Pretty much. Cred: Christine Nishiyama

Week 1: A standoff with imposter syndrome

Myfanwy
Myfanwy
Nov 4 · 5 min read

Happy Monday! As promised, this week I went to three very different events and took away plenty of insights:

  1. Escape the city workshop: Lots of people are dissatisfied with their professional trajectory and doing things they’re not passionate about, it’s never ever going to feel good to change things when you’re comfortable, it requires pure, uncomfortable force. The most important step a lot of people glide over when starting a new enterprise is listing and testing base assumptions.
  2. Jobs-to-be-done meetup: Frame product design around the ‘job’ a product is being/ could be ‘hired’ to help someone perform, rather than the pure function you have in mind for it. Look for the ‘jobs’ potential customers need help with in their lives that don’t already have ample good solutions. Also, the way I learnt how to run user research and translate it into product backlog at the bank is aligned to what seasoned product professionals advocate. I know more about overall process and terminology that I assumed I did and I have already lead parts of it.
  3. Her Future Summit: Organised by the Global Startup Ecosystem, this was not only incredibly confidence-boosting but FILLED with practical tips around how to create an authentic, engaging pitch, what to put in an ideation/ execution/ business plan, how to commence marketing and fundraising and finding tools to help. But my favourite bits were some of the quotes that facilitator Christine Ntim mentioned:

“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it”

“Speak your truth rather than a rehearsed sales pitch and no one can tell you you suck… well, they can, but you’ve built something, so whatever.”

“The fundamental goal of a pitch is to ensure people can repeat what you’ve said — the other things you want are follow-on consequences.”

This all said, the most critical value of going to these events was starting the process of gnawing out my imposter syndrome (which this article helped me recognise as such). I’m not a student anymore, I’m unemployed and I’m not a founder: I have a weak narrative with zero substance to back it up and I dreaded each event.

I used to be on the lookout for IS in scholarly and professional contexts. I made room for it to creep in but found it didn’t try to, like when my parents would buy confectionary in the lead-up to Halloween only to be left with 36 mini Snickers bars and barely a trick-or-treater in sight. As with back then, I’ve been all too content with the no-show. But now, surveying whether I could have a place in the startup community, it’s barged in with a vengeance. The Snickers are gone and I’m left scrambling for the cookies at the back of the pantry. Lamentably, it’s a lot more intimidating than 10-year-olds in zombie masks: less the pill you gulp down and more the oversized Omega 3 tablet that gets stuck in your throat and triggers fish oil reflux for the rest of the morning.

Entering each new room and conversation felt like edging into cold water. What helped was that I attended super entry-level, non-intimidating events (I’ll level-up in time), and kept in mind these thoughts:

  1. If I can’t deal with this level of discomfort, how could I succeed as an entrepreneur?
  2. No one cares about my story, they care about whether I’m easy to chat to and if I’m interested in their stories
  3. It’s like pushing through a tough gym class — only X hours, then I get to go home and feel smug for doing it (and if I’m really hating it I can leave)
  4. I’m not allowed to whinge about being too tired when I don’t have a job
  5. This is first and foremost an opportunity to learn and isn’t that cool because I love learning
  6. Be grateful: I’m an extrovert and I love meeting people, imagine how tough this must be for introverts

This said, it’s important to mention that my imposter syndrome is not solely attributable to the groundless burden of Type As, but a rational concern: as a woman considering founding a fintech, I am an imposter. Only 6% of the 261 UK fintechs who made funding deals last year had a female founder/ co-founder and female-founded fintechs only received 3% of the VC money, despite claims that female-founded fintechs are realising more than double the average return. Listening to podcasts with and reading the blogs of female founders has been terrific to counteract all that — hearing the stories of hugely successful women who I can relate to so I can see there is a route there, even if it’s the road less travelled.

elenastreehouse.com

Last week I promised to speak to at least five people in my life about the idea and start creating an execution plan. I can proudly say I’ve done both and the response from friends, family and strangers alike has been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve started making a list of incubators and competitions I could apply to (turns out there are a lot) and working through how much time I should be dedicating to each stage of this process. As of today, I’m starting on my ideation plan, which includes desktop researching several different topics I’ll need to understand better to have good conversations about my idea, qualitative interviews, writing my problem definition and related key assumptions and developing/ distributing a quantitative survey to test them. This week my key tasks are:

  1. Attending 3 more events (in particular focussing on female financial literacy) and trying to meet more industry people
  2. Completing an application to the Antler incubator
  3. Week 1 of desktop research, focussing on: quantifying the gender wealth gap, the changing economic empowerment of women and female financial/ investment habits

I also have two job interviews and am starting casual consulting work. I feel purposeful and busy and I couldn’t be more relieved. I see you, fintech bros, and I’m coming for your fuseball tables (so we can play together in friendly mutual bonding and professional collaboration, obviously).

A.

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