PART 2B: THE PLAT PRINCIPAL

Four years into my startup journey and I’d already worked for strikingly dynamic companies…from a pre-seed logistics company getting its idea off the ground, to a later stage social enterprise focused on social justice and digital reporting, an Edtech geared towards skilling, upskilling, and connecting creatives to the industry, and a growth stage gig platform focused on top-notch service delivery. Different sectors, different funding landscapes, different nomenclature, different methods, one unifying denominator — tech as the cornerstone. Whether the solution was built and optimized on a mobile app, the web, the cloud, or a combination, the outcomes were also similar, using tech for good.

Further down the line, I still didn’t have a clear understanding of my career path or the story I wanted to tell. Sure, I was getting better at understanding what excited me, but I was fixated and hung up on not being able to translate this into a linear path. Noting further how encompassing my work was, making sense of my journey seemed too out of reach. It wasn’t until I’d shifted from one startup to the next that it became evident. Irrelevant to the sector, the stage, or the funding type, all my experiences fit neatly under the tech umbrella! Before joining the scene, I knew very little about what it meant to work for a tech company, and even less about the nuisances of working for a Sub-Saharan African (SSA) based tech company. To me, a tech company was synonymous with the traditional Silicon Valley archetype e.g. Meta, Apple, eBay. In my naïveté, working for a tech company meant building and selling software or hardware to the end user…minimal interaction points, little need for humans, and existing and/or well-defined structures. So, if you weren’t a member of the tech or product team and/or were not directly collaborating with them, there was very little space for you to work, let alone, contribute meaningfully. But those first 4 years really reshaped my understanding.

Unlike the West where tech is often a turn-key solution, in many emerging markets, businesses must also consider the complexities of the ecosystem e.g. infrastructure, players, access to capital etc. Many startups (including the ones I’ve worked for) have great solutions to ‘simple’ problems. They enter the market having identified a gap and invest heavily in building a solution to address it. But along the way, they find a handful of other gaps that need to be addressed too. Why? Either the problem is more complex than originally anticipated, the addressable market is too small or doesn’t exist, and/or for the solution to be effective, additional structure and investment are needed. For some startups this complexity results in taking a step back and reengineering the solution, while for others this means trying to address all problems (including those outside your scope), deviating drastically from the core business, and eventually losing runway. I’ve worked for startups that have fallen into both buckets; those that have managed to reengineer and still engage, and those that have deviated and lost runway (more on the latter in part 3). In both instances, the reality was one of continuous complexity.

Across all the tech companies I’ve worked at, my work has always focused on people and systems. Strangely enough, the problems I’ve been responsible for solving haven’t always been tech-driven. Why? I learned the hard way just how complex, costly, and time-consuming it is to build tech from scratch. And when you have limited funding and few people on your product and tech teams, it isn’t viable to build out every proposed idea. As such, you need to think creatively about developing “manual” pathways before investing in technical optimizations. This often means that tech is your last and not your first option. I think it’s probably why I still struggle to think of the places I’ve worked at as tech companies; at least in the traditional sense. I think a more transparent descriptor would be tech-enabled or tech-powered i.e. growth supported by tech vs. growth driven by tech. For instance, many of the companies I worked for scaled not through investing in more sophisticated tech but even more so by hiring more operators, buying more machinery, building/renovating a larger space, spending more on marketing, streamlining operational processes etc. And without getting into the weeds of product-driven growth vs. sales-driven growth, for anyone that isn’t tech or product, beyond the internal CRMs you use day-to-day, it’s sometimes easy to forget that you’re working at a tech company.

Though I may have stronger opinions on the true nature of working at an SSA-based startup, at the end of the day, tech not only enables businesses to scale rapidly but is a key criterion VCs look into when investing (capital, expertise, advisory). The tech scene is sexier, more innovative, and has more potential to be catalytic. It makes sense then why so many small businesses in this space fall under the tech umbrella. It’s where so much of the money and interests converge.…from eCommerce to Fintech, SaaS, HealthTech, Biotech, and Edtech, the opportunities are boundless not just for founders and investors but employees as well.

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When it comes to matters of food and pleasure, the French don’t compromise. It’s all about cooking the best-quality ingredients and using the best techniques to deliver the best taste. The Plat Principal is the ultimate display of this pride and serves as the gastronomic apex of the meal. This is why the dishes before the main meal are so important —they prepare and warm you up to the culmination of deep intensity and flavours. Similar to the Plat Principal, it took a few courses for me to feel more comfortable in the startup space. There was still turbulence, but I was getting more accustomed to disruption and building the muscle memory to pivot. The more comfortable and settled I felt, the easier was to move forward, to invest, and to circumvent. Things just started to feel less daunting. Had my mindset shifted, or was I just wiser about how to shoot in the dark? I can’t say for sure, but I was walking with more gusto and purpose.

By year four, I’d gotten into a good rhythm. I had clarity on what I was doing, understood and could qualify my contributions, and had sufficient feedback to not only ascertain that I was doing a good job but also demonstrate that I still had a lot to learn and improve on. I was also getting more comfortable with the reality that a perfect job is an illusion…they’re always things you’d rather not do and people you’d rather not engage with. The key to moving past the things that are unideal is to acknowledge, accept, and find balance. For me this meant;

• identifying my energizers (what fuels you) vs. stressors (what deflates you) early on…and revisiting them when the seasons (demands, projects, deliverables) changed

• accepting that a percentage of my job will be spent doing work I don’t want to do and making peace with doing it anyway

• structuring my time based on my needs and energy levels e.g. since I’m a morning person, deep strategic thinking work was done early vs. afternoons that were set up for ‘busy work’ like emails, meetings, planning, core documentation etc…this also meant

• assessing how I was spending my time and reprioritizing accordingly e.g. timing myself during different tasks, adding % to my JD, using Google Calendar to understand time allocations etc

• leveraging internal or external tech tools to manage and keep track of tasks or events e.g. Asana, Trello, Evernote, G. Cal

• asking for support and delegating when needed e.g. too much on my plate, restructuring priorities, managing or working with a difficult person

• building small and big rewards for task completion e.g. sleeping in on X day, grabbing a coffee or sweet treat outside of the office

One of the things I like most about the startup space is the flexibility to work in ways that make sense for you. While this luxury was afforded to me with time, experience, and as a result of a trust-built relationship with my managers, I also acknowledge this privilege isn’t ubiquitous. Provided I delivered on my tasks, guiding policies related to things like reporting hours, in-person vs. remote, were simply that, guidance. I was able to schedule my days and tasks in a manner that worked predominantly for and around me. It allowed me to be more honest about my bandwidth, eased the pressure of having to do things on someone else’s timeline, and allowed me to be more structured with my deliverables. And though I still had time-bound milestones and needed to be flexible to shift my schedule to accommodate others, I had a lot of leeway to push back, pivot, and restructure. It was a lot more freedom than I was used to, but also required a lot more intentionality and discipline.

Photo credit (Akinyi Wavinya): A delicious French contemporary plat principal from one of my favorite restaurants La Colombe in Capetown, SA

Working at Lynk was the first time I felt a deep sense of purpose in my work. I was personally invested in the work and the vision, my boss was amazing, I got to interact and work with fascinating people, and I finally felt like I had enough experience and backing (performance + sponsorship) to tailor my career in the ways that worked for me. Things just seemed to fall into place. It was also the first time I was empowered with real autonomy to set the agenda (develop KPIs for teams and departments) and determine the pathways (milestones, activities and initiatives). I had real ownership and could inform change. For instance, in 2019, I worked alongside my boss; the COO at the time, as well as the tech and product team to design, build, and test a one-of-a-kind algorithm that queried service providers (informal gig workers) on a demand basis via mobile and USSD. The dynamic shift to auto-querying was revolutionary because it assessed multiple factors including skill set, type of work, distance to the customer, and potential monthly income. This meant that, so long as we (Lynk) marketed and sold our services regularly and competitively, we could promise workers equitable work and pay on our platform. Real innovation, tangible contribution, immediate impact!

We had a saying at Lynk “learn fast, fail fast”. It was the first time in my career that I was granted free reign to test, fail, test again and go back to the drawing board. It was encouraged and embedded in our culture. I learned a lot about experimentation, prioritizing ideas based on impact and cost, and assessing the problem from different angles. Even more, I learned how to innovate collaboratively with speed and intent. We thought of problems and solutions through a scientific lens and weren’t afraid to assess the viability of running or discarding the experiment in its entirety at any point in time. Even though I spent most of my time thinking through operational complexity and how to build or synthesize systems for teams, the technology proved beneficial to rolling out several solutions — some more effective and useful than others.

The main course is often the most anticipated for a reason. It shows you what you’ve been building up towards and allows you to critically assess whether it’s worth it. For me, it was truly an opt-in moment. I learned a lot about managing my workstreams, and even more about managing others, and fell deeply in love with what I was doing. Most of all, I had the professional support system to go deeper.

It’s good to feel like you’re in control and winning. It helps you regain confidence and gives you the energy to accelerate. But with more ownership also came more responsibility for self, others and bigger things.

After Le Plat Principal, your belly should feel more extended. But there’s more…unbutton your pants, roll up your sleeves, and make room. The next course isn’t to everyone’s liking and if the mouldy funky varieties aren’t for you, you may not be pleased...deep breaths, it’s time to flip the script, hold up a mirror and take responsibility for being the boss.