Happy Birthday
Today is my birthday and today I’m relaunching my personal website and blog.
I can think of at least two occasions when I’ve written with conviction – once was starting in 2012, when I took the first steps towards writing my first book, Integrated Investing.
The second time was at the start of 2016. I had a one-year-old child and a 57,000-word draft manuscript. Pulling myself out of the lulls of that postpartum period of child-rearing and with no more writing to do in connection with the book, I felt compelled to keep up my writing habit somehow. I committed to writing at least one answer a day on the question-and-answer site, Quora. After about 3 months of writing and perhaps close to 100 answers, I was selected as a Quora Top Writer. About 3 months after that, I had my first answer syndicated in Inc. I was hooked on writing.
On both occasions, I was recovering and reflecting after a significant change in my life.
In 2012 I was recovering from a trans-Atlantic relocation, a new marriage, and the commencement and abrupt ending of a job. I wrote to bring some order to the ideas swirling in my head. Writing was anchoring. I wasn’t sure who I was in 2012. Just as quickly as I had vacated the office of the job for which I moved to Vancouver, I had a name for the business I launched – Pique Ventures. If Pique Ventures was the container for my business ideas, my writing – and at the time, Integrated Investing – was the vessel for the broad and varied ideas I had about investing, startups, and impact.
In 2016 I was recovering from having my first child, launching Pique Fund (25 days before giving birth), and the commencement and abrupt ending of my part in launching an impact-oriented accelerator. Writing on Quora connected me to the Bay Area somehow. My perspectives on venture capital were valued and for a while, I probably believed I was a venture capitalist.
In 2020, I’m recovering from having my second child, a cross-country relocation, and the commencement and abrupt ending to my attempt to raise a second fund. I am working on a second book and admittedly part of me is scared about writing it. I have lots of ideas in my mind – about career paths, job searches, and starting over. About impact investing, gender-lens investing, and alternative investments. About power, negotiating, and decision-making.
Since I started writing with conviction in 2012, I published Integrated Investing, had several more Quora answers syndicated, and had three op-eds published last year in Business Insider, Next Billion, and Toronto Star with my own byline. They won’t be my last.