Recovering From Eating Disorders And Burnout To Living Out Your Dreams with Minnie Ingersoll
Just one glance at Minnie’s resume will get you thinking ‘WOW this woman is incredible!’ A graduate from Stanford, co-founder of a successful startup, Venture Capitalist at TenOneTen, podcast host, a wonderful mother of 3 kids, her life is set! Little do you know, behind the thick curtain of success is a scene with a hint of darkness. In college Minnie suffered from eating disorders, she dropped out of Stanford, and at one point almost gave up on her big aspirations.
I was fortunate enough to interview Minnie to not only learn about the highs of her life, but also the lows that she overcame to become the success that she is today (bundled into the interview transcription I’ve organized below). Through reading her story you’ll discover where she built her emotional resilience, what grounds her, and the most surprising lessons she’s learned over the years. By reframing her journey, you’ll learn she is just as human as you are. As such, YOU are capable of overwhelming success in your life as well. So if you are a goal-getter yourself, let Minnie’s story really sink in and serve as inspiration for your path. Enjoy!
Interview Transcription
Minnie’s background
It's fairly recent that I've changed sort of sides of the table onto the VC side of things and so I'm at TenOneTen which is an early stage L.A. based venture capital fund. We are usually the second round of funding, but first institutional round of funding, which is a super fulfilling and amazing place to be because it usually gets people beyond asking for friends and family money and actually raising a couple million dollars that you can go build the thing that they are eager to build. It's a great place to be. Before that I was a founder of a company and so I spent a lot of time getting to know the venture capital side of the world from the other side of the table.
Growing up
I grew up in Pasadena. I always was full of energy and I still am. With all this energy I really just funneled it into sports. In the musical Hamilton there’s this song about wanting to be in the room where it happens. Likewise, I really wanted to be in the room where it happens -- where the decisions were getting made. I wouldn't have phrased it that way growing up but that was I think where I was at.
Fast forwarding a little bit -- so I was competitive and athletic and energetic and kind of math inclined. But then I got to Stanford and thought I wanted to major in math and it wasn't like the room where it happens. The math department in the early 90’s was not innovating and it wasn't affecting the world as much as the Computer Science department was. That's how I ended up in doing Computer Science in the mid 90’s.
Eating disorders and dropping out of Stanford
In high school I was really happy and fairly sheltered and there were things that were a little wonky, but mostly it was pretty straight on this easy path of I was successful in school, I was successful in athletics, and I was really sheltered. Then I went to Stanford and my freshman year I was directionless-ly energetic and was too extreme. I think I verge on the towards manic depressive because I just have so much energy. My freshman year I channeled that into an eating disorder. It was one of those things that I just thought ‘oh my gosh I can lose all this weight and be blonde and skinny and tall and you know date new people’, like that whole landscape.
Anyways, the eating disorder got really out of control my freshman year and then my sophomore year I went to the other extreme and started like binge eating. When I got to college I lost 30 pounds and my sophomore year I gained like 50 pounds, which is probably only 20 pounds different than where I started, but the difference of gaining 50 pounds in like three months is significant.
I dropped out of Stanford and became super depressed. Some of it was just chemical imbalance. But, I went back to Stanford a semester later and graduated on time. At the time I felt like I wasn't functioning properly. I couldn't interact with the world. I was so embarrassed about my weight and my life. When I went back to school though, it seemed like me dropping out was no big deal. At the time, it was this huge deal.
Turning negative experiences into lessons
Everything prior to college had been pretty easy. For me to go through something that wasn't easy taught me my most valuable lessons of life: needing to depend on others for help, being able to talk about what's actually going on with you, and having more sympathy for other people who were going through hard times. That was my first exposure to it.
How Minnie healed herself
My mother nursed me back to health more than anything and it left me feeling so much warmth for her. But, the bigger lesson was being able to tell people what was going on with me because I had so much shame. I wasn't aware enough of what was going on with me that I couldn't necessarily talk about myself let alone fully articulate it to other people.
Minnie’s approach to dealing with challenges today
Fast forward any number of years, and I see all the time that my startup is failing and I don't want to talk about it. I could choose to bury my head in the sand instead of taking action when I need to take action, until all of a sudden I'm out of money as opposed to doing a round of layoffs. I think what’s really important is being able to admit when you're massively not doing well.
For example, in my startup we had to do a round of layoffs and I was losing sleep over it. I needed to layoff this one guy that moved across the country with his family and the board kind of just said ‘this just happens’. Talking about these things took the edge off of them a fair amount for me. Also for me having a really strong family has been extremely important.
Why failure doesn’t scare Minnie to the same extent anymore
If you ask what goes on in my head on a daily basis, I'll say I have five meetings in a day and one of them won't go well and I'll come home and tell my husband “oh my god that didn't go well”. But the more I have those meetings, the more I just get used to it one thing going poorly. I learn to roll with things because they're far less dramatic than dropping out of Stanford.
You go through these things and everything seems like a less bigger deal because you're like I've already failed at that before. I know how that goes. It's fine. When I graduated from Harvard Business School and I didn't have a job everyone else had a job and I felt like a failure. Then I went to work at Google and got a good job. Life’s just a big roller coaster.
Learning how to control bursts of energy with intentional structure
My ambition, excitement, and energy will rally everyone to run up the mountain. I'm full of energy and it's contagious. I’m sort of like a camp counselor -- I get everyone to run up this mountain, but I’ll occasionally run up the wrong mountain. And then I’ll make everyone run up it again and again before I realize that I’m chasing the wrong battle. For me I need people or structures that help me think about which mountain I’m running up.
There have been different times where I purposely structure what I do. For my startup my board played that role. I would actually intentionally schedule a topic for our board meeting in three months. Then I could attack the strategic topic as if it were an operational topic because if I knew that I had to present on some strategic topic in three months I’d approach it in some operational run up the mountain sort of way. Some people naturally spend time thinking about the big picture.
Creating successful habits
I have daily habits that help me stay kind of grounded. My natural inclination is to be a little on the manic depressive roller coaster ride. That means for me that I need to tame down for everything else that isn't like a roller coaster that like. So I quit drinking and I quit coffee. I sleep regularly and I sit down to dinner every night at 6:00. Those sorts of things are tools that help me not get too caught up in my excitement of everything.
Lessons from managing and being managed
Asking questions generally. I actually have found that surprising about management. Managing people or being part of an organization has been extremely integral to my personal development. Having a team of people or having peers or having managers has certainly helped me understand who I am. When you ask me who I am, I'm like I don't know. But then when you show me 20 other examples of my peers who are quite different in their communication styles, in their habits, in their mindset, and all of that then I can better understand who I am.
Another thing I learned from management was both about asking questions and giving feedback. Asking questions, not just like how did that project go. I think my inclination would be to say ‘let me help’ as opposed to saying ‘how do you think that went’. Asking more questions rather than offering advice or help has been a change in mindset for me. By listening and seeing where their head is at I could be more helpful.
Other surprising lessons Minnie’s learned
I learned not to be intimidated. I go through life feeling nervous from everyone else -- meeting the fancy venture capital investor or even my professors when I was in school seemed intimidating to me. Then you go on and on and all of a sudden you are peers with those people. I'm peers with my professors. They’re obviously still 20 years older than I am but we're now the same stage in a lot of ways. That has surprised me. These people who used to be intimidating to me back then are people that I am like now.
The other lesson for me is really grabbing onto your supporters and staying close to them. There's a lot of power in networks. It doesn't have to be your Stanford network; it can be your high school network, it can be the parent of your friend. Latching onto those people and keeping them up to date on your life is really important and useful. As a founder of a company you send out these like quarterly reports to your investors. There's something similar around in sending nice notes to the people who believed in you. I didn’t stay close to some of those people because I didn’t think they wanted to hear from me. I felt like I would be imposing on their time. But, a little bit of appreciation for people goes a long way.
The best piece of advice Minnie has received
Show up, tell the truth, hope for the best. It’s kind of coming from a negative place. There’s been lots of times where I’ve not wanted to do the thing that I’m doing. Many times I haven’t really liked my job, or I’ve gone through bad periods of the job. Even at Google which was the “best place to work” there were times when my product was behind schedule, I was stressed, I didn’t agree with my manager, and so on, but you just have to keep going.
A conventional piece of advice Minnie disagrees with
Strong convictions loosely held -- like I’m going to argue with you about your point, I have this strong conviction, you can argue back and convince me of your point of view. I don’t like that at all because my experience is I go through life thinking everyone is intimidating until I get to know them, so when these VC’s have strong conviction and want to argue with me I’m like “oh my gosh, my idea is shit.” One of my girlfriends wrote this post: Maybe Everyone Should Talk Like a Girl? People tell women don’t talk with verbal uptick, when you end your sentence in a question mark essentially. And she’s saying that when you talk like that you leave open this room for everyone to bring their own opinions into the conversation. People can more easily give you feedback or it leads to a richer discussion.
How Minnie wants to be remembered
I’d like to think that I played some role in building up the tech ecosystem. I don’t need it to be a huge role, but that’s what I’m even trying to do right now. I’m a believer in entrepreneurship and innovation as a contributor to our country. There are many things that aren’t working in our country and I think that is one thing that is. I want to help the ecosystem thrive.
Minnie’s takeaways for you
Some of the most impactful mentorship that I've received along the way or the things that have stuck with me in my heart have not necessarily been the people who have been my manager or the people who've been in mentorship roles. They’re the one off little pieces of kindness that people have done that have had this huge emotional impact for me.
It's an important lesson because I think it's something everyone can do. Everyone can do these small little things and some of those might not get noticed but others have these huge butterfly wing effects that you can’t anticipate. I like to encourage people to just realize that you can have a huge impact even on a random person you don't know very well.