Adfin | Life as a Founder Associate at a startup: my first 4 weeks at Adfin

What's a Founder Associate?!

Let’s jump straight into week 3. My second event with the company - the Festival of Accounting and Bookkeeping conference in Birmingham. Unsurprisingly enough, one of the most asked questions I received was: “Founder Associate…what does that mean?” on reading my job title on my badge.

This is why I’m here, writing this article.

It’s difficult to answer what exactly a ‘Founder Associate’ is, as it’s a relatively new concept - something I didn't even know about myself until I came across Jumpstart, a programme that connects generalists with startup opportunities. In essence, we’re the right-hand person to the founder(s)- someone who supports them with anything and everything that helps grow the business.

Friso van de Stadt amicably calls us the ‘Rising Superstars’ in his article on Medium, whilst a Reddit user describes us a ‘glorified secretaries’. In reality, the role can’t be defined too strictly - it depends entirely on the specific needs of the startup and its founder. So, to give you a glimpse, here’s what my first 4 weeks as a Founder Associate at Adfin looked like.

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Week 1: Into the Deep End

Day one: suitcase in hand, I arrived at the office… just in time to head straight to Liverpool for a conference.

Tom (Founder/CEO) had called me the week before to float the idea: “Fancy going up to Liverpool for a conference on your first day?”. Anyone who knows me will know that that was an easy yes.

It was the definition of being ‘thrown in the deep end’, but having familiarised myself with our product, I was ready to meet customers, pitch, and learn more about the accounting world. The highlight was definitely the after party, hosted by yours truly 😝

After Liverpool, my focus shifted to:

Completing my onboarding (setting up my laptop, familiarising myself with our strategy and product roadmap, having a sandwich at the local sandwich shop 🥪)
Understanding all things payments (shoutout to our support wizard Chris!)
Writing my new joiner blog
Ordering cool Adfin merch for a product launch the following week (custom fortune cookies anyone?!)
Booking flights for the whole team to get to Italy for our offsite (we get together every quarter as the team is split between Iasi in Romania and London, as well as Madrid and Amsterdam)

By the end of the week, I had already been assigned my first few big projects (see week 2!).

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Week 2: Tax Credits and Travel Plans

This week was all about balance: Italian offsite planning, commercials, R&D tax credit research, admin and…running?

On the Italy front: arranging logistics for 20 people to go to rural Italy was harder than I imagined. I spent the start of the week searching the internet for a photographer willing to travel into the depths of Umbria, booking rental cars, coordinating drivers and working on a food brief for the cook.

On the commercials side, I was working with Carlos on re-engaging customers stuck in the sales funnel. We wrote personal emails, offered demo calls, and tried to unblock whatever was holding them back.

I also:

Kickstarted our R&D tax credit project (which helps us claim tax relief for the research and development work we’re doing)
Worked on our employee handbooks, making sure they fit the laws and regulations based on country
Found an actor to be our ‘Mad Hatter’ (check week 3)
Attended the Money Squirrel product launch with cookies for the goodie bags
Joined my first Thursday Run Club…(let’s not talk about my performance on this one)

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Week 3: A Mad Hatter in Birmingham

The focus of week 3 was the FAB conference in Birmingham. The theme? Tea Party.

At the stand, we had a Mad Hatter serving tea (yes, the one I found the week before), a jar full of chocolate biscuits, and a lot of attendees asking: “What does Adfin do?” and “Sorry, what’s a Founder Associate?” (where we started this blog). It was great.

Not sure how I’d follow up a tea-serving Mad Hatter, so I won’t try. You can check out some photos from the event on our LinkedIn post!

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Week 4: Sardines and Hackathons

Week four was offsite week 🇮🇹

The main event was our hackathon, which (as you’ll know if you keep an eye on our socials) was a big success. We worked on two key projects: launching Adfin's MCP server and making payment limits for each payment method fully configurable. Since my role isn’t technical, my contribution focused on the go-to-market side of things, like creating support articles to help customers understand the new features.

We also had a marketing kick-off, as we’re bringing all our marketing in-house. I helped define our strategy, map out some early campaigns and outline what we want to deliver to our customers, including a new newsletter format and monthly webinars for our ABC members. Working together to plan ahead meant that we could start to shape what the next few months could look like.

I also hosted team-wide workout sessions at 7:30 am every morning, for those brave enough to join 🫣 (see warm up stretches featured in the blog picture above).

The week ended with a big team dinner and a serious, wine-fuelled game of sardines.

All my prep meant that the whole Adfin team could stay focused on maximising the use of our time together whilst we were there, so I’d say it was a success!

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Some Reflections

Looking back, it’s safe to say that the job is exactly what I asked for: no two days alike. I’m not too concerned about defining what I do, so my answer to “What does a Founder Associate do?” will remain undefined, and that’s okay! One thing that I do know, though, is that the undefined nature of the job informs the person you have to be: super adaptable and intuitive, with a willingness to get stuck into anything. For now, I’m super excited to be wearing many hats in a super cool, fast-paced startup.

If you ever want to chat about my role, low-cost payments for your business, or tea parties, feel free to reach out!

Life as a Founder Associate at a startup: my first 4 weeks at Adfin

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