Interview: Prime Time Finalist - Joely To - London, England
The Founders Live Prime Time 2022 pitch competitions highlight twenty founders from our global ecosystem who have achieved various levels of success in previous Founders Live city pitch events.
We bring you additional coverage of these finalists through a series of posts in which we ask about their entrepreneurial journey, as well as what they are building and why.
Please introduce yourself
Hi, I am Joely To, the founder of Blaze Careers Tutoring and Pioneer, and am also a 2nd Year mathematics student at the University of Warwick (UK). At 17 years old, I launched a non profit that has empowered almost 3000 girls worldwide to pursue maths and related careers. I have been featured in The Guardian, The Times and BBC Radio for my entrepreneurial spirit and have worked with companies such as Morgan Stanley, Financial Markets Institute, Experian, Zurich Insurance and Tableau. As a result, I won Innovative Young People of 2020 Award, TES Student Initiative of the Year 2021, Gen Z One to Watch UK 2021 and Woman of the Year 2021. Blaze Careers Tutoring is my most recent initiative and I'm excited to develop the world's first 1:1 careers tutoring platform!
How did you discover Founders Live?
I saw it in an email newsletter.
Why do you feel others will benefit from Founders Live as well?
Founders Live gives an unparalleled opportunity to showcase not only your passion but also you as a founder, and your unique story and background. It enables anyone to access incredible opportunities solely based on your merit and potential, and provides rewards for anyone involved - not just the winner!
As an entrepreneur, why did you choose this path of creating your own company?
There's no better way to explore what drives you and inspires you than to immerse yourself in it and become a trailblazer in that area! Instead of waiting for others to come along and create a solution, you have the satisfaction of trying to overcome the obstacles head on and innovating that solution yourself.
You've made it to Founders Live Prime Time! What do you want to get out of this experience?
Mainly the experience of pitching to a global audience of innovators! There are few opportunities like this where you have such a large exposure at this scale. The ability to network and meet like-minded ambitious individuals is invaluable and I'd love to learn from the other talented founders!
Please describe the company or project are you currently building? Why are you building it?
Blaze Careers Tutoring is the world's first 1:1, tailored careers tutoring site for Gen Z. We match a Gen Z person to someone in their dream industry or dream firm to guide them through each stage of an internship or graduate job application process, for a long-term, personalised and affordable service. I am building this because there is no current 1:1 service at the moment to guide Gen Z through career navigation, that's accessible to all. With 91% of Gen Z feeling career anxiety, especially as a result of the pandemic, Blaze Careers Tutoring is needed more than ever before.
What is your vision? Go out 5 years, what does the world look like with your product or service in it?
Every student can have access to personalised career help and receive answers to any questions they want, anytime. Students no longer have to waste time researching online and feel overwhelmed or stressed about which information is relevant, or rely on solely one career advisor for their whole year group, but they have a trustworthy, personalised individual to help them ultimately land their dream role. We'll almost be like Coursera for career learning, but 1:1 and tailored.
What ONE thing do you need help with the most, and what do you want to ask from the Founders Live community?
I need most help with developing our business strategy and product-market fit, in order to fully establish our operations and raise funding. I'd love to ask for advice, feedback and actionable takeaways from the collective experiences of the Founders Live community. I believe this will be incredibly useful for validating our assumptions in the development of our business model.
Identify 3 qualities that when combined make a great founder. Expand a few descriptive sentences on each.
Resilience - the ability to overcome setbacks and look forward to challenges instead of feeling intimidated by them. This also includes being able to turn what would be seen as a "failure" into a major learning and development milestone, and always bear in mind the long-term vision. Empathy - to be a great founder, you must be a great leader. But you can't be a leader if you have nobody to lead! You need to show that you're building on your passion for a purpose that others can relate to, and craft a story that others can resonate with. Ambition - the ability to take risks and give it your all while not knowing if it will result in "success" is key to being a founder. Setting yourself those ambitious goals and stretching your capabilities is essential for achieving maximal growth and potential.
Advice - If you could go back to the beginning and talk to your “rookie founder” self, what would say?
As a rookie founder, what I find most challenging is knowing exactly what next to prioritise and what next actions to take. There seems to be an overwhelming amount to do, and it can be easy to become sidetracked with new, exciting flashy opportunities and forget to discipline yourself in the tedious admin work.