The Psychology & Anatomy of a Start-Up: Session 10 - Reflection and Hot seat Pitch (3 mins each)
SESSION 10
Hot Seats & Reflection
Share your journey, your wins, your pivots — and the takeaways that will stay with you
Nine sessions. Forty-five minutes each. A complete system for building something that matters.
But a system only becomes wisdom when you sit with it long enough to see what it actually changed. Session 10 of The Psychology of Startups: Building Something Meaningful is not another lecture. There is no new framework, no new slide, no new homework. This session belongs entirely to you and the cohort you've built it alongside.
Hot Seats & Reflection is the series capstone — a structured, facilitated space where every founder shares the most important thing they discovered, the assumption that turned out to be wrong, the moment that shifted their thinking, and what they are going to do differently because of it. It is the session most participants say they didn't know they needed until they were in it.
The hot seat format means every founder gets the room — briefly, honestly, without a deck — and the room gives back. Questions, observations, encouragement that only comes from people who have been in the same room for nine sessions and actually paid attention.
What you share does not have to be polished. It does not have to be a success story. The most valuable moments in this session are usually the ones that begin with "I thought I knew what I was building, and then..."
Led and facilitated by Morné Maritz, who has sat on both sides of the hot seat — as a founder, as an investor, and as an organisational psychologist who has spent twenty years helping people extract the signal from their own experience.
✅ What This Session Includes
A structured reflection exercise before the session opens — you will come prepared, not ambushed
Hot seat rounds: every participant gets 4 minutes in the seat and 4 minutes of group response
A guided cohort debrief: what patterns emerged across all 10 sessions that nobody expected
A "letter to your past self" closing exercise — what would you tell yourself before Session 1?
The series retrospective: what worked, what you would have sequenced differently, what you are still carrying
A commitment round: one specific thing each participant commits to doing in the next 30 days — shared with the group, documented, and followed up on
What to bring:
Come with honest answers to these four questions. You do not need to present them — you just need to have sat with them.
What was the single most important thing you learned or unlearned across this series?
What assumption did you hold in Session 1 that you no longer hold today?
What is the hardest thing you still haven't done — and why?
What does your startup look like differently because you were in this room?
🎤 Your Facilitator: Morné Maritz — Founder & CEO, Cogniate | Author, The Leadership Balance Triangle | Organisational Psychologist | Former EY & Accenture Partner | Former Professional Athlete | Neurodivergent founder. Morné created this series because he wished it had existed when he started. Session 10 is the one he looks forward to most — because by this point, the room knows something real.
🎤 Your Host: Diane Gogoleva — [Networking Expert & Events Curator | Founder of ________ | The person who has held this community together across all ten sessions and knows better than anyone what has been quietly building in the room.]
This session is exclusively for participants who attended at least four sessions in the Psychology of Startups series. The hot seat format only works when the room has shared context.
Session 10 of 10 — and the beginning of what comes next.
A note on format: Session 10 runs slightly longer — plan for 60–75 minutes. The extra time is not accidental. Some conversations cannot be rushed, and this one has been nine sessions in the making.