Learning Through Leadership Talk – January 2026

‘How to start a startup’ with Brandon Severin (Class of 2013)

On 6 January, at The Rank Foundation’s offices in London, the Learning Through Leadership Talk series* welcomed Brandon Severin, CEO of Conductor Quantum, for a candid and insightful talk on what it really means to start a start-up. Rather than offering a polished success story, Brandon presented entrepreneurship as an evolving process shaped by uncertainty, resilience, and sustained focus.

*The Learning Through Leadership Talks are a bi-annual event where members of the Fellowship are invited to deliver a talk on their leadership journey and reflect on what leadership has looked like and felt like to them in their careers and beyond.

Brandon began by reflecting on his own journey, from his time as a Rank Fellow and his academic experience at Oxford to becoming a founder in the highly technical field of quantum computing. He admitted that entrepreneurship was not always part of his plan. Instead, it emerged gradually, driven by curiosity, opportunity, and the willingness to commit to an idea before all the answers were clear. 

A central theme of the talk was what Brandon described as the essential foundations of any startup: team, money, and focus. He emphasised the importance of building a small founding team, ideally two to four people, with strong technical expertise and, equally importantly, mutual trust and emotional support. Founding a company, he explained, is as much a psychological challenge as a technical one. On funding, Brandon advised founders to raise enough capital to survive at least a year on minimal resources, sharing lessons from his experience with Y Combinator and cautioning against becoming distracted by unnecessary legal or administrative complexity. Above all, he stressed focus. For Brandon, the need to commit fully and resist the temptation to hedge or delay is key.  

Brandon also spoke about product development and the value of rapid iteration. He challenged the idea of waiting for perfection, instead advocating for building a “minimum valuable product” and learning directly from users. Drawing on examples from both Airbnb’s early days and his own company’s use of simple landing pages and AI-driven tools, he demonstrated how early feedback can shape more effective solutions. 

Leadership, Brandon suggested, is inseparable from vulnerability. He spoke openly about doubt, exhaustion, and the emotional strain of leading a growing company, arguing that honesty and openness foster stronger teams. He spoke about the vital role of a support network, one that can steady you and talk you back from the brink when doubt takes over. When asked about external recognition, such as awards and rankings, he dismissed them as distractions, insisting that real progress comes from solving meaningful problems for real users. 

Ultimately, Brandon’s talk offered a realistic yet motivating perspective on entrepreneurship, one grounded not in hype, but in persistence, learning, and shared belief. 

About the guest speaker:

Brandon Severin is the co-founder and CEO of Conductor Quantum and was recently named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. He read Materials Science at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. He later completed his DPhil on AI for quantum computing in silicon, before undertaking postdoctoral research in quantum thermodynamics. Originally from Harrow, London, Brandon was the first Rank Fellow at Harrow School in 2013.