发布时间：2019-03-11
《传承宝典》4
初创型公司CEO的一天
作为 Future is Now 《传承宝典》的一部分，我们新近采访了私募股权和风险投资领域的不同参与者，包括：大企业、初创型公司和引人注目的并购交易撮合者，透视他们的日常生活（day-to-day life），来为家族未来的接班人，提供创业榜样与职场借鉴。首先，我们采访了位于伦敦的一家食品分享主题初创型公司：OLIO 的联合创始人兼首席执行官 Tessa Cook 女士(图左)。该公司提供了一个免费的应用程序（app），允许用户之间分享不需要的食物，以减少浪费。
English Version
A day in the life of a startup CEO
As part of a new series, we're speaking to different players in the privateequity and venture capital space—including companies, startups and noteworthy dealmakers—to find out what day-to-day life looks like for them.
To kick it off, we talked to Tessa Cook (pictured on left), co-founder and CEO of London-based food sharing startup OLIO. The company provides a free app which allows users to share unwanted food to reduce waste.
How did the idea for OLIO come about?
I'm a farmer's daughter, so I grew up learning first hand just how much hard work goes into producing food, so as a result I absolutely hate wasting food.
The lightbulb moment came when I was moving country, and the removal men said we had to throw away all our food. I wasn't going to do that, so I set out on the street to try and find someone to share my food with and failed.It was very frustrating because I knew that there would be people who would've loved that food, but they just didn't know about it, and that was where the idea for OLIO came from.
Having set up OLIO, what does a typical day look likefor you?
Firstly, there is no such thing as a typical day, but there are things that I do most days. Perhaps the most important of which is customer support for OLIO and spending time interacting with our users, understanding how they use our product and getting their suggestions as to how to improve the service—I think that's quite unusual for a CEO to be doing that, but I find it an invaluable way to stay in touch with our users. I'm responsible for deciding what features we build and when, and I will often start by sketching up a wireframe for the technical team and then feeding back on their work and testing the new versions of the app.
What is the most challenging aspect of your job?
Fundraising is definitely one of them. We're a tech-for-good company and our mission is very important to us, so we're looking for a very specific type of investor, which immediately narrows down the pool we're looking at. Add to that the fact that we're a female-founded business (and the industry is biased against female-founded companies) and we're still very early in our monetisation journey, and you start to see the challenge!
We talked about what the most challenging aspect of your role was, but what is the most rewarding?
Without a doubt, the most rewarding part of the role is the impact that we know we're having every day. Being a founder is hard, and in those dark moments, I'm always motivated by the emails that we receive from our users and seeing all the food coming onto the app and being saved from the bin.
Being a CEO, how do you balance work and personal life?
The approach we take at OLIO is very much formed by the fact that we're two female founders who have children, so as a result, we all work remotely and flexibly. We don't think so much about work-life balance,which seems to suggest that there's a thing called "work" and a thing called "life." We think much more holistically about how to lead a balanced life. And that means that every team member carves out time during the"working day" to spend on their wellbeing.
What advice would you have for future and current founders?
Get something small out, as quickly as possible, soyou can respond to real data—build, test, learn—and get that loop happening as quickly as possible.
There is also a tendency for startup founders to build an app right away, and I always encourage people to try to find a way to test your hypothesis which doesn't require you to sink your life savings in building an expensive app—such as Facebook or WhatsApp!
By: Leah Hodgson
October 9, 2018
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