47 min
You’ve Got To Be Happy in Your Work Before You Start Reaping The Rewards of it With Adam Farah The Turning Point With Dan Maw
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- Careers
Adam is the co-founder and CTO of Zazu, a logistics supported trading platform connecting farmers to markets. Previously, he used to work in the financial services industry with a background in big data, analytics, and software engineering. Adam has a deep interest in solving problems using simple technology.
Adam’s Key Points
* Any opportunity that presents itself to you, should be handled with open arms.
* No matter the situation you’re in, do some research and get the backing of people you’re closest to.
* If you are thinking of moving from one industry to another, try doing something in your spare time and learn something.
Guest Links
* Website – http://www.zazuafrica.com
* Twitter – https://twitter.com/adamfarah
* Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-farah-271ba713/
Top Quotes
* When I got sacked, I realised that there is more to life than a standard job.
* Things were alright but I got bored again and that’s the true financial servers game started.
* Things had to change because I knew I wasn’t quite happy.
* I was kind of living in a world of not having financial certainty.
* My girlfriend now wife broke down whilst heavy pregnant.
* I saw some problems in the breakdown industry that I thought I could do something to help.
* I spent every evening doing research and ideas of what I wanted to build.
* I think I want to quit my job.
* I got the blessing from my wife and went for it.
* I don’t think I’d have had the balls to follow through with it without my support network.
* In the startup scene and I knew I wasn’t going to get any revenue for a good 12 months, I thought let’s do some serious budgeting.
* Quick tip, if you have quite your job and have 12 months of runway, don’t have a child and get married in another country because that will absolutely ruin your budget.
* I love building, it so happens that software is my preferred method of building things.
* I didn’t want to manage people who didn’t really want to be there.
* Any opportunity or any event can help you.
* I thoroughly and wholeheartedly believe that you shouldn’t regret anything.
* I had exactly 12 months to try and build this startup.
* I only learnt later on that I actually did it completely wrong but this is only something that I could have learnt by being in the start-up world.
* People have this idea that start-ups are in America because that’s where it’s all happening and that’s just not true.
* Through conversations and meetings, we got accepted onto Londons first program.
* We live in Barnsley and London is 180 miles away and it just wasn’t commutable.
* The program managers are there to push you to progress.
* Some people just ripped your product to pieces.
* 50% of the mentors really didn’t think Cavalry would work and 50% were the polar opposite.
* The reason 50% of people didn’t like it was because they thought in 20 years who’s going to own a car but they were city people not rural.
* A pivot normally is you stick around the same sort of company but change your product
* We decided to park Cavalry and do something completely different.
* I was down about it all, it was like having a funeral for Cavalry.
* I’d properly burned through all my savings.
* I started to think what is all this for.
* One of the mentors said, “Go out and get really drunk and think of it as a wake for this and give it a send-off and then come back and leave it there.”
* In a few days, we managed to get double the amount of people using Pip than we had using Cavalry in a year.
Adam is the co-founder and CTO of Zazu, a logistics supported trading platform connecting farmers to markets. Previously, he used to work in the financial services industry with a background in big data, analytics, and software engineering. Adam has a deep interest in solving problems using simple technology.
Adam’s Key Points
* Any opportunity that presents itself to you, should be handled with open arms.
* No matter the situation you’re in, do some research and get the backing of people you’re closest to.
* If you are thinking of moving from one industry to another, try doing something in your spare time and learn something.
Guest Links
* Website – http://www.zazuafrica.com
* Twitter – https://twitter.com/adamfarah
* Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-farah-271ba713/
Top Quotes
* When I got sacked, I realised that there is more to life than a standard job.
* Things were alright but I got bored again and that’s the true financial servers game started.
* Things had to change because I knew I wasn’t quite happy.
* I was kind of living in a world of not having financial certainty.
* My girlfriend now wife broke down whilst heavy pregnant.
* I saw some problems in the breakdown industry that I thought I could do something to help.
* I spent every evening doing research and ideas of what I wanted to build.
* I think I want to quit my job.
* I got the blessing from my wife and went for it.
* I don’t think I’d have had the balls to follow through with it without my support network.
* In the startup scene and I knew I wasn’t going to get any revenue for a good 12 months, I thought let’s do some serious budgeting.
* Quick tip, if you have quite your job and have 12 months of runway, don’t have a child and get married in another country because that will absolutely ruin your budget.
* I love building, it so happens that software is my preferred method of building things.
* I didn’t want to manage people who didn’t really want to be there.
* Any opportunity or any event can help you.
* I thoroughly and wholeheartedly believe that you shouldn’t regret anything.
* I had exactly 12 months to try and build this startup.
* I only learnt later on that I actually did it completely wrong but this is only something that I could have learnt by being in the start-up world.
* People have this idea that start-ups are in America because that’s where it’s all happening and that’s just not true.
* Through conversations and meetings, we got accepted onto Londons first program.
* We live in Barnsley and London is 180 miles away and it just wasn’t commutable.
* The program managers are there to push you to progress.
* Some people just ripped your product to pieces.
* 50% of the mentors really didn’t think Cavalry would work and 50% were the polar opposite.
* The reason 50% of people didn’t like it was because they thought in 20 years who’s going to own a car but they were city people not rural.
* A pivot normally is you stick around the same sort of company but change your product
* We decided to park Cavalry and do something completely different.
* I was down about it all, it was like having a funeral for Cavalry.
* I’d properly burned through all my savings.
* I started to think what is all this for.
* One of the mentors said, “Go out and get really drunk and think of it as a wake for this and give it a send-off and then come back and leave it there.”
* In a few days, we managed to get double the amount of people using Pip than we had using Cavalry in a year.
47 min