Seedrun

Can you give a brief introduction about yourself?

I'm Will. I'm the founder of Workflow, which is a project management tool for creative teams. We're a really early stage company. Three founders at the moment, just having launched our MVP and getting into a private beta. I was previously the CEO of Rota.com, we were a team of 40 people and we sold to private equity two years ago.

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur/startup founder?

It's the most impact you can make. Honestly, nothing like this will be able to change as many people’s lives in such a short space of time, if you get it right. So I really feel like it's a great way to give back to the world and to make an impact.

What problem does your startup aim to solve?

Creative teams currently use a huge patchwork of different tools, often ten or eleven different pieces of software, which spreads out all the information that their project needs into different spaces. So work is in one place, feedback is another place, and it becomes very messy and full of busy work for the creative. So what we're doing is bringing all of the different aspects of the project into one central space.

Can you describe your startup in a single sentence?

We're organising the world's creative work.

How did the idea for your startup come about?

When I was running the last company, we had a really efficient product team which had world class output. We were the first company in the world to release a React Native Android app - designed, built and shipped in just a week after React Native became available to use. So we were shipping incredibly fast on that side. And then on my creative team, it was very messy and everything was like links being sent over Slack, and there was six different tools being used. Our creative agencies were also very slow. So I was really frustrated by the creative marketing side and loving the product side. What we're trying to do is bring a lot of what works from the development world into the creative world. Centralisation and making things move really efficiently is a big part of it.

What's the most unique aspect of your solution or business model?

It's more the solution than the business model. In our project manager you can view the creative work and leave feedback directly on it. Instead of having this old links and text paradigm where whatever work you see in the task manager, you have to click out and leave your comments in. Some other tools might be four other tools on the team. It's all happening in one place. That means it's searchable, you can instantly access anything, and in future it's going to be AI enabled. So you will be able to generate new content, new assets, new presentations, simply by giving a description of what you want and having the database of the work you have done before.

What’s the most challenging aspect of building your startup?

It is always full time commitment and then some building a startup. You work every hour of the day, every day of the week. That's just part and parcel of it. But I think with that comes the challenge of making sure that you're on top of what you're doing, while also managing a team and making sure they're all happy. You could spend too much time in just one of those aspects. You actually have to nail both of them to be a really good leader and be a really effective at startups.

How have you overcome obstacles and challenges in your journey so far?

Pretty much anything can be solved if you move quickly enough and you iterate through enough ideas. There really aren't any meaningful obstacles or challenges in startups today. Like, there's so much out there in terms of resources and tools and software and people who can come to your cause and help you build something big. I think it's just a case of moving really quickly. So the biggest challenges are actually just distractions. Not wasting your time on things that don't matter. How to overcome this is it's actually a case of sacrifice. You really have to eliminate or lean away from a lot of things that would distract you as a founder that are not adding value.

What's the most valuable lesson you've learned as a founder?

It is to find amazing people, but then to build a culture that unlocks their entrepreneurial energy. So that feeling of enthusiasm when you're going the extra mile and working really late, if you can unlock that in your whole team, then you just go so much further than if people are feeling penned in and trapped. I think it doesn't matter how big your company is, you can always find ways to unlock that. I think that's the biggest thing.

How do you manage work-life balance, especially with the demands of a startup?

I think it helps to ring fence aspects of time, like a date night once a week with your partner, making sure you're catching up with friends once or twice a week. The reality is you're going to be working pretty much every day. Not every startup will do this, but I think it's the right way to do a startup. But I think if you ring fence certain time for yourself and you check in with yourself and make sure you're not burning out, then you can manage it.

What’s the next big milestone for your startup?

We're gearing up for this private Beta. So we've got a working product and we're using it with a few people privately and using it ourselves. But we're going to do like a meaningful 20 or 30 company private beta. So that's exciting.

What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs or startups?

Go all in. There's a power law distribution of returns for startups. If you're in the top 10%, you get all the rewards. So you got to play that game and be committed to going all in. I think that's the biggest thing.

Any ideas on how we could improve Seed Run?

I loved it. There are no complaints here. It was a really fun route. Really fun run.