2019: The Year In Review

It’s been amazing year! Yes, I say it every year and that’s all true but 2019 was special, full of changes, challenges and it’s so nice to recall these special moments that took place during the year. It’s to remind myself how happy I am, to be thankful every day for all people around and to be excited for the things that are yet to come!

I moved to Boston (another place I can call home) and I love it here!
I started my MBA and I spent last 4 months with amazing folks representing 42 nationalities and I experienced the value of diversity like never before! It just stays in your mind any you don’t even notice how much of understanding of the human behaviour you absorb every day!

I started working with Ground Up Ventures as Venture Fellow/Campus Partner and I enjoyed sourcing startups, taking to founders, writing investment memos sooo much! I met amazing people from different campuses and we all worked together discovering local startup ecosystems and learning form one another along the way. Thank you Jordan and Saurav for great opportunity (and the rest of the Ground Up Ventures crew)! It was amazing to get insight into how you work and how it is to write a check for really early stage startup that has nothing else but brilliant idea, visionary founder and you are just jumping in to help them grow the concept and become significant market player.

I did my very first 2 Angel Investments 🙂
Buildstream (PropTech)- The on demand marketplace for equipment and labour services in the construction industry.
Sable (FinTech)-The digital bank that welcomes internationals in the U.S.

I completed VC University at Berkeley as legal and technical knowledge about VC investing is something I just needed to understand deeply.

I did Venture Deals Academy organized by Brad Feld, Kauffman Fellows and Techstars.

I joined Hack.Diversity as a Mentor. I truly support #femalefounders and I’m honoured to work on bringing equality to the market.

We have finalized our 2020 Cohort of 75 remarkable individuals. Notable highlights:
Career tracks: 67% engineers, 24% IT professionals, 9% data analysts
Gender: 33% self-identified she/her adjectives, 67% self-identified he/him adjectives
Race/Ethnicity: 64% Black, 27% Latinx, 5% Biracial (Black & Latinx, Black & Asian), 4% Middle-Eastern/North African (all women)
Talent sources represented: 27 (up from 20 in 2019); talent sources are inclusive of 2 yr programs, 4 yr program, masters programs, and bootcamps
83% shared that they will experience first internship in tech through 2020 Hack.Diversity participation
85% shared they’re first in family to study STEM field
71% shared they or their parents are first-gen immigrants
9% of those accepted had applied to Hack.Diversity in previous cycles

I volunteered a lot and it was kind of my way to give back to community 🙂 I Helped Startup Boston during the Startup Boston Week (stay tuned for 2020 edition!) and I was helping out in Venture Cafe Cambridge (great lineup coming next year as well). I met amazing people that do what they love and just share their experience helping others on the entrepreneurship journey.

I had great pleasure to get to know amazing leaders of Founders Live and The Capital Network and participate in their events as an expert in Founders Live pitching competition and as mentor during the Investor Lunch, respectively. Thank you for being so welcoming and letting me support your initiatives that tirelessly strengthening startup local ecosystem. You do amazing job 🙂

I mentored during the hackathon organized by F10 Incubator & Accelerator. One of my last event in Switzerland before leaving to the US. Switzerland has great potential and more and more initiatives pop up on the market speeding up innovation process.

I spent few days in Paris participating in UpcomingVC as a Challenger. It was great to get to know French startup and VC ecosystem. Great program for UpComing VC investors as well as founders to warm up and get a feeling how it is to meet dozen of passionate people and choose only one, potentially the best idea to introduce to partners.

I reviewed more than 300 pitches and thank you all for your trust and inviting me to learn about your ideas.

My very favourite startups I talked to:

Qwerky
Symmetrical
Tapple
SEEDiA
PartRunner
SFUSO

I read some really good books. Few recommendations below:
1.Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld
2.The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
3.Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It by Scott Kupor
4.You Only Have to Be Right Once: The Rise of the Instant Billionaires Behind Spotify, Airbnb, WhatsApp, and 13 Other Amazing Startups by Randall Lan
5.Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown
6.VENTURE CAPITAL MINDSET: Become the candidate that every venture capital firm would like to hire by Renata George
7.Women Who Venture: You Can’t Be What You Can’t See by Renata George
8.Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
9.The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
10.Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
11.Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling , Anna Rosling Rönnlund
12.Ahead of the Curve : Two Years at Harvard Business School
by Philip Delves Broughton

Ehhh, and I almost forgot, I quit my banking job 😉

Personal life:

I moved in to my boyfriend and it’s kind of next step in our happy living together 🙂

I did several hikes in beautiful Swiss mountains.

I spent amazing week in Fuerteventura.

I’ve fallen in love with running and I hope to keep doing my daily 5k forever!

I became an aunt! (first time in my life, thank you Sis! :))

I feel like I somehow helped many people and I was true to myself.

It was year of changes, learning, redefining, making decisions and clarifying my true calling 🙂 There is still a lot to do but I’m happy where I am now.

Thank you all for being part of this year, you made it so special and I learned from you a lot! Can’t wait for what the 2020 will bring!

My thought for the upcoming year:

‘It’s not about getting there it’s about enjoying the process of chasing your dreams and recognising small wins!’