Sometimes you just have to go n a direction. That’s the advice of a just turned 50-something founder and angel investor. She told me:
“Most people don’t know ‘what their passion is’. If you do …you are lucky. But what do you gravitate toward? Dig into that. Find ways to apply those interests. Then, go in a direction. Don’t get stuck by thinking you have to know for certain. You may change directions ten times so you better get started. Right now.”
I like to think of it as finding the intersection of your interests and your strengths…and seek opportunities to apply them. Then It’s up to you to make the connections even if they aren’t linear.
I heard a startup founder speak last week at a pitch event and she nailed this point. She was talking about the difficulties of getting VC funding as a woman and offering some tactics to overcome the bias.
One of these biases is that VCs are looking for patterns and proof that you know how to run a business.
This is doubly tricky as a first time female founder. So she made the pattern from the. No she hadn’t run a company before but she used examples from her work experience that showed she knew how to multi-task. She knew how to work under huge amounts of stress. She knew cost accounting. She knew how to lead.
So look at what you have done and weave together the story you want it to tell not the story a straight resume would tell.
“It’s not about what do you do…who cares? It’s how you put across the message about what you do. What you do now has no bearing on what you want to do.” – 40-something, HR consultant