In the blink of an eye

Celebrate the wins along the way and enjoy the journey

This was originally published in the booklet at my last Demo Day I hosted with Incubate before stepping down. I liked it so I thought to republish here. ☺️

‘In the blink of an eye’ refers to things that happen extremely quickly, literally the 100 milliseconds it takes to move your eyelid. You might not use that phrase to describe the 365 days in a year but that is what it feels like with INCUBATE. Seven blinks, seven years.

At the end of 2012, I was sitting in a small converted meeting room inside Manning House as a volunteer with our first cohort of startups wondering “is this going to work?” I was a recent graduate looking to make a mark and ‘Program Manager’ was not a role that existed yet.

In what feels like a blink of an eye, I was recently sitting in pitch practice and just looked around. We were in our newly-built INCUBATE Hub (one of the nicest startup coworking spaces on any campus), founders were busy working on pitches, our startup-alumni were closing customer deals, our long-time legal mentor was advising startups, investor-mentors were on the phone negotiating a company sale and their next investment, and our Community Manager was hustling on upcoming events. This is a thriving startup community.

There was no thriving community in Sydney when I started, let alone one on a university campus. We have come a long way in building recognition and support for the ecosystem and technology industry and it’s important to celebrate this achievement. Not only at the University of Sydney but also across the entire Asia Pacific region where all universities have taken up the challenge to better support student entrepreneurs on their campuses.

I tell our startup founders to celebrate the little wins along the way, as it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day hustle. Today, I think we can celebrate the achievement of the best on-campus startup program this side of the world and I don’t say that lightly.

Thank you to the University of Sydney Union for being the first to support and fund this program. Thanks to the University of Sydney for jumping in and writing our first ‘million-dollar’ cheque as well as funding the new INCUBATE Hub. Thanks to our many mentors over the years and to our founders, who I’ve learnt so much from ( more than they’ve learnt from me!) and a special thank you to the amazing Team INCUBATE who make it all possible.

I can’t wait to see what happens in the next blink of an eye for INCUBATE.