If you’re feeling like “you don’t belong,” lemme tell you something:
You do — and this is exactly how I know! 👇
When I entered the startup tech world in 2014, I was fighting preconceptions daily — sometimes even my own. ☝️
I didn’t seem to check any of the “right” boxes:
❌ I didn’t live in San Francisco (or have any plans to move there).
❌ I wasn’t in an accelerator or incubator.
❌ I was working on a startup in an area considered “finished and over”.
And yet:
I still carved out my own niche and reputation. 🙌
In retrospect, so much of it revolved not only around putting out what I was confident in what I knew, but learning how to communicate it to others.
Building dialogues and relationships was critical to moving forward and finding out where I “belonged”.
Networking supercharged my entire trajectory. ⚡
Yeah — some days it was really tough to close my ears to the noise and focus on the goal.
But I still built a magnetic network with some of the most influential people in tech. 🚀
I did it by doing what I believe everyone can:
Embracing my own talents that I could bring to the table and creating a rapport with the people whom I wanted access to. 🔥
To me, tech startups are about changing the world we live in and that starts with changing perceptions; of others and ourselves.
Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t belong because you don’t check some abstract boxes. 📦
So often these abstract check-boxes distract from the truly important things.
Be tenacious — don’t give up. ✊
