With me today is Mike Quinn, the founder of Zoona, one of Africa’s startup darlings for a period of time. He and three other cofounders built Zoona, a money transfer and remittance business, to over 3000 agents transactacting $2.5Bn across two African markets - Zambia and Malawi. They earned $86 million in revenue along the journey. He was one of the first founders on the continent to ever raise venture money and raised through Series B before their Series C and ultimately the future growth of the company went into a death spiral. He wrote his reflections in a book titled “Failing to Win” and he is now on to building his next venture, Boost. Hear on this episode: 1) Learning from Failure - The Startup CEO & Founder Reality We are All Failing All the Time The Difference Between Having Failed and Thinking You Are a Failure Navigating Self Doubt in Tough Moments Making the Decision to Leave Your Own Company You are Not Going through the Founder Journey Alone if You Do it Right How Being a Dad and Husband made Mike a Better Leader 2) Managing Your Board Managing the Culture of Your Board as You Would Your Team Reduce the Drag Coefficient of Your Board Talk about What Actually Matters at Your Board vs Reporting and Updates How to Communicate to the Board When You Are Disappointing Them 3) Exiting a Key Executive Deciding to Exit A Key Executive Who Doesn’t Fit Your Culture When Your Culture Is Misaligned Internally and How You Know When Someone Breeds a Different Culture Internally to What You Have When International Expansion Fails in a New Market after it Worked in Others 4) Team and Culture How to Hire The Fewest “Right” People Culture Exists Whether You Care About it or Not Managing Culture and Morale When Contracting not Scaling Behaviours not Values are What Matter Finding a CoFounder Who Complements Your BlindSpots Find Mike's book on Amazon and Audible. Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices