What the Hot Seat Taught Me About My Own Business

A few weeks ago, I sat in the Anabasis Academy Hot Seat — a live session where founder and host Sid Mohasseb delivers unfiltered, investor-caliber feedback to entrepreneurs in front of an audience. I posted about it before it happened. I showed up. And then I ran out of road trying to explain the business.

Sid struggled to follow what I was trying to explain because I was explaining it the wrong way, to the wrong audience, using the wrong frame. The people I'm building Elikonas for understand it when I describe it to them. They've lived it. But investors ask entirely different questions, and I wasn't answering those.

Sid could have moved on, but he was driven to help me succeed. We scheduled a follow-up and in that second conversation, he asked me something simple:

"What do these people need?"

That was somehow easier to answer.

• Awareness: They need to know that a learning solution that fits their needs exists.
• Guidance: They need access to recommendations that fit their needs.
• Community: They need a network of trusted humans to advise, encourage, and keep them accountable.
• Ownership: They need to see their learning path and progress in one place to further motivate them.

Here's what Sid got through to me in that exchange: I had been leading with the injustice of the problem rather than the humanity of the solution. And while the injustice is real, investors aren't moved by inequity alone. They want to see the mechanism. The answer to "what do these people need" is the mechanism. It's also the architecture of the Elikonas platform. This is the map to success — both for students who sign up with Elikonas and for building the business.

There's a particular kind of confidence that comes from being pushed until you find your own footing. Sid closed the follow-up by telling me to reach out when I get funded.

That was all I needed.

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If you're a founder who has been circling the same pitch language and wondering why it isn't landing with investors, I'd encourage you to find your own version of that question. Strip away the framing. Forget the market sizing and the problem statement and the TAM. Just answer this:

What do these people need?

The answer exposes the core of why you're in business in the first place. For me, it clarified the center of gravity for how I communicate what we're striving for at Elikonas.

— Katie

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