What it’s like to work at Fortune and publish Term Sheet

Polina Marinova, who is leaving Fortune on Friday after five years and 1,300 articles, writes about her experience.

Marinova writes, “At that point in time, I had only written a few general news stories and worked on Fortune’s social media strategy. There was no fire in me to learn about the crazy, complex world that is Silicon Valley. Until 2017.

“That was the year I grew beyond what I thought possible. I had been helping my predecessor Erin Griffith compile the deals in Term Sheet, but when she left Fortune, I was presented with a fork in the road: Do I raise my hand to take over this beast of a newsletter or do I lay low and continue life as a person who never had to wake up before 7 a.m.?

“I decided to go for it. And I’m lucky to have worked in a place with colleagues who not only encouraged me to do it, but cheered me on every step of the way.

“In the early days of Term Sheet, I would wake up at 4:30 a.m. with the crippling daily anxiety of not knowing what to write about. I would look up the definitions of more VC jargon than I care to admit. ‘WTF is ‘dry powder?’’ was a memorable one.

“I’m a highly anxious person, but perhaps my greatest strength is that I’m even more stubborn. And if I feel insecure about a certain topic, I research, obsess, and ask dumb questions until I gain a basic understanding of it. Maybe that’s why working on Term Sheet was a good fit for me … and maybe that’s why I’ve decided to start from zero yet again.”

Read more here.