Speaking at the latest TechToronto event, Alex and Ali de Bold, the married co-founders of ChickAdvisor, shared with a crowd of current and future entrepreneurs about successfully working together as co-founders.
ChickAdvisor is a Toronto-based community and native advertising platform that allows women to share and receive recommendations and reviews on various products and services.
During their talk, the de Bolds said that when launching a startup, co-founders need to look at four different aspects of their idea: infatuation, reality check, getting hitched, and making it work.
“I’ve heard many people put their hands up and talk about building a new platform, a new solution. Somebody’s got a great idea and nobody else has done it before,” said Alex. “There’s a heck of a lot of difference between having an idea and bringing it to a reality and monetizing it.”
Alex and Ali tied these four stages of a startup to their own experience with ChickAdvisor, pointing out that even though investors did not support their idea initially, the co-founders still thought it had potential. With that in mind, the de Bolds decided to bootstrap their platform with their personal finances in 2006. Since then, the company has been growing for the last 10 years.
According to Alex, the four keys to getting the startup right and making it work are remembering that “challenges and change are inevitable, you have to set clear roles and responsibilities…and have a short memory.”
The de Bolds will be releasing ChickAdvisor’s third platform in the coming weeks.
Watch the full presentation below: