(originally posted on 11/6/2014)
Today has been one year since I launched my first company–we pivoted to this company midway. During the first year, I thought often about beginning a blog and chronicling my experiences. But my social media feeds were awash in posts from optimistic founders, recounting their hard-won triumphs to the world. I wasn’t certain what more I could contribute.
What’s left to write about?
What remains unsaid? What remains misunderstood?
Entrepreneurship is about having the courage to transform an idea into reality (that’s the product) and to share it with others who also come to care about it (that’s the business). Despite the quotidian professional status that entrepreneurship seems to have achieved, a nearly assumed right of passage for any anyone in tech, few people ultimately embark down that road. The disconnect between a dissatisfaction with the status quo of one’s job as an employee and the stymied reluctance to begin a venture, leads me to believe that there remain unanswered questions.
If you are looking to read about the “10 things super-successful founders do” or any of myriad similar lists, please google on your own. No, wait, I’ll provide you some links to those articles to get you started. Here you go:
http://www.inc.com/peter-economy/10-everyday-things-creative-people-do-that-lead-to-success.html
http://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2014/10/12-weekend-habits-highly-successful-people/
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-successful-people-do-at-the-end-of-the-workday-2014-10?op=1
And, if you are looking to gain insight into “women in tech,” or learn from great community leaders who also happen to be women, I point you in this direction:
If you want to learn about finding a co-founder http://www.salvadorbriggman.com/ways-meet-startup-cofounder/ or being a non-technical founder http://www.groovehq.com/blog/non-technical-founder or getting into an accelerator https://www.codementor.io/startups/tutorial/y-combinator-vs-techstars-alum-comparison http://blog.zactownsend.com/going-through-y-combinator-s13-nine-lessons-learned or fundraising http://unreasonable.is/invest/crowdfunding-a-startup-a-success-story/, those topics have been more or less well-documented.
It is amongst these fields of information wherein I intend to carve out a little niche for my own story.
Who am I?
I am an anthropologist who finds herself in strange company, surrounded by tech workers in San Francisco. All my life I planned to be a professor. I wanted to learn about other cultures while traveling the world. I remained more or less “on track” until I completed my PhD a few years ago, looked around, and realized that there were no tenure track faculty jobs in my discipline.
As an anthropologist I examined social and economic inequality and entrepreneurship in the developing world. One of the tenets of anthropology is the consideration to maintain an objective research setting; try not to interfere with one’s informants. I grew dissatisfied with studying people struggling to meet their daily needs. I began to consider alternatives to a career focused on the documentation and analysis of poverty. What could a career focused on poverty eradication look like?
I worked with several organizations in order to gain an overview of varying approaches to the mega question of “how to make the world a better place.” In June 2013 I began to work on an idea, and in November of that year I launched the company publicly. One year later I am still plugging away at it.
To whom do I direct my writing? And who might actually read this blog?
I don’t expect much overlap in these two groups. Perhaps if you are my friend or acquaintance, you are reading this now. Thank you, I appreciate your interest, and would love your feedback. More than likely you are in tech. I write with you in mind. But I am not so sure that I can help you or say anything you haven’t already read a hundred times.
Instead, I direct this writing toward people who want to know how to solve a problem in the world. I chose a fairly large problem–poverty.
Likely you have never considered building a company. My efforts to impact global poverty began with building a business that gives laptops to kids who want to learn how to code, but who can’t afford their own computers. This is tiny. It sounds naive. Give me time to explain, to woo you.
If you join me on my journey, I will share the concrete steps of how I’m building my business, the struggles I face as someone with few technical skills, my frustrations as a wife and a mother and, more generally, a woman, and finally, my joys of making small gains as I witness positive change happening in the world.
This first year has been a long one. In twelve months I
learned how to run a Board of Directors
learned about incorporation, taxes, and name-changing, and non-profits
got some angel funding
tried to run my company while working internationally at another job
spoke at the Crunchies
got rejected from YC after my interview
was the first nonprofit accepted into Techstars and moved from SF to NYC
had a major crisis, almost quit my company, but stuck with it
hated my customers
pivoted to this company
loved my customers
found a glimpse of product-market fit
finally got a co-founder
lost my CTO to bigger money
got an office
hired 2 employees
still considered quitting every day
couldn’t be more exhausted or fulfilled every night
All of these topics will make excellent future posts.
The Dubious Entrepreneur
I have titled this blog, the Dubious Entrepreneur, because I am. I am an academic who has spent more than a decade analyzing and criticizing society and others’ efforts to improve it. I’m not convinced that building a business is the right way to make the world a better place. And I am just as critical of the tech world as I am marveled by its optimism. That’s why this is a personal blog and not my company’s blog, and why I direct my writing to people who want to learn how to solve problems as opposed to individuals looking to read yet another “Top 10 list” with expert advice from a first timer.
More than anything, I’m looking for help. Tell me what I don’t know. Tell me which blogs to read. Are there non-technical founders with blogs I should read? Are there female founders who have amazing blogs? Are there academics who have left the ivory tower to build companies? I’m always open to learning more and to incorporate that information into my experience in order to generate more robust knowledge for interested readers. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Hope to see you again.