{"id":43529,"date":"2023-10-20T15:29:15","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/hey-you-founder-rebekah-campbell-on-her-biggest-startup-regret-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:29:15","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:29:15","slug":"hey-you-founder-rebekah-campbell-on-her-biggest-startup-regret-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/hey-you-founder-rebekah-campbell-on-her-biggest-startup-regret-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey You founder Rebekah Campbell on her biggest startup regret – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hey<\/div>\n

For Hey You founder Rebekah Campbell, there\u2019s one big thing she\u2019d do different if she had her time over again.<\/p>\n

Campbell founded Posse in 2010, which after a series of pivots became mobile ordering and payments platform for cafes Hey You.<\/p>\n

In an AMA run by Blackbird Ventures, the Sydney entrepreneur says she wishes she hadn\u2019t raised so much funding early on in the business.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d raise less money at the start of the business,\u201d Campbell says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI raised a seed round of $1.4 million, which in hindsight was way too much. I hired a lot of people so when we made mistakes they were a lot more expensive than they needed to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cNext time I\u2019d bootstrap for as long as possible until I\u2019m sure the model is dead right and then I\u2019d start raising capital, building a team and scaling.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says that this lesson is useful for all founders.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started my first business I divided up the company on the back of a napkin and gave 20% to one guy who\u2019d do the tech, 5% to another who\u2019d raise the capital and 5% to another who\u2019d do the design,\u201d Campbell says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSix months later they had all disappeared. I raised capital and was stuck with a bunch of large shareholders who didn\u2019t do anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy advice to founders who are splitting equity in a company is to work out how much you think is fair for each person to own and then have the shares vest over four years with a one year cliff.<\/p>\n

\u201cFounding a startup isn\u2019t for everyone and it\u2019s inevitable some people will drop off along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hey You recently secured a $2 million funding round<\/a> that also saw Campbell take a step back from her role as CEO.<\/p>\n

In the AMA session, she revealed many interesting insights into her entrepreneurial journey and dished out some useful advice for all founders.<\/p>\n

Finding the right co-founder<\/h3>\n

Campbell says that finding a co-founder that has the same level of work output and quality is just as important as having similar values and vision.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf one person is working much harder or just does better work than the other founder then both founders will get frustrated,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen this break so many co-founder relationships. The only way to know is to have a long engagement and see how the other person works before you get married.\u201d<\/p>\n

Campbell, who recently became a mother, says running a startup team is a lot like being a parent.<\/p>\n

\u201cLots of marriages break down because the couple have different parenting styles. The same is true for co-founders,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you lead a team it\u2019s very different to being a couple of founders with a dream and laptops. You need to be a united front and have shared expectations for team accountability and culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to know how you will parent until you become a parent but it\u2019s at least good to talk about how you would like a team to work before you build one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keeping a growing team motivated<\/h3>\n

She says it has taken \u201cgreat difficulty\u201d to keep Hey You\u2019s ever growing team motivated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m naturally very self-motivated, ambitious and driven so I don\u2019t really find it hard to keep going myself but it has been tough to keep a team motivated through lots of challenges,\u201d Campbell says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can help to allow teams to go through a renewal process every so often. Sometimes people get tired and it\u2019s not always a bad thing if people leave because it can give you the opportunity to bring in fresh energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The founder recalls how a simple new tradition helped her team push through some dark times.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we almost ran out of money, some people left and weren\u2019t replaced, we were working out of a garage and it was winter,\u201d Campbell says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I had to do something but didn\u2019t have much cash to spend. I decided to start putting on team breakfasts at 8:30am every morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was cheap to buy nice bread and cereal and it got everyone together socialising first thing in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

How becoming a parent changes your view of your business<\/h3>\n

Since becoming a parent, Campbell says her perspective has shifted.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecoming a parent has made me much more focused,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to spend lots of time doing things I didn\u2019t enjoy or that I wasn\u2019t actually that good at. Now I\u2019m a mum I want to spend as much time with my daughter as possible so I have had to give up doing a lot of what I was doing before.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt forced me to delegate responsibility and trust others to run large parts of the business. I\u2019ve also become a lot more patient and I\u2019ve developed a new level of empathy and care for others.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m way softer now which I can see will make me a much better leader in years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and SoundCloud.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Hey You founder Rebekah Campbell, there\u2019s one big thing she\u2019d do different if she had her time over again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}