Zero Point One

I made it to Top 2 She Loves Tech in September 2021 – The Largest Global Startup Competition for Women & all the goodies you could talk about when you talk about initiatives for Female Founders.

It’s worth celebrating at personal level. But the truth is, none matters if your startup dies. All would be accolades to hang on walls, faded as time goes by.

A founder journey, as told a million time, feels like an endless tunnel without end.

You may try so hard & get so far. But in the end, if it’s not good enough, it’s NOT good enough.

It’s a YES or NO. Not the in-between.

So this is not a Top 2 story.

It’s the story of a Zero starting point, of how I was clueless at delivering a 60s-90s pitches to crafting my own 5min-one that doesn’t sedate my audience.

It’s the revelation from getting more Customers to payback by being Empathetic and the frustration after delivering demo deck to Mentors only to get both confusion & aha moments at the same time.

My Inner Child (& my therapist) would be proud of me.

My metacognition improve.

I can see how I am doing, taking all of everything coming at me and cook a disk that I have no recipes for the better. A Pokemon upgrade from one level to another. From asking stupid questions to putting Investors in the Customer mindset. From putting everything in 30-slide-deck to trimming them all to the minimal so that my narrative stands out beyond mere slides. It begins to work (not that it is perfect). People get it, engage, then follow up.

I should have taken more Dramatics courses at college. I only took one. The techniques are brilliant. Empathize with Character, tone & voice, body language. Except for the stage is now Zoom which adds more technical incidents.

It’s not a secret that I wasn’t made out of thin air as a Founder.

I was extremely fortunate to graduate as Top 1 SHINE cohort (by AVV & Investing In Women). Week by week, some progress, some none. It takes a dedicated crew to build outstanding program to coach Founder 1:1, being both practical & on-demand, cutting all the bullshit of theoretical guidelines. Not all initiatives are comprehensively built to help Founders but PR exposure.

I sometimes forget I’m a woman (& married #oops). I just say what I wanna say regardless. I save me a lot time filtering out bullshit in life.

But others can’t free themselves from society prejudice. This program really helps me realize it really matters to have Female Founders as each other Role Models. They are all (Brain + Beauty + Grit) + All Goodies you can find in a perfect human being. Society may add “Stubbornness” into that Dictionary but I call it “Resilience”.