If You Can Be Anything, Be An Imposter: A Letter From Our CEO
Hello to Founders at all stages.
My name is Kristin Slink, I'm a 4x founder, I've raised $55M in funding, had 2 of my companies acquired, I've been featured as a speaker, judge and panelist...
And you may be surprised to learn that last month I gave my first keynote speech.
To be honest, I was feeling a bit of imposter syndrome as I was preparing. As I am sure many of you can relate, doing something new for the first time is scary, uncertain, and mostly uncomfortable. This is the epitome of “imposter syndrome” - and mostly because we are just that.
We're all imposters.
And bear with me on this. By the end, you'll understand why this is actually a good thing.
Ten years ago, I had drained my 401K, had $5 in my bank account, and my wildly expensive San Diego rent was due in 5 days. From the outside, no one else would have known the panic we were facing. BUT, my co-founder and I had found angel investors who were interested.
As anyone who has sat across the table from an investor knows, you are asked a LOT of questions to "poke holes" in your business model, leadership team, numbers, and strategy. I let these questions grind away at my self confidence. I let them make me feel like I didn't belong.
I had let imposter syndrome settle in, but all along I had exactly what every founder needs to be successful at the beginning of their journey:
1. A deep understanding of my target market- their problem, needs, and motivations that would turn them into loyal customers
2. Empathy, and the ability to ask great questions and actually LISTEN. By listening to customer feedback, I could prioritize the features they wanted, design a product that felt intuitive to them, and, in the end, pioneer an entirely new market.
3. A WHY that was bigger than me or any obstacle. There was literally nothing that was going to stop me, for better or for worse. I would put up with sexism, toxic leadership, glass ceilings, and worse. I leaned on that WHY and it gave me what I needed to be here now.
The investors could smell our desperation, so they gave us terms that benefited them and took away all our power. We jumped at the chance.
I was about to learn that getting funded may solve some problems, but it can introduce a whole new set of challenges- especially as a woman founder.
———————————————-
First, the two investors dictated that only one of the two founders could sit on the board. And they had already decided it would be the white man. This decision excluded me from key decision-making processes within my own business.
Instead of standing up for myself, I began to believe "I'm lucky just to be here." When my co-founder -- let's call him Chad, shall we?
When CHAD was the only one allowed in the boardroom, it also shifted our dynamic so that he had power over me and my own destiny. One day, Chad came out of a board meeting following our biggest round of funding, declaring he had gotten me a raise. When I went into the financial projections, I realized Chad had negotiated raises for both of us. And his was MORE THAN 30% higher than mine.
30%!
Mind you: Chad had no MBA, was a first-time founder, and wasn’t even CEO. Not only that, but behind those doors, they took away my title and role as Chief Operating Officer- to be replaced by another white man.
At the time, I thought these things were completely out of my control. To me, losing my title as COO was the worst thing that could have happened.
So I figured out what I could control.
I took the opportunity to embark on a whole new career path- that of Chief Product Officer -which would allow me to step into a role that I was made for. At the time, product was a brand new concept that I saw in a magazine article. The article described it as a position that leads the strategic direction of an organization's product - in my case, our fintech platform. As COO, I was already co-leading the development team and using wireframes and customer feedback to guide the direction of what we were building and when.
Despite that, I once again felt like an imposter.
Who was I to say that I was "Chief Product Officer"? Nearly everyone in my company was telling me to be smaller. To lower my voice. But the qualities that they tried to dim- my creativity, empathy, ability to collaborate -made me a talented CPO. They also made me an excellent panelist, industry expert, and leader.
So I marched up to my Executive Chairman and presented (read: fought for) my new role, title, and job description. I became Chief Product Officer.
The moral of the story for you is this:
Allow new opportunities to come to you, even if they don't align with your expectations. 👈
Lean into your secret sauce and qualities that make you a great CEO/CPO/CTO - whatever role you find yourself embracing. 👈
And do not tie your identity- who YOU ARE -to a role or company. 👈
From a decision I had no control over, I learned that a title is not the entirety of a career, but it can serve as a jumping off point … and an opportunity to shape your future from a place of a long term vision.
First at Georgia Tech's incubator, and now as the founder and CEO of Tech AF Founder Academy, I have helped hundreds of founders start early-stage companies. I took my learnings as a CPO and my experience with Georgia Tech, and developed Tech AF's step-by-step curriculum to teach founders how to validate their business, step into the role of Chief Product Officer, and to own being an imposter!
I'm going to leave you with this: If you can be anything, be an imposter.
It means you are trying something new.
Testing boundaries.
DOING THINGS THAT HAVE NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE.
Remember: You. are. a. Founder.
So much love to you,
Stella Foundation and Tech AF Founder Academy Join Forces to Advance Women Tech Founders
It all begins with an idea.
Stella Foundation and Tech AF Founder Academy are thrilled to announce their partnership aimed at providing women with equitable opportunities to build and succeed in technology entrepreneurship.
The primary goal of this partnership is to merge the powerful missions of both organizations, which are dedicated to supporting women in building companies. By joining forces, Stella Foundation and Tech AF Founder Academy aim to ensure that women have the opportunity to lead and shape technology innovation, foster generational wealth, and advance women's rights through increased power and influence.
Founded in 2012 by Dr. Silvia Armitano Mah, Stella Foundation has been connecting women founders and investors with the resources they need at every stage of their entrepreneurial journey. With a focus on inclusivity and empowerment, Stella offers a range of support services including courses, access to capital events, advisory services, and funding opportunities.
Tech AF Founder Academy, established in 2020 by CEO and Founder Kristin Slink and co-founder and COO Ashley Beck, provides a safe and supportive space for women to build successful tech businesses. Founders often fall into two categories: (1) women who are solving a real-life problem they are passionate about through technology, and (2) existing business owners who see an opportunity to scale through tech.
Through its signature five-module pre-accelerator program, Tech AF’s Founder Academy offers a rigorous curriculum that combines comprehensive video education, weekly meetings, and mentorship. Academy graduates complete comprehensive customer discovery and a data room to present to investors, including visual tools like user flows, wireframes, and a clickable prototype.
“Women started 49% of new companies in 2021, according to the World Economic Forum. Yet, in 2022, women received less than 2% of venture capital investment, and Women of Color received less than 0.2%. This is ludicrous when women-owned companies are highly profitable investments. Stella Foundation steps up where others fail, powering more than 500 female founders to raise $200M+ from more than 50 female angel investors to date. My co-founder, Ashley Beck, and I attended the 2023 Women’s Venture Summit and it was thrilling to see the rooms, relationships, and spaces they’re creating. We knew we had to partner,” said Kristin Slink, Tech AF CEO, who built and sold her first financial technology company in 2017 and has been paying it forward ever since.
By leveraging Stella's established community and Tech AF's high-quality curriculum, the partnership aims to equip women entrepreneurs with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the competitive tech industry. Together, they aim to increase the representation of women in technology entrepreneurship and address the stark gender disparities in venture capital funding.
“We are thrilled to unite with Tech AF whose significant industry expertise has shaped a rigorous curriculum for women tech founders. Tech AF provides high-quality online education and mentorship that women can excel at even if they can’t yet commit to quitting their full-time jobs or stepping away from caregiving duties, something that many accelerators and incubators require for attendance. Their five-module Academy is filling a gap for the Stella community’s technical founders, who will graduate with both a clickable prototype to bring to partners and investors, and an engaged and validated initial customer base. This partnership is furthering Stella’s mission to connect women founders and investors to the right resource- at the right time- in their journeys.” Kara Smith, COO
The partnership between Stella Foundation and Tech AF Founder Academy is expected to yield significant outcomes, including increased access to resources, enhanced networking opportunities, and greater empowerment for women entrepreneurs. Technology is becoming so deeply integrated into society that it is imperative that women are helping lead the development of innovations such as artificial intelligence. When women are not part of these conversations, things like sending 100 tampons on a week-long NASA expedition or neglecting to use crash dummies that accurately represent 51% of the population, occur. By providing women with equitable opportunities to succeed in tech, the partnership between Stella Foundation and Tech AF Founder Academy will contribute to the development of more inclusive and innovative technology solutions that benefit society as a whole.