Chris Hilder of Kaffelogic: 2 ways starting up is like rock climbing.
Dunedin founder Chris Hilder of Kaffelogic has a seriously fascinating story. With beginnings tinkering with a popcorn maker in his garage, Chris developed his renowned benchtop coffee roasting device that went on to achieve global recognition in the 2021 World Brewers Cup competition in Milan.
An alumnus of Startup Dunedin’s Incubator programme, Chris has picked up some golden bits of wisdom along the way, as well as noticing an interesting trend with local founders.
Rock climbing.
Angus Pauley, Startup Dunedin’s Programme Facilitator, recently visited his office to chat with the founder about his new manufacturing move back into Dunedin. Once they got to talking, something interesting happened: both noticed how common it was for Otago founders to take up rock climbing as a hobby.
Why? It turns out there’s a couple of key similarities between the two activities.
You find a way to complete tasks that feel impossible.
A reason founders like rock climbing so much is pretty simple - the satisfaction of completing the seemingly impossible. Chris noted that beginning a rock climb on one of the more difficult walls can make you feel like you're stuck there, and you can think to yourself “this is just impossible for me to climb any higher. There's no way I can find any way to move forward.”
That feeling is pretty familiar for a lot of founders who can’t see their next steps yet - pushing forward when you’re not sure where you can go from here.
Chris relates the two; “once you're there long enough, you see a little nook, and you go - hmmm… maybe if I just squeeze my foot in there, and manage to push off, I can keep moving.”
There are a lot of parallels there with startups - when you are faced with a challenge and begin to think “there's absolutely no way I can do this”, if you're present for long enough, you’ll begin to see the path forward.
You have to find a way to rest.
As well as resourcefulness and rising to challenges, both rock climbing and startups require you to find an opportunity to rest, and sometimes those opportunities are fleeting, or hard to come by, or very-very-very rare.
“When rock climbing, you have to be really clever at figuring out how to rest, when you're not really in the position where you can rest.”, says Chris. As an example, you can’t exactly take out a deck chair on a climbing wall and sit down for a few minutes, but you can figure out a way to relax under pressure when you're on the climb. Even just for a few seconds, you can carve out a space for yourself and give yourself space to breathe.
Startups can feel overwhelming. You can put in too many hours, you can take on too much, and it can be hard to find the time to take care of yourself. Strategic rest is so important - no one gets safely to the top of the climbing wall by frantically scrambling and wearing themselves out.
You can read more about Kaffelogic here: https://kaffelogic.com/home
