Foray into the startup world

In 2017, I joined an exciting new fintech business just out of university. I was their first employee, reporting directly to the co-founder & CEO, which was an incredible learning experience.

Seeing a startup that hadn't raised any external funding suddenly explode and reach $50m+ revenue within 18 months was transformational. The company later went onto IPO, again without having raised VC money.

There were several important learnings I took from this experience. First of all, I glimpsed the boundless opportunity that comes from building the right business at the right time. I thrived in this non-typical working environment, having grown up in a household that was never your typical 9-to-5, and so I had an appreciation for the different career paths that were available to me. I relished having the freedom to creatively solve problems in a non-linear way. 

But simultaneously, I struggled to be so close to the founder journey, without it being my own. I knew that, whatever my next step was, it would be something that I was leading myself. 

Finding Valarian's product market fit

Measuring milestones as a business is often tangible things, like some of our first marquee raises or bringing in our first big clients. But for me, the biggest milestone to date was finding true product market fit, which is repeatable and scalable. By this, I mean developing a product which really addressed our customers’ pains. 

It's certainly not something you stumble upon instantly, but rather is the result of an ongoing process of refinement. Here are the key steps I’d want to highlight: 

1. Iterative Messaging. We continuously refined our product messaging to ensure it resonated with our target audience. 

2. Quantifiable Metrics. We focused on quantifiable metrics, such as shortening the sales cycle, to understand which strategies are truly effective and follow them. 

3. Repeatability. We ensured that the process and messaging work for different organisations across our key industries and geographies. 

4. Patience. No one typically achieves product-market fit on day one. Prepare for a cycle of iteration, tweaking, validating, and even pivoting from your initial thesis. Be open to change based on customer feedback. 

Finding product-market fit can often involve struggle. Having a dose of naivety really helped: we weren’t afraid to reach out and present our solution to key decision makers, even at top institutions. Not every meeting will go smoothly, but it's still a learning process and the main goal is to get as much useful, constructive feedback as you can. 

One of the big outcomes of this is our recent rebrand and repositioning to Valarian. From a design perspective, our new look and feel reflect a key piece of what makes our product unique: Valarian is a transparent, seamless layer of security and compliance over our clients’ existing infrastructure; and our name reflects the platform’s key features: resilience, scalability, and efficiency.

Clearing the path for the company’s success 

Since those early days, my role as CEO has transformed. The difference between building a small early team and now leading a team of 30 to 40 people is huge. This current stage feels like the sweet spot between being small enough to feel decisions being impacted very quickly through the organisation, while still having enough resources. 

No day is without its challenges. I often describe it as fighting hand-to-hand combat on a daily basis, overcoming obstacles that come our way to try and clear a path for my team to thrive. 

Where do I source my inspiration for overcoming these challenges? I don’t listen to podcasts really, nor do I read business books. Rather, being able to lean on the expertise of others has been instrumental. I’ve benefitted hugely from those who are always at the other end of a phone call when needed—certain people who have built and run successful businesses themselves. This can be everything from the macro view of running a business, to nitty gritty specifics that you encounter on a daily basis. 

We’re entering a critical and exciting stage at Valarian, and I often think about what it will take to succeed here. And other macro factors aside, I don’t feel it's complex. It’s really just about relentless execution, something that is firmly in my control. I feel confident that success comes from compounding time, that if I spend 10 to 12 hours every day executing, I’ll wake up in 3 years and have built a fantastic company.