PART 1A: THE AMUSE-BOUCHE

My relationship with food is a straightforward one. I love it and it loves me. Even when I am eating, I’m already dreaming about what I will have for my next meal, restaurants I should visit, new recipes I should try, or how to capture a beautiful plate of food. My life truly revolves around food. Why? It’s familiar, it’s nostalgic, it's delicious, and it evokes emotion. And like any worthy experience, there are different levels of engagement.

In the grand scheme of my working career, I am only getting started. I haven’t even worked for a quarter of my career - so why am I already so tired? While my experiences are ‘infant’, having worked in a space where one month feels like six, I more closely associate with a pre-teen. And much like a prepubescent, I have a lot of opinions and enough skin in the game to take a step back and reasonably question. To me, my startup experience has felt very much like a French classical menu - complex, unexpected, but also amusing.

So where did it all start? With your consent, I’ll paint a picture - a culinary one (of course) - that walks you through each course in the context of my experiences, starting with Part 1: The Amuse-Bouche and ending with Part 4: The Dessert. But first things first. What’s an amuse-bouche? Some refer to it as an aperitif or a pallet cleanser. Amuse-bouche translates to tantalize or amuse the mouth. So if done right, it ignites your tastebuds to the upcoming experience and signals to your body to prepare for more delight…

Photo credit (Akinyi Wavinya): A beautiful amuse-bouche from a one of my favourite local Kenyan restaurants in Karen, Embark

My entry to the startup space didn't live up to the climatic expectation of a well executed amuse-bouche. In fact, the pallet-cleanser was left out and skipped entirely! After graduating from college with a double bachelor's in Environmental Science and Geography Earth Sciences, I immediately moved back home with the full confidence of starting a promising job in my sector. The job was with a cutting-edge European WASH organization expanding its technology and offerings to Africa, starting with Nairobi. It was exciting, would make good use of my degree, and was what I’d quite literally started campaigning for in my Junior year of college. I was on track to turning what I'd manifested into reality. So even without a contract (not a red flag then), I eagerly moved back home ready to change the world! After one month of working (mainly research and scoping) for the WASH organization and being on multiple calls and email exchanges to attempt to close out contracting, I still found myself contractless and without compensation. And even when panic set in, I continued to work without clarity, worried, dissatisfied, and demotivated. Had it not been for one of the founders being sued and bringing everything to a halt, I may not have had the gumption to say no or take a hard step back. So here I was, 3 months into it, with no job, no work experience outside of college, no adult monies to my name, and still living under my uncle’s roof. No one and nothing prepared me to enter this job market. Not even my “foreign degree”.

Trying to find a job, is a full-time job. Period. I remember working tirelessly to refresh my CV, tailor cover letters and apply for anywhere between 10-20 jobs a day. Despite the effort I put in, I got very few responses, sometimes rejections, and the prospects of accelerating to any stage or even being given a chance were next to none. All entry-level positions required at least 2 years of experience and despite working 3-4 jobs in college, no one seemed to think collegiate working-experience was credible. It made no sense. How the hell is a student supposed to have 2 years of work experience after graduating? Isn’t the primary purpose of being a student to study? Why were my peers so far ahead of me, and did they get a memo that I didn’t?

To say those first 6 months post-graduation were depressing and discouraging would be a real understatement. No one told me that good grades weren’t enough, nor did they tell me that I was allowed to “phone a friend or family” for an assist (more on ego later in the learn-and-share series). It wasn’t until I started to look outward, ask for help, and get myself out there (events, socials etc) that things started to shift in seismic ways. After 7 months of being at it, and courtesy of a very strong referral, I landed my first “real” job at UN-Habitat! I remember thinking how much better it would be working for the UN than all those 100 other places I’d applied to and had rejected me. Take that! Not only was it the UN, but I was working in the Regional Office of Africa and was attached to the Kenya Programme. This meant I would be working directly on projects that would impact my community! I was stocked! It meant impact at scale, transformation at scale and people focused on doing good for the benefit of humanity. This was it, I would be happy and fulfilled here….

I stay hungry, I stay eager, and I stay ready to grind. I’m not the smartest person in the room, but more often than not, I am one of the hardest working. This is always how I’ve worked. Being an intern and then a consultant at the UN was no different. I had a fantastic boss (more on him and great sponsors later) and worked hard to ensure people knew my work was good. But apart from learning and working closely with a great mentor, the work itself wasn’t fulfilling. It’s not that the work wasn’t meaningful in the long-term, but more that I had little to no position to inform or drive change in a way that made me feel like I was truly involved. I felt like my ambition and ideas were untapped, on top of which the working culture just wasn’t my jam. I often felt like my eagerness and ambition were misconceived. More than anything, I wanted to be where the action was, in the thick of cross-fires, doing and implementing stuff, being part of the change. My work at the UN didn’t allow me to do that. And so with a little over 1 year of “real" work experience to my name, my projects coming to a close with little prospects for renewed funding, and being very disinterested in politicking at the time, I quit.

Going back to ground zero was even harder this second time around. I felt more lost and unsure of myself. My first two dreams hadn’t panned out and I had very little energy to get back to applying to 10-20 jobs a day. I decide to take 3 months off to recalibrate - a career break that I hadn't planned for. With no framework to think critically about what came next, and the anxiety of being unemployed materializing quickly, even before the 3 months lapsed, I was desperate to find work. So when an opportunity to help my sister’s friend start a small business in Nairobi presented itself, I immediately latched on. That’s it. That’s legitimately how I entered the startup space. No interview, no background or CV check, no assessments, and no contact (this came later), but at the very least compensation agreed. It really wasn’t that deep. And even though I didn’t have any sectoral experience and knew nothing about setting up a business in Nairobi, I rolled up my sleeves and said yes! After all, I was a quick learner, and a proud Kenyan, born and raised…at the very least my lived experience and networks would count for something.

This first start up I worked for was birthed from a graduate thesis. It was a concept and idea that had been well-researched but needed to be validated. It was interesting enough to opt in and its potential effect on the logistics ecosystem at large, and thus livelihoods, made me feel like it was in line or at least adjacent to what I cared about - impact. I was employee 001 after the founder and the then CEO. It was just me and him for those first 3 months. No structure, no JD, and no clearly defined tasks. My job was to get whatever needed to be done, done. From registering the business, to onboarding truckers, testing the tech platform, setting up meetings with potential logistic partners, interviewing potential staff, to hosting IVY league summer interns, you name it, I did it. Nothing was too small or too big, at least not in the early stages. And because I had no JD and no experience in the space, I thought I didn’t have the right or power to steer my job to a place that felt more authentic to me. I didn’t have the vocabulary to articulate what I was feeling then, but I knew that I wanted to focus on things I cared about - my why, my purpose.

Being thrown into the deep end without an understanding of how big the pool is, is a forceful way to learn how to swim or know if swimming is even your sport. Even though I was only at Lori for 4 months, it was enough for me to know that it wasn't where I belonged. I didn’t enjoy the work, I had no colleagues to problem-solve with or learn from, I had little to no guidance, and most importantly I didn’t feel like my work mattered or that anyone cared. But working at Lori in those very early stages also meant that I gained a lot of valuable life lessons that set the tone for my continued pursuits in the startup space, namely;

• A JD (whether provided or not) is more of a suggestion. Most of what you do in a startup is not captured in your actual day-to-day. From what you've been hired to do, to random tasks outside your role, to supporting the business market and sell. Whatever moves the business forward is your priority too. Be ready, willing and/or comfortable with doing anything and everything under the sun…especially in those early stages.

• No one is going to hold your hand. Many early stage startups are resource-constrained. They have limited funding to show traction and appetite for their product(s) or service(s). When it comes down to it, this often means they don't have enough people to get the job done. More often then not, it means 1 person is expected to do the job of 3 or that the 3 know what they're supposed to do without being told or managed. Either way, the job still needs to be done. In order to grow, you need to be comfortable with trying and failing early, or at least fake it until you gain enough validation points that build your confidence. Once you've seen that you can figure it out, you'll also start to believe that you are more capable

• Connections and reputation matter. Good work is good work. You don't have to like who you work with (hopefully and at the very least you respect them), but you do have to keep it professional. Do what you were hired to do and do it to the best of your ability and capacity. Even when you leave, the bed frame should still stand. The relationships I made at Lori followed and continue to follow me to date

• Going back to the drawing board doesn’t make you a failure. It builds your backbone and muscle memory. Part of being in the space is developing a thick skin and an appetite to accelerate forward. Going back is a reaffirmation that it’s possible and sometimes necessary to start again

---

My first 1-2 years in the startup space was rough. I was worried that recruiters and potential employers would perceive my moving on as losing interest, or even worse, giving up up easily. I didn’t know how I would explain my career path and if it would make sense. It felt like I was always constantly starting and ending. Like I kept on stumbling into, without actively opting in. But there was something about the startup space - not clear to me then - that I kept on coming back to. It was like an amuse-bouche that wasn’t conventionally good but still peaked your interest. And even though I felt like I an outcast, each time I went back to the drawing board I felt a little bit tougher, a little bit more resilient, and a little less naive.

There’s no roadmap to entering this startup space. Like many other spaces, there are several barriers including your social capital (who you know), years of experience, technical proficiency, etc. The greatest barrier for me was self-doubt, especially in those entry years. But whether you accidentally fall into your job or actively seek it, getting started requires a lot of painful and simultaneous learning and unlearning. It means being open to starting from zero, doing a lot of what you don’t like to do and/or isn’t value-adding (at least not for you) and gauging the rules of engagement. Starting allows you to gain an understanding of what you want, what you don’t want, and how to strategically do more of the former.

Being ready to engage means being prepared for an unconventional or bad amuse-bouche and adjusting your stance accordingly. A rocky start also means that there is room for feedback, improvements and ultimately growth.

Stay steady, the waters are choppy, but you’re on course!