Building a rocketship

The second day of Entrepreneurship Week shifted focus to one of the most requested — and often most daunting — topics for founders: capital. Under the theme Funding Tuesday, the stage opened with an honest and grounded conversation about growth, fundraising, and navigating the startup ecosystem without getting lost in the hype.

The morning session featured Jasper Mills, founder of Ethira, a company currently on a high-growth journey. Introduced as a “safe harbor” in an otherwise noisy startup landscape, Jasper brought a refreshing mix of realism, experience, and transparency to the stage.

Published:

Jan 30, 2026

2 min read

From Entrepreneurship Week 19-23 Jan 2026
Day Two Fireside Highlights

From Experience to Execution

Before diving into Ethira’s growth story, the session took a step back to explore Jasper’s background — not as a pitch, but as context. With experience spanning engineering and product management, his journey highlighted a recurring truth in entrepreneurship: companies are often built not from bold ideas alone, but from deep understanding of problems worth solving.

Rather than positioning success as a straight line, the conversation framed growth as a series of informed decisions, trade-offs, and constant learning.

Funding Is a Strategy — Not a Milestone

One of the most important messages from the session was that fundraising should never be treated as an end goal in itself.

While many founders focus on how to raise, Jasper emphasized the importance of first understanding why:

“Not all capital is equal, some people I really wanted on the cap table didn’t want to be on the cap table, whereas other people I didn’t know well have shown up in incredibly unexpected ways and become some of my most supportive people.”

The discussion highlighted that different stages, business models, and ambitions demand different funding paths — and that saying no to the wrong capital can be just as important as securing the right one.

Navigating the Noise

In a startup ecosystem often dominated by LinkedIn announcements, bold claims, and comparison culture, Jasper’s perspective stood out for its calm and clarity: There’s a lot of hype out there. But building something real takes time, and most of that work happens when no one is watching.

Rather than optimising for visibility, the focus was on building strong fundamentals: understanding customers deeply, iterating the product, and being honest about what is — and isn’t — working.

What Investors Actually Look For

The session also addressed one of the most common founder questions: What do investors really want to see?

Beyond polished decks and buzzwords, the emphasis was on:

Clear problem – solution fit – founder market fit
A credible team that understands its market
Evidence of learning and traction — not perfection

This reframing helped demystify the fundraising process and lowered the threshold for founders who may feel they need to “have it all figured out” before starting conversations.