Nira de Waele

After getting my MSc in entrepreneurship I co-founded a startup and ran it from A-Z. From writing a business plan, networking my way to investors and raising funds to building a product, brining it to market. I developed and implemented a marketing plan which helped our company gain thousands of customers from over hundred countries while managing the day-to-day operations. I gained much experience dealing with costumers, managing employees and making compromises ;-) I also have experience working at a scaleup as a product manager working in a multifunctional team. The scaleup was bought by a multinational and I left shortly after realising I much rather work with startups... For the last couple of years I'm mentoring early stage startups as part of the validation lab in Yes!Delft incubator and as a freelancer. I love it & I would be happy to do more of it... I started mentoring because I know what I was missing while running my company and even through my studies and I hope that the mistakes I've made could bring some value eventually. Anyway long story short, please reach out if you need some help...

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  Advice on funding

  How to get 'funding ready': - Practice your pitch - Go over your story - pitch deck - How much to ask for? - Where to find funding? - How and when to approach investors? - Alternative fundings

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  Bootstrapping

  Trying to get as far as you can with minimum resources, I see it as an art form :) Something like 'fake it till you make it' mind set - e.g. try to build a mockup mvp instead of an expensive one... etc.

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  Mindset coaching

  Sometimes it's good to take a break from the everyday hassle and take time to reflect. The things that went well and things to improve on. working on self efficacy, setting goals and looking at the big picture. - Mentors (and me specific) could help with this :)

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  Product market fit

  - Is your product solving a real problem? - Who is your product build for? - What alternatives are there for your product? - How to reach your potential market? etc.

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  Venting frustration

  Amen to that! Sometimes you just want to complain and that's ok ;) I can be a good listener, no judgment no unsolicited advice. Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster and when you'r down you are really down. There is no harm in taking a minute and realising the frustration. It's there for a reason.

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  JIRA

  12 years of experience

  Project management tool that helps breakdown the project to smaller steps - within an epic you have stories and each story composed of tasks. For software projects you can report bugs or features and follow their development process. Ability prioritise tasks and work as a team seeing at any given moment the status of things.

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  Education

  Teaching e-ship and innovation at a university. Active in incubators. Finding the right product-market fit I Getting 'funding ready' - working on pitch & deck I Overall strategy I Coaching & reflection I Generally challenging assumptions by asking difficult & annoying questions :)