who tf do i think i am?
my life as a christopher nolan movie
today i drew circles. not the kind that explain organizational structure or map out strategy. these were circles of Becoming – mapping a temporal pincer movement between all my selves. (yes, this is both an ode to christopher nolan and perhaps me thinking too much about myself. but isn't that what ~transformation~ requires? a delicate dance between self-reflection and self-forgetting?)
at the very center: aish <> aish. this is where past and future versions of me meet in the middle. where the “teller” meets the “doer”1, where theory collapses into practice. one version of me sits hunched over books and papers, desperately trying to prove she belongs in rooms with brilliant minds. the other version already knows that our brilliance lives in our bones, not our bibliographies.
one whispers "what if they see through you?" gripping credentials like armor, building fortresses of footnotes and frameworks. the other just smiles, knowing that being seen through is exactly the point – that our power lives in the spaces between knowing and Becoming. one tries to earn her way into existence through analytical rigor, while the other understands that our messy humanity, our raw intuition, our trembling courage to imagine differently – this is what makes us uniquely capable of nurturing new possibilities into being.
then: aish <> analogue. there's a delicious tension here – i'm building a garden for audacious ideas while my own audacity is still finding its roots. it's like i'm learning to trust my voice by creating the exact space i needed five years ago, when i thought legitimacy only came in credentials and citations. every time i tell a potential fellow that their unorthodox thinking is precisely what we need – that their intuition without peer review is valid, that their midnight experiments matter more than their resume – i'm really whispering to my past self. the one who thought she needed permission to imagine different futures, who didn't know that her very questioning of "how things are done" was itself a form of brilliance. i'm building the village i needed when i was too scared to say "what if we did this differently?"
expanding outward: aish <> world. here's where it gets spicy. in intro calls and pitch meetings, there's always that unspoken question hovering: "who does she think she is?" – this girl with a garden metaphor trying to redesign how we fund the future. some days i want to shrink, to hide behind powerpoints and market analysis. other days i want to walk in radiating the certainty of someone who's already changed the world.
but lately i'm learning that this tension itself – this shaky bridge between doubt and audacity – might be my most honest offering. because i'm not here to perform certainty. i'm here to stand in that electric space between what is and what could be, to say "yes, i'm also figuring it out, and that's exactly why you can trust me to nurture your Becoming." my power isn't in having all the answers; it's in knowing how to hold space for the questions that matter.
maybe the world doesn't need another polished VC with perfect pattern matching. maybe it needs someone who knows how it feels to have wild dreams and wobbly knees, who can recognize brilliance precisely because she's still learning to recognize her own.
finally: analogue <> world. but even this isn't static. it's more like a breathing thing, each circle inhaling possibility and exhaling transformation. when analogue creates space for breakthrough thinking to take root, we're not just building another funding vehicle – we're cultivating an ecosystem where intuition and imagination hold equal weight with data and proof.
when we tell fellows that their pattern-recognition born from lived experience is as valuable as statistical analysis, that their midnight wonderings matter as much as morning meetings, i'm metabolizing that truth in my own body. each time we fund someone's wild hypothesis² about how the world could work differently, my own certainty grows like a quiet garden after rain.
analogue interacting with the world is my interaction with myself.
these circles aren't separate territories. they're a map of the same landscape – the space between trembling and power, between the self who asks "who tf do i think i am?" and the self who replies "exactly who i need to be."
maybe this is why it feels so right to build this: because i'm not just creating an institution, i'm creating sacred space for all our Becoming. a place where we can hold both our doubt and our knowing, our current tools and the ones we're still forging.
who tf do i think i am? some days i'm still figuring that out. but i'm starting to understand – i'm the one who can sit with both the trembling and the power. the one who's learning to hold space for my younger self's fears and my future self's audacity. moving through time from both directions, meeting myself in all these circles i drew today.
but then again..
..i might be thinking about myself too much.
on analogue:
analoguegroup.org
get funded for your cool idea
funnily enough, i recently wrote my most important analogue related piece yet on the temporal pincer movement in innovation funding
PS. today my friend and brilliant researcher Vicente published his first piece, please read and support his work: Integrative Responsiveness
—
at this electric juncture in my life, i'm committing to 30 days of micro-essays – a variation of my earlier ‘50 days of writing’ from 2023. while most pieces will be personal reflections mapping this transformative period, others will explore and crystallize ideas surrounding my company. writing, after all, has always been my way of making sense of pivotal moments.
you can follow along in two ways: subscribe to this substack to receive each micro-essay as it's born, landing directly in your inbox. or, if you prefer a weekly rhythm, these pieces will find their way into my newsletter – a consolidated journey of the week's thoughts, revelations and musings. your choice, your rhythm.
from the book The Inner Game of Tennis
"who tf do i think i am?" and the self who replies "exactly who i need to be." .. yes