Slush Tokyo member’s story: Aryssa
4 weeks to Slush Tokyo: Aryssaだよー！
Hi everyone! This is Aryssa from the startups operation team at Slush Tokyo 2019. I’ve been messaging startups non-stop these past few weeks, so some of you may have already at least heard from me; please bear with me through all the messages…
Let me tell you all a bit about myself and my journey with Slush 😊
I’m a Brazilian-born, ethnically Japanese hybrid. We call this 「日系」, or “Nikkei”, referring to Japanese communities that emigrated to different countries across the globe. So I am a 「日系ブラジル人の三世」, which means 3rd generation of the Japanese-Brazilian community — my grandparents moved from Japan to Brazil by boat roughly around WWI, and have been in Brazil ever since. The biggest community of Japanese people is actually in Brazil (over 1 million and counting!), but there’s only so much about us that can be defined by our heritage.
I moved to Japan for the first time at 13, graduated high school at 17, quit university in the UK for chemical engineering at 20, and eventually got my bachelor degree in biomedical science at 25. In the meantime, I’ve gone from doing kickboxing, getting a hairdressing license, swimming, ballroom dancing, playing the piano, almost dying from a bike accident in the Philippines…who knows what else will be in store. I am grateful for all the opportunities and chances I have had in life, I would never be the person I am if I hadn’t experienced both the good and bad days. And like so many other of us who work and live in multiple countries, we never completely fit in, but our concept of “home” and “family” becomes one that goes beyond culture, age, gender, blood, while recognizing our own history.
At 25 and having never worked full-time for a company, I felt it was time to dive into business and see what it’s all about. My first company was not only a startup, it was a media/branding agency — one of the furthest things possible from what I studied (yep, going for polar opposites seems like the kind of thing I would do). Up until university, all I had learned about was proteins, angles and speeds of chemical reactions, distillation column design, heat exchange, and occasional classes in public spaces, gender studies etc. I’d never gone into business: finance, legal, ‘company culture’, management, marketing…??? What…? I knew all my life had been about theory, and this was my chance to put everything to practice and try to understand better how subjectivity plays into valuation when looked in the context of current society, and in doing so rediscover what matters to me.
Long story short: I struggled A LOT.
In the process I learned a lot about my own biases, what I lacked, some things I enjoy, but for the most part it has been weirdly fulfilling to be economically sustainable. And somewhere along the way I saw Slush and attended as a media. It was fun, young, and vibrant, albeit a bit young. Fun overall, but that was that.
Then somewhere along the way, when one conversation leads to another, which leads to another introduction and so forth, I found myself holding a jazz event bi-weekly on Airbnb, and one of our regulars happened to have a familiar shirt I’d seen over 6 months ago. And here I am, diving again head first into a world that I know nothing about and learning as I go. Our team is young and energetic; everyone is working hard to become the people we want to be, that we believe we can be, and supporting each other with honest criticism and advice. It’s always so fun to be interacting with startups and seeing everyone’s dynamism and passion (although, I won’t lie, sometimes it is very dramatic), and being able to participate and support everyone’s vision of the future has been a roller coaster ride already.
I have never job hunted seriously — I always cringed at interviews and could never be myself in a suit, with black hair, pleasing others just for the sake of getting hired. It’s always something I couldn’t believe in. But Slush Tokyo is different. With a lot of luck and support, I’ve been able to come along so far, and hopefully we can move even further ahead together. Join us 😊
