Quickfire Questions with Adam Horne
Adam co-founded member network Open Org with John Faulkner-Willcocks last year to help under-resourced people teams access resources and support. Together, they have 25+ years of experience founding & building companies, which makes him the perfect person to ask about friendship within business.
Q: Why did you choose to co-found a business rather than going it alone?
Adam: I’ve done both, and have found pros and cons to both honestly. I’ve been a Founder or Co-Founder for 11 years now. My first few were as a sole Founder. On the one hand you have full freedom and opportunity to decide how things are done. But on the other, everything sits with you. And executing anything can take twice as long. I’ve found that if you have the right co-founder, you can move way quicker. Plus two minds are better than one! And founder life can get lonely. It’s nice to have someone to share that journey with.
Q: What are the pros and cons of having an existing friendship with your co-founder?
Adam: I’ve known John as a friend for 13 years now. We’ve always connected on work, culture, and the idea of building something together one day. That alignment over a long period of time has set us up well. We know each other as individuals, and we know we’re aligned not just on what we want to build, but also aligned on personal goals outside of work too. That’s crucial. I’ve found if you’re at different stages of life, or have different needs from your business personally than your co-founder, it can cause problems.
Q: What weaknesses do you have that John balances out, and vice versa?
Adam: John’s had this incredible journey through the world of consulting, product, people, and agile coaching. He’s worked with companies of all shapes and sizes all over the world and he’s seen the good, the bad the ugly. He’s also got ADHD as a superpower. I’ve never seen someone read & absorb as quickly as him which comes in handy for the work we do, and he works way faster than anyone I’ve worked with before… oh and he can code too.. He built a SaaS product (www.peoplemetrics.fyi) just for fun over the Christmas break whilst I was having my 3rd baby, which we launched into beta and then to paying customers shortly after.
What do I bring in comparison? I’ve had 11 years of building companies of varying sizes as a Founder which is a pretty powerful lens I find. I’ve started 4x bootstrapped companies over 11 years, growing teams from 2-100. You learn a lot. You see a lot. And aside from that, I’ve spent 13 years alongside that advising tech startups & scaleups on all things people, talent & culture. I’m also pretty comfortable on LinkedIn content, which is a huge source for our inbound leads & community growth. I find our experience complements each other well; I have the talent & founder & ‘from scratch’ people exposure & John has the culture change, coaching, and problem-solving mindset which is so powerful.
Q: If you could go back to the day you started your company, would you choose to relive the time since then in the same way?
Adam: I think so, mostly. We’ve iterated and pivoted a little along the way as we’ve worked to find our product-market fit. It’s taken us a while, but when I look at everything we have done I think I’d do it again. We doubled down on User Research & sharing our ideas out loud. We built quickly, got feedback, iterated, and went again. We focused on giving value to our target audience, which has helped accelerate our brand immensely.
Q: For anyone wanting to follow in your footsteps, what would be your one piece of advice?
Adam: I sort of have 2 but I’ll be clever and roll them into 1 if I can… Network & Connect. In my early days, I didn’t do enough to share early business ideas or meet other founders. I was wary of someone taking my idea, so I kept it hidden, building without feedback or market research. This time around, we’ve seen the power of that. My advice… No one’s stealing your idea.. and if they do, trust that they’ll never do it better than you. Share it and vocalise it. People will help you build the thing. And embrace building a network of other founders with whom you can share the journey. It gets lonely, but you’re all facing the same challenges.
