Challenging decades long processes with mechatronic engineer Sophia Kurianski
Why being a new grad gives you an advantage for disruption and how to to circumvent the 10+ year of experience and associated network.
Carve Your Own Path Series: Insights from Women Entrepreneurs in STEMM
Featuring insights from Sophia Kurianski, mechatronic engineer, Founder & CEO of Jinolo.
The Itchy and Defying Entrepreneur
Sophia Kurianski belongs to the brilliant minds the STEMM sector attracts.
Choosing mechatronic engineering is already a daring choice - which leads to getting straight into a male-dominated environment at university and, of course, then at work.
But mechatronic sounds pretty cool, and that was enough to pick the subject - a combination of mechanical, electrical engineering, robotics, and computer science.
Couple this with being a new grad, and suddenly you have a young woman challenging processes that were unchanged for decades in a male-dominated environment.
Conducive for taking action?
Depends who you ask. And if you ask Sophia, then it is.
Finding Your Unique Piece and Purpose
The Chicken or the Egg?
Following your own curiosity and preferring self-starting initiatives is simply a good enough reason to start.
I like to ask about the chicken or the egg - did you always want to start something and looked for an idea to work on, or did you have a problem to solve which led you to entrepreneurship?
For Sophia, that was the former. Sophia considered entrepreneurship from day one and her mind was primed for finding ideas:
"I've always thought about starting a company, but I didn't really know which idea... I wasn't one of those founders where I was like, this is the idea that I want to work on. I was more of one of the founders who fit into the second category where I thought I want to start a company and let's find something cool to work on."
If that's your mindset then, harness your mind power. Prime it for finding problems. Observe gaps and inefficiencies.
Sophia noticed a critical gap in the engineering design process while working as a mechatronic engineer. She saw a very clunky process to share 3D files to review 3D design and thought to build a better solution to help people collaborate internally. That's what motivated Sophia in the first place - her problem-solving mindset and a bias for action and innovation.
It turned out not to be the true issue, but never mind, it was enough to get her started.
The Entrepreneurial Mind Knows How to Find Vision
She had enough experience with the problem, the right background to understand the pain points and the users, as well as a first market to focus on - mechatronic and industrial design.
That was a good starting point and while she did not get the problem right at the first attempt, her vision grew to transcend a simple technical solution or technology.
That's the beauty of persisting with an idea - as you work with it, a deeper layer emerges.
And for Sophia, that deeper layer was "to enable designers to build their vision" and Jinolo aspires to be "a place where creativity and ideas get shared and happen."
"Inspiring creativity and enabling people to build their vision is something I'm really passionate about. And that's the larger mission and vision of the company."
Finding depth in your mission is instrumental to keep going. Otherwise, the fun of creation ends pretty quickly.
ACTIONABLE INSIGHT
Is entrepreneurship appealing to you but you're not sure what to solve?
Look around you in your daily work for recurring problems that frustrate you and others.
The best business ideas often come from personal experience with an inefficiency that affects many people but has been accepted as "just the way things are done."
Anger and frustration are undervalued resources that lead to creativity for those who are solution-focused.
And if you want further catalyst, you can:
Participate in a hackathon - they throw problem at you and you propose a plan with team on the day.
Join a community of founders, where they often try to find a co-founder. Your skills, interest and stamina may be another founder's treasure.
Find an entrepreneurship program like New Waves which is an intensive program for aspiring founders, accessible without an idea.
The Mindset Shift: Can I Even Do This?
Making it Real: First Steps
What made it real for Sophia was going all in with the incubator program support.
That's because once someone believes in you, you almost make a secret commitment and foster self-accountability. Finding the right support is crucial to power your ambition.
"It was like there are other people believing in you. So you start to believe that maybe I can give this a proper shot."
This external validation of Sydney Uni incubate program fuelled the confidence that the idea was worth exploring and that someone was willing to take a bet and support it.
No Need to Jump from a Cliff
She did not have to make a sudden choice. Instead, the traction and time investment was gradual:
"When I started, I was still studying, so it might have been maybe a few hours a week, and I wasn't sure whether I was going to even continue with this... And then really once I graduated and made the decision to go full time, that's when I realized that, yes, I'm a founder now, this is my full-time job."
And You Don't Have to Start Alone
"Getting into the [incubator] program was actually one of the main motivators for me to actually try to do the startup full time instead of looking for a job."
The structure from the program helped her manage the dynamics of stepping into full-time entrepreneurship, where it is you, your laptop, and no one watching you.
Moreover, it is a great way to surround yourself with Mentors & Advisors, which are so instrumental for every founder but especially for young founders:
"When you're a young founder, you definitely don't have those 10, 15 years of experience of network and problems that you've encountered... So the way I would suggest to circumvent that and succeed in spite of that would be to have a really strong network of mentors and other people in the startup community and also people in the industry that you're trying to build for."
How Will I Pay the Bills or Sustain Myself?
That's a long topic with lots of options, and it depends if you can pull off a sustainable business by day one (i.e., cover your expenses + get some income from the profit) but long story short for Sophia:
She leveraged money from the accelerator and from the MVP grant (a grant that subsidizes building Minimum Viable Products)
Being a new grad, she benefited from saving rent by living a bit longer at the family home
She took other jobs and consulting and continues to maintain "a bit of work on the side to help keep the company going"
Now the latter is important because:
It keeps the cashflow healthier and extends your runway
It is a further validation that even if things don't go as planned, you can have a backup plan with a typical job or some consulting
Differentiate Valuable Feedback from Naysayers to Overcome Skepticism
While it was not all smooth sailing, Sophia persisted despite the "expected skepticism" (and I bet a good dose of ageism) in an industry resistant to change:
"Some people were super keen, they were like, 'yes, this hasn't changed for the past years and no one's done it and someone has to do something about this.' And then there were other people who just turned around and said, 'this will never work.'"
But Sophia had seen enough to feel the potential and she also had the means to test it out as she is a technical founder.
Wisely, she also recognized the importance of filtering advice:
"Everyone's biased based on their life experience and their point of view... And that might or might not apply to your situation. And so it's almost like you have to pick and choose which advice you should listen to."
ACTIONABLE INSIGHT
There is no age to start.
You're not too young (or too old - Listen to Sarah Crow's founder journey for a founder life after the kids fly off the nest).
If you can envision a solution to a problem that you can validate to be a real problem, then you can start exploring.
Your background and perspective are assets, not limitations. Reframe them as such.
What is it that you see that others don't?
Find your tribe because they will fuel your ambitions and build bridges you need.
Where can you find like-minded people? Those who are trying to do similar things to you?
Move away from those who find barriers everywhere and surround yourself with those who help you find your next clue.
Accelerator programs or founders' communities can provide structure, knowledge, and a network of mentors and like-minded people.
Tap into it; there surely is one for you, whether in person or online.
From Idea to MVP: Crafting the Initial Offering
Validating the Problem & Solution
I insist on the fact that she did not get it right on the first attempt because sometimes you just have to start with something. Many times, you can't work out everything from being in your own head and there is only so much research you can do.
That being said, validating the problem is a step that can save you trouble.
"Start with the problem" says EVERY ACCELERATOR PROGRAM.
Sophia learned the hard way about the importance of validation:
"One of the first things I did as an engineer was to just try to dive in and build a solution, which is definitely not the right way to go about things. I realized that very quickly within weeks... and had to essentially scrap all that code and start again."
But eh, she figured it out and learned from it. This experience shifted her approach to focus on validation first:
"Before you start building anything, talk to some users... Verify that the problem actually exists, see if the way you're thinking of solving it would actually help them solve it, because sometimes the problem that you think is the problem is not really the problem."
Her initial assumption was that the problem was engineers collaborating with each other, but customer interviews revealed the real problem was engineers collaborating with non-technical stakeholders:
"The problem it's solving is that it's helping very technical design-focused people communicate with maybe less technical people who still need to have a say on the design process."
When designers send 3D CAD files to clients who aren't designers themselves, those clients often can't open or understand the files, creating a significant bottleneck in the review process. Existing solutions were either overly simplistic (like email attachments) or too technically complex, requiring specialized training.
What followed next was a research-focused phase:
"The first three months was very heavy on the customer interviews and also researching if there are any other alternatives... So a mixture of online research and also speaking to actually people in the industry to verify the problem."
This methodical approach helped her avoid building the wrong solution (again):
"When you're doing that research and you dive into actually building the products, it kind of feels like you're wasting time... But that's a really important step to make sure that once you start building, you're building the right thing."
Starting Simple: The Minimal Viable Product Approach (MVP)
The MVP is actually an art, and there are lots of misconceptions around this (you can learn all about it in this article if you wish).
It is a foundational step for everything.
At its core, it answers the fundamental question: "Will my solution achieve what the customer needs to achieve with the minimal possible efforts that can be done?"
Sophia's MVP was deliberately minimal:
"Our first version, we didn't even have 3D comments. All we had was a chat on the side... That was our first Minimal Viable product. That was enough to get people to start sharing the files and seeing the potential of this tool."
Product Early Adoption - What's the Best Approach?
Finding your early adopter is quite important to both steer the next step in the product design and in getting it in the hands of your ideal customers.
Some founders don't build until they have some sign off or even paid procurement contracts ("Brenna" is a good example of that - the founder is a lawyer and has a significant opportunity cost in doing a start-up, and lawyers know how to handle negotiation for sure!) and some build it all before anyone decides to pay for it and hope to gain traction from these initial users.
That's bottom-up vs top-down approach in a nutshell (more on this in this article, including the approach that worked for Brenna).
Sophia experimented with different customer acquisition approaches:
"I've actually been trying both [top-down and bottom-up approaches] in the early stages... In the case of Jinolo, the bottom-up approach actually has been a lot more interesting and it allowed us to get the feedback that we needed to ensure building the right product."
She found that connecting directly with end-users (bottom-up) gave her better product feedback, though she acknowledges both approaches can work depending on the product.
Her customer interactions with the tool informed the next steps and what was perceived as high value:
"The biggest feature was the 3D commenting... where you can actually click on a particular point on the model and add a comment at that spot. That wasn't in the minimum viable product, but it was definitely a very highly requested feature."
Now everyone has 100s of asks and not every ask is created equal - i.e., is actually high value and may take 1 line of code or a whole extension or change of coding paradigm. That's not obvious for the users but Sophia being a technical founder helped her evaluate this. She also developed systems to prioritize development based on customer feedback:
"One of the processes I have is I've developed a [way to track] how many times a particular feature or problem gets mentioned by a customer and that data is then used to decide what's happening next in the roadmap."
Product Early Adoption - Who Should You Target First?
Sophia's approach to getting early customers was deliberate and targeted:
"One of some of the early adopters we tried to focus on was startups or people that are in less regulated industries who are maybe building products that are not for medical use. And so they were a little bit easier to convince to try the product."
This strategic targeting of more adaptive, less regulated customers helped her gain traction more quickly.
Now that is clever because picking the right early adopter can make or break your product.
Had she tried to get this to a Fortune 500 company, she would have ended up defeated by the procurement team, without even knowing if the product had value to employees.
ACTIONABLE INSIGHT
Customer discovery may sound like a fancy term or even daunting, but exploring your idea can be as simple as talking to potential customers and researching alternatives.
And it is actually the most important foundation for your business.
Start with Google, Reddit, and friends/colleagues.
Beware - ask the right questions, don't feed them the answers; otherwise, you will bias their feedback and lure yourself.
Then think about the simplest way to test a solution. Build the simplest version that allows users to experience your core value proposition. That's your MVP.
If you're thinking of a tracking app to help with calorie intake, test what would your user do with the information tracked?
If all they do is tracking - your MVP is telling you that the solution won't be impactful. No need for a fancy tracker that can guesstimate calories from a picture of your meal!
Find your ideal early adopters - those who would resist the least. The lowest energy of activation still prevails!
The more freedom they have, the more flexible they can be, and the more open to change they are, the better for you.
Needless to say, Joe who told you "it is the way it has always been" isn't your ideal early adopter!
View skepticism and criticism as valuable data rather than rejection—it's giving you the roadmap for your product's evolution.
Develop measurable outcomes that will help you steer.
Being a Founder and Especially a Solo Founder is Testing
What's Worth Your Time? Do What You Must and Outsource What You Can
As a solo founder, Sophia took a careful approach to growing her team, working with contractors rather than immediately hiring full-time employees:
"I've had contractors do things like some sales research... or they've been doing some website things or a few technical things as well."
She learned the importance of clear communication when delegating:
"Sometimes it's also testing your own ability to manage people, your own ability to explain things clearly... As I've had a bit of experience, I've learned techniques to help, and one of them is just making sure you have really clear instructions that they can go back to."
But ultimately, she had the key advantage of being a technical founder and being able to build her MVP on her own with little cost besides supporting herself.
That's tens of thousands of dollars saved, and it made it easier to deliver on her vision because she knows what is possible and what's not, what's a huge feature and what's not, and doesn't need to rely on someone to explain this to her to judge what's worth the effort.
"I actually built the MVP myself because of my software engineering background. So that was a huge benefit because I could do a lot of that work and it also helped to save some of our runway."
She recognizes the advantage this versatility gave her:
"If you have the ability to build your own product, that gives you a huge advantage over other teams that need to go look for either a co-founder to bring onto the team or look to hire people."
Managing Mindset, Not Just Time
Some tasks are simply better done by the founder and business development is one of these, at least at the early stages. But for Sophia, a high achiever used to having all As, sales did not come naturally and was really testing.
To be honest, many STEM people struggle with the idea of sales.
There are the jedis and the dark side and scientists tend to see their work as the jedis, while the sales (and anything corporate for that matter) belongs to the dark side!
Sophia pinned down the best way to approach sales.
First, she accepted that not closing a deal is not a reflection of your value and is part of the process. The nature of sales means a lot of rejections.
"I think it was the sales. It was just, it felt like I was constantly failing because if a deal didn't go through, I felt like maybe that was a reflection on how I presented something... But I had to quickly learn that it was part of the process."
She had to reframe her relationship with failure, particularly as someone from a STEM background:
"STEM attracts a lot of really high achieving people who are just used to succeeding in everything they do... But with sales, that is probably statistically impossible. You cannot sell every single thing you try to sell."
Second, products don't help people unless they get to use it and sales is the bridge to that.
"I found the best way to approach sales is thinking that you're trying to help this person streamline their process. You're not trying to kind of deceive them or anything like that. And I found that that change in mindset really helped me make sure that I approached sales with a positive mindset instead of, feeling really anxious about it and trying to be perfectionist about every meeting."
Sacrifices & Trade-offs
The biggest sacrifice for Sophia was psychological rather than material:
"I think it's more kind of dealing with that uncertainty. When you have the corporate job, it's very stable, you know what's happening, you have that structure... As a startup, you don't really have any of that, sometimes it feels like you don't know where you're going or where you're going to be even half a year from now."
Besides, no one is setting targets for you. It is very self-driven.
Sophia was very disciplined and created her own targets and metrics.
She adapts her metrics and KPIs based on the stage of her business:
"In the early stages, I've had a goal of how many customers I should speak to every week. But then when I was more in the building stage, it was more of how many features or how much development I do in a week."
She recognises that these metrics evolve:
"It also changes on where you are in the business. And now I'm also looking at which KPIs I should set and maybe changing some of that as well as the business changes."
ACTIONABLE INSIGHT
Don't spread yourself thinner than you need to.
Do what you must (or what will burn your cash to outsource). Delegate everything that can be.
If it's not providing you personal growth or learning at that point and someone else could do it better or faster and you can afford it, then delegate/outsource.
For high-achieving STEMM professionals, entrepreneurship requires adapting to a new relationship with failure and uncertainty.
Reframe rejection and setbacks as normal parts of the process rather than personal failings.
Build routines and habits that help you manage energy and maintain perspective during the inevitable ups and downs.
No, I am not encouraging chocolate rewards or comfort! But perhaps there is a certain kind of task that gets you depressed and you need to pair it with something you really like or anticipate the low and plan a reward.
In my job, there is one task that I hate more than anything else. It just drives me bonkers… so I try to plan it from the park or do it from somewhere with a nice view.
Connect your technical solution to a larger purpose that will sustain your motivation through challenges.
The roadmap is loose and the KPI versatile.
Be flexible with how you define success at different stages, adapting your metrics to match your current priorities rather than holding yourself to fixed standards that may not apply to your evolving business.
Bottom Line
There is no single "right" path to entrepreneurship, and Sophia's journey is a testament that you can write your own path from day one.
A few key messages:
Find your unique perspective where your experiences reveal angles others don't see.
Be solution-focused but ask the right questions. Don't skip customer research- start with the problem.
Test your assumptions systematically rather than committing too early to one approach, and remember that what works for others may not work for your specific situation.
Embrace flexibility in how you structure your journey. Nothing lasts forever, not the hills, nor the plateaus. Maybe you go part time first then all in then again part time… maybe you do all by yourself then start outsourcing… maybe you need to pivot. Adapt as you go.
Do what you must, outsource what you can.
Surround yourself with the right people and communities. Differentiate helpful and valuable feedback from naysayers or even well-intentioned time wasters.
The most important thing is action.
Read whatever fancy book you want, I think that Disney said it all for us and my favourite quote will remain from "Moana 2":
"There is destiny in motion" so "Go get your destiny."