Episode overview

Laura Johnson joined Steve Grace on Give It A Nudge just eight weeks after co-founding Strivin with Rich through the Antler program. The conversation covers how the platform came together from two independently developing ideas about mentoring and professional development, what it means to be in the very earliest stage of a startup, the challenge of backing yourself when you have no team and no budget, and why Laura believes the mentor-mentee relationship is as valuable for the mentor as it is for the person seeking guidance.

From startup life to starting up

Laura spent five years in the Australian startup ecosystem and several years before that in the UK, always on the operator side of growing companies. She describes startup life as addictive: the speed of change, the breadth of the role, and the constant growth. When the Antler program opened applications, friends were talking about it and she applied expecting rejection as a useful rehearsal. She got in on the first try.

How Strivin was born at Antler

Antler’s first week involves meeting 100 people who all want to start a company. Laura and Rich had independently been working on similar problem spaces from slightly different angles: Laura from a startup mentoring perspective, Rich from a product professional development angle. An hour of whiteboarding and a page of scribbles later, Strivin existed: not just mentoring, but a full platform connecting people with mentors, coaches, and learning resources.

Getting out of your own way

The hardest thing about the first eight weeks was getting out of her own way. Both she and Rich had come from roles with teams and budgets. Suddenly they were doing everything themselves, well outside their comfort zones. The Antler community provided ballast: 100 other people having the same doubts made the self-questioning feel manageable. The move, Laura says, is to learn to back yourself.

The value flows both ways in mentoring

Steve shares his own experience being matched with a mentee in a structured program. He expected to give more than he received and found the opposite to be true. Laura nods at this as one of the core insights behind Strivin: the mentor-mentee relationship is mutually generative. As the pace of technology accelerates, older generations have as much to learn from younger ones as they have to share, and the platform is designed to support both directions.