About Maureen Sarewitz
Founder of Trove, a company whose mission is to helps organizations leverage diverse perspectives to maximize business performance.
Maureen’s a second time founder. Her first venture, the Acacia Growth & Impact Consulting has been running for the past 4 months, providing product management and marketing advice to her growing list of clients
Faculty and Clinical Instructor for Project Management at the University of Washington School of Public Health
Start up coach and mentor to many early-stage founders
Operating executive at the Polaris Growth Fund, focuses on growth, marketing, and product management, as part of the Strategic Acceleration Team
Key takeaways and quotes that made us go ‘a-ha’
Passion is a MUST when venturing out to do your own thing. And you need to complement that passion with milestones that keep you going.
“For me, it was really just about setting small milestones to keep myself chugging along and going…at the end of this month, I want to have these 3 things accomplished”
Taking a break is necessary from time to time, to reset your energy and give you perspective.
“ I had an advisor who said you’ve been going a million miles an hour…it will probably be good for your business to get some perspective by stepping back”
Lean on your networks to help with the admin-side of setting up your business. Spend enough time investing in finding the right level of information you need.
“I connected with other people who had started businesses to ask for their advice….there is so single source of truth…find someone who is credible and trustworthy, tap into their expertise”
“Better to set it up right than having to rework and pay even more to correct things later on”
Testing does not just mean putting your MVP out there, you can also test people’s response to your problem solving.
“Through sharing my content, I did a big marketing push to get people to engage with the content. Once I did that, a lot of people reached out to me with feedback and shared interest in the problem I was solving”
“The solution I may have envisioned for this is really different compared to the direction I am actually going in because I learnt a lot through this way”
Be careful about where you spend your money in the initial stages of starting a business.
“The only actual money I’ve put in, aside from the time, has been spent on the website. And I know I now need to put money aside for the MVP. But my goal is to continue bootstrapping and working as well…this gives me the most flexibility to build on my own timeframe and terms”
Beta customers are great to not just trial your product, but also to become your continued customers and advocates. So, be strategic about choosing them, and start with ‘friendlies’.
“I am going to do user research…my hope is that people who participate in this will become beta customers. I first thought about the target/ideal customer and I landed on a specific company size that would fit the bill…I’m putting together a simple explanation of Trove and a list of ‘friendlies’ that I know and have sent out clear signals to be potential buyers of the product”
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