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It's been a month since the last episode. That is mostly due to the fact, that I simply could not get interviews. People were really stressed out about the final pitch before the Investment Committee, but also the Covid-19 crisis unfolded. Suddenly (almost) everyone was working from home... But I didn't want to let the podcast end without and ending. So this episode gives you the final glimpse behind the final curtain. 

 If you thought that the last episode turned up the heat, you 'll be pleased to hear that it's getting even more intense. As the first pre-IC pitch is happening, teams are stressing out, breaking up and yours truly does his first pitch! You can find the whole pitch, including slides here:  Here's the link to my pitch: https://youtu.be/Rci1axB7D7o  

At the end of week five we were all reminded that we're here to create startups with unicorn potential and that we better pick up the pace. This had the direct effect that people really buckled down and started working longer hours - but sadly there is no direct correlation between hours spent at the desk and quality of the ideas. It was interesting to see how people reacted: some got stressed and started jumping on ideas even if those were not in their original field of interests, others went the other way and started focussing more on what they really want to work on. The other side-effect was that people would not spare five minutes to talk to me for the podcast anymore. That's why it took me two weeks to get this episode ready. Still worth it!

It seems no matter where I turn people are finding ideas and teams - it's at the same time amazing and frustrating.  This week sees lots of teams being formed and I struggle to stay on top of things as the formation process seems eerily similar to the nano-seconds after the big bang: You talk to people and they have "no ideas, no team, no nothing" and the next day they are tracked out. Wow. My journey in contrast is still ongoing...

Week 4 arrives with a splash: the previous two weeks were extremely packed with four 24h industry sprints, so it‘s absolutely breathtaking, when Monday starts with ... lots of time. It‘s like a social-experiment and you can observe very well, how people react to this new freedom. Some immediately take the opportunity to find their co-founder and track out, others start the co-founder dating and others still just need some time to process what happened in the past weeks. I follow my co-founders deeper into their search and dating, find some who have found their match, barge in on some dates and also have my own dates. This is where the startup-generation meets the tinder-generation.

After the first week, where everyone was excited and nervous, the second week gets down to business. We start with industry sprints, where teams of five have 24 hours to come up with a solution to a problem - and with solution I mean of course "company". These exercises really get the creative juices flowing and help a lot in figuring out who you could work with and with whom there is no connection. These sprints also give us a good opportunity to practice our pitching: each group gets 5 minutes to present their idea on stage with a jury asking questions - much like in pitching investors. To give us a little more food for thought we also got a massive brain dump from Andreas Birnik, instructing us on everything from „go-to-market“ archetypes and design thinking to pitching DOs and DONTs. Amazingly this directly impacted the presentations: suddenly people started evaluating their ideas with the new framework and this killed many ideas, but also gave rise to a new way of thinking. With so many presentations going on, we also quickly learned what works on stage and what doesn’t  - so the quality of the pitch-decks as well as the style of delivery improved drastically. At the end of week three we could also see the first teams forming and people organising their own little get-togethers. So the fear of getting left behind got more tangible.

Welcome to "Inside the Founders Generation", my podcast about participating in a startup generator. The Antler program started in January 2020 in Oslo and is comprised of 59 people from around the globe - all here to build the "next big thing". So for the first ten weeks all participants try to find their team, their idea and perfect the pitch. The first week was very exciting for everyone: people are intimidated, nervous, but also full of potential. I'm part of this amazing cohort and will post episodes while the program unfolds, so you can go through all the emotions of young and old founders.