I have an announcement...

In March of this year I chose to leave the UK in pursuit of something different. I wasn’t sure what it was that I was looking for but it felt like a risk I was willing to take, and indeed I think it was a risk that paid off, though perhaps not for the reasons I had initially imagined. I wanted to explore different ways of living; different climates and rhythms of life; different cultures and perspectives. Having learned to speak fluent Spanish over the course of the last 7 years, I felt called to embark upon this journey in Latin America, where I would be able to interact with locals in their own language and dive deeper into the routines of the every day. Now, six months later, I am facing a move back to the UK to start an exciting job that seemed to fall right on my head at a time when I wanted it the most, but removing myself from the backpacker track certainly feels bittersweet.

I arrived in Guatemala and did a yoga teacher training, which I would later put to use on the rooftop of a hostel in Oaxaca, Mexico. I spent the 3 weeks of my course, the first weeks of my time out here, feeling doubtful about my decision to reject the norms of what I saw the people around me doing (grad schemes, internships, and invariably doing so from London), and one particular question became lodged in my mind: where am I going with all of this? As the weeks passed, and I moved from place to place, this question burned hotter in my thoughts. I hadn’t been able to choose any particular career path for myself, neither before university when I chose my degree programme (so I studied on a flexible, American-style Liberal Arts course), nor afterwards when most people supposedly set to work on and up some kind of ‘ladder’. The weight of my indecisiveness felt like a world of potential that was bound to be unrealised.

I did my yoga teacher training with a group of people who were all at different stages in their lives, and I took comfort from learning that some of my course mates still didn’t know what they wanted to be when they grew up - even after growing up (if there is such a thing) and pursuing a career for 10 or more years. One of them had decided to quit her job as a maths teacher and train in software development. Thinking that this might be a viable option for my own trajectory, I asked her about her move into tech. She gave me the low-down on her work and related jobs in the field, and offered a suggestion based on what I had told her about my chronic uncertainty and inability to choose a specific path for myself: try working for a start-up.

Whilst I was in my final year at university I took a module which gave me insight to the world of start-ups, and I saw how dynamic and fast-paced the work can be. I am someone with a range of skills but none that I consider especially honed or specialised, so the flexible work-load which comes part and parcel with start-ups appealed to me. I knew that it could be a great way to explore a variety of tasks and responsibilities within one malleable role, and so my interest piqued when the suggestion was made to me at a time when I was struggling to envision a place for myself within the working world.

Around a month later, I remember googling ‘how to work for a start-up’. The next day, I noticed a connection request on LinkedIn from a man called David and, although I didn’t know him, I accepted the request because well…why not? I received a message from him shortly afterwards with the question: “have you thought about working for a start-up?”. I think that my initial response was surprise and confusion – had my Google searches been being monitored? I replied saying as a matter of fact, yes I had thought about that, and from there a Zoom call was arranged for the following day. It took a while to convince my mum (and to some degree, myself) that it wasn't a scam.

During that first conversation I learned about David’s (second) start-up: Mayday. He told me about his vision for the brand new company, and asked me some very general questions about myself. Mayday Recharger, a solution for companies with multiple related entities who need to calculate payments between these entities, had launched just a couple of weeks prior to our initial conversation. I learned that the team consisted of David and his co-founder, Griff, and that they were looking for the right person to join the team when the time for hiring came. As we scheduled more conversations over the following weeks it became clear that I was a potential candidate for this position, and we discussed some initial tasks that I could lend a hand with so that we could both get an idea of how the other works. I accepted my first challenge to perform some website comparison and make some recommendations for improvements of the Mayday site. I handed in my work and left them to review it. I left it too long. Here I learned my first start-up lesson of many: keep up the momentum. David and Griff were happy with my work, but I learned that it was too risky to leave it as long as I did before moving things forward and I should have checked in, ideally with some suggestion to talk next-steps.

Initiative, forward thinking and forward moving are key in the fast-paced world of start-ups, where ideas and projects and people can be swapped or dropped at any moment. Thankfully, I was given the opportunity to learn this the easy way, and my chances at Mayday were not jeopardised to the point that the next steps couldn’t be taken. In the coming weeks and months, I got acquainted with co-founder Griff, I was given my a company email address and was added to the group on Slack, continuing to work remotely on a casual basis to determine if the job and I were right for each other. I read Peter Thiel’s book on start-ups, Zero to One, and worked through a number of Paul Graham’s start-up essays, and I even posted about the role on LinkedIn. I felt happy to have an aim to my wandering and a direction for my work. The insecurities and uncertainties that had previously bothered me seemed lessened by the idea of dedicating myself to the success of this start-up, and I had (and still have) confidence in this team as one within which I could grow and ‘have a go’ and make mistakes and learn from them.

I am still in South America but we are now working towards the final stages of the slow-drip recruitment process. We have discussed the start-date which is likely to be sometime in early November, by which point I would have to be back in the UK – more specifically, in London. It feels funny to remember the times last year that I visited my friends who had relocated to London, revelling in the excitement and possibilities of England’s vast capital with them but looking forward to my adventure on the other side of the world, and feeling confident in my own vision to do something a bit different. I certainly felt some reluctance to cut my exploration short only to return to where I started, in fact I spent a period pendulum-swinging between the opportunity to work with Mayday and the temptation to keep drifting within the low-responsibility backpacker lifestyle to which I have grown accustomed. I now realise that, given all I have learned over the course of this adventure, even if I return to England there is no way I could possibly return to where I was before. I might be coming towards the same physical point on the racing track, but I am now running one plane above.

The experiences I have had over the last few months, first on my own and then with my sister, have helped me to evolve my perception of the world around me. I have spent time amongst people with wildly different backgrounds and experiences to my own, reinforcing an important acceptance of, and a curiosity in the variety of beliefs and practices that can be found amongst the human species. I have spent time with my sister which has been at times challenging, but overall an incredibly rich experience for us both. Perhaps most importantly I have spent time alone. The time I spent deciding what I want for myself – where, how and with whom I want to spend time - helped me to see that I am craving a project to direct my energy and attention towards. It is going to be a huge challenge for me to become the third member of our ambitious team within an industry which until very recently I knew nothing about; I am trying to educate myself on the best practices and key players and lingo - the bread and butter of the fintech world. I think I am ready to work hard and to feel rewarded by my work. I miss learning. And I miss my friends.

This journey has ended up both smaller and bigger than I originally anticipated when I travelled out here - a little reminder that life will always throw punches and curveballs for you to roll with, if you can be open enough to accept the world’s subtle answers to your innermost petitions. It will be fascinating to continue to reflect on how a trip across the world ultimately led me to the conclusion that a UK start-up is the right place for me right now.