Post by University of St.Gallen

🚀 A dash to Silicon Valley Episode 3: When the right person sees the shortcut That is how Leon Iwanowitsch describes receiving feedback from Tom Blomfield, founder of Monzo Bank and Ontora (YC P26) Y Combinator partner: “You have been running against a wall. Then someone shows you that the wall actually ends two metres further down — and you could simply walk around it.”   For Leon and his co-founders Maximilian Arnold and David Korn, YC is not only about being in San Francisco. It is about being surrounded by people who have seen start-up problems before — and can help you move through them faster.   In Ontora’s first two months at Y Combinator, that support has become very concrete.   Founders often overcomplicate things too early: automating customer outreach, building complex systems, preparing for scale before product-market fit is even there. Tom’s feedback keeps bringing the team back to what matters most:   1️⃣ Talk to customers. 2️⃣ Understand their problems. 3️⃣ Solve them in the simplest way possible. Sometimes, Leon says, the better move is not building another system. It is taking a full day to buy cakes and deliver them in person to potential clients. Not because it scales. Because it teaches. This is what makes the YC network powerful: experience turns into speed. And for Ontora, that speed matters. The start-up is building AI agents that help organisations unlock knowledge that usually stays hidden in people’s heads — and make it available where decisions are made. It’s utterly amazing what they’ve managed to achieve.   The story also connects back to St.Gallen.   Leon met his co-founders through the extended START Global network connected to HSG. Without that entrepreneurial community, Ontora would not exist in this form.   Now, at YC, the same principle continues on a global level: ambitious people, honest feedback, shared momentum.   Episode 3/4 follows Leon and Ontora inside the network that helps founders move faster. Because sometimes, the decisive advantage is not another tool, another system or another meeting. It is the right person asking the right question at the right moment. Right people. Real feedback. Faster progress. Follow this journey. HSG Entrepreneurship