Never waste a good crisis with Ines Santos Silva

With a love for learning since early age, I have a feeling Inês will be learning for many years to come. She is passionate about innovation, and is not scared about solving a challenge. You just have to look at her resume to see this. I lost count of the number of roles and ventures in her LinkedIn profile.

A fast-starter

Ines assessed start-ups needed support way before it was cool to talk about accelerator programs. So she designed one. And expanded it to multiple cities. She determined there was a need for social ventures long before social impact was a concept. So she dedicated her efforts to Social Value Generator. She found she was often the only woman attending Tech events, so she decided to create a network for Women in Tech. She assessed that only a small percentage of businesses' procurement goes into woman-owned businesses - so she created a database of women-owned businesses that large corporations can use, so there is no longer the excuse that "they can't find them". What's next?

Time for space

Inês is taking time to define her next steps. She is not in a rush and is, as expected, putting a lot of time into learning. She knows it will involve AI, Web 3 and all the new developments in this area, but she has not defined yet where next she will put her energy. She has been brave to really take a step back and create this space for thought. In her daily life, she has also become better at incorporating moments of space into her life, especially as the pandemic thought us that there is so much we can do remotely.

Looking back

Inês feels the things she has done are mostly connected and the reason they seem so many are because she started early. But more importantly, she reminds us that there are a lot of ideas she had that never had the light of day. She was willing to try a few ideas that were not fully formed (like the first accelerator week for Start-up Pirates). The first step is the one that makes things happen:

"It is much easier to move something that is already moving"

Old piece of advice

The other reflection Ines brings us is one someone shared with her early in her career. As she met someone with a very different lifestyle more than 10 years ago (a famous digital nomad), she questioned his choices to understand what drove him. The answer was simple

"What is the worst that can happen?"

When thinking about it like this, we are often reminded we can probably live with the outcome.

Never waste a good crisis

As for many of her ventures, Inês was early for the pandemic. She got supplies early in February and buckled up. As she did so, she focused on this quote by Churchill to ensure she would not go crazy during these times. She focused on working hard on her company in consulting at the time. One of the things that Inês definitely put to good use, was the time to start eating healthy and take better care of herself.

Final thoughts?

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the 2nd best time is today!

To remember

• Quote: Never waste a good crisis (Winston Churchill)
• Word of the Year: Experimentation
• Book: Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius (and Ines Goodreads list here)
• Find Ines here
• See more about Season 3 here

Podcast edited by Alice Stansfield