{"id":140969,"date":"2024-09-27T15:26:54","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T13:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/?p=140969"},"modified":"2024-09-30T12:00:25","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T10:00:25","slug":"adam-horne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/adam-horne\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Horne on Co-Founding, Friendship and More"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quickfire Questions with Adam Horne<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Adam co-founded member network Open Org<\/a> with John Faulkner-Willcocks<\/a> 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"adam<\/p>\n

Q: Why did you choose to co-found a business rather than going it alone?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Adam:<\/strong> I\u2019ve done both, and have found pros and cons to both honestly. I\u2019ve 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\u2019ve 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\u2019s nice to have someone to share that journey with.<\/p>\n

Q: What are the pros and cons of having an existing friendship with your co-founder?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Adam: I\u2019ve known John as a friend for 13 years now. We\u2019ve 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\u2019re aligned not just on what we want to build, but also aligned on personal goals outside of work too. That\u2019s crucial. I\u2019ve found if you\u2019re at different stages of life, or have different needs from your business personally than your co-founder, it can cause problems.<\/p>\n

Q: What weaknesses do you have that John balances out, and vice versa?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Adam:<\/strong> John\u2019s had this incredible journey through the world of consulting, product, people, and agile coaching. He\u2019s worked with companies of all shapes and sizes all over the world and he\u2019s seen the good, the bad the ugly. He\u2019s also got ADHD as a superpower. I\u2019ve 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\u2019ve worked with before\u2026 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.<\/p>\n

What do I bring in comparison? I\u2019ve had 11 years of building companies of varying sizes as a Founder which is a pretty powerful lens I find. I\u2019ve 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\u2019ve spent 13 years alongside that advising tech startups & scaleups on all things people, talent & culture. I\u2019m 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 & \u2018from scratch\u2019 people exposure & John has the culture change, coaching, and problem-solving mindset which is so powerful.<\/p>\n

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?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Adam:<\/strong> I think so, mostly. We\u2019ve iterated and pivoted a little along the way as we\u2019ve worked to find our product-market fit. It\u2019s taken us a while, but when I look at everything we have done I think I\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

Q: For anyone wanting to follow in your footsteps, what would be your one piece of advice?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Adam:<\/strong> I sort of have 2 but I\u2019ll be clever and roll them into 1 if I can\u2026 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\u2019ve seen the power of that. My advice\u2026 No one\u2019s stealing your idea.. and if they do, trust that they\u2019ll 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\u2019re all facing the same challenges.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":141234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-resources-interviews"],"acf":{"topics":"no-topic"},"yoast_head":"\nAdam Horne on Co-Founding, Friendship and More | Factorial<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The co-founder of Open Org tells all about starting a business, co-founder skillsets complementing each other, and his one piece of advice to entrepreneurs.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/adam-horne\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Adam Horne on Co-Founding, Friendship and More\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The co-founder of Open Org tells all about starting a business, co-founder skillsets complementing each other, and his one piece of advice to entrepreneurs.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/adam-horne\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Factorial\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/people\/Factorial\/100064908455810\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-09-27T13:26:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-09-30T10:00:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/30120010\/Frame-35124-3_11zon.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"820\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Emma Baigey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@factorialapp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@factorialapp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Emma Baigey\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/adam-horne\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/adam-horne\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Emma Baigey\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/60f87cc8ee5125540515f3d7936d39b4\"},\"headline\":\"Adam Horne on Co-Founding, Friendship and More\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-09-27T13:26:54+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-09-30T10:00:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/adam-horne\/\"},\"wordCount\":795,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"HR Interviews\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/adam-horne\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/adam-horne\/\",\"name\":\"Adam Horne on Co-Founding, Friendship and More | Factorial\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2024-09-27T13:26:54+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-09-30T10:00:25+00:00\",\"description\":\"The co-founder of Open Org tells all about starting a business, co-founder skillsets complementing each other, and his one piece of advice to entrepreneurs.\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/adam-horne\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"Factorial\",\"description\":\"\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"All-in-one business management software - 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