Helping diverse entrepreneurs build start-ups from scratch.
Foundervine aim to change the face of entrepreneurship, literally.
“Our job will be complete when a young girl from an ethnic background with no MBA, no connections, no entrepreneur uncles, and very little money has a community in which she can build a Startup from scratch and has the right support to do so.”
Cecil Adjalo, Director at Foundervine aswell as FT IB Top 100 Most Influential BAME Tech Leaders 2019 and Yahoo Finance EMPower Top 50 Future Leaders 2019.
What or who inspired you to start Foundervine and what is the purpose behind the company?
Foundervine was created to solve a concerning problem that we see in our society today. On the face of it, tech entrepreneurship is reserved for only one demographic and gender. There is a distinct lack of entrepreneurs from minority ethnic backgrounds and the female gender. This has implications on our future economies and matters because the world is changing rapidly and there is a demand for new ways of thinking to create new products and services for a wider variety of people in fast growing populations. It also matters because there is untapped potential wasting away within our society who would otherwise be creating jobs, valuable products and services, and raising the quality of life for everyone. A group of us who came from underprivileged backgrounds in the UK and have worked hard to achieve success for ourselves in technology and business domains came together because we wanted to fix this situation.
Foundervine aim to change the face of entrepreneurship, literally. Our job will be complete when a young girl from an ethnic background with no MBA, no connections, no entrepreneur uncles, and very little money has a community in which she can build a startup from scratch and has the right support to do so.
You connect high-potential early stage ventures to mission-driven companies. Which impactful story sticks most in your mind?
Foundervine has helped young founders create Startups and for me each one of their achievements is so impactful and the value they add to our community is tremendous. One Startup comes to my mind instantly that has overcome many odds and I feel as though I contributed in a very direct way. This founder was a teacher and previously a support worker. She came to our Startup 54 event not really knowing what to expect but she had an idea of what she wanted to build but not really the means and confidence to go about it. Initially she did not want to pitch her idea but did so at the last minute. During the weekend she managed to find a co-founder and started working on the idea.
We gave all teams the option to ask for extra pitch coaching and she came to me and David, another Foundervine Director, to ask for a session. We happily took her into a private room to hear her pitch. Her idea was brilliant, but she was not getting it across convincingly. She was nervous and unsure if she was ready to do this. On top of this there was hardly any time left until the final pitches and against larger teams with very confident pitchers. David and I set to work on addressing her body language and pitch structure. Within a short amount of time we helped her address many points but then her co-founder decided she did not want to be involved in the live pitch; it was devastating. Not everything can end up the way you want it sometimes. It came to the pitching finale and all teams were buzzing with excitement and many delivered great and confident pitches. When this founder came on the stage however, I was blown away by the transformation she had achieved. She delivered with poise and purpose and very convincingly.
Unfortunately, she did not win the overall competition, but I was extremely happy to see her win the best pitch as rated by judges who had no idea of the story behind her entire weekend. I am proud to say that she has subsequently gone on to raise 5-figure amounts, has left her job to focus on the business full-time, and has been connected with organisations like Unltd, TechHub, NatWest, MSDUK and many more.
No. 10 Downing Street. Tell us more about your visit there and how it helped Foundervine?
After one of our Startup 54 events we had the pleasure of running at Monzo Bank, we were covered in The Sunday Times and reached the front page of the business section. This gave us a lot of visibility and we were contacted by a business advisor to the Prime Minister at the time. He invited us to No.10 Downing St. and we were over the moon. He wanted to discuss what we were doing and show his support for our initiative. He asked us what he could do to help, and we suggested that we hold a round table discussion with small businesses run by diverse founders and large corporates about how we can boost entrepreneurship amongst under-represented groups with help from the government. He happily accepted and that’s exactly what we did!
What is the biggest challenge you see when engaging with large corporations that want to get behind entrepreneurship innovation?
Many large corporations put out a message that they are value-driven and very supportive of the communities they serve and operate in. Sometimes we find that these messages are simply that, messages. Internal procedures and policies often make it hard for supportive people within organisations to make meaningful social impact with their work. We are used to being flung from one department to another in search of the right budget allocation or the right person to sign off on us delivering a programme. The intentions are there but when it comes to execution most organisations fall flat.
Having said this, we are acutely aware that businesses need to ensure the decisions they take add to their bottom line and whilst it would be great to support the community in building new ventures, proper business case justifications need to be done. Our biggest challenge is working with corporations to help them understand the justifications for sponsoring and supporting our programmes, not just for social impact but also for their commercial benefit.
What is on the agenda for you and your team this year?
I don't think you can fit that in this article, and we are such a dynamic team with so many ideas and lots of will power to make things happen. Very often we need to reign it all in and focus on what's important.
The biggest thing we have this year is Founderfest, our annual get together of movers and shakers in the tech entrepreneurship space who see diversity as important. I can’t say too much but this year it’s going to be bigger and better. We have multiple Startup 54 programs running across the UK and we are expanding Northwards of London where we see fewer opportunities and also much further away into West Africa for our first ever international Startup 54. We are also planning some technical skills workshops with Microsoft. Many universities have shown a strong interest in our work and we are doing a multitude of training sessions for student entrepreneurs within universities. We are also submitting multiple tenders in consortiums with other impactful organisations and these are of a global nature.
Looking at the future, what do you feel the young start-ups of today can be most excited about?
There has never been a better time to start a company right now. Technology has made some aspects easier like accounting and marketing, meaning less knowledge is required to handle these for your business. Social media has turned advertising on its head with the creation of new channels stealing people’s attention, with content creators and influencers on these channels changing the way people are sold to. This has led to literally anyone being able to cultivate a fanbase based on their posts giving them unprecedented abilities to monetise their following. The internet and the rise of the mobile phone have created entirely new business models. Think about where Facebook, Uber, Apple, Amazon, and Google were 20 years ago - nowhere! Financing has changed massively. Low interest rates are pushing investors towards higher return and higher risk startup investment.
We also have new government initiatives like EFG, EIS and SEIS making funding much easier. Looking forwards, I see these factors accelerating. Each year there are great improvements in the size and scope of the entrepreneurship ecosystem which is growing in many parts of the UK, and indeed globally. What this means is that young Startups have an easier time getting the support they need to understand the gaps they have as well as filling those gaps. Initiatives run by Foundervine, which are either free or very low cost, bring opportunity to those that would otherwise be left out of the entrepreneurship revolution. We’ve seen people leave their jobs, raise hundreds of thousands, and appear in the national press just from coming to a 3-day program. I am super excited for the future founders out there.
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