https://shirtsofstartups.com/home daily 1.0 2024-02-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1610344621823-YFN46C99JYQPQSNZYJ8O/image-asset.jpeg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1625182487500-326O069YYIF4LHTQMQ1R/image-asset.jpeg Home - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1617279683654-999ALRY7EQEKMYRT9G69/image-asset.jpeg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1615936464762-1AQMSJMB7QCS9L5P8DOA/Manish+%E2%80%93+StackGo.JPG Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1627794670128-2NGC2WYXO7LOJYKXPI7X/image-asset.jpeg Home - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1625894829947-QTPMG7O1BBVNJIRPQUP7/image-asset.jpeg Home - 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Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1623381279761-KW5AJQFN8MASVESZ4S90/image-asset.jpeg Home - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1616392981092-JR68KHFBZ4QW1FTKU2AC/image-asset.jpeg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1615507765959-SBW2OJ7ED0R3A23AWP9Q/image-asset.jpeg Home https://shirtsofstartups.com/newsletter daily 0.75 2021-01-31 https://shirtsofstartups.com/about-old daily 0.75 2023-05-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1611371692966-SC8JHFVZTU56VH0EXEJ4/image-asset.jpeg About https://shirtsofstartups.com/support daily 0.75 2021-07-04 https://shirtsofstartups.com/startups daily 0.75 2021-08-01 https://shirtsofstartups.com/nominate daily 0.75 2024-02-20 https://shirtsofstartups.com/coder-one daily 0.75 2021-03-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1611374562586-3G17DYB3VQOP3ETQ5DY2/image-asset.jpeg Coder One - "Growing up, I spent a lot of time at my cousin’s place, playing on her Game Boy all day. It’s one of my fondest childhood memories. We had one of those bootleg cartridges from China with 50 games in one – which was great, I played Pokemon a lot – but the downside was that you couldn't actually save your game. So I played the same games over and over from the start. I was that kid, always wanting to play games. It defined my childhood. There are even photos of me from friends’ birthday parties, sitting in a corner and playing a Game Boy while everyone posed for the camera. When I was around 12, I got my own Game Boy Advance from my parents and it meant a lot because we didn’t really have a lot of money. We only ever bought one game for it, Super Mario Advance, but I played it every day and I loved it. While I didn’t know it at the time, my childhood of gaming taught me a lot about resilience, all those endless days training in the earliest levels, losing, and doing it over and over again. You would think it gets boring playing the same games over and over again but it developed my ability to focus on a task, not get distracted, and just keep going." Coder One is a consumer-tech startup building the future of AI Sports by making programming and AI fun and accessible, and connecting tech-driven companies with top tech talent. https://shirtsofstartups.com/feather daily 0.75 2021-03-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1612087287658-OZAQ296EJPSFVEFOFOB2/image-asset.jpeg Feather - “Whenever someone asks me how many languages I speak, I usually say 20-25, including all the programming languages I know. And from that group, English was probably the most difficult to learn. It has so many words from different languages and different sounds, a lot of it just doesn’t make sense. But it’s also been the most useful. I wanted to learn it because I always felt like Turkey, where I’m from, was not big enough for me. Even now, I feel like Earth is not big enough for me. I always look for new things to discover and, growing up, I knew that I would probably end up in another country. So I decided English was a good step to take for the future, so I could talk to more people and read more books. I actually studied Electrical and Electronics Engineering in university because I decided to stay in my town and that was the only degree taught in English. I learned a lot by watching American TV shows: Lost, Prison Break, How I Met Your Mother... And knowing the language today, I feel free. It is the freedom to reach more information. But... if I could pick any language to learn and use, it probably wouldn’t be English. It would probably be JavaScript. It doesn’t have many meanings or different spellings. You learn it once and it works everywhere!” Feather is a consumer-tech startup that empowers creators and instructors to easily manage and monetize their virtual events, on-demand classes, and other digital content. https://shirtsofstartups.com/sync-tech daily 0.75 2021-01-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1612087719386-QEJ0L1YRF9BNQT5ZE5FV/image-asset.jpeg Sync Tech - “We were really in the middle of nowhere, on a little boat going along the Amazon River. We had no reception, though there were crocodiles. One day, we went looking for monkeys and on that day trip, I remember talking to him and it was just amazing. And it was fate that we met, because I wasn’t meant to be there. I had just finished my Master’s and was going to start my PhD, but before that, I went backpacking through South America with my best friend. Our trip overall was two months long, but we actually spent just two days in the Amazon jungle – and that was by accident. We were meant to go to Machu Picchu, but there was a big strike and we couldn’t go. So I literally opened a map, closed my eyes, pointed, and it was the Amazon jungle. Next thing you know, we bought the cheapest tickets we could find for a 17 hour bus trip through the Death Road in South America. Similarly with him, he was meant to be on the Inca Trail at that time, but due to a mix up, he had to wait two weeks. So he also ended up in the Amazon. When I met him, I remember saying to my best friend, “If I were to get married, it has to be a man like him.” Little did I know, I had just met my future husband in the Amazon jungle of Peru. After the trip, I went back to Switzerland to start my PhD and he returned to Australia. A couple months later, I saw on Facebook that he was traveling through Europe and by coincidence, he was flying with Swiss Air so he had a stop in Zurich. We reunited, traveled around Switzerland together for five days and after that, we were together. After doing distance for a while, I decided to quit my job, quit my PhD – I quit everything – and move my way to Australia. I didn’t want to live with the thought of what would happen “if.” Meeting him strengthened my belief that life is a journey and you just have to enjoy it. Don’t be too afraid of taking chances – just do it. I don’t want to be 80 years old and looking back on my life and wondering what could have happened.” Sync Technologies is a prop-tech startup, enabling construction businesses to turn data from existing & emerging technologies into action. https://shirtsofstartups.com/portant daily 0.75 2021-03-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1612088049554-4MJS6GCTXP14LZ73XHL6/image-asset.jpeg Portant - “I was sitting in the library, studying for a biology exam in high school, and drawing up these little characters while doing practice problems on Punnett squares. And I remember thinking that the concept would be so awesome as a game. You could have these animals with different traits that could be crossed, and you explore an open world where everyone would have their own unique creature. Like the game Spore. That idea made me want to create the game and I actually made a very basic version of it as one of my projects in school – just a little prokaryote swimming around and collecting food. Got full marks. And, of course, for me to make this evolution game, I had to learn how to code. So, really, learning about genetics turned out to be one of the most pivotal moments in my life. Because it led me to coding, and coding is my whole world today. I really do enjoy it. But if I ever found myself with infinite money and didn’t have to work, I think I’d go back to uni and do degrees in genetics and maths. There’s still so much I want to learn.” Portant is a no-code document automation startup that deletes repetition from people’s workday. https://shirtsofstartups.com/remote-social daily 0.75 2021-03-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1612088283300-2FYZSMZ90T637UK5ZO91/image-asset.jpeg Remote Social - “I was a super curious child, always outside and exploring. I grew up in a military complex because my dad was in the army and it was safe for me to just wander. I think that environment really helped me develop a good perspective on life. I remember playing next to helicopters, watching them take off. Sometimes they would fly back with wounded soldiers, who had been out in the jungle fighting the guerillas in Colombia. I would see them being carried into the hospitals. I saw friends lose their dads in the war and that was pretty hard. It really taught me appreciation and not taking things for granted. My parents were good at making it clear that we were very lucky, growing up in a safe environment in what was a really unstable Colombia back in the 80s and 90s. In middle school and high school, I failed pretty much every math, science and English class, but I was always outstanding in drawing and art, and things that were not structured. Finishing high school, I knew that I had to pursue a career in something creative. I chose to pursue industrial design because I had no idea what to study, but I knew which university I wanted to go to in Colombia. And that was probably the most creative degree I could pursue outside of arts, which I knew was going to be really tough for me to get a job. I applied for it and got in. At the beginning I had no idea what to expect, but I ended up loving it. Doing my degree, I had to ask a lot of questions, ask a lot of why’s, and be able to understand why people behave in some particular way. So that was pretty much the backbone of many things. The key reason why I'm doing what I'm doing today, starting my own business, is because I always question everything. And I've done that since I can remember, from my years in the military complex to my years working for big companies. That questioning of how things are done, that curiosity, is what has taken me to where I am today. And that's something I bring to my work everyday. To always try and understand the why.” Remote Social is a consumer tech company, providing the ultimate destination for remote and hybrid teams to come together online to build connection and culture through play and shared experiences. https://shirtsofstartups.com/stackgo daily 0.75 2021-03-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1612088457752-CTUFE1UBW03HZKJ98PKG/image-asset.jpeg StackGo - "My five year old recently asked me if Santa Claus is real, and I asked her, “What do you think?” She replied, “Nah, I don’t think he’s real. I think it’s just someone dressed up as a Santa Claus to deliver presents. The real Santa Claus is in the North Pole.” The happiest moments of my life are when my kids do or ask things that demonstrate their character. They go from being a child that you look after to coming out with insane comments or views of the world that speak to the fact that they are individuals. And that just makes me feel fantastic. The most important thing in the world to me is being a dad. My own dad passed away when I was quite young, so I always felt that his words of advice shaped me as a person and as a dad myself. He always knew how to have fun and have a good sense of humour. I find that my time with my children is the happiest when we’re playing a silly game or something. And as they grow up, like my dad taught me, I’m teaching my kids gratitude – being grateful with what you have is such a healthy mindset. I’m always reminded that you can’t have everything in the world, but you can be happy if you remember to be grateful." StackGo is a SaaS startup, providing a simpler and faster way for B2B software vendors to sell through SaaS marketplaces." https://shirtsofstartups.com/portant-james daily 0.75 2021-03-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1614640611046-NUP9KOTNLBSRUTWLASVQ/image-asset.jpeg Portant-James - “I grew up in the Highlands of Scotland, where Braveheart was filmed. They actually auditioned my school for extras in the movie, but I unfortunately didn't get a place. It was the very stereotypically Scottish landscape and I lived quite an outdoors life, a lot of skiing and mountain biking. I was in Scotland until I was 18, when I moved to England to go to university, then I got a job as a systems engineer in the aerospace industry. Later, I joined a growth stage startup, making helmets for American football teams and the US military. I don't know if it's just having been lucky or not, but getting people to pay you to learn how to do something is amazing, like when I transitioned from engineering to marketing. I guess a lot of people would try and solve that problem by going to university. I tried to solve it by getting a marketing job and learning on the job, trying not to be completely out of my depth. To get that job, I just used all my skills from project management to get a similar role in marketing, and then I just slid along into more marketing meetings, advertising meetings and just learned by doing. It wasn’t super intentional, I was just interested in how it works. I think of myself as a jack of all trades, but master of none – someone who solves problems systematically and creatively. I also really like to learn on my own, from YouTube and blogs, in particular; you can really learn anything online. And you don't even have to pay for it. I sometimes think it is just like copying other people, copying what they do and working out why that works. They say imitation is the best form of flattery, but it turns out it's also the best form of learning. I use all these skills in the startup world today and I enjoy it because I think something that has always been important to me is creating something, something larger than yourself. If somebody loves something that I've made, that's great – that's how I get my biggest kicks in life and I guess that's what a successful business is. That’s the key for me to find satisfaction and keep my engine running.” Portant is a no-code document automation startup that deletes repetition from people’s workday. https://shirtsofstartups.com/strivin daily 0.75 2021-03-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1614808558017-5HSJWQDSBRBS0TQ2JFX2/image-asset.jpeg Strivin - "I was going to study ancient and classical civilizations in university. But I completely messed up my history A-level in sixth form and just failed a unit. I don’t know what happened, I got 100% in a lot of my business class exams. Then I was planning to take a gap year before uni to go and teach English in China for a few months, but that all fell apart at the last minute because the school pulled out. So I thought, maybe I’ll go to uni earlier than planned. And I was literally searching for courses that weren’t full. I ended up doing a double honours degree in management and marketing, and I loved it. When I left uni, I wanted to go into marketing, but looking back, I have no idea why 21-year-old me thought that was a good idea. I graduated in 2009 during the recession in the UK. There weren't many graduate jobs, especially in marketing. But I was lucky enough to get a three-month, summer job in marketing in Jersey. And I ended up staying in Jersey for five years. Eventually, I thought, if I want a big career, I have to live in London. I guess that was drilled into me as a kid: you've got to live in a big city if you want this glamorous job. So I moved to London... and really didn't enjoy it. I had gone from living on the beach in Jersey to getting the Tube every morning and it was grim. So I was 27 and decided to take a gap year. I planned a two year working holiday visa for Canada and a six months placement in a surf school in Costa Rica, but by the way of Hong Kong, Australia, Fiji, and Thailand. So I left the UK and was like, “Guys, I'll be back in three years, see you soon!” But I got to Australia and never left. I'm one of those people who thinks everything happens for a reason. And I think probably messing up that A-level was a good thing because it made me work a bit harder after that. And I'm incredibly grateful for my life and everything I've been able to do in terms of traveling, where I've been lucky enough to work, and the group of friends I’ve met along the way. I think every mistake or everything that hasn’t gone to plan has led to something else that's been better." Strivin is a platform to supercharge careers, featuring a personalized hub of content, connections, mentors, and events. https://shirtsofstartups.com/make-your-change daily 0.75 2021-03-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1615236667053-I8KPECLE8YZA48PC57DU/image-asset.jpeg Make Your Change - “An earthquake, a missed flight back to Australia, and an expiring visa turned my Indonesian holiday into an emergency flight to Tokyo with a girl I had just met. That then sparked an 18 month adventure to Europe. That earthquake really taught me that sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches and turn a challenge into an opportunity. I ended up working for a med tech start-up in Berlin that had a real purpose, which helped to really open my eyes to what is possible. And I realised for me, my purpose is climate change, or rather, taking action to stop it. I wasn’t passionate about climate change growing up, but that’s changed over time. I think I’ve always been someone who’s looking for a challenge and my background in consulting taught me to look at bigger and bigger problems. And I don’t think there’s a bigger problem at the moment than climate change. Visiting the Great Barrier Reef, for example, really helped to bring an appreciation for nature and also just to see the destruction that’s happening in Australia. You see these beautiful photos of the coral, but you get there and everything’s dead. It’s really a whole other thing to viscerally experience it. I think I spent a lot of my early career focusing on getting promoted or increasing my salary or these kinds of arbitrary goals. But now, I have a purpose and a mission. It's been harder than I ever imagined, but it’s so much more much more rewarding because I’m progressing towards something meaningful.” Make Your Change is a non-profit startup, providing a "one-stop shop" for the environmental justice, sustainability and climate action movement in Australia. https://shirtsofstartups.com/conx daily 0.75 2021-03-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1615412475391-9H4B0U92BWFZ1AC3EZAC/image-asset.jpeg ConX - "We had one year on our tickets. It was a backpacking, round-the-world trip that I’d always planned to do after I graduated from my Master’s program in London. Before that, I had spent 19 years in Dublin, where I was born. We went to South America, and to the Caribbean, and then to New Zealand. We spent way longer than we had planned in New Zealand: we got visas, lived in Queenstown, got ski passes, got a car, and stayed there for six months. I worked in a restaurant as a waitress and went snowboarding everyday – I had the best time ever. We lived in a share-house with about 18 people, just people from all over the world. One of my best friends came from Central America and it was just a big group of friends. Then we got here, to Sydney, with only a month or two left on our tickets. And we just never went home. There was really no set decision – we just arrived as backpackers and there was a huge Irish contingency here. Everyone was living their best life. I got a job at a bank and they ended up sponsoring me. Everything just fell into place, not one thing was planned. But I always wanted to have my own business and I eventually fell into startups. Again, no plan. I didn't make a conscious decision to leave from corporate to startups or anything like that, but the startup life has been great. I think my year of traveling the world taught me to always be flexible with your plan, because if we had structured a plan, we would have done our year of travel and been back in Dublin after 12 months. So, I suppose, have a loose plan but be very flexible. And that can apply to everything in life. Just enjoy yourself and don’t stress about anything because everything just works out fine. It's the best time of your life." ConX is a SaaS platform built for SMB construction contractors to manage the pre-construction process with estimating and tender management tools. https://shirtsofstartups.com/tradable-andre daily 0.75 2021-03-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1615507992772-NW06KXA6BLO0H7BBD8SV/image-asset.jpeg Tradable - “Spending 10,000 hours on something is supposed to make you a master—if you’re talented at it. Growing up, I must’ve spent 10,000 hours tuning and fixing our TV, figuring out how it works. We had one of those TVs with the set-top box, and all that time spent tinkering with settings and signals to get a clear picture must have inspired my engineering mindset. I’ve always been inquisitive about how things work. I studied Electronic Engineering, then worked in the telco space. But I had always wanted to travel out of Johannesburg, so I quit my job to go travelling. I was in Majorca, Spain, when a mate was working on a big, Russian-owned, 80 meter superyacht—and he got me a job on it. Two months later, I was in charge of the electronics on a different super yacht: Microsoft’s Paul Allen’s. 18 months later, I was doing IT and AV on Steven Spielberg’s superyacht. Working on superyachts is completely mind blowing. As an engineer, it’s a giant puzzle. You’re faced with tech problems everyday—problems you’ve never seen before and you have no idea what certain things do, but you need to make it work, now. There were some crazy moments—once, we were crossing the Atlantic and there was an electrical issue. So, there I was in the 40 degree engine room in a puddle of sweat, desperately trying to fix a problem I’d just encountered. I loved applying engineering philosophies and learnings from university, and I still have that mindset in the startup world today. I’m always wanting to fix things, to make them bigger and better. I like to see a problem, or have an idea, and be able to quickly prototype a solution. It’s not like you know exactly what you have to do when you’re problem solving, but you ideate, iterate, and improve—and I love that. I’m really grateful for the chance to use these skills daily.” Tradable is a startup that designs and develops proprietary digital asset trading, portfolio management and market-making software. https://shirtsofstartups.com/remote-social-mike daily 0.75 2021-03-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1615786408835-KD2UZRNRB426YY5IVB67/Mike+%E2%80%93+Remote+Social.jpg Remote Social – Mike - "People are often surprised to hear that I started out as a full-time house DJ in Sydney. At 19, I dropped out of an art education degree and picked up a job as a nightclub lighting operator, pressing buttons every Saturday night, watching the DJ do his thing. One day I just asked the DJ if he'd teach me... and he did. I'd spin the first hour or two while the club got warmed up and he would take over from there. I learned an awful lot about the psychology of reading a crowd of people and rotating the dance floor. That was fascinating stuff that showed me a lot about human behaviour and seeing how people operate en masse. It would later become my basis for understanding user experience—what people want and how to give it to them. One of my best memories from that period was headlining the retro room at a party in the Hordern Pavilion. It was on the night after Fatboy Slim had played there, so I had his turntable setup: a rotating DJ booth in the middle of the room. And as I'm in the middle of this sea of several thousand people, I led the entire room through the YMCA. It was awesome. 15 years on, I was getting older, but the patrons were not, so I retired from DJ-ing. In the mid-90's I taught myself basic design, HTML, and CSS with a friend's copy of Photoshop. That quickly saw me shift into design leadership and UX as the digital age started taking over, and that kicked me off into joining companies like Telstra, Atlassian, Auth0, and Deputy. Every time I moved from one thing to another I always stayed super curious and inquisitive. Always learning. I don't have a university degree, but I think you can learn everything you need with self-taught resources. I taught myself back-end programming using Google's Udacity platform several years ago. I've learned to just go in and do things until someone tells you that you can't (hint: they won't). I would encourage anyone else to just continue chasing their dreams and don't feel like you need to study too hard to be able to start doing something. Just go start doing it and you'll get there." Remote Social is a consumer tech company, providing the ultimate destination for remote and hybrid teams to come together online to build connection and culture through play and shared experiences. https://shirtsofstartups.com/lord-of-the-trees-aymeric daily 0.75 2021-03-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1615804516607-D05HRXMOSV67M9Q5BGZ1/Aymeric+%E2%80%93%C2%A0Lord+of+the+Trees.jpg Lord of the Trees – Aymeric - “Since I was a kid, I’ve been growing plants. My mum used to say that I could grow a tree out of a chopstick. I grew up in the vineyards, in the south of France in Bordeaux, and at home, I had a little plot where my dad was forbidden to mow. That’s where I grew anything that I could—it was my little garden. Once, in primary school, my teacher gave everyone five beans that we had to grow over the two-week Easter break. So in our garage, I set up a big fish tank that kept the moisture at a certain level and had lights with a timer as well. And the last weekend of the break, I had to go to my grandparents’ which was an hour drive away. So I insisted on taking the fish tank. A few days later, back at school, everyone had a few sprouts but mine was this overgrown, extraordinary thing. I really love that when you work with plants, they’re alive. I like that they evolve over time; they’re not just an object. I eventually had a career in marketing at Disney and Louis Vuitton, but when I moved to Australia, I wanted to do something that resonated more, so I did Environmental Studies. When I graduated in 2007, “climate change” was a dirty word, so I’m glad to see, almost 15 years later, that we’re getting on top of the political agenda and people are talking about it. Today, my startup restores ecosystems and plants trees using drones. We do full ecosystem restoration with the help of science, technology, and Indigenous culture. Most days it feels like I’m on a rollercoaster with no seatbelt on, but that’s been a challenge in a very good way—there’s a lesson every day and it’s exhilarating.” Lord of the Trees is a global reforestation project that uses precision drone technology to plant seeds and restore ecosystems in degraded land after mining, bushfires and agriculture. https://shirtsofstartups.com/stackgo-manish daily 0.75 2021-03-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1615936374142-XUOD3B71H5HHP4AEJJXC/image-asset.jpeg StackGo – Manish - “As first-generation immigrants from India, my family’s always been pretty entrepreneurial and working on businesses. So while I wasn't one of those people who’s constantly been reading about startups, I was surrounded by business. My first job was stacking shelves at Coles. I did that for a few years, then started tutoring. Later, I worked at a bookstore—that was probably one of the best jobs, I got paid to sit there and read. Growing up, my parents had a party shop, so I helped with that on weekends. I didn’t realize it at the time, but all these jobs helped me learn a lot of the business rules. A small business is definitely different from a startup, but what doesn’t change is that you have to make your customers happy. Like when I was delivering goods for the party shop, I was the customer service rep: I had to set up the AV, mics, lighting, and smoke machines. I quickly learned how to talk to customers—there’s a certain nuance to working and empathizing with them. Or at Coles, there's a difference of 90 seconds between saying a product is in Aisle 4 versus walking them there and chatting with them, but to a customer, that means the world. I think that philosophy’s true for a lot of startup tools, like Paul Graham's idea of “do things that don't scale.” Another tool I have as a tech founder today is writing: I discovered that if I’m struggling with something, like big decisions or imposter syndrome, I’ve found it helpful to write. Oftentimes, writing can make things seem smaller or give them the right frame of reference. I don't recall anyone specifically saying I should write, I just got it from different sources and I thought, I'll try it. And it stuck, because I got value out of it. I think those are the best things: when you decide to do something because you can feel the why, rather than somebody telling you to do it.” StackGo is a SaaS startup providing a simpler and faster way for B2B software vendors to integrate to SaaS platforms. https://shirtsofstartups.com/hudled-alex daily 0.75 2021-03-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1616392568124-K7IHOE5MXYS40V6MY6GL/image-asset.jpeg Hudled – Alex - “My parents put me in tennis lessons when I was five. Growing up, there was a big wall at our house and I’d always be practicing, just hitting against it for hours. I eventually got quite good and, for over a decade, I competed in a lot of junior and state tournaments, up until I was 18. My favourite part about tennis was the grind of matches, especially when you’ve got the mental edge over someone as you’re deep in a set or a tiebreak. I really hated losing. I wouldn’t miss a lot and would consistently hit my winners, so I could generally out-grind the other players. But as we got to the next level, I had some shoulder problems that meant I couldn’t ever serve as big as a lot of the other guys. That was eventually why I didn't try to pursue it further overseas. Today, I feel like the startup world and tennis have the same lessons, just at a different pace. In both, you have to stay focused and take calculated risks at the right times, and I love that parallel. But more than anything, tennis taught me about grit. And that’s just as important in a startup as it is on the court.” Hudled is a SaaS startup providing a real-time dashboard for teams in growing companies to track and optimise their software stack. https://shirtsofstartups.com/upflowy-guillaume-ang daily 0.75 2021-03-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1616392866366-KAKXRANCJZIJY4GQH0ZY/image-asset.jpeg Upflowy – Guillaume Ang - “I went and worked in Wuhan for a year in the automotive industry after studying engineering in university. I was born and raised in Paris, but have Chinese origins and wanted to learn more about that part of my background. I also spoke some Mandarin, so I helped a school there create a program on entrepreneurship. And from that experience, I knew that when I returned to France, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. My time in China really taught me that if you try something, it will either work out or something will come out of it because people want to be involved in interesting opportunities and around people with energy. If you surround yourself with the right ecosystem, things can happen very fast, which I’ve tried to replicate in Australia. As a founder today, I think my main strength is that I really, really care about the people that I work with. I try to get the best of them and to help them grow into the best version of themselves. I think that’s influenced by my mother, who is a psychologist. Growing up, that was always part of the conversation—understanding how your actions make other people feel. I come back to that often.” Upflowy is a no-code SaaS tool enabling growth leaders to build and experiment with seamless sign-up flows without relying on engineering. https://shirtsofstartups.com/about daily 0.75 2024-02-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe5ae4e8d20536a3fbc6118/1611371692966-SC8JHFVZTU56VH0EXEJ4/image-asset.jpeg About - Hi there! Thanks for checking out Shirts of Startups. SoS was founded in the Sydney Startup Hub in 2020 to celebrate the inspiring, unconventional stories of startup founders. I started this platform because I’m passionate about startups as a former founder myself. Separately, ever since I picked up a DSLR camera in uni, I’ve loved photography. I combined these two passions, together with a love for storytelling, and voila – SoS was born. I hope you enjoy it! Shori Hijikata Founder of SoS Personal Instagram, website & LinkedIn