Brewing Success In The Startup World

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Read time: 10 minutes

Welcome to the 161 new people who joined since the last post!

I’m so glad you could join our exclusive community of top-performers.

Today we're taking a slight detour from the typical career advice – and for good reason.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Hazim Mohamad, Co-founder of CoffeeSpace, and I couldn't pass up the chance to share the wealth of insights that emerged from our conversation.

While this may be a departure from my usual articles, I believe you'll find that the lessons from this startup journey are remarkably applicable to career growth across various fields.

In the dynamic landscape of startups, success stories often come with invaluable lessons that extend far beyond entrepreneurship.

CoffeeSpace, an innovative platform designed to connect aspiring entrepreneurs with potential cofounders, exemplifies this blend of startup ingenuity and career wisdom.

Through this insightful interview with Hazim, we gain a unique perspective on the challenges and triumphs of building a startup and lessons we can take away for our own career journeys.

Let's dive into my conversation with Hazim.

CJ: Can you share the story behind the inception of CoffeeSpace? What inspired you to create this app?

Hazim: It's hard to bring ideas to life alone. I sat on an idea for two years, but it was only when Carin reached out (by luck) that we started exploring together and building. This is a common phenomenon -- in America alone, 61% of people have a business idea, but 9/10 of them don't follow through, hence most ideas never come to life (i.e. they don't even try).

Five out of six top reasons people don't follow through can be tied to not having a cofounder (e.g. not having all the skill sets, feeling overwhelmed building alone/of the uncertainties, not having the time, insufficient resources).

That's why we're building CoffeeSpace, a Tinder/Hinge-like platform that algorithmically matches people exploring ideas and looking for cofounders in the tech space and beyond. We want to unlock entrepreneurial opportunities globally by reducing the barrier for people to explore their ideas.

CJ: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced while developing CoffeeSpace, and how did you overcome them?

Hazim: We faced two main challenges:

Challenge #1: Validate it's an actual (and painful) problem and people were willing to pay.

The most important part for us was initially to validate that people actually had the problem (of finding a cofounder), that it was a 'hair-on-fire' problem as defined by YC i.e. it's something that is top of mind for them and one where they'll use even basic/simple tools to help address.

We interviewed about 50 people within the first 2 weeks of ideation. After that, we started asking if they would pay for a very simple version of the solution. We proxied the profile feature via a Google Form, I personally looked for matches, and if both sides were interested, I'd put it on their calendars. We got the first 15 people paying us within the first month alone and only after that did we build a simple MVP.

Challenge #2: Solving the 'Cold Start Problem'.

For an app like ours, we need to get the initial critical mass to serve folks. Our theory was that if we could launch and get 1,000 people within a few targeted cities on the app within a month of launch, most people would be able to get at least a few dozen possible candidates.

We had a pilot phase for a closed beta group of testers before actually launching our public mobile app. By the time we launched in March this year, we already had a lot of people who'd indicated interest, which helped us reach the 1,000 user mark within the first month.

CJ: What key traits or skills do you believe are essential for someone looking to start their own business?

Hazim:

1. Resourcefulness: You can do a lot with little resources, and especially in the earliest stages of a startup, that's very crucial.

2. Being able to learn fast and being agile: The main advantage a startup has is speed. You can quickly experiment and validate/decide to proceed or otherwise, while in bigger companies it might take weeks to months to do so.

3. Being customer-centric: The most important people you need to serve and make happy are your users. It's famously said only 2 things matter for a startup to succeed: 1) Talk to users, 2) Build the product. As long as you keep talking to users and make iterations to the product based on their feedback, you're optimizing the odds of building something that'll be loved.

CJ: How has CoffeeSpace evolved since its launch, and what are your future plans for the app?

Hazim: We have gone from:

1. Manually serving/matching users: Carin and I would spend our full Sundays writing the names of 50, then 100, then 200 people and their industry, skillset and location on a whiteboard and manually matching them.

2. We then developed the first version of the algorithm, but manually reviewed the results to compare how well it did relative to the matches we were making manually previously.

3. Finally, we've moved to the fully automated matching algorithm when it hit a percentage of accuracy (judged by % of people swiping right) that we were happy enough with.

Next would be to improve it further with not only the 'dealbreaker' parameters like location, idea commitment level, skillset etc., but also to using the swipe data to build a social graph of people similar to those users are swiping right on, as well as using natural language processing (NLP) or LLM to make use of the textual information people are writing to also include variables such as similarity of ideas, personality, working style etc.

CJ: What advice would you give to individuals looking to find a co-founder or business partner?

Hazim: It's not an easy process, but finding the right cofounder is one of, if not the most important factor in creating a successful company. While we can suggest suitable candidates, you should take the time to properly get to know the person and do a trial period to know if your working styles match one another.

It's also important that you both work on a problem you deeply care about rather than one that just seems interesting. When the going gets tough (and it will, without a doubt), it's important to know the reason you wanted to work on the problem in the first place, hence it makes for a solid foundation.

CJ: What are some career growth lessons you've learned from building CoffeeSpace that you think are applicable to any profession?

Hazim:

1. It's okay not to know things, but you have to know how to learn fast and be adaptive.

2. Feedback is important, otherwise you (and your team) will not know what needs to be improved on. So make sure you share it as well as are open-minded when receiving it since when people share feedback it means that they care (otherwise they wouldn't bother).

3. Sometimes you just have to take a chance. With startups, you won't have the answers to many things, and that's a scary thought. But if you overthink and never actually try, you'll never know. And it's the same for career growth, when opportunities arise, it may be intimidating to move to something new, but that's usually one of the best ways to learn and grow.

CJ: How do you balance the demands of being a founder with personal growth and maintaining a healthy work-life balance?

Hazim: Having a few hobbies has helped a lot with maintaining work-life balance, in addition to keeping in touch with family and friends. The hobbies that I love include Magic: The Gathering, chess, indoor climbing and most recently scuba diving.

My family is based in Malaysia, so I would call them weekly as well as fly back twice a year on average, especially for the most important family events.

Having a close group of friends who are also founders has helped me a lot as they understand how challenging the journey can be and can connect on a deeper level.

CJ: What role do mentors and advisors play in your entrepreneurial journey, and how can others benefit from similar relationships?

Hazim: Mentors and advisors have been absolutely crucial to us, not only for growth and product but also for things like fundraising, strategy etc., since they have a lot more experience than we do.

It helps us leapfrog some of the steps since they share what worked for them and what didn't. Sometimes you just want someone who is not bogged down by the day-to-day to chat with as they can see angles that you may not, especially when it comes to the larger picture and what should be prioritized.

CJ: What trends do you see emerging in the startup ecosystem, and how can aspiring entrepreneurs leverage these trends for career growth?

Hazim: There are 3 trends in particular that we are excited about, and which we believe will spur even more folks to build:

1. Increasing adoption of no-code and AI tools

2. Side hustle & gig economy becoming mainstream

3. Post-covid environment has made remote collaborations a lot more common

All 3 makes building easier, regardless of skillset, current commitments and their geographical location so aspiring entrepreneurs should leverage this and start tinkering.

As we espouse in CoffeeSpace, it starts with just talking to others about your idea, as people who do talk about it (instead of just thinking and leaving it at the back of their mind) are at least 10 times more likely to actually build.

CJ: If you could go back and give your younger self one piece of career advice, what would it be?

Hazim: I would tell my younger self to enjoy the journey rather than be obsessed about the destination. It's easy to get caught up in the outcome, but as I look back it's clear that every step of the way had a reason and helped in more ways than I could dream of.

I had no idea I would become a founder, but I found a problem that I was passionate about solving, and I was lucky enough to find someone who also shared that passion to build with.

If I didn't work with the World Bank, I wouldn't have judged the case study competition where I met my cofounder (Carin was representing Wharton at the event). And as much as we both enjoyed our previous jobs, after working on our first idea for a while on the side we both reached a point where we felt the timing (and progress) was right to give it a proper shot.

CJ: Where can people learn more about you and CoffeeSpace?

Hazim: You can learn more about us through our website. Our app is live on both the App Store and Google Play (links on our website), and if you're interested to connect, feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn!

In Conclusion

Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a professional looking to advance your career, the lessons from CoffeeSpace's journey offer valuable insights for navigating the complex landscape of modern work and business.

From the importance of collaboration and resourcefulness to the value of customer-centricity and continuous learning, the principles that drive startup success can also fuel individual career growth.

Let me know if you enjoyed this interview with Hazim!

Thank you for reading,

/CJ

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