The Founder's Foyer with Aishwarya - Product, design, community movement

Ft. Felix Lee, Co-Founder of ADPList, the global mentoring platform. Felix covers his journey as a designer-turned-founder, building a remote team, purpose-driven communities, and more...

Aishwarya Ashok

Hey everyone,

Here’s this week’s update from the The Founder’s Foyer project!

Most of us start an idea like a side project, and soon go deeper into it. That’s exactly the story of ADPList and the person behind it—Felix Lee.

Bringing 'Foyer Feature' - a section of #TheFoundersFoyer that covers projects and journey of a specific founder/creator and their share of learnings.

I sat down with Felix Lee, who spoke about Amazing Design People List aka adplist.org — what made him start this community, and how it's been transforming the way people learn and grow with each other's support, across the globe.

The video here is a specific segment wherein Felix says how being a (former) designer and now being a founder are typically involving a similar path—to scale and run a business and think in design are very interrelated and connected, whether it's solving for problems or business metrics.

Check out The Founder’s Foyer:

LinkedIn | YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Instagram

Watch on YouTube

Here’s the full episode wherein Felix and I chat about a bunch of topics:

  • Being a self-taught designer and early creative journey

  • The full-form of ADPList (surprise!)

  • Building and running a remote team (and learnings from that)

  • What matters in the journey of a founder

  • Why being a founder and designer are the same things

  • What are some lessons Felix learned by building a community

  • Community vs corporate (what to be and how to choose)

  • Listening to customer feedback and applying that into the product

  • Showing up as a person, not as a CEO

  • Creating a movement, not just a company or brand

When questioned about his idea behind a community, Felix quotes,

There was like none of my team or none of myself or my team would ever say that we are a company. We're not a company. Like I say, we're a community. We are movement. Like we might be raised as a company. We might be funded by VCs, but you know, to the eyes of the public, we cannot be a company and we should not be a company.

Listen to our conversation as a podcast on:

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Thank you, and keep your suggestions/feedback coming! :)

Happy weekend,

Aishwarya