Chapter 3: “What’s it like being the only girl?”
For a long time, Roger has been a team comprised entirely of guys, and hence it probably was surprising to see me in some of their recent photos. Having met several of their friends, here’s the question I get the most:
“ How is it like being the only girl with 5 other guys?”
In this third part of the Roger stories series, its my turn to tell my Roger story 😉
Half a year ago, I applied for my school’s overseas startup program, National University of Singapore’s Overseas College (NOC). After several rounds of interviews, I managed to get a slot to work in New York for a year. It was almost like a dream come true, especially since it was my second time trying out for this program. By December my plane ticket was booked for 6 January, luggage was filled and I was ready to go.
Then on 31 December, I received the worst news possible — my internship company was going to close down. This meant that I had just a week left to find another company or in other words, my chances of going to New York were practically gone. During that one week, I emailed numerous companies and scoured through AngelList countless number of times daily but unfortunately, luck was not on my side.
I decided to continue with my decision to leave for New York, determined not to let this opportunity slip by like this, but at the same time I knew better than anyone else, the consequences if I did not manage to find another internship in time. Knowing how much my family would worry, I hid everything from them and it was only a few hours before my flight that I came clean and yes, it was painful.
On the night of 6 January 2016, I boarded the plane to New York.
Over the next few weeks, I watched my fellow NOC batch mates start on their internships and my hopes began to wear thin. I started to wonder whether I made the right decision. Was I too stubborn? Should I have stayed in Singapore?
Then, finally one day my program coordinator emailed me, informing me that a startup called ‘Roger’ was interested to meet me:
‘’Hi Yushu. We’re looking forward to meet you for an interview. See you at 1pm!
-Ricardo Vice Santos”
It was the greatest news I could ask for at that time. I did my research thoroughly and found out that these guys came from big names such as Spotify and Microsoft, and since I have absolutely no technical background (plus it was a full male team), I started to wonder if I would be good enough for them.
With such doubts in my mind, I entered Roger’s office on 12 January 2016 and saw those guys for the first time. It was quite an intimidating sight when I saw them deeply engrossed and typing away at their desks, stopping for only a few seconds to greet me with a short “Hello, nice to meet you!”.
Ricardo brought me to a cafe nearby and one of my most unforgettable moments till today was his enthusiasm in explaining what Roger is. As he read out carefully to me, word for word, an email he received from a motor impaired user thanking the team for making Roger so simple to use, it became clear to me that this was a startup that was truly passionate in what they do.
Much to my delight, Ricardo emailed me shortly after with an internship offer with Roger and I joined them officially on 19 January 2016 (best birthday gift!).
As of today, I have been in New York for close to four months and here’s where I am now:
It has been an amazing ride so far, and one thing I can say for sure is that they are a bunch of really dedicated guys who are willing to stay in the office till 2am, burn their weekends and sacrifice their sleep to push out a new feature, fix a bug that a user just reported and reply to every user who reaches out to them. That’s the sort of dedication you rarely get to see.
Working in a small and early stage startup like Roger means we face numerous setbacks all the time- negative comments, lukewarm response towards new features and even demoralizing statistics. Yet, that’s also the best part of working in Roger because they are the people who do not mind trying again and again, till they make it.
Even after I was with Roger for some time, it was difficult for me to see the value in talking to someone. Why use Roger, when I can just send a text message? I was not convinced, but at the same time I was intrigued by how the rest of them were actually using Roger all the time, and that was when I decided to really use Roger.
I created a group chat with a few of my NOC batch mates (photo below) and soon after, I found myself saying things like “Oh! So that’s how your colleague sounds like?” or “Guys, the clouds are so pretty today!”, while actually looking at the clouds and not down at my phone.
As simple as it might sound, its definitely not easy to get the people comfortable talking to each other again, hearing their own voices or embracing the spontaneity of actual conversations but as we like to say in Roger : Whatever man, let’s get it 😉 👉🏼
Let’s talk more often!
