Looking back | Moving forward

Yes, sounds like Jensen Huang's story - he's lucky I didn't start in tech.

This humbling experience brought hunger in me... so what did I do next?

At Essens, I immersed myself in every system of a network marketing company (30-35 headcount internally).

Rotated through all departments, reporting directly to the Essens CFO, and even job shadowing the CEO.

My first experience in an early-stage scaling startup - at that time valued at EUR 13 million.

I learned that in startups, there's always something to do, and always many things to do.

I felt a need to share the difference between what is taught about real-world experience in academia and what it truly is.

We learn from what we live, but sometimes we don't know what we're missing.

I joined Sparrow - a very early-stage startup with a team of 3... facing the classic chicken-and-egg situation of building a two-sided market.

We expanded Sparrow's client base by executing a go-to-market strategy that acquired over 1,000 individual clients.

After graduation, I spent three months attending Bay Area events to explore my next move.

Several meetings later, I joined Kos to help put it on the map in Silicon Valley.

I stepped back in during a leadership transition to keep the people side steady and finish the handoff clean.

A few events needed to happen, a new team needed to settle, and I was heading back to Europe right after.