Team Throne

What a Month!!!

What a wild month we’ve just wrapped up!

Summer Startup Tour has been a thrilling journey for Team Throne in every way—physical, psychological, and emotional. With that being said however, it has undoubtably been the best way we three could have spent this summer. While we were jumping across the continent on planes, trains, and electric scooters, we’ve had the pleasure of meeting a group of incredibly inspirational, intelligent, and ambitious Founders and CEO’s who are still at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journeys.

The main thesis for our team this summer was to focus on early-stage startups in three sectors that interest all of us—Consumer, Tech, and Impact. The reason for which all of the companies we have visited fit into this early stage criteria is because in addition to the support we have received from INSEAD, we have been extremely fortunate to have had Antler as a co-sponsor for our tour. As Antler focuses on early stage companies, we’ve used this tour to do some grassroots deal-sourcing for them.

The lessons we’ve learnt are unsurprisingly numerous! Themes surrounding forging company culture, company and brand positioning, the importance of partnerships early on, and how to create a lean operation at the start are extremely valuable.

While we’ve been light on the content here on the blog, we are so happy for the tremendous level of engagement, comments, and sharing of our 20+ Linkedin posts! The domino effect certainly came into play from a networking standpoint for which we are all grateful.

Now, in terms of next steps, we are pleased to share with you all what we will be working this next month:

• First and foremost, as part of our project deliverable for Antler, we will be consolidating a list of all the companies we have spoken with and creating a dashboard on our findings for each with detailed information.
• As co-presidents of the IEC, we will be putting together a playbook where we summarize key themes that we have learnt are critical to become a successful entrepreneur.
• Finally, we want to showcase how some of the interactions we had went live and will be publishing a podcast with our most notable interviews.

Thank you all for your continued support and enthusiasm you have shared with us during this journey!

Best,
Otto, Ali, & Marcell