How I Landed My Community Role at Antler VC: The Long, Spiritual Version

A lot of tech careers look amorphous so I try to be as transparent as possible about mine. I wrote about how I landed my first job at a unicorn startup, what my sales enablement role was and the skills I gained from doing it.

The long story short is I was referred to Antler by a friend, interviewed, and got the role.

My real story with Antler begins in the summer of 2023 and I was depressed

In 2023 April, my previous workplace The Org laid off like 90% of its team and as the community leader I was devastated. I cried when I found out and consoled my friends who all said that this was the best thing that could ever happen to me even though I didn’t feel that way yet. The next day, I woke up and ran the Central Park loop twice to clear my head. For work, I started community consulting immediately– helping NYC founders with their own community building and events. Money was coming in, I kept busy, I spent that summer in Europe and I didn’t look or think about the next opportunity because the 2 truths were:

I will find great work again. No one’s career stops in their 20s.
I will find it the way I found all great things in my life– through people.

I didn’t know when or how but in my bones I knew these were true.

My old building manager who consistently encouraged me to start a company

After weeks in Europe, I returned to New York and decided to paint the town red by tapping my network to see what job was out there for me.

I felt excited and curious.

“So what do you want to do now?” I’d get asked by friends and strangers I’d just met

I didn’t have a genuine answer. People assumed community, maybe sales enablement again but I didn’t know. Every coffee chat, meetup, dinner or networking event felt suffocating because I did not have the clarity to answer the question in earnest. I think people who wanted to help were left feeling unhelpful. I started to get in my own head with spiraling thoughts– “do they think I’m not driven??” “am I coming off like I’m not taking the lead/control of my life?” “do they think I threw in the towel with my career?”

All of this energy was put into running laps in the park. I ran every day, sometimes twice a day. I spiritually needed to pound the pavement and let go of the frustration I felt with myself.

New York City is the greatest place on earth to be if you come in with ambition and a clear dream. I only had ambition at the time. I just felt a bit lost and it took MONTHS for me to be ok with being lost. Casey Neistat’s thing is that if you stay busy, the right things will shake out.

Oprah’s thing is that when you do not know what to do, do nothing, find stillness and your natural instincts will guide you

At first I subscribed to Casey’s approach, I kept momentum but nothing was landing so I adopted Oprah’s philosophy. For the rest of 2023, I decided to not renew my UES lease, fold up community contracting work, and move to Seoul where I could live rent free and the overall cost of living was cheaper. Before flying out, I suffered a terrible running injury which put me off the road for 6+ months.

my pov when I’d leave the apt and look up to take in the night sky

When I got to Seoul, I moved into my family’s apartment, isolated from my U.S. friends, and felt the grief of full time unemployment and lack of life direction.

Summers in Korea are basically saunas. I stayed inside with the AC all day feeling too depressed, ashamed of how unmotivated I was, and overall heavy hearted to want to see anyone.

My daily schedule went like: rewatch movies in bed until 6-7am, sleep, wake up at 4pm, iced coffee from CU, eat, lay back down, watch more movies, journal, mope, after the blazing sun has gone down at 9pm walk the Han River with Eminem blasting in my ears, then at 11pm get back in bed and watch movies until sunrise and repeat.

What started to compound on me spiritually was that I could not run because of my injury so I had all this frustrated pent up energy. The night time long walks helped but nothing could replace the pure ecstasy I felt from running miles.

So I started to pray to God, meditate, and reintroduce affirmations.

I never understood why/how people hermitted until I did it

Before this personal experience, I had friends who would go through tough times and not want to leave their apartments. We’d show up at their door and basically drag them out on a perfect NYC day for coffee on the sidewalk tables and after 5 minutes of sipping iced lattes, they’d want to go back home alone. I could not understand how or why… until now.

I realized all those social things we commit/overcommit ourselves to, we don’t have to do any of them.

I leaned into social flow > committed hangouts. I’m also incredibly lucky that my Seoul friends can always be counted on for adventure and cheering up. Our Seoul Startups OG crew took a weekend trip to the ocean side together and this nature experience breathed some new life back in me.

My great friend Tima, who knew I was in the dumps, would finish his full day's work at the autobody shop and at 7pm, take the subway across town and text me “hey I’m at a cafe by your apartment if you feel like coming out tonight.”

These gentle loving nudges. I’d pull myself up from bed, unshowered, pull my greasy hair back, brush my teeth, grab my laptop and go meet him at the cafe.

Once a week, he’d nudge me like this. We’d sit at the Seoul coffee shops until late both on our laptops. He edited his YouTube videos and I applied for roles I thought were interesting.

Submitting a text resume for community work is like showing a video on your phone of a live concert– an absolute injustice of the real magic and no one’s having fun

One Friday night, Gamma hosted a meetup in Seoul. I was introduced to their product in NYC by my engineer friends who hated making slides but needed to present. I mustered up the energy to shower and put on real clothes and caught the subway to Gangnam. Sticky, sweaty, and uncomfortable from the ungodly humidity, I arrived at the venue feeling proud of myself for leaving the house.

Grant, the cofounder of Gamma got up there presenting some of the new AI features that were written in Korean. CJ, the Seoul-based community builder and Korean translator for the Gamma founders, absolutely crushed it with questions and facilitating audience participation considering that Koreans tend to be on the quieter side of things.

The combination of seeing Gamma’s product capabilities and watching CJ beautifully host this gathering sparked a fire in me again. I wanted to create. I wanted to be on stage. I wanted to be around founders. I wanted to take care of a community.

I wanted something for the first time in months

I love wanting things to go after because of the certainty I have knowing I’ll get them so the journey of getting it is simply my opportunity to learn and sharpen my skill sets.

That weekend I got started on my Gamma page that would properly illustrate my community work. I finished in a day because it’s so easy to create content on it. I perfected it throughout the week and the next time I sat down at a coffee shop to meet Tima– I came excited to show him it. Even though he’s not in tech, he gave his feedback and I was so thankful.

Then, towards the end of 2023, I blasted it to my network and community.

And my community absolutely showed up <33333

I felt thankful and loved and supported and taken care of by all my friends and former coworkers.

I had a few conversations and interviews but I take my work seriously and nothing was hitting the right way.

In December, the Antler GP posted that he was hiring for a community role in NYC. My friend, Dan did the kindest thing and vouched for me to get the role, attaching my Gamma page.

Another NYC partner who is my manager today, reached out and set up an interview with me. We did several rounds and when I came to the Flatiron office to meet the New York team, I sat down with one of the principals. Her and I talked the entire time about women's health, our own mental health journeys, habits, personal goals, etc and I made the decision that if this team has someone like her who takes her health journey so seriously, then I want to be on this team. I gravitate towards passionate people like a moth to a flame. I wish more people dialed up their intensity rather than dialing it back to be “normal” - future post on this soon.

After the Antler interviews, I had 2 other offers on the table and took the weekend to decide. To help facilitate the conversation with myself, I hit up a friend S, who has helped coach me since our days at Sprinklr.

The irony with me is that I ask friends what I should do even though I already know

I just need to make sure I’m covering all my bases and they shine light to any career blind spots because every career decision I’ve made was made on my intuition. I just knew in my bones it was the right move.

Today, I’m a year into Antler and I love it here. Thankful.