Navigating the Startup Rollercoaster: key lessons for Tech founders
Description changed:
Lorenzo will share his story of bootstrapping his digital agency, and growing it organically for 23 years, until his exit in early 2025. Lorenzo will share mistakes made, lessons learnt, and the importance of maintaining perspective for business owners, especially for solo entrepreneurs. Knowing what you don’t know, as early as possible, and consolidating those gaps, is critical to your success.
Lorenzo is also an Entrepreneur-in-residence for our Tech Incubator program - Cooper Project at Sheffield Tech Parks.
Workshop Agenda:
- The Startup Journey – Lessons from Key Phases
- Validation Stage- Launching a Startup - Access to Market
- The Founder’s Journey - Overcoming the challenges of being a founder
- The Future – What to Expect in 10-20 Years - Advice on long-term vision, scalability and adaptability
- Q&A & Discussion
Guest Speaker’s Bio:
Lorenzo Gordon was co-founder and for 23 years until March 2025, a director at Maldaba, a London-based software development agency focussing on innovative digital solutions for the public and not-for-profit sectors. Originally a software developer, Lorenzo has been leading innovation in health, social care, university research, housing and education for over 20 years, including innovative solutions for patient held records, supporting vulnerable people with their health and care information, interoperability, improving communication across organisations to support inter-agency collaboration in health and social care (NHS,Social Care), randomised controlled trials, multi criteria decision analysis, housing management, distance-based collaboration in low and middle income countries, and virtual community centres.
Lorenzo has led Maldaba on various SBRI Health phase 1 and phase 2 competitions and an InnovateUK grant on a >£900K project. Lorenzo consults for and supports organisations regarding organisational development, product-market fit, commercialisation. Lorenzo grew Maldaba to a >£1M turnover company, with 15 multi-disciplinary staff and operating profit >£270K.
