December marked eighteen months since I joined the Sydecar team and embarked on the most challenging and fulfilling experience of my professional life. The lessons I’ve learned about go-to-market, about company building, about this very weird industry, and about myself are endless. I hope I can find ways to keep learning at this pace for many years ahead.

For my first ten months at Sydecar, the company was in stealth and the team was still very small. I was the first and only “business” hire and many of the lessons that I learned were learned on my own. I didn’t do a good job of finding mentors or building a support network around myself. I am confident that because of this, I made more mistakes, spent more time questioning my judgment, and took longer to make important decisions. 

In contrast, I saw people around me in the startup community asking questions, admitting mistakes, and showing general vulnerability in very public ways. Sometimes, this made me cringe – and sometimes, it made me deeply jealous. Frankly, the notion of “building in public” has never resonated with me. Maybe learning these lessons the hard way was actually important for me. It required grit, resilience, and fighting off a tremendous amount of imposter syndrome. In some ways, I guess I am better for it.

But I appreciate the intention of building in public. No doubt, it is an effective way to learn quickly and build a robust support network. While I am by no means pivoting to a “build in public” person, I am committing to sharing more of my thoughts and learnings publicly in 2023. If there is a single person who can learn from the mistakes that I made, then I think it’s worth it to share them. Also, I’ve done very little writing for myself over the past 18 months. I know that writing is a phenomenal way to reflect on both mistakes and successes and continue learning from them. I hope it’s also helpful, or at least entertaining.