Lindsey Christensen is back as the Marketing Lead at thoughtbot! She's joined by guests Jordyn Bonds, the Director of Product Strategy at thoughtbot, and Ashley Sheble, a founder currently participating in thoughtbot's eight-week startup incubator, to discuss the multifaceted journey of entrepreneurship.
thoughtbot's Incubator Program aims to help founders like Ashley turn an idea into a viable product. They're currently at the stage of validating assumptions about the problem space and target market. Jordyn introduces a new concept: a project roadmap visualization that includes an "emotions workstream." This is designed to help founders anticipate and navigate the emotional rollercoaster often associated with the early stages of startup development.
Ashley finds the roadmap valuable, especially as it challenges her to examine her ideas from multiple perspectives. She appreciates the one-on-one support from the Incubator team, which complements her own expertise. She also speaks to the liberating aspect of acknowledging emotions in the startup journey, which is especially pertinent for female founders who often face additional challenges like lack of funding.
Jordyn emphasizes the importance of early and continuous customer engagement for product validation and innovation. She encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to talk to potential customers as soon as possible to iterate and learn from these interactions. Jordan and Ashley stress that embracing the logical and emotional aspects of entrepreneurship leads to more effective and grounded decision-making.
Follow Ashley Sheble on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-sheble/).
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Transcript:
LINDSEY: All right, we are live. So, thank you for joining us today. So, we've got a new founder that's going through thoughtbot's startup incubator. And we're going to be checking in with her as she goes through the program, learning what she learns, learning about the process.
Quick reminder: thoughtbot is a development and design company. We help founders and existing companies create, launch, and improve amazing products and their teams. And one way we do that is through our startup incubator. The incubator is an eight-week program. And our second session just kicked off, which we're going to be talking about a whole lot today.
So, I'm excited to introduce you to the founder that's going through that process, as well as our fearless leader of the incubator program, Jordyn, I myself, Lindsey Christensen. I'm the Marketing Lead here at thoughtbot. I'll be asking lots of questions. But if you also have questions, please enter them in the chat, and we'll get to those as well. Before we get to Ashley, I'm going to start off with Jordyn. For those who may not be familiar with you, can you tell us who you are and what you're doing?
JORDYN: I am Jordyn Bonds. And I am the Director of Product Strategy on thoughtbot's, Ignite team, which is the team that is kind of experimenting with this incubator, shall we say. And I am a two-time startup founder myself. I've worked at other early-stage startups as initial head of product. Long ago, I spent ten years as a software engineer. So, that's my distant background. And I live in Boston.
LINDSEY: Oh, we got our first comment. Someone says, "Thanks for sharing your experience." Thank you. Welcome. Love that. Keep the comments and questions coming.
Okay. And now for our latest guest of honor. Ashley, can you introduce yourself to the audience? A little bit about you and maybe even about your journey to bring you here today.
ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. So, hi, everybody. My name is Ashley Sheble. I'm currently based in Houston, Texas. I have about 15 years of experience in sales and operations roles. And I have two kids. I've got one who started third grade yesterday and one who