Melbourne Migrapreneurs

In a nutshell, one of the biggest things to have happened over the month of June was my involvement in facilitating Founder Accountability workshops in collaboration with Catalysr X during the Melbourne Migrapreneurs program, sponsored by the City of Melbourne.

The learnings I took away from these 4 sessions are beyond what any online accountability class could have taught me. In the past, NARU has run accountability sessions and co-working sessions as well, but nowhere near with the same calibre and vibrancy of the community of 35 migrant founders in a room at StartSpace - networking, sharing ideas, exchanging contacts, finding partnership opportunities, and more.

In order to dispel what really went down and my reflections from feedback, here’s how NARU hosted the Founder Accountability sessions in the short span of 4 weeks (and how, as a community builder, you could steal some of these takeaways to implement in your own as well).

Week 1: Introductions to “Founder Accountability”

The Melbourne Migrapreneurs program was broken down into 4 weeks of masterclasses, with guest speakers like Sakshi Thakur OAM, Roberto Daniele and Daniel Veytsblit as well as 🌏 Usman Iftikhar himself (CEO/Founder of Catalysr - Accelerator for Migrants & Refugees) to lead the teaching in-person. In the first week, we introduced the concept of “Founder Accountability” and gave the audience a way to register their interest to join next week before the masterclass.

What we did right: As soon as people started entering the space, we greeted them and registered their attendance so that we could have a good idea of who was in our audience. It was the perfect timing to strike up a conversation about their own business and what they were here for.

Insight: Founders usually have a lot to say, but they’re not sure how much to say (we do blabber a lot!) So when someone asks them a more specific question like “What are you here to learn about?”, they will find a quicker way to answer it, rather than going on a spiel about everything in their minds. It’s also a good way to prime your audience before a class so that they’re aware of why they are there - to learn.

Room for improvement: Some founders couldn’t make it to the session, or were unaware of the Founder Accountability initiative so they failed to register their interest to join - but when they showed up the next week, they wanted to join anyway. Instead of making it a “bonus initiative”, incorporating it as a part of the program would enable more information to be shared about these sessions beforehand, and allow all founders (whether present or not at the first session), to join and have an opportunity to participate.

Week 2: Let’s define “Accountability”

This week was the official starting week of the Founder Accountability sessions. In the days leading up, I received 30+ registrations for the sessions. Based on questions asking about their role, stage of the founder journey, and industry - we matched them into 8 groups of 4-5 founders. The key concept was to ensure that the number of people in the group was small enough for it to be a comfortable place to talk and share their own goals and challenges - the Elephant group theory.

What we did right: We gathered everyone to sit down at their table with their group. Then we started with a check-in question for everyone: “How would you define accountability?” We went around and gathered responses from each table. A few mentioned “sharing what you’re working on with someone else”, others mentioned “having someone to rant to when you’re stressed”. The fun bit was that everyone could relate to all the answers.

Insight: We exist in a society where living socially amongst one another improves our focus, increases our lifespan, and as founders, greatly boosts the chance of success. It was eye-opening to find that while we may not realise it, we already require accountability to function. And it can take form in many ways: through conversations, co-working, and activities like eating or walking together.

Room for improvement: We realised that while we did our best to match people based on their roles, stage as a founder and industries, people bonded naturally in real life and a few members reached out to say that they felt awkward with the group they were assigned online. One founder also suggested playing a card game to determine people’s interests outside of startup before allowing them to form their groups online. We’ll take on these suggestions for sure!

Week 3: Commitment + Planning

Our 3rd and last week of Founder Accountability felt like a wrap-up session even before we could get started! Many founders had found a certain groove in their group. When I posted a mid-week reflection question, asking founders to rate how they felt out of 10 (on the duck 🦆 scale Sakshi used in week 1) - most who replied were a 7/10.

What we did right: We started this session with a very interesting check-in. We asked founders to share with each other a gift they would bring for other members of their group. The answers we got varied from a robot, a potluck dinner with everyone bringing their own home-cooked dishes, sharing of “joy”, a Tesla, and many more interesting gifts that raised eyebrows.

Insight: I found that it was a great way to prime the audience’s brain by thinking about “What can I give?” instead of “What can I take?” Many times, founders will come into a circle with an idea to pitch, much ask and not much giving back in return - not because we’re mean people, but because we’re simply hardwired that way. It is a lot easier to tell people what you need than to tell people what you can give them in return. The “lacking” mentality usually overpowers the mentality of gratitude. This question helps us think about what we are grateful for, that we can also share to others in this world.

Room for improvement: We ran out of time in the end to determine any real steps moving forward with the Founder Accountability sessions. While I shared advice on having a commitment strategy with the people in their groups - to figure out a time, place and frequency to meet up - we could have actioned it further by determining how we can host sessions like this in the future after the last session that day. A few ideas come to mind: continuing the Founder Accountability sessions on behalf of the Catalysr - Accelerator for Migrants & Refugees community, or bringing them into the Uncommon Collective community (as they share a similar migrapreneur audience) and merging them into activities we run outside such as the Founders Walk happening monthly.