We went to a start up bootcamp

What we learnt and what's coming soon...

Sep 23, 2024

September so far seems to be a month of duality: it has both flown by and been going for ages, we have had beautiful sunny evenings and also flash floods across the country. In what also now seems ages ago, Tom and I were at a start up ‘bootcamp’ in east London last week.

We recently finished a longer programme with 100 companies, and the top 10 won a slot on this in person intensive session - and we were successful in getting one. The two days were spent workshopping and pitching Verse to mentors, investors and industry experts, helping us to evolve and test our ideas.

It was pretty intense, with lots of information and even more feedback, but the highlights were:

Meeting 9 other fab companies and their founders
A pitching masterclass where we were put through our paces in compelling ways to craft stories. Particularly important since our attention spans are now 1/3 shorter since the release of the original iPhone (it was 12 seconds in 2007, now it’s just 8 seconds). How quickly do we think we’re going to lose another 1/3 thanks to TikTok?
All things rapid experimentation, with an important reminder that building stuff isn’t progress, learning is. It’s also a more fun way to live.
More business book recommendations 🥰 - if this floats your boat, here are the ones mentioned at bootcamp and on our accelerator.

weare.verse

A post shared by @weare.verse

We’re reading all the recommended books we’ve had to date and will share our ‘best of the best’ soon. We want to really put them through their paces, but if you’re keen to explore in the meantime we’ve linked all the ones mentioned in our shop.

What’s coming next?

We’re very close to our first release of Verse and we are going to start testing with a small group of users imminently. Let us know in the comments if you’d like to be part of this group ✨
We have created a whatsapp community which you should join!
If you’re looking for your next read, you can drop what you’re after in our book recs channel and we’ll get you the very best of recommendations.

Share Verse

Here’s 3 things I found interesting recently:

This Founder Mode essay went pretty viral in the product & techy parts of the web. It’s an interesting piece by the co-founder of Y Combinator (a venture capital firm), with some interesting food for thought. Companies started via Y Combinator include Airbnb, Dropbox and Stripe.
I’ve recently switched my browser to Arc and am honestly just having a lot of fun. The design is great, the organisation is super effective. Plus their onboarding emails are a masterclass in being useful and bringing out the personality of the brand.
I loved the discussion on purpose in this podcast: what if your purpose was to first make yourself better, and then to make everyone who comes into contact with you feel better? A nice thought for the week.