TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Amazon Web Services (AWS) Global Start-up Advocate Mark Birch has been supporting start-ups and entrepreneurs to build communities and make connections globally.

Birch spoke with the Startup Island TAIWAN podcast Friday (Jan. 27) to discuss his work following a keynote speech at the 2022 Meet Taipei start-up festival. He joined host Jon Y to discuss start-up community building, focusing on the fundamentals of business, and coping with being a lone entrepreneur.

As a former business founder himself, Birch stressed the importance of having a strong community of founders and a developed ecosystem for start-ups to thrive.

‘’You could be an incredibly talented individual, or you could have an incredibly talented team, but oftentimes you also need the ecosystem and support mechanisms to give you a boost along the way," Birch said.

He added that a well-developed ecosystem not only enhances the chance of meeting potential investors and partners. It also provides the opportunities to meet other like-minded entrepreneurs to share thoughts and defeat entrepreneurial loneliness.

Birch described the AWS Global Start-up Advocate role as helping founders to find the information they need at a specific point in time. “When I do sit down with a founder … I’m always thinking, 'How can I provide a resource connection,'” he said.

Birch said he also provides a contact point for founders to answer questions they may have around what services and strategies they can use. “We provide 200 (services), so you need to understand how to use these building blocks to build your start-up.”

Birch said the transition from paid employment to becoming a founder can be jarring for some. He said that when in paid employment, he had a whole range of support options and pre-existing connections. However, when becoming a founder, they all vanished.

“I often say entrepreneurship is often very lonely, because you do jump into the ocean and you have to swim for yourself,” he said.

Birch said that for this reason, it’s critical to develop a supportive community. He said that when he first started as a founder in New York there was no ready-made ecosystem of tech entrepreneurs supporting each other.

“Now, many years later, the resources and communities that are accessible are very different,” he said. “From that you have communities you can plug in to.”

Aside from having a strong support network, Birch said he often stresses that founders and entrepreneurs should focus on the fundamentals first. “Are you building a product which is fundamentally adding value to this world, that’s changing the relationship of users?” he asked.

Birch also spoke of the concept of “active listening,” which he said will help founders address their own internal biases. “We put on ‘happy ears,’ meaning we hear things that are confirmation of what we believe and we tend to reject things that don’t conform to those beliefs,” he said.

“If you don’t listen with the intent of filtering out the bias, you could be listening to a lot of signals that are telling you you are going in the right direction, when in fact you are not directionally correct.”

Birch also noted the value of having a mentor. “It’s good to hear that outside perspective so you can get out of your own head. And even if you don’t listen to your mentor’s advice, it's good at least to talk about it.”

He also said that burnout amongst entrepreneurs is a big issue, and that being able to recognize one’s personal limits is a key trait of a successful entrepreneur. “You’re going to work hard, but that’s different from working all out. You’ve got to do the hard work, but you’ve also got to give yourself the down time.”