Underdog Founders - can Felix build the world's largest mentoring platform without a degree?
Can helping others find jobs for free become a real business?
Felix didn’t play much with the other kids - he was at the bakery helping mom and dad.
Born to low-income parents in Singapore, life would have to be earned, not given.
With zero experience, Felix started his first tech company at 18, still in school.
It was called Packdat, a product to help students plan their vacation with family and friends.
When it sold for a quarter million dollars, it changed his life.
Loving tech, he flew to SF, Tech Mecca, to learn as much as possible about the space.
Felix realized why most unicorns are born there - talent living in SF starts aiming higher than most of us.
He skips university and gets a job in fintech, to get coached by good managers.
Covid hits, and he sees how everyone is starved for connection and afraid to lose their job.
He meets his co-founder James through LinkedIn, and APDList is born as a side-project.
Two 25y-olds from Asia and Africa, with no college education, go on a mission to help everyone find a mentor.
adplist.org kept growing and, one day, without ever being physically in the same room as Felix, James told him:
“Man, if you leave your job to build this, I’ll quit and go with you”.
Felix (left) hanging out with a friend - life got a lot sunnier after he decided to do the hard things.
The traction was there, but the revenue wasn’t, and it put pressure on their shoulders:
- “Will we be alive in 6 months?”
- “Can we afford to give anyone a raise?”
They flew to SF to fundraise.
They had a good team and a ton of traction.
Except when they got there – they only found capital to fund 20% of the initial growth plan.
He remembers a specific meeting with an investor that suddenly said, “let’s talk about something else”. He just stood there, trying to keep it cool.
They were forced to cut costs and change hiring plans.
Raising back home wasn’t all roses too.
User testimonials don’t show up in cash-flow statements.
Finally Sequoia India pulled through with a check, and it was just enough to build the round.
Today, ADPList is the top mentoring platform in the world, with +14,000 mentors globally.
I can see why. When I asked Felix to share one of his big wins, his answer was:
“When one of the best mentors on ADPList lost his job at a famous tech company, he was destroyed”.
“He told me the only thing that gave him something to look forward to was mentoring the juniors asking for help”.
If you’re in love with your users,
you’re probably gonna make it.
Felix is hiring a super passionate, world-class content creator.
If you want an easy, admin-free way to help the next generation, sign up to become a mentor. I did, and it gives me joy.
Underdog Founders 05 - Felix Lee from ADPList.
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#mentoring #careers #saas