Hit reset. As Supercharge Lab winds down another month of fundraising, I am thankful for the people who have come along for the ride, and for the clients who have given us their trust and support. I am deeply encouraged by the investors who have provided us with significant advice, doubted our strategies, put us through rigorous questioning and breaking down every statement, number, and process, all in the process of helping us get better.
Fundraising is soul-crushing. I had an investor, just two months ago, congratulate me that they were going to invest a sum of money into our startup, only to renege on the deal, giving us a nonchalant excuse. You need to be able to pick yourself up – every rejection, every critique, every doubt – these things are supposed to make you stronger.
84 per cent of founders experience imposter syndrome – worried of being found out for lack of knowledge or ability, and 72 per cent of founders report suffering from mental health issues. I am no different from the rest, knowing that I have suffered a lifelong battle with depression. Through the startups that I have founded, failed, exited, and raised funds for, I still wonder if I have what it takes to get the company to where it needs to be.
As the founder of a startup, I have always spent a lot of my time attempting to impart a strategic view of the business across all levels of the company – from the bottom up. I remember watching Michelle Obama say that “you practice for who you want to be”, and I instinctively start every strategy planning session with the question – who do we want to be?
As Supercharge Lab closes its seed financing round, I am reminded that there is much work on the road ahead – that this is just the start of a new phase in the journey that I am now taking. I am dreaming bigger, learning more, and building tangible skills that can be applied to the work that I am doing in the future.
We are working with urgency, building the plane while flying it, and pushing hard to gain lift and climb. I am dead focused on achieving the goals that I need to achieve – it’s a dance of taking the driver’s seat and driving the company forward and taking a passenger’s seat to get a view from a few feet back, planning and strategizing and recalibrating where we are going.
There are 85 more days of work for 2021 for Supercharge Lab (we shut down for two weeks at the end of the year). In these 85 days, Supercharge Lab must transform itself from where it currently is (financially as well as strategically) to building the infrastructure for where it wants to be. Here’s a quick preview of what to expect from Supercharge Lab over the next few months:
We will reach out, reconnect, and reengage with our friends, clients, and stakeholders. We will work harder than before to delight our clients, drive outcomes, and bring tangible value to our clients through the work we do. We will build technology that is powerful, deliberate, and human. Supercharge Lab connects human intelligence with artificial intelligence – and we do so by helping you take a walk in the shoes of your audiences or to listen to the voices inside their heads.
We will grow our partnerships model – we know that no company is an island, and it is imperative for us to build relationships across our ecosystem. Many of the investors who we once worked with have become our clients, and we are in the process of helping their portfolio companies go to market, raise funds, and build their product-market fit. We continue to engage with enterprises who see value in remarketing or reselling our solutions to their partners and clients, and are excited to see some early traction in our Ambassador program, which we launched last week.
We are pleased to welcome Ann Suwanjindar, an inspirational leader, recognized through her time working with Fortune 100 companies across the globe, as our Chief Strategy Officer. Ann has helped to sharpen our focus, push our seed financing round forward, and help us learn more about the gaps that we need to fill, quickly.
As Steve Jobs famously said, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever”, we place our trust in the universe that the way forward will be one fraught with adventure, excitement, and a little bit of magic.