Atlantis Startup Hike backstory and why I became a Coach for Bitcoin founders… It took three months to organize this group for the hike in Madeira.
I‘m an engineer by background and had no prior experience organizing events. I have been working in the bitcoin industry for 6 years. So I knew plenty of great people. Being an introvert, I hadn‘t met many in person. But as a former founder I knew what I would have wanted… to meet mentors and investors to help me in my venture.
But how did I make the transition from engineer to becoming a startup coach? I worked as an engineer in startups for 12 years. I was Co-founder and CTO at my own email encryption company and worked at several bitcoin startups. Always working on open source. After a burnout several years back I received therapy, coaching and worked with psychedelics like Ayahuasca. That healing journey created a shift in me and I made a lot of changes in my life that improved my health. Overall I feel much more resilient, balanced and productive now. After sharing my journey and lessons with others, I was given feedback that my advice helped them and that I should become a coach. Needless to say the work culture in tech startups is highly competitive and often times toxic. But I still loved working with smart people and being involved in the creative process. I also loved the people working on bitcoin, especially those in the open source community! So after completing the formal training to become a coach I decided to focus on executive coaching for bitcoin founders. I thought this would be the way I could make the biggest impact on Bitcoin adoption, while helping founders make positive changes and find balance. After working with a few founders in the past two years, I knew I was ready to grow my coaching business. So I got a business coach myself to help me figure out a sales strategy to meet more founders. The idea was to do a startup hike at a conference to bring together new founders, mentors and investors. Everyone could profit from making stronger relationships. Founders wanted to meet investors and mentors. Investors wanted to meet founders to invest in. And I wanted to meet founders who needed coaching… win-win-win!
I also felt many conferences are largely broadcasting from the same group of people. While I highly respected these people, I felt the conferences weren’t providing the most valuable experience for me. As I could already listen to many of these people on podcasts. In the spirit of bitcoin, I wanted more peer-2-peer conversations between new founders (from the pitch day) and mentors in nature while moving. So I decided to organize the startup hike as a satellite event at Bitcoin Atlantis in Madeira.
If you ever want to meet a lot of people in an industry, organize an event. It‘s highly political process, but you‘ll learn a lot about the people involved. You‘ll also know pretty well who you‘ll want to work with in the future. The hardest part was saying no to a lot of amazing people who wanted to join. But keeping the group focused on founders turned out to be the right decision. The feedback I’ve gotten from the founders has been amazing. One even said it was the most valuable event for him at the conference. Some even skipped the conference and flew in just for the hike! And a few founders have already reached out to ask for coaching. So in this regard the event was already a success. If you have any feedback about the event, please reach out and let me know. I‘m still learning. And I’m definitely considering organizing another startup hike later this year. It was a blast. And thanks again everyone for the support. Special thanks to
@Fox 🧙♀️🪐 for organizing the pitch day and
@moneyball for the support and introductions. I couldn’t have done it without you all! 🧡
