Start-up Spotlight with Katy Tuncer
In our second collaboration with Business Weekly we are thrilled to bring you Katy Tuncer's start-up spotlight article.
This week we are focusing on Katy Tuncer, a serial entrepreneur who has raised money and support for ventures in creative and innovative ways. Her results range from global profitability, to meaningful community impact, to down-right failure. For more information, listen to the podcast interview between Katy and Peter Cowley, serial entrepreneur and Chairman of Cambridge Angels on www.investedinvestor.com
Katy Tuncer is the APECS accredited Executive Coach and former McKinsey consultant who founded Horizon37. Her services include: (1) Individual and Team Coaching, (2) Strategy-led Facilitation, (3) Leadership Training Courses, Workshops and Seminars.
What does your company do?
At Horizon37 we provide leadership consulting and coaching to individuals and teams facing something new.
What are the great stories of ‘rewards or satisfactions’ that you can share?
Being a coach is a bit like going on lots of personal development journeys at the same time. When I’m coaching an individual leader, I am immersed in their world. I understand their business context, their individual decision-making, and the pressures they feel personally. I get to experience things with them – as I help them make sense of what’s going on and their own actions.
Since setting up Horizon37 I’ve felt huge satisfaction, and pride in supporting my clients in growth tech companies in, for example, how they’re handling funding, technology development, building and un-building teams. I’m gaining “war stories” at an astonishing pace and getting better and better at what I do as I spot patterns in the ways of thinking and behaving that achieve results.
How do you characterise success?
Success is creating value in every project we do – I’m much more interested in why we should do the project and the outcomes that really matter to our clients, than in the detail of what we do. We know we do leadership coaching, facilitation and training, but we are still evolving our services and products in detail. Almost all our work comes from referrals. We only serve a small number of clients at any given time, and we stand for every single one having leadership breakthroughs.
Who inspires you and why?
Generally, I am inspired most by real people who I know and connect with, rather than “famous people”.
I feel I’m part of a community of people who inspire me – some give me advice, some validate and encourage my professional aspirations, some share their ideas and personal experiences with me. Above all though, it’s my clients who inspire me in a very practical way, every day.
I love their openness to new ways of thinking, doing and being, and how they’re really making a difference in the world. They’re not perfect, and they know they’re not, but they’re out there with big ambitions and the tenacity to keep adapting and keep trying new things.
If you could offer an entrepreneur one piece of business advice, what would it be?
Change is good. I must have tried 20 different products and services in my last tech start-up over three years. I thought I was pivoting quickly but, in retrospect I can see that I help on to some pre-conceived ideas about how willing my audience would (should?) be willing to buy from us. I still haven’t met an entrepreneur who got the product-market fit right first time. Move fast and listen to customers.
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Want to listen to Katy's business journey? Listen to her talk through Ready Steady Mums and it's elegant failure here.
You can find out about her excting https://www.hey360.co.uk/.