It’s been nearly four months since the Techstars program I joined wrapped up. Techstars talks about the post-cohort cliff and how navigating and overcoming it is vital to a company's continued growth. What is the cliff, you ask? It’s the moment post-program where founders step back into the world and into reality. Daily structure is back to being set by you, your new friends are back in their respective cities continuing to build, you jump back into life with friends and family as if you never left, and you learn to become independent once again. And for me, that meant moving back to Chicago from London. How do you overcome it? I’ll start by saying the cliff is real, and it happens to everyone. But how it affects you can vary from founder to founder. Techstars is designed to teach you structure, communication, and organization during the curriculum, and if you throw that out the window the day after Demo Day, you’re only doing yourself a disservice. Outside of the time change, culture, great accents, and the busy life that London is, for me, it’s about finding the balance of celebrating work wins, finding hobbies outside of work that keep me distracted and challenged. Most importantly, having things to look forward to. These last four months have been full of chaos, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am grateful for my Techstars experience and know that I left stronger as a founder and as a person than when I started. If I can pick up my life and move across the pond in six days for a 13-week program, anyone can do it. Your idea is worth giving everything. I’m curious, how has the cliff impacted you? #founder #startup #thecliff #techstars

💡 #ThursdayThoughts 💡 🧱 Stacking: The tumbleweed way. As a first-time founder, there are lots of words to signal positive movement within your startup. Some of the most common ones that come to mind for me are traction, momentum, and growth. 🚀 Momentum: Is that initial push and excitement that gets things going. It was a force that first propelled me as a solo founder, and ultimately ignited the entire Co-Founding team to get things moving. 🌱 Traction: Looks more at our components that prove we're gaining ground. Things like revenue, customers, market interest, and pilot partnerships, all supporting our hypothesis that our product is a scalable and venture backable. 📈 Growth: Somewhat longer term and is the sustained upward movement towards every startup's ultimate goal - the hockey stick! Each of these terms are useful, but I didn't feel like they told the full story - at least for tumbleweed. What ultimately resonated with me, and has stuck with our team, is what I've been calling "stacking". I define stacking as a mix of strategy, creativity, and awareness. Envision a brick wall, bricks aren't stacked one directly on top of the other, they're stacked in such a way that each brick is supported by two other bricks. This means that no one brick must bear the weight alone. Just like a brick wall, stacking at tumbleweed requires strategy (a defined pathway to achieve our goals), with creativity (innovative and novel ways to solve our customer's problems), and awareness (deep understanding of the market trends, with foresight to see future paths). Yes, we have momentum, our traction is on the upward swing, and we are experiencing continued growth, but for our team, our solid foundation is supported because of our strategic stacking. 🧱 #Stacking #StackingStrategy #Momentum #Traction #Growth #Tumbleweed #TumbleweedWay #PaulFromTumbleweed #NorthStar

More from mistakes and less from successes. Earlier this month, I had the chance to attend the #techspark event, where I met some amazing people—new founders, startups in their ideation stage, and students dreaming of launching their own ventures one day. What really struck me in these conversations was how open they were about their mistakes. They didn’t just focus on the wins—they shared the tough moments too. Listening to their stories, I realized how small missteps can throw off the bigger picture. For instance, something as simple as not securing your personal finances early on while waiting for business returns can lead to bigger issues down the road. We can’t avoid failure entirely, but we can definitely prepare ourselves better to manage it when it comes. #techevent #events #networking

I could NOT resist sharing the story behind this picture.   My talented husband is working on a commissioned painting of Abraham Lincoln which is sitting behind my desk in our studio. Yesterday, as I was waiting to join a virtual meeting, with my custom "Formus" background, I realized Abe was photobombing from behind my desk! It made me laugh out loud. 😂   There’s more to this though…. When Abe unexpectedly appeared in my meeting today, it brought to mind his wise words: “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first six sharpening my axe.” This made me reflect on the startup journey—how vital it is to invest time in preparation, learning, and refining our approach before launching. Our momentum with Formus Technology, Inc. has been especially encouraging the last few weeks, and we’ve appreciated solid customer feedback, amazing people wanting to collaborate, and even some very specific dreams. Even with such positivity, I got momentarily sidetracked when a friend asked how long I’ve been pursuing Formus. For some reason, when I was asked this, a twinge of “imposter syndrome” crept in, as it can often do with female founders. Even though I know we’ve been wise in dedicating two years to research, I sometimes wonder what others could think about our timeline. Abe’s words are both timeless and timely. In the fast-paced world of startups, it’s tempting to rush forward, but lasting success comes from a foundation built on sharpening the axe. I recognize the importance of taking the time to sharpen our tools, which to me is refining our strategies, perfecting our processes, and building a solid foundation. What do you think? What is sharpening the axe for you and what you’re working on? How do you decide when to move forward with sharpened tools?  Furthermore, what’s a quote that inspires your mindset, helps guide your resolve, creativity and hustle? #StartupJourney #FemaleFounders #LincolnWisdom #CreativeProcess

Tech founders journey for Pack to the Future™ Investor's on my list so far: 38 No's from investors: 3 Warm referrals: 2 Interested investors: 2 100% the whole “show the build in public” has got traction. I’ve had two amazing and warm referrals over the weekend as well as another investor show genuine interest (Craig, I won’t tag you just yet but I am looking forward to catching up and answering your questions). When people say that the fundraising journey is a full time job, they aren’t exaggerating. I’m so damn lucky to have Sara Knight, Marcelo Alcantara and the team behind me while I spend every waking hour networking. For those wondering, I’ll be actively looking for term sheets started May 15th. Until then, I’m happily networking and building referrals. 9:30pm Friday night I got a brilliant email from 🏔️ Meg Williams letting me know I’ve been shortlisted to pitch on stage at Blackbird’s Sunrise conference. Thanks for pulling long hours for the current Giant’s cohort Meg and thanks for giving me the chance to get some mentoring from Gaby Howard 🙌🏼 That news was further affirmation that I’m on the right track and a bloody big step towards unfu*king the planet! On top of the Blackbird Giants program we are currently in, I also snuck in an application to Y Combinator on the cut off day for their next intake. Thats the bloody holy grail of startup world to get in Y Combinator and it would mean I’d be heading to San Francisco for a few months if we got in. In a platform update, we’ve all but finished the API connections to all our partners and we are on hopefully the last scrum to get the MVP live and in a working test environment. We’ve now been shipping out the physical packaging to stores daily and we’ll go all in on ramping up that offering when I get back from a week in Sydney for Sunrise. I can’t help but smile as even though I’m working 7am-11pm daily, I’m doing something I’m so damn passionate about that it’s not even work 🫶🏼

We’re fully deployed out of MKT1 Capital, fund 1! So what’s next? Over the course of the last 4 years, I’m so proud of what we’ve built at MKT1. We started advising early stage founders & marketers on how to build their marketing team and strategy. From there, we saw a huge gap in the market—most founders don’t know marketing and most investors don’t know marketing. To build a massive company, you have to be able to win on both product AND go-to-market. We built a fund on the thesis that the best product isn’t enough—you need marketing advantages, things innate within the business that will help you grow faster (think network effects, a wedge in, founder/market fit story, etc). We’ve invested in 34 companies who fit this mold and are excited to support them as they grow. A few months back, we started talking about the next chapter for MKT1. The past 4 years have shown us what we love to do—for me, that is investing in and working with the best founders. I’m excited to continue investing in early stage companies as a partner on the investment team at Pear VC. Why Pear? I’ve known Pejman and Mar for many years and have long admired what they’ve built. There are a lot of similarities in the ways Pear supports founders with an in-house talent team that helps founders make their first few hires and an in-house GTM team that helps founders go from zero to 1 on the GTM side. They have built a strong track record and team to support founders in the early stages of building a company and I’m excited to be part of this next chapter of the firm. Thank you! Finally, a huge thank you to the founders who took a bet on us as a new fund- we are so happy to be on this journey with you. And to our LPs who put their faith in us as first time fund managers to pick great companies (and make you money!). What does this mean for MKT1? We will continue supporting our portfolio founders. I will move to Pear to keep investing and Emily will continue writing the MKT1 Newsletter and will advise growth to late stage companies on marketing. 

Munich’s startup scene just got its spark back—and it starts with Foundrise. 🚀  This morning, we hosted the very first Foundrise Breakfast, and the energy was electric. 💫 Here’s what made it unforgettable:  • Dr. Marc Laukemann shared a masterclass on due diligence—priceless insights for both founders and investors.  • Coffee-fueled conversations turned casual chats into future-shaping collaborations.  • First-time connections became real opportunities  (you could feel the momentum building). But Foundrise isn’t just another networking event.  It’s a MOVEMENT. 🤍 A bridge between Munich's boldest founders and the investors ready to  help them break through. Why Munich?  Because this city has everything we need: talent, ambition, and vision. What’s been missing?  A way to bring it all together. Foundrise is here to do exactly that.  To ignite the entrepreneurial spark that’s always been within Munich—waiting to shine. And this morning proved it.  The room buzzed with ideas finding champions and visions  meeting their accelerators. What’s next?  We’re not stopping here. February 14th marks our second Foundrise Breakfast—an even BIGGER opportunity to connect, collaborate, and create. If you’re a founder with bold ideas or an investor looking for your  next big win, this is your moment. Let’s make Munich the beating heart of innovation once again.  See you in February. 🚀 

Even as our company has grown, We've kept the startup culture alive for 15 years. Basatne is a family-owned and operated company, and our company culture reflects this closeness, But for me, the key to our continued success lies in merging the hustle mentality of startups with the corporate excellence of leading players like Apple, Google and T-Mobile. As we expand into new markets, this fusion becomes increasingly important. But beyond the team mentality, there’s another driving force behind everything we do: Impact. We've created an environment where every member feels like a valued part of the family and is inspired to make a meaningful difference. I always say that we're a company that does things differently. We’re creating real change. And even long after I'm gone, I envision Basatne continuing to make a positive impact. This can only be achieved by having the right people on board - Individuals who are not only technically skilled, but who are driven to make a lasting impact. #CircularEconomy #ReverseLogistics #Team