Author Archives: Kate Kendall

Not just another post about burnout

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goldengate“We’re on a road to nowhere”

I can’t believe it’s May.

It feels like the last few months have flown. And by flown, I don’t mean in a jovial, enjoyable manner. It’s been uncomfortable. I’m liking it to being chucked in a river and only just keeping up with its current.

I was focused for so long on getting my long-term US visa (related: immigration reform for entrepreneurs), that once it happened, there was a pause. When I first got to NYC, I powered through getting the home and office set-up that after it was all done, I felt tired. Now, for anyone who’s just moved, let alone someone creating a startup, this might seem natural. However, it’s been an unusual state for me. I recently admitted this to my friend Jen. She laughed, remarking that she thought of me as one of her ‘Ninjas’ for getting things done as well as being everywhere, so it was good to see I was human. (I say this mostly to display things are relative – and to share vulnerably from a place of strength, not to boost ego.) It was somewhat of a relief as I tend to house a High Expectations Asian Father in my head!

Since then, I recognised I’ve been getting a taste of burnout. And I haven’t really encountered it before. You can read all the lifehack and productivity tips you like but until you experience something, it’s hard to relate. I believe we don’t understand much about burnout in startups because a lot of literature is focused around the initial – or final days of companies. It’s either the hustling, fearful enthusiasm or calming hindsight of success. Once you’re one or two years into working on something, it’s different – you need to find that balance to continue. Burnout isn’t to be confused with stress either. You are very conscious of when you’re stressed – it’s manifests physically and is the result of too much. Burnout is the opposite – it sneaks up on you emotionally. It’s the result of too little – it’s hopelessness and detachment.

Burnout feels like you (can) no longer give a shit about things you usually care so much for. Your momentum is off. Giving up seems like a serious option. You’re indecisive and lost. You feel bitter. Unsupported. And according to Marissa Mayer, resentful:

“I have a theory that burnout is about resentment. And you beat it by knowing what it is you’re giving up that makes you resentful. I tell people: Find your rhythm. Your rhythm is what matters to you so much that when you miss it you’re resentful of your work.” ~Mayer

Tomasz Tunguz offers another perspective with the antidote to burnout being progress. To him:

“Burnout is a motivation problem, a listlessness, a defeatist attitude, and perhaps even a hopelessness, triggered by the lack of progress.” ~Tunguz

He recommends highlighting what you have done each day as a reminder of the progress made. I love the idea of a ‘done list’ instead of a ‘to-do list’ as a place to leave our minds as we finish each day. Celebrating what you have achieved and the resulting successes is crucial. It’s definitely not something I’ve done enough of to date, and while this keeps one in a humble beginner’s mind – awareness of progress helps build confidence. You need to regularly reflect on how far you’ve come. Rebekah Campbell has a post on why this is important:

“When you’re burdened with a list of unmet goals, it’s easy to overlook what you have achieved.” … “I learnt that this approach weakened motivation.  The team didn’t feel appreciated and productivity dropped.  Worse than that, we weren’t having fun!” ~Campbell

Andrew Dumont also published a Svbtle post last week with some tips on avoiding burnout. You hear the following suggestions a lot but working out, sleeping well, taking time off, unplugging, getting small wins and a healthy diet can make a massive difference. I now aim for at least one day a week where I’m not working on my startup. Because the beta version of The Fetch involves a Monday morning deadline, I realised I’ve work every weekend for the past year and a half. There’s comes a point where working longer and harder isn’t viable anymore.

In fact, I’ve recently revisited my entire schedule after Amber Rae’s Fast Company piece on optimising for creative performance. I try to hold all my meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays, get in the zone with solo work  on Monday and Wednesdays and use Friday for catch-up requests, coworking in cafes/spaces and getting through the inbox. I’m following Amber’s lead and scheduling nothing for all day Saturday and Sunday mornings – enjoying free time and allowing for more spontaneity, not to forget new city exploration. I’ve moved most of my non-work related communication and mentoring to Clarity and cannot recommend it enough.

Another thing to note is that if you’re like me and actually love your work, it is hard to switch off to do other things. I’m not exactly going to finish up for the day to do some drinking at a noisy bar, but I might like to put some energy into a side-project (like this blog). Now I’m in one place, I’ll also take up biking everywhere again.

If you’re trying to navigate burnout, my final tidbit is to cull any niggling negativity from your life. As cliché as it sounds, life really is short and it’s a waste of time trying to please everybody, or bring naysaying connections along for the journey. Make space and you’ll attract the right peeps.

So, I guess this did just turn out to be another post on burnout. :) If you have any other tips or words of wisdom, please share in the comments or hit reply to send me a message if you subscribe via email.

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Related: Burnout on Wikipedia and this entry has a great table on the difference between stress and burnout.

New York, New York

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nyc

I know, I know, where have I been, right? Can’t believe it’s a month since my last update. And I started the year like a blogging machine. #fail

Anyway, there is a reason… I just moved to NYC. Yep, I’m hanging up my minimalist and digital vagabond shoes for a while, and now have a lovely apartment to call home. A couple of weeks ago, I didn’t own a pillow. Now I have a whole bed. (Side note: it takes a surprisingly lot to furnish a place.)

There was quite a bit of rationale behind switching the base of The Fetch HQ and I’ll dive into a little of it below.

For starters, NYC has definitely proved to be the media meets tech capital of the world. I’ve really resonated with Meetup, Etsy, General Assembly, Skillshare, Kickstarter, Foursquare, Thrillist, Refinery29, BuzzFeed, Flavorpill, Brain Pickings, Creative Mornings and other Made In NYC goodies for some time. I feel The Fetch’s startup DNA is similar.

I’ve also been accumulating share-worthy tidbits like:

A recent book called Tech and the City: The Making of New York’s Startup Community by Alessandro Piol and Maria Teresa Cometto, with a forward by Fred Wilson, is a recommended overview. I’ve just starting reading the Kindle edition (god bless Amazon Prime and its lending library!) and already feel way more conversant and familiar with the ecosystem from the first few chapters.

Startup Genome published its annual worldwide startup ecosystems report late last year. While females are still underrepresented as founders of tech companies, New York leads the way of the top city’s list with close to 20% women entrepreneurs. I went to an event at the Apple Store in SoHo tonight featuring Brad Feld and one of the authors above, and was blown away by the amount of driven female founders and investors packing the room. Before ducking out, I was caught in a line of around 20 women waiting to ask the speakers questions. It was such a foreign yet incredible ratio for me.

Like others, I’ve also found the startup cultures differ between the San Francisco Bay Area and NY. This article from Online MBA from March this year offers a solid comparison of Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley.

RebelMouse’s Megan Berry also wrote a post for Huffington Post around the time of her relocation on Comparing New York and San Francisco Tech Scenes.

The government is also playing a big role. It seems there has been some cool shit going down ever since Rachel Haot took over as the City’s Chief Digital Officer. Check out Made in NY (celebrates the city’s media, entertainment and digital industry), Mapped in NY Digital Map and the one and only New York Tech Meetup’s Made in NYC list. The latters monthly meetup is now approaching 30,000-plus members, which is a feat in itself.

NYC is massive but it’s still an underdog compared to the Valley and as a result, I’ve found the community tighter-knit, extremely welcoming and very inclusive. People are open to coffee meetings (yes, they can be a time waster and sin but less so when you’re new somewhere). On my most recent trip here, I left feeling I could really make a contribution and dent. I hope to in SF as well – but have often felt drowned out with all the noise there.

We will continue to curate and share more links in upcoming issues of The Fetch New York.

For now, I’m trying to give this non-Night Owl thing a try and go to bed earlier.

If you have any cool happenings or recommend anyone I should meet with in NYC, please forward my way.

To finish, I finally get why people say “New York, New York”. Took some time but I got there. :)

The skill you didn’t think you needed – awareness

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rainbow-eyes

We often place our professional development and advancement in neat little boxes. We have education and we have experience – we understand our goal to be around maximising the two.

Outside this, we know it’s important to be connected to people, especially the relevant kind. And when you have that sorted, you have the trifecta ripe for success, right?

Wrong!

You see, there’s something we don’t get informed about in a plain manner – and that’s awareness.

Wikipedia states awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects, or sensory patterns.

Let me explain further…

You just had a job interview via a solid referral – all in all, you think you crushed it chatting about how your history and direction are perfectly suited. The next candidate shows, much of a muchness, but proceeds to share knowledge about the market, background on partners we could potentially work with and really specific things on what we could do better. Our conversation turns into more of a consultative brainstorm and I start wondering why we ever lasted without them. Guess who gets the gig.

This is awareness in action.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at an event in Melbourne when I bumped into someone from the industry I’ve known for a few years. The person is connected to me on every social channel known to humankind. He asked what I was working on nowadays. I was a little taken aback. I mean, it feels like I shout all things The Fetch from the top of my lungs – and should even tone it down. How could he not be across it? Sure, 99.99% of people are expected to not know but considering the context in this case, I felt slighted. At the end of the day, great relationships are built by taking notice of what each other is up to.

This is awareness in action.

You have an awesome idea for a marketplace startup – it’s around events and activities. You get a team together and start building the platform. A year later, you launch and then a year later you shut down. The thing is – the same thing happened to five other similar businesses, some two years ago. If you’d opened the blinkers and realised you were building a local clone of a site that previously failed in the US, you would have saved yourself the time and energy – and focused on solving the problem in a new way.

This is awareness in action.

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I owe everything I have to date down to increasing my ambient awareness – of people, myself, things, places, markets and news.

So, how are you becoming more aware today?

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Related: Check out Amber Case’s blog Cyborg Anthropology for more on this topic.

Some context on being a woman

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blog

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while but I know it will be contentious. I’ll just have to delicately dance it out. And today is the day to post considering it’s International Women’s Day.

So, I can’t tell you how much I’ve been glued to reads about women, business and technology over the past five years – I’ve viewed almost every decent article that’s been published on the web in this area. The debate can, and will, go on forever. What I have found really effective though is reframing the context to help others see how things can come across.

I feel some human rights movements are more progressive than others – they’re further along. People have been fighting for them longer. While I don’t want to denounce or compare different movements, we are more aware and sensitive to the ones further along.

For instance, racist statements can generally come across more harshly than sexist statements. To highlight this, I’ve reframed five examples I’ve come across in the industry. Take a look and let me know if and how your reaction changes.

1) “Women aren’t interested in learning how to code because they’re not as good at maths. They aren’t good enough to speak at our developer conference.”

This could translate to: ”Black people aren’t interested in learning how to code because they’re not as good at maths. They aren’t good enough to speak at our developer conference.”

2) “Maybe you should get a man in the room for credibility to help you raise funding?”

This could translate to: ”Maybe you should get a white person in the room for credibility to help you raise funding?”

3) “We’re running a competition! Women: send us your best boobs in tech photo.”

This could translate to: ”We’re running a competition! Asians: send us your most Asian-ness in tech photo.”

4) “People are making too many dick investments in startups nowadays.” [In relation to female-founded companies.]

This could translate to: ”People are making too many black investments in startups nowadays.”

5) “You can’t come to our dude startups drinks because we want to talk about bloke stuff. Women should stick to their book clubs instead.”

This could translate to: ”You can’t come to our white startup drinks because we want to talk about white stuff. Black people should stick to their book clubs instead.”

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The same interchange can be done for gay rights.

So, the next time you hear something that doesn’t feel quite right, swap the context and you’ll feel it even more.

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Related:  Ash Beckham on GBTQ acceptance in schools and “so gay” usage at Ignite Boulder.

A note about the help you need

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helpDon’t walk alone

I just archived another email…

Another request to help someone. Mentor them. Advise them on a new project. Connect with them. Meet for coffee. Try out their beta. Promote something. Listen to or troubleshoot their problems. Usually these requests wouldn’t bother me, but today they do.

You see, doing a startup is hard work. You only have so much energy to drive things forward. At times, I’ve used every last drop of my creative and physical energy to get things to where they are today, and keep the momentum going. Everything that happened is because of an action. Do nothing and nothing happens. It feels like I’ve been pushing a muddy cart uphill solo and then some (brilliant) others joined when they could see the destination.

But there’s lots more to do and sometimes I need the help too.

My friend once said to me: “You have to be selfish to be selfless”.

And it’s true. I cannot continue to provide for others if I don’t get my own company’s foundation firmly planted.

I’ve always been independent, self-sufficient and practical, looking after myself from my early teens.

From four years ago, when I wanted to discover more about startups and Silicon Valley – I flew myself there and back from Australia many times. I slept on couches in Palo Alto while barely post-pubescent grads coded around me until 4am. I went to events as a nobody and introduced myself. I trawled investor-authored blogs, Hacker News and Quora for knowledge. I bootstrapped my own projects via savings, testing the market fit. I found opportunities by being ridiculously curious and interested in the space.

I’m sure it’s a story many others share.

Now, I find it a little ironic that I’m asked to mentor on programs where entrepreneurs get flown about, accommodated, advised, introduced, sent to events and even funded off the back of a fuzzy idea on a LaunchRock landing page.

That’s it though – if there’s support, you need to take it.

Don’t do a me. There’s nothing noble about it – it’s stupid. It’s becoming increasingly obvious the best entrepreneurs are the ones who can bring the help together.

Case in point: my other friend (who’s a loveable extroverted chap) was recently transitioning from consulting to wanting to do another startup. Around a month ago he invited many of his network out for dinner one-on-one to chat about his new ideas. He then brought people together to get a landing page done and shared in a startup-related group that he’s looking for a cofounder. A couple of days ago, his new site was featured on TechCrunch.

The difference? He’s asking for help left, right and centre.

So, if you’re more like me. Get out there and find the advice and support you need. Speak up for it… consistently. It’s not being shameless or weak, it’s being smart.

I look forward to giving more again soon. Once I first learn how to ask.

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Related: Check out Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk on the art of asking.

Cool job: Content and Community Coordinator

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#Edit: Feb 25 – we have closed applications for this role for now#

Just tried reblogging a post via WordPress and it was a bit of a fail – apologies if you got an email notification!

Anyway, you might have seen on The Fetch Blog that I’m hiring a Content and Community Coordinator. It’s a part time, location independent, paid contract role to begin – with the possibility to join us full time in the US (if desired) in a few months. Check out all the details here, pass it on or apply ASAP.

thefetch