This guide is based on Mixergy’s interview with Adeo Ressi.
After he learned that close to 90% of startups fail, Adeo Ressi created an organization to support startups and helped 1,000 entrepreneurs start 499 companies. It was all done by helping people launch and grow startups, so we invited him to teach you how to do it.
Adeo is the creator of The Founder Institute, the world’s largest idea-stage startup incubator.
Here are the actionable highlights from the interview.
Udemi’s founders launched their education platform within just a few months of forming the idea in Adeo’s Founder Institute, and they got an advantage over other online education companies because they entered the market so early.
Adeo mentored the founder of Retailigence, who convinced other founders to drop their companies and come work for him, and the team he assembled helped attract angel investments and additional rounds of funding.
When Adeo hears people say he’s too hard on the entrepreneurs he mentors, he reminds himself that many founders are grateful for his help and he shouldn’t let a few unhappy people ruin his motivation.
Adeo had to stop tinkering with the Founder Institute’s name and website because a journalist was going to publish a story about it within an hour, and that pressure gave him the push he needed to launch.
Adeo told an entrepreneur that if he had quit his comfortable job he could have turned his customer service idea into a fantastic startup, but he didn’t, so the startup never launched.
Adeo turned down $34 million from the Colombian government because managing a multi-million dollar entrepreneurship program in Colombia would have distracted him from the Founder Institute’s mission of helping entrepreneurs worldwide.
Watch the full interview now
Written by Sarah Brodsky, based on production notes by Jeremy Weisz