When I was about six or seven years old, my parents enrolled me in piano lessons. I don't remember asking for them—I was just placed in them. My mom used to play the piano. She had learned as a girl in Cuba while living with her grandmother.

My dad would usually be in the kitchen, or somewhere close enough to hear both my mother’s shouting and my sobbing. He would try—feebly—to placate her. “Honey, let her practice. She’ll get it right.”

Unknowingly, I carried the lessons from my childhood piano bench into adulthood. The fear of making mistakes became so ingrained that entrepreneurship felt like an insurmountable challenge.