You don't start your company to end up in court, with Michelle You, Co-Founder and CEO of Supercritical and former Co-Founder of Songkick

After exiting Songkick, Michelle You was burnt out. It felt like failure and grief (her words). She spent a year backpacking around the world, living on $2 per day, trying to figure out what it took to make her happy, to figure out what mattered to her and what her next business move was. “I went camping and hiking and surfing and climbing for the first time. And it was that that made me fall in love with nature. And that was my gateway drug into the climate change crisis.” Michelle is determined not to repeat the same mistakes she made at Songkick at Supercritical, the climate tech startup helping businesses actually achieve net zero. “It took me personally lots of coaching and conversations to feel like okay, I really feel ready now to dive in again, because I was scared, you know, I was really scared of failing, I was scared of having a bad idea, scared of replicating terrible decisions, terrible experiences.” Find out how Michelle found herself again after feeling like a massive failure from her first startup, and why she’s built a climate tech software platform that isn't all just planting trees. “We measure the carbon footprint end to end. This typically takes somebody six months of working with a consultant charging five figures. And that's what I learned [during] my time at LocalGlobe. This can be done with software.” We chat about: Why the end of Songkick felt like grief The importance of a good product discovery process Why climate is the next diversity and inclusion -- Sponsors Vorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleaders Vanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleaders Vertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders -- Newsletter Sign up here: https://secretleaders.email/ You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes