What if the most undervalued asset in your entrepreneurial toolkit isn’t your skillset, network, or even your idea—it’s your life itself and the challenges you and your business encounter? Consider Rayana Hossian, founder of the fast-growing furniture brand ISHO. Her journey—from studying architecture in Toronto to Harvard’s innovation-focused design program—wasn’t a linear path to entrepreneurship. A series of unexpected inputs: diverse experiences, familial influence, and even moments of self-doubt, all of which became the raw materials for building a category-defining brand.
At Future Startup, we’ve seen it time and again: the best founders don’t just build companies—they curate them, stitching together lessons from their past, intentionality in their present, and a stubborn belief in what’s possible.
Through conversations with Rayana and other founders, we’ve distilled 7 counterintuitive rules for turning life’s chaos into a competitive edge. Learn how to use “active patience” to overcome your challenges, how to dig deep into your background to find inspiration and learn critical lessons, and why doubting yourself might just be the fuel your ambition needs.
Seek diverse experience: Our experiences work as inputs for our lives and eventually end up shaping our lives. We come across people pursuing ambitious goals and start doing something ambitious ourselves. We see people building fascinating non-profits or tech companies, it inspires us to follow a similar path.
At Future Startup, we interviewed founders who started companies because they came across certain life experiences that inspired them to start a particular company.
For instance, fast-growing furniture brand ISHO Founder and CEO Rayana Hossain shared in an interview with FS: “Apart from my degrees in Architecture and Visual Studies from the University of Toronto, I also spent 3 years at Harvard for my master's degree. I was the Co-President of HarvardxDesign, a program that focuses on the collaboration between design and business through GSD and HBS. It was here when I realized that design is an extremely integral part of business and believed that it should be incorporated in all organizations. Great designs and creativity can be used to transform systems and inspire innovation.”
This provides two lessons.
First, we should seek new and diverse experiences. We should be open to learning new things. We should embrace opportunities that live outside of our known boundaries.
Second, we should dig into our experiences, pay attention to our lived experiences, and seek what we can make out of what we have gone through.
Where we come from is important: It is impossible to overestimate the influence of our background and where we come from in the life we end up building.
It takes great effort to overcome our personal histories.
When our personal histories become fuel and support for a good life and for the life we want to build, it is an extraordinary blessing.
“I am fortunate that I come from a family of entrepreneurs and business owners which while I was growing up allowed me to understand the various nuances of running a business,” explained Rayana. “It is this exposure that has allowed me to take on the challenges and responsibilities of running a business today.”
But only having the right background and history is not enough, we have to be willing to put it to the right use.
We must learn to use the materials of our life—our background and upbringing, our environment and support system, etc—to support our ambitions and goals in life.
If we are mindful, whatever background we come from has something to offer to us. What is important is that we are willing to do the work and accept the gift.
Be intentional: Being intentional means you have a direction and a purpose that you want to walk towards. Amid all the noise and distractions, it is easy to forget what we want.
It is possible to always feel liquid and adrift amidst all the pull from all different directions. But it is critical that we hold the ground and set direction for ourselves. We must maintain intentionality in all our work. This sense of intentionality is what sets people and organizations apart.
Like people who do well in life, great organizations are also intentional in how they operate and what they want to do.
In the interview Rayana explained how ISHO approaches design: it “takes inspiration from global locations and the history of different materials when it comes to designing a particular collection or product.” The same applies to its growth and expansion strategy when it chose to go omnichannel while initially launching as an online-only brand.
Believe in what you want to achieve: One of the most debilitating challenges people with ambition face is their self-doubt. In the face of constant challenge and struggle to build something worthwhile, we not only feel stressed, but we constantly question our ability to achieve what we want to achieve.
This is often a more common reason behind the death of our ambition. It is natural to doubt ourselves and our abilities. But it is equally imperative that we learn to manage and eventually overcome this doubt.
I find a two-pronged strategy effective in strengthening our belief in what we want to achieve.
First, choosing a cause that we find worth pursuing. If we believe in the worthiness of our goals, it helps us to maintain our drive.
Secondly, we have to choose our goal for the right reasons. We have to find ways to understand our motivation and align our goals with that motivation.
People make a company: In his management classic Good to Great, Jim Collins explains what sets the great companies apart from the good ones—it is people. Ultimately, companies and organizations are a collection of people.
So it is only wise that one pays extra attention in the early days to assemble a team that is driven and has what it takes to build an organization the founder aims to build.
Active patience: Fahim Mashroor, Founder and CEO of Bdjobs once told FS that building a company is a marathon. It takes a long time to build anything worth building. Rayana in her interview agreed: “You need to be patient and have trust in the process and your vision.”
However, it is important to understand the difference between merely being patient in a passive manner and active patience which demands that we work diligently and consistently against all odds towards achieving our goals.
Share your stress through collaboration: “Challenges and stress shouldn’t be yours alone,” advised Rayana. “I personally try to adopt a collaborative approach at ISHO.”
Being a founder is a difficult and stressful position. But when you are working with a team, it doesn’t need to be that way. You can share your burden with your team and develop a collaborative approach to tackle challenges. This will not only help you deal with your stress more effectively, it can also unlock new productivity for your organization.
Take the work of shaping market perception seriously: Companies that introduce something unique and new in the market face the important work of shaping consumer perception. Making people understand the value of your product or service and why yours is superior to available alternatives in the market can make or break your business.
Almost all great companies spend disproportionate efforts in shaping consumer perception about their product and work. More so for companies that offer something unique to the market.
Being a new type of furniture brand offering unique designs, ISHO had to spend significant efforts in educating consumers and shaping consumer behavior to the light of its products. And the company took the work seriously on day one identifying it as a key challenge. If you want to build a successful business, you must take the work of shaping public perception seriously.
To discover similar brilliant insights, explore our collection of interviews with extraordinary builders here and here.
