Many of our past #BetaKit1on1 videos have been with established founders: those who have jumped back on the entrepreneurship wagon multiple times.
Today, we look at two co-founders from the Waterloo Region building their first company, the construction-focused startup Bridgit. In the video below, Mallorie Brodie and Lauren Lake speak honestly about the trial by fire building your first business can be.
“You absolutely have to be resilient if you’re a young founder that’s starting a company today,” Brodie says. “You don’t get everything right the first time.”
“You have to get very comfortable with trying and failing,” she continues. “It’s just part of the game, so make sure that if you feel like you’re having one of those tough days where things aren’t going well, just keep going.”
But the young startup, which recently raised a $2.2 million round to expand to the US, isn’t building on its own. In the video below, both Lake and Brodie credit the mentorship they found through the Next 36 program to keep the company on track (Bridgit is also a Velocity alumnus).
“We got mentorship, our initial startup capital, and all of the resources we needed to launch the company and get everything off the ground,” Lake says, before Brodie expands, “It wasn’t just about finding people that were fifteen years ahead of us, it was finding people that were six months ahead of us.”