Mr. John Sechrest - a founder of Angel Investors Conference of Seattle cum an international coordinator for Startup Weekend and co-organized Lean Startup Seattle program presented his speech at FTU

At the beginning of the session, he introduced the Lean Start-up model and Canvas model. These were models that could help businesses to eliminate unnecessary costs and shape things that businesses have to do in a more specific and clearer way. Afterward, he gave a direct consultation for each startup group. The groups had 30 minutes to present their project and received useful advice from him.

The second session of Mr. John Sechrest for investors took place on August 22nd, 2018. At this sharing session, he gave an overview of start-up ecosystems including elements such as business startup center, creative spaces, education and training programs, system support websites, and especially emphasize on Open Coffee - a very important and effective activity for startups and looking for angel investors. In the questionnaire, there were very active exchanges between Mr. John Sechrest and investors as well as some students who involved on how to approach angel investors and how could angel investors find the right project and startup for their investment?

He also had a meeting with the students on the same day afternoon, and he has shared openly about the difficulties that students would face if they want to start a career. How to call for investment? The capital was always the leading story in every startup story, but Mr. John Sechrest asserted that "You can start a business with the initial capital of 0 VND". The key here was the value you have created for your customers, not the issue of capital. If you created value for your customers and the society, the investors would see the potential and funded capital for your project. The second story that John shared was how to know the idea of starting your own business was worth pursuing? The answer was that you were really passionate about this idea and were you creating a solution to the problem that people were experiencing? If so, you are completely on the right track. Finally, John confirmed to students that starting a business was not difficult if you had a passion and confidence in yourself. You may fall and fail, but it was inevitable and important that after failure, you found your own start-up lesson and continued the path you choose.

At the end of the three sessions of speaker John Sechrest, investors, start-up groups and students received a lot of useful information from him. Ftalk 6 has been successful in the hope that it will inspire students and young people to start their own business.