Hattie Willis

Background

About Hattie Willis

As the name implies, I'm a lover of hats. I'm the founder of two companies, GuessWorks and IfWeRaise, and Host of the Not My First GuessPodcast. The shared thread in every hat is my mission to make entrepreneurship and innovation skills more accessible to the most talented founders who are all too often left behind. My first company GuessWorks does this through training in Schools, Universities, Corporates and on Accelerator Programmes. We teach entrepreneurs and intrepreneurs the practical skills of innovation: from idea generation to scaling projects and companies. We deliver everything from one off workshops, to coaching, to offsites, to full programmes - if you're curious about what we can do, get in touch! My second company IfWeRaise, was co-founded with Exited Founder and Angel Investor Tim Deeson, on a mission to connect incredible but underserved tech founders with the knowledge and network they need to get fairer access to capital. If you're looking to drive a change in the ecosystem to make entrepreneurship more equitable - please reach out! For fun, and to amplify the learnings of epic founders, I host of the Not My First Guess Podcast where I interview top entrepreneurs of all stages. Our mission is to debunk and de-glamorise startup myths, so you can learn from the real experiences of founders from all backgrounds. Over the years, I've worked with hundreds of founders, including supporting programmes like the UN’s Maritime SDG Accelerator, Amazon’s Sustainability Accelerator, and Hatch; and with universities such as Imperial, LSE and University of Oxford. I've also worked to drive innovation through huge companies, including Jaguar Landrover, DPD DHL, Lloyds Banking Group, to name a few; delivering innovation trainings, but also as a Venture Builder, coming up with new ideas to launch and testing them at an early stage, ready for corporate partners to co-invest in. I’m a regular speaker and panelist, and support the startup ecosystem by judging startup competitions, and helping select founders for accelerators by evaluating product, team and business model. If any of the above sounds interesting, and you think it might be fun to work together- do get in touch!