How She Went From Writing Quests For Games to Helping Security Companies Manage Threats

Joining us is Natalie Doran, CEO and co-founder of Lytehouse, which does manages threat detection for security control centres.Learn about Natalie's journey from through the world of startups and social entrepreneurship to her current startup, Lytehouse.She shares her insights and experiences on:- the importance of co-founder fit, in terms of skills as well as alignment- working on startups with a mission driven by social impact- how she tried to validate a few prior startup ideas- her experience meeting her co-founder Jean-Vicente De Carvalho, bonding with him, and having a good skills match- how she validated the idea that morphed into Lytehouse by sitting down with security personnel and observing their workflows- self-care and making time for yourself when building a company.Favourite books:Leaders Eat LastPicture of Dorian GrayFavourite tool:G-SuiteHubSpot CRMhttps://www.lyte-house.com/nterviewed three amazing entrepreneurs on how they are starting and building their companies in this stressful climate. I just wanted to apologize in advance for the audio quality of these first three episodes.I fixed my microphone settings so that starting from episode four onwards, my voice should be much clearer, but for the time being, please bear with me and I hope the content more than pays off for the audio.  thank you.And let's gaze into the Abyss together.welcome to Abyss Gazing. I'm your host Alvin Leong, and joining me today is Natalie Doran, the co founder and CEO of Lytehouse, a security control center for managed threat detection using machine learning.An AI Natalie will tell us about her journey into entrepreneurship and startups  the lessons she learned from her first startups and how she applied them to building Lytehouse. The challenges she's facing, we're going Lytehouse and [00:01:00] where she's going to be. So, Natalie, are you ready to get started? Natalie: Okay.Alvin: So Natalie and I both knew each other from the entrepreneur first program, but before that she's from the UK. She graduated back in 2014 and then since then she has been working in various roles in Singapore. So Natalie , can you tell us a bit about how you moved to Singapore?Like what made you decide to move to Singapore. Natalie: Really the move to Singapore was not as strategic or as calculated as I'd like to pretend it is. Um, actually the idea to move to Singapore really came from. Uh, I was, uh, in the, in the UK, in the West Midlands where I'm from, small village. I came out of university, the English literature degree and creative writing.And sort of ended university hit the ground running. I was like, I'm going to go and change the world and I'm going to do one of these things. And then people basically said, well, with an English [00:02:00] degree you can become a teacher or you can become a journalist. I was like, and then? And they're like, nah, that's good.It's kind of it. You can teach it well, you can be a journalist. I was like, well, okay, well, neither of those things really works for me. And so I was really struggling to find. Like my niche or like the area that I can really get passionate about. And, uh, you know, some, some family members, like family, family of my dad's family, uh, had been in Singapore for over 16 years, I think it is now.Um, and so they say, you know, why don't you try Singapore. It's in need of creatives. It's a need of people with content. And, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a far cry from teeny tiny village in the West Midlands. So pretty much overnight I agree to move. But I honestly, hands in the air, didn't know where Singapore was on a map until I got hit.And I went, I didn't even put them in stories. I was just like, I have to leave. I have to go start a new life. [00:03:00] And so I kind of did that. And, um. Kind of arrived and when, okay, what, what do I, what do I do now? So the idea was never initially I'm going to go be an entrepreneur. It was, I need to find a job in a country that I know nothing about.And I was 23 at the time. And I just went to every networking event I could find every single one. And, uh, ended up meeting a guy who told me he was building a startup. It was a social impact game for kids that would enable them to contribute to real causes in the real world with game play. And, uh, I sort of fell in love with the mission.Volunteering had been a part of my life since I was very little. And so, uh, impact and the human elements of a business really inspired me and they were also looking for someone else. The content side. So a lead to the opportunity. I did six months of interning at various, uh, uh, ad agencies and, uh, some, uh, the American chamber of commerce.So, so did a bit of [00:04:00] interning, but ultimately realized that I really wanted to try my hand at the start of game. So I joined them yet in end of 2015 and fell in love with startups from there. It hasn't been easy. Yeah, really, really not easy. Um, but I think I wouldn't ...