In this series, three student entrepreneurs on the LaunchBox programme at Trinity chronicle their adventures. Here, in their third diary entries, they talk about lessons learned and the people they admire in business.
Anika Riley – Work Smarter
During my MSc of Entrepreneurship program, we covered a lot of ground, but we didn’t focus on many of the technicalities of founding a business. Founders’ agreements, vesting shares and some of the legal points around investment might not be the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of being an entrepreneur, but messing up any of them can kill a company regardless of how good the product is. The speakers that have come into LaunchBox have really pushed us to think about these things early and manage many of these legal necessities on a startup’s budget.
Someone who I very much admire is Céline Lazorthes, the founder of the fintech companies Leetchi and Mangopay. As a female CEO in the financial services sector, she and her female CTO heavily emphasise company culture and are a welcome glimpse into a more diverse future. And, while she is an impressive woman on all accounts, the fact that she founded Leetchi straight out of university resonates with me in particular.
“Work Smarter exists because we sincerely believe that freelancing should not come at the cost of financial security.”
Jumping over to an entirely different sector, I am consistently impressed with the ethics and transparency of the company Dr Bronner’s. What I find most inspiring is their refusal to accept the status quo and their unwavering commitment to a vision. In pursuit of this vision, they hold themselves to high standards such as by capping the CEO wage at five times the lowest paid warehouse employee.
Building such a vision-driven company is what my co-founder and I aspire to.
