Entrepreneurship — Understanding the ripple effect

An entrepreneurship transition

From the outside, Fariha Shah explains, having a business acquired can look like a clear, simple success. The reality is far more complex. “You build something from scratch, pour everything into it – time, energy, belief, resilience – and suddenly, one day, it no longer fully belongs to you,” she says. “You shift from creator to contributor. And even if it’s the right move, there’s a kind of emotional dissonance that comes with that.”

For Shah, a 39-year-old entrepreneur from France, this pivotal moment came in late 2023, when she sold Golden Bees, an AI-driven recruitment platform she founded eight years before. Building the startup from zero into a $10 million business had been a long, formative journey. Having left the safety of a corporate job, she funded the first two years of R&D through consulting work. “Most people didn’t believe in the project,” she says. “Actually, almost no one did. But I did… and the motion never stopped.”

Defining new milestones

At the time, Shah says, “every day felt like new territory”. Fully preoccupied with growing her business, she became obsessed with the next milestone, the next client, the next product iteration. But the intensity of growing a startup changed the way she thought about what those milestones could look like. “Before Golden Bees, I thought of success in fairly traditional terms. Build a good career, climb step by step, find stability. But once I became a founder, that whole framework exploded. I stopped thinking in terms of roles or titles. I started thinking in terms of systems: what do I want to build next? What impact do I want to have? What needs to exist that doesn’t yet?”

After exiting, these ideas began to percolate. “I didn’t immediately picture a next job, or even a next company,” says Shah. “What I pictured was a way of being: staying in motion, solving real problems, creating new things that carry my values. I understood, maybe for the first time, that I didn’t have to adapt to the world around me – I could shape it.”

For Shah, who had developed a clear understanding of the ripple effect entrepreneurship can have, it was clear that she wanted to commit more time to philanthropy – and supporting other entrepreneurs. Shah had grown up watching her parents – immigrants from Pakistan – build a life in a country where they didn’t speak the language at first, had no networks, and very few guarantees. When she entered the tech and entrepreneurship world, she carried that resilience with her, but immediately felt the gaps.

“I remember pitching to early stage investors who loved the idea, smiled at the traction, but couldn’t quite ‘see me’ as the person to pull it off,” says Shah. “I remember being the only woman – and often the only person of colour – in meetings where big decisions were made, and realising that no one would give me the mic unless I took it. And I remember, too, the rare people who did believe in me – and how far that belief carried me.” Her approach to philanthropic work has been forged by these experiences: “from the deep feeling that the people I try to support today could’ve been me.”

Helping others build their own mould

Shah is now committed to numerous initiatives that support equity in tech for underrepresented founders, and serves on the board of Women France at the United Nations. She also mentors underrepresented founders, invests in early stage tech startups and has seen brilliant entrepreneurs transform under her watch. “Sometimes it’s a founder from a banlieue [outer suburb] who doesn’t speak the same startup jargon. Sometimes it’s a woman who’s been trained to downplay her ambition because she’s been punished for being ‘too confident’. I’ve seen how quickly they flourish when someone finally tells them: ‘You belong here. You don’t need to conform. Build your own mould’.”

She views her role as an investor through a similar lens. “I’m not just writing cheques – I’m voting for the future I want to see,” says Shah. “And that future includes entrepreneurs who’ve never had a head start, but who are building with hunger, insight and authenticity. I don’t believe in funding ‘types’ – I believe in funding potential. I’ve learned to look past polish and see power.”

The draw to build startups herself did not leave Shah, though. Soon after exiting Golden Bees, she founded Cominty, an AI agent designed to streamline workflows in mid-size organisations, and she is the CEO. This time – having already experienced the personal toll that scaling a company can have – she has approached her role very differently. She focuses on high-level decisions, is better at delegating, no longer romanticises “the hustle” and values coherence over speed. “This time, I care more about staying aligned with our long-term vision and values than racing to prove traction.”

It is among the many lessons Shah has drawn from during the past couple of years. The biggest, though, is that exiting a company is not a finish line. “It’s a transition,” she says. “And how you prepare for that transition – mentally, operationally, emotionally – matters more than you think.” If she could do it again, she would have given more time for this inner preparation – bracing herself for the identity shift. “In hindsight, the exit was a gift. But it also held up a mirror. It made me realise that while building a company is hard, letting go is even harder; and just as defining. Because that’s the moment you see clearly who you really are.”