People want to feel supported and safe at work – and inspired to innovate. What can people working at large corporations do to create this kind of environment? Saskia Mureau is the Director of Customer Digital at the Port of Rotterdam where she is harnessing digital systems to reduce emissions. She is passionate about creating inclusive workplaces where psychological safety and collaboration drive meaningful change. In this episode, Kamila sits down with Suchi to talk about why she chose to work at large corporations rather than startups. Saskia also reflects on her personal experiences, including navigating IVF while at work, and discusses how organizations can foster environments where employees feel empowered to bring their whole selves to work. Links: Saskia Mureau on Linkedin WHO infertility research BCG 2024 report on psychological safety in the workplace Suchi Srinivasan on LinkedIn Kamila Rakhimova on LinkedIn About In Her Ellement: In Her Ellement highlights the women and allies leading the charge in digital, business, and technology innovation. Through engaging conversations, the podcast explores their journeys—celebrating successes and acknowledging the balance between work and family. Most importantly, it asks: when was the moment you realized you hadn’t just arrived—you were truly in your element? About The Hosts: Suchi Srinivasan is an expert in AI and digital transformation. Originally from India, her career includes roles at trailblazing organizations like Bell Labs and Microsoft. In 2011, she co-founded the Cleanweb Hackathon, a global initiative driving IT-powered climate solutions with over 10,000 members across 25+ countries. She also advises Women in Cloud, aiming to create $1B in economic opportunities for women entrepreneurs by 2030. Kamila Rakhimova is a fintech leader whose journey took her from Tajikistan to the U.S., where she built a career on her own terms. Leveraging her English proficiency and international relations expertise, she discovered the power of microfinance and moved to the U.S., eventually leading Amazon's Alexa Fund to support underrepresented founders. Subscribe to In Her Ellement on your podcast app of choice to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, business, and technology.…
To have a successful startup, you need: a great idea, a great market, a great team, a great product, and great execution.
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We spend a lot of time advising startups. Though one-on-one advice will always be crucial, we thought it might help us scale Y Combinator if we could distill the most generalizable parts of this advice into a sort of playbook we could give YC and YC Fellowship companies.โดย Y Combinator
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One of the first things we ask YC companies is what they’re building and why.โดย Y Combinator
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Mediocre teams do not build great companies. One of the things we look at the most is the strength of the founders. When I used to do later-stage investing, I looked equally hard at the strength of the employees the founders hired.โดย Y Combinator
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Here is the secret to success: have a great product. This is the only thing all great companies have in common.โดย Y Combinator
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Although it’s necessary to build a great product, you’re not done after that. You still have to turn it into a great company, and you have to do it yourself—the fantasy of hiring an “experienced manager” to do all this work is both extremely prevalent and a graveyard for failed companies. You cannot outsource the work to someone else for a long tim…
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Growth and momentum are the keys to great execution. Growth (as long as it is not “sell dollar bills for 90 cents” growth) solves all problems, and lack of growth is not solvable by anything but growth. If you’re growing, it feels like you’re winning, and people are happy. If you’re growing, there are new roles and responsibilities all the time, an…
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If I had to distill my advice about how to operate down to only two words, I’d pick focus and intensity. These words seem to really apply to the best founders I know.โดย Y Combinator
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Earlier I mentioned that the only universal job description of the CEO is to make sure the company wins. Although that’s true, I wanted to talk a little more specifically about how a CEO should spend his or her time.โดย Y Combinator
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Hiring is one of your most important jobs and the key to building a great company (as opposed to a great product.)โดย Y Combinator
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A quick word about competitors: competitors are a startup ghost story. First-time founders think they are what kill 99% of startups. But 99% of startups die from suicide, not murder. Worry instead about all of your internal problems. If you fail, it will very likely be because you failed to make a great product and/or failed to make a great company…
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Oh yes, making money. You need to figure out how to do that.โดย Y Combinator
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Most startups raise money at some point.โดย Y Combinator
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Remember that at least a thousand people have every great idea. One of them actually becomes successful. The difference comes down to execution. It’s a grind, and everyone wishes there were some other way to transform “idea” into “success”, but no one has figured it out yet.โดย Y Combinator
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