The best-misguided advice I ever got from Jack Dorsey
In the fall of 2013, I was a freshly minted YC alum. Having been the first Hispanic to ever complete Silicon Valley’s top accelerator, I felt equal parts pride and impostor syndrome. I talked about this to one of my investors, he kindly suggested chatting with a ‘friend CEO’, who also felt like an imposter at the beginning of his career. Who was that CEO? None other than Jack Doresy.
I met Jack at his office at Square. He was kind enough to give me 20 mins of his busy time. I asked: “how do you overcome the impostor syndrome from being one of the few people that look like you in tech?”
Jack: “You become so good that they can't ignore you!”
At the time, I was truly grateful for the advice. However, ten years later, in hindsight, that's not the advice that I'd give underrepresented founders. Firstly, all investors pattern match. The earlier the stage, the more your pattern as a founder is more important than your product, market or even your traction. The less you fit that pattern, the more you seem like a “risk” to that investor. Unfortunately, that “pattern” disproportionately hurts, Black, Hispanic and women founders. If you fall into this group, you can't be just “So good”, because you have to:
present yourself in a certain way, (lead with your credentials before your company, say name is X, previously I was at [Big company or big school] and I’m the founder of XYZ)
your team has to look a certain way, (you likely need a co-founder that does fit the pattern)
you have to get warm intros to VCs from certain people (if you’re Hispanic, getting a VC intro from a Hispanic professional, will put automatically put you in the “minority investment charity” category, yeah it sucks)
Basically, if you’re an underrepresented founder, you can't be just “so good they can't ignore you”, you have to be #{{%%ltplaceholder%%}}amp;ng formidable. That means that when investors hear you, they hear a depth of knowledge, insight, and conviction that's so profound, so powerful, that you go from being unseen to unstoppable 👊
