EP #221 - Pascal Koenig: Hardship Can Be Rewarding

About Pascal Koenig:

Pascal Koenig is the co-founder, former CEO and current board member at AVA women, a startup manufacturing wearable fertility trackers for women. He studied business in St Gallen and New York and worked at McKinsey for a few years before being invited by one of his university professors to join a startup project — Cardiosave.

After having started 4 companies, here’s some of the advice Pascal has for young entrepreneurs:

- Pick your co-founders very carefully. Most people do so randomly or without much thought. Having studied alongside them and being confident in how knowledgeable they are is not a good enough reason;

- When building your product, don’t strive for perfection right away and know that ideas aren’t worth much. The real magic happens when you buckle down, get it done, and then iterate, iterate, iterate;

- Switzerland is more or less the same country whether you live on 100’000 or 1’000’000 CHF. So if you’re hesitant whether or not to take the entrepreneurial leap, take it;

- The best place to start when building a product is with a real problem that you know quite well.

Memorable Quotes:

"If you’re not embarrassed when you launch your first product, it’s too late to launch it."

"Switzerland is more or less the same country, whether you live with 100’000 or with 1’000’000."

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If you would like to listen to our conversation with AVA women co-founder, Lea Von Bidder, click here.

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