Week 11 @Founders Program: Start-Up VS Employment mindset

I've been looking forward to publishing this article because it has been quite the epiphany for me that building a Start-Up will most definitely challenge your employment mindset.

I've had the pleasure for working for the biggest Tech companies in the world. Being the geek that I am, I spent the last 10 years understanding the deep operations and processes of how Google, Meta, Oracle and TikTok make billions of dollars. The best part of my work day was analysing revenue dashboards. If you asked me to choose between having more leave days OR accurate revenue dashboards, I would choose the latter. I probably shouldn't use that as an example, it doesn't perpetuate work-life balance. It just however feels like the best way to explain how my brain gets excited with understanding the impact of process optimisation on revenue.

And it was not all in vain, my sales programs were always the top performing programs. There was once I increased revenue of one of those companies by $100M within 30 days as a result of processes optimisation - and here is the thing, I never doubted my ability to achieve that. I had analysed more than enough data to propose the right process improvement opportunities. I knew without a doubt I was going to succeed, I just waited for the data to prove me right.

But GUESS WHAT?

You won't have a revenue dashboard as an early-stage Start-up. At the same time, you would need to convince an investor why they should invest in your business.

I found myself in a space where I was struggling to figure out the most optimised way to pitch my Start-up with 100% confidence. I am so used to leveraging data supported by dashboards. As a Sales Program Manager in these big Tech companies, I've always been paired with a data scientist with whom we would propose strategies to Leadership. I remember being asked questions such as ''Esther, what's the plan on revenue acceleration?'' and I would confidently respond by saying how my data scientist and I have identified the path to success.

But I don't have a data scientist as part of the Founder's Program. And in a very weird way, imposter syndrome started to kick-in. I started being scared of saying things without data supported by dashboards.

Thank goodness to the Founder's Program, they brought in Nicola McClafferty to talk to us 12 days ago. So I put my hand up and asked her a question.

Me: ''As an early-stage Start-up, much as you've done your ground work, you are YET to succeed. I'm struggling to find a way to pitch with confidence and insult the intelligence of an investor because at the end of the day, I still haven't made it.''

Nicola went ahead and gave me the best answer. If I can rephrase what she said:

1. First of all, this is an issue that is seen to affect women more than men.
2. Two, pre-seed investors are always looking to listen to big ideas. If they wanted to invest in low-risk ideas, they'd be doing property investments.
3. Third, no one knows what will be the unicorn idea. It's about the data and traction in that moment that can encourage an investor to take a chance on you.

That's when it hit me.

My bosses and I were also part of the big machine. When you are an employee, your job is achieving process optimisation because the hard work of building the big Tech company has already been done by the Founders.

So it's less about thinking out of the box, even more crazy, it's less about doing what it took to build the big Tech company. Instead, it's more about optimising processes within your line of business, which in isolation, is not enough to build a unicorn business from scratch.

I used to think the Founders of these big Tech companies must be living a stress free life because they have thousands of employees building their dream. Then you realise that they probably have the toughest job which is keeping the company alive. Building Google, Meta, Oracle and TikTok is hard, and I can only imagine that keeping the company alive is even harder.

If I was to go back to being a Global Sales Program Manager, I would spend less time over analysing the revenue dashboard in isolation. I would spend time understanding how the CEOs of these big Tech companies grew the company from 1 customer to billions of customers. That's where the real magic is!

Speaking of magic, when you are an employee, your life is centred on pleasing your boss and colleagues. The context in which you please them may or may not necessarily contribute to the growth of the business - because it all depends on the boss and the corporate culture.

As a Start-up, the context in which you please investors is directly related to the growth of the business - and that makes all the difference when it comes to Start-up and Employee mindset.

So the conversations you have with your boss will certainly NOT be the same as the conversations you will have with investors as a Start-up. Your Start-up will have you searching deep inside yourself while a job will have you analyse the external corporate political nature of your work environment.

Your Start-up will have you demonstrating that you are the best person to solve a problem for a particular customer and market. Your job will have you demonstrating what your boss needs you to in order to be eligible for high performance ratings and promotions.

Building a Start-up is not easy, but the beautiful thing is that there are people so passionate about helping Founders become successful. Just last week I found myself in an uninspiring cocoon which I could NOT get myself out of. I had successfully managed to demotivate myself. My Mum tried to text me inspiring messages to get me out it but I was relentlessly still holding on to unnecessary limiting beliefs. I however told her that I was going to talk to my mentor and see what he says.

So I took my phone and texted my mentor all the limiting beliefs I was entertaining. The crazy thing is, after talking to him for 15 minutes, I completely LET GO of them. It helped that he took time to ask WHY I was feeling what I was saying - and he debunked the lack of truth in the false things I was telling myself.

And then shortly after he helped me address those limiting beliefs, I once again started to stress myself out. There is a video from Y-Combinator that explains how early-stage Founder's give themselves unnecessary pressure - the first 40 seconds of this video is literally ME. Once again, my mentor came to the rescue and I am the moment taking time to just allow myself to get out of my head.

Being a Start-Up means having real, vulnerable conversations with people around you because as a Founder, your business needs YOU. As the CEO of your Start-up, your well-being can influence whether you build a multi-billion dollar business or not. The stakes are higher.

Whereas as an employee, even if your are sick for 365 days a year, the business will still generate revenue without you. The stakes are lower.

I want to end this article by saying that I understand why Jack Ma said that one needs to work in large companies to understand processes. I don't want to make it seem like being an employee is 100% disadvantageous to a Start-up, I simply wanted to sensitize that the mindset of being an employee may not always be what's required when building a Start-up from scratch.

I learnt so MUCH working in big Tech companies that I am absolutely applying in what I am working on. For example:

• I am leveraging my stellar global program management and stakeholder management to work with a remote team. When you work for a large company, there's always a lot at stake. Strong communication and relationships is key to be successful.
• I learnt the value of customer obsession in every single way you can think of. Making and keeping your customers happy should be at the heart of growing your business.

There's actually so much I can share and I am thinking I should publish another article on how working for a large tech company prepares you to build your own Start-up.

Well, it's December. I may or may not post another article before End of Year. I am thoroughly looking forward to taking a break.

As you reflect on your 2024 goals, I hope you challenge yourself in a healthy way!

Until then, happy holidays!