What makes a start-up a “cockroach”?

We were still running on the pre-seed money, once we had made the pivot, for a good while. And it was really towards the end of that runway. And we managed to really squeeze the lemon. And I remember having a chat a few months down the line, after we had done the pivot with one of the partners at First Minute, they said, they actually refer to us as the "cockroaches" in their investment committee, because they hadn't seen any team survive all these apocalyptic events in an early startup's life, and managed to pull through. So we're very proud of that. We wear that as a badge of honor. Apparently, they now ask in their ICs, "Is this team, are they going to be cockroaches? Will they survive?"

Perseverance. Perseverance, perseverance. We were perseverant. We did make a pivot, but we persevered. It's not that we weren't perseverant. There's some level of... It's tricky. I think it's tricky, because being a cockroach means different things to different people. The level at which you can really, "Let's live on tin beans," there are different levels. And for some people it might not work. But I think it's a mindset. You have to be financially responsible and really understand your management accounts. It sounds a bit boring, but understand your runway and your monthly burn and your costs. And just be comfortable making hard decisions, when the going gets tough. And really turn down the lights and make sure you're steering the ship through the storm, I guess. It sounds very anecdotal, but I think it's very much on a case by case basis. But it's really all about persevering through it. And building a framework that allows you to persevere without burning out, is extremely important, I'd say.