Katherine Gao

I would attribute my success to courage and braveness. I think doing startup kind of feels like walking in the fog, so actually being brave is the fundamental momentum for me to step forward. It's something that contributes to where I am and what I've achieved so far because I'm not afraid of losing it or doing something wrong. It's just a matter of keep trying. Even if it's a failure, you still get the signal from the failure. The fundamental momentum is just be brave to face whatever that's coming to me and also be able to move forward after all of the feedbacks.

The best career advice I received was from one of the VC founders. She told me it's more important to make decisions, even if it's a bad one, than just hanging there without making any decision or making any movement. She also said that where you are right now is the accumulation of your past decisions. I never feel regretful for any of the decisions I made in the past. This advice really resonated with me because being decisive is quite important in startup. I deeply agree that actually spending more time just debating about all of the options available out there is actually a waste of time, because you have to make decisions by the end of the day anyways. If you know what you want that clearly, then it won't take so long to actually make one decision. Sometimes people have to step out and have the guts to make decisions. Making the decision is just the key, no matter how much time it takes, because nobody can make sure they are making the right decision every day, every moment, for every single one. Time is the most precious thing.

I would say the most exciting career that someone can have is by knowing what kind of person they are. They better just think thoroughly about who they are and what they want most in their life, thinking from the result. What do you want to get by the end of the day? And then move backward until where they are right now. Take that as the direction or navigator toward what they want out of their life ultimately, and do whatever that can accumulate to that point as many as possible. It's kind of like turning the switch on, because once they are really clear about what they want, the opportunities are gonna show up in their life. Just be clear about what you want, which is gonna affect the decision about which kind of career you are gonna get and also manifest the opportunities in their life leaning toward that point. I think the most successful or exciting career that a young woman can get is through self-reflection. Choose the paths that can lead to the result they want to get from those reflections and make this kind of path become their career. This is more like a self-designed career path, instead of randomly choosing whatever that's been given to them and leading to a random destination when they don't even know what they want in their life. I would say just be self-navigating and self-reflective before they make a decision about their career when they are young. I do believe it's never too late to change anything, but it's better for you to figure it out when you are young, so you have more time.

I would say the biggest challenges are the scarcity of resources. For example, the employees I'm gonna hire, funding opportunities, and product market fit. Right now, the product market fit hasn't been verified because I just brought the MVP out, so there is uncertainty in my future about how this product is gonna go or how this company is gonna go. It's more like making moves one step by another, instead of getting everything ready. It's not like having an all-star team ready for some project. It's more like building something from scratch, so the uncertainty and also the lack of resources would be the biggest challenges for me right now.

I think the most important value for me is to bring those abstract ideas, or somebody's spirit, or understanding about the world, into the real world through the entity, which is called a company. I do believe the company is actually the entity of somebody's thoughts, or those invisible spirits or energy. So I think that's the most important value in what I'm doing and also my life: to realize the invisible personal value or the intelligence somebody has and bring it to the real world.