Our toughest week yet launching our startup

Kindling founders face funding-bias backlash in launch week

Kindling launched after three months of heads-down building, and the numbers went well until an Australian Financial Review article about the founders and their race was used as a straw man in the argument that women do not get funded. Both say they agree with the underlying point about bias in fundraising and that the anger is aimed at the system rather than at them. The attacks built conviction, and turned their attention to articulating a bigger vision and to the habits and sleep launch week had eaten into.

Takeaways

• Launch week met a funding-bias controversy. An Australian Financial Review article about the founders and their race was picked up in the industry as a straw man for the claim that a women-led business with the same model could not have raised. It began around day three.
• Public strangers, not hate, drive the anxiety. Adam says the difference from ordinary online abuse is that public people who do not know them are now commenting, while everyone who knows them well is encouraging. The anxiety comes from not controlling how they are represented.
• Critics are angry at the system, not them. Sachin says they did nothing wrong and both care about women getting funded less than men. He calls exposing pre-seed uncertainty in the article a mistake, and says some attackers later messaged privately to say it was not aimed at them.
• The attacks built conviction, not doubt. Adam says reading the comments built far more conviction and made him think about the impact he wants to have. He says resilience has physical and emotional dimensions, and that comfort with public attacks is a skill they must train.
• Habits and deep work hold up under launch pressure. Sachin does two to three hours of deep work after morning coffee, using state changes such as the office sauna. Adam's sleep and exercise slipped after a year of good habits, so he is limiting social media and separating sales days from creative days.
• Sachin says his soul has gone uncared for. He slept an average of five and a half hours over eight days and says consuming Alex Hormozi all day would not produce brilliant media the way the New Yorker and old films would. He rejects the nine-to-five balance idea for high performers.

The months ahead

• Kindling is six people. Neither founder has managed before, and every hire has been told they want them managing ten people in 18 to 24 months.
• Sachin wants their first employee John paid a world-class wage with equity. A second hire has joined in the Philippines, with an intern named Anastasia and Yuri returning from the United States.