You might think not having a data background means it'll be tougher for you to get a career in data. For Preksha Kaparwan, co-founder and CMO at Alphaa AI, the journey into data was anything but traditional. In this episode, Preksha talks about starting her career in the hospitality industry, falling in love with data through printed POS (proof-of-sale) receipts, and bombing meetings with clients when she was growing her startup. In addition to being a startup founder, Preksha was a 2021 LinkedIn Top Voice: Next Gen winner. We discuss how she utilized LinkedIn to grow her community, and how to be vulnerable to build trust with your community. Hopefully Preksha's story inspires you to pursue a career in data no matter where you got your start.

It begins with hospitality

Preksha started her career as a chef at a top hotel in India after studying hospitality management at university. What she liked about being a chef is that you have a set amount of ingredients in recipe and something good comes out at the end of the recipe. After becoming a sous chef, her responsibilities expanded beyond just creating food. She had to manage events, supplies, profitability, and ensure hotel guests were fed and happy.

The hours were brutal. Working from 7AM-12AM was not uncommon. The worst part was at the end of her shift, she had to use a POS (point-of-sale) system to make reports about the day's activity. The POS system was not connected to the Internet so she had to do a print out of every single receipt. She had to manually calculate how much butter chicken was sold that day, compute revenue, and do other tedious calculations by hand. This data would then get manually entered into a computer. This would push her shift to 2AM or 3AM some nights.

At the time, Preksha didn't know she was doing data analytics. The unfortunate part was that while technology was advancing all around her, it wasn't catching up with the restaurant and hospitality industry. She knew that data and processes should be digitized, but wasn't sure how or where to start.

The hospitality industry creates a ton of data

Preksha didn't realize it at the time, but when she was a sous chef she was doing data analyst work. She wanted to get into the data world and decided to join any startup would be willing to give her a job or internship. Any restaurant or hotel that is working with data would want to hire her, she thought.

The toughest part of this process is taking that one small step from your cushy job and willing to be a student or intern again. Preksha was managing a team of 30 and felt like she would be going backwards by starting over. On top of that, you have the peer pressure from friends and family.

She ultimately joined a startup that was working with restaurants and hotels by helping them create menus on iPads. As a business development manager, Preksha ate at 50 restaurants for 3 months but didn't make any sales. She ended up working with one account that wanted a website for their restaurant. The restaurant also wanted to keep track of their orders online. The startup she was working at was losing money and the developers were leaving. Preksha still felt like she wanted to deliver what she promised to this restaurant. During this time, she met her current co-founder and developed a data analytics platform for restaurants.

Turning into the data analytics team for restaurants

20 businesses started treating Preksha's startup as their in-house data analytics team. Preksha wanted to create a self-serve data platf...