#54 The Question I Keep Coming Back To 🦘
A reflection on risk and entrepreneurship, plus AI strategy, fundraising events, and this week’s sharpest reads for founders.
At the Amela Frequency 📡, every Monday, we reflect on tech news, share thoughts from our network ✍️, and hand you tools and frameworks for early-stage builders ⚒️. If you’re building (or dreaming about it), you’re in the right place.
Hi Amelxs👋
This week I had a call with someone from my alma mater school who is considering entrepreneurship.
And yes, I know, here I am again talking about my MBA, but since INSEAD recently decided to recognize me as one of their watch out entrepreneurs in a feature:
I figured I tell this story on this week’s newsletter.
Firstly, I think the reason she reached out had less to do with business strategy and more to do with something deeper: permission.
Permission to try.
Permission to want more.
Permission to imagine a different kind of life.
At some point during the conversation, I found myself remembering a question someone asked us during a study trek:
“When was the last time you took a real risk?”
I remember how uncomfortable that question made me feel.
Specially because I couldn’t remember when I had last taken a risk!! What I could remember was actually when I had not.
I realized that many of my decisions were still deeply optimized around safety, validation, and trying to make the “correct” move.
And honestly, I keep coming back to that question.
Because over the years, through entrepreneurship and through building Amela, I’ve realized that risk is not always about dramatic decisions.
Sometimes risk looks like:
starting before feeling fully ready,
sharing your work publicly,
testing an idea that could fail,
wanting more than what is expected from you,
or allowing yourself to imagine a life that doesn’t fully fit the script you inherited.
One of the things we talked about during the call is that entrepreneurship does not have to start with quitting your job tomorrow.
In fact, for many people, it probably shouldn’t.
A lot of the women I’ve seen build meaningful companies started with side hustles, experiments, freelance work, small validation cycles, and slowly building the confidence, and financial stability, to take bigger bets over time.
I think sometimes the startup world over-romanticizes recklessness.
But most sustainable journeys I’ve witnessed are actually built through gradual courage.
And I also think network matters much more than people realize.
Not only because networks open doors, but because they shape what feels psychologically possible.
If everyone around you is optimizing for safety, stability, and predictability, it becomes harder to even imagine yourself building something different.
That’s part of why communities matter so much to me.
Not because entrepreneurship needs to become trendy.
Not because everyone should become a founder.
But because I think many talented people spend years postponing dreams that are actually worth testing.
Not due to lack of capability, but due to lack of environment.
So maybe the reflection I want to leave you with this week is the same question I keep returning to myself:
When was the last time you took a real risk?
With that reflection, let’s move into this week’s newsletter 💌
hugs,
🧠✨ Validate Your Idea: Stop Building the Wrong Thing
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💡Recommendations
Articles, videos, and other resources to learn
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Listen now
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