At this year’s CYEL Gala evening, last year’s competition winner, Matias Mäenpää, was tasked with sharing his most important advice for startups.

As a co-founder of Videobot in 2022 Matias knows what it means to develop a startup. As a co-founder of LEAP, an accelerator helping startups and young businesses to leap, he learned through sharing and discussing experiences.

Despite receiving only two minutes for his speech, he shared a profound insight after walking the talk himself. He used the first minute to explain what his company does and why people choose their services. During the second minute, he briefly explained the advantages of the Luxembourgish ecosystem. He shared what to do if the ambition is to scale and how startups can get stuck despite the given advantages.

According to him, the biggest mistake startups can make is assuming they are needed.

They rely on their sense of how fantastic and useful their idea is and believe that once it becomes known it will be evident to everyone else. Based on this assumption, they make incredible efforts to stabilize their business and perfect their idea. They do so hoping it will help them fill the gap between the demand they experience and the one they imagine to be there.

What they don’t do is talk to everyone they can think of. They don’t think about learning more about whatever is needed to transform the initial idea into something successful. They focus on their view of their idea.

Success doesn’t result from the talking startups do. It results from a mix of becoming known and becoming knowledgeable about what people want from the service one delivers. None of this happens without enough space to allow for an exchange on the matter.