What does it take to build a purpose-led tech company as a woman today? In this week’s episode, I sit down with Nomiki Petrolla — a powerhouse product leader, mother of four, and founder of Theanna a data-driven platform designed to help women tech founders go from zero to $1M+ ARR.

We dive deep into:

• The pivotal moments that shaped Nomiki’s leadership journey 👊
• How trauma clarified her mission 💥
• Why women build differently (and why that’s our superpower) 💡
• The role of mindset, motherhood, and mission in building with impact 🌍
• The importance of community, data, and momentum in the startup game 📊

This conversation is a must-listen for visionary women building the future of tech.

Our Guest This Week:

Today we have a Founder-Forging Firestarter in our midst!  

Nomiki Petrolla is a visionary product leader and tech founder transforming how women build and scale tech companies. With 15 years of experience across healthcare, fintech, AI, and enterprise SaaS, she has led product and strategy in some of the toughest sectors—and broken countless barriers doing so. As the founder of PDS Lab and now Theanna, Nomiki is creating unprecedented infrastructure for women tech founders, guiding them from zero to $1M+ ARR with clarity, connection, and data-driven insight. Her platform, Theanna, is the first of its kind—a social network and data tool built specifically to close the gender gap in tech entrepreneurship by matching women to the right support at the right time. A mother of four, Techstars mentor, and Harvard speaker, Nomiki brings the rare combination of technical expertise, lived experience, and radical clarity needed to help more women lead companies of substance and scale.

Takeaways:

• We discussed the emergence of a new leadership model that prioritizes women's perspectives and insights in entrepreneurial endeavors.
• Nomiki's platform, Theana, aims to bridge the gender gap in tech by providing tailored support for women founders seeking to scale their businesses.
• The conversation highlighted the importance of community and collaboration in empowering women to overcome challenges and achieve their entrepreneurial goals.
• I shared personal stories that shaped my perspective on leadership and empowerment, emphasizing the necessity of resilience and determination.
• The episode concluded with a call to action for women to pursue their ambitions without hesitation, reinforcing the belief that anything is achievable.

Chapters:

04:10 Shaping Moments of Inspiration

11:05 Empowering Women in Tech Leadership

14:39 Building a Supportive Platform for Women Entrepreneurs

24:57 Integrating AI into Founder's Journey

28:33 The Role of Women in Tech and Funding Challenges

36:21 The Vision for Women Entrepreneurs

37:43 Embracing the Journey of Founders

Burning Questions Answered:

1. What would you build if you stopped second-guessing yourself?
2. What’s one mindset shift that changed the way you lead?
3. Are you building a hobby or a revenue-generating business?
4. What would you do if you fully believed you could not fail?

Favorite Quotes:

“Believe in yourself, and others will believe in you. It’s magnetic.” — Nomiki

“It’s okay to stand up for yourself. You don’t always have to sit back.” — Nomiki

Guest Offers & Contact Information:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nomikipetrolla/   

LinkedIn Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theanna-io/posts/?feedView=all 

Website: https://www.theanna.io/

Follow the #WisdomOfWomen show for more inspiring stories and insights from trailblazing women founders, investors, and experts in growth and prosperity.

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/yja3w7nh

Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/4tak8ajk 

Amazon Prime: https://tinyurl.com/366syddj 

Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/bdhananz 

RSS Feed: https://feeds.captivate.fm/womengetfunded/ 

Coco Sellman, the host of #WisdomOfWomen, believes business is a force for good, especially with visionary women at the helm. With over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience, she has launched five companies and guided over 500 startups. As Founder & CEO of A Force for Good, Coco supports purpose-driven women founders in unlocking exponential growth and prosperity. Her recent venture, Allumé Home Care, reached eight-figure revenues and seven-figure profits in just four years before a successful exit in 2024. A venture investor and board director, Coco’s upcoming book, *A Force for Good*, reveals a roadmap for women to lead high-impact, high-growth companies.

Learn more about A Force for Good:

Website: https://aforceforgood.biz/ 

Are Your GROWING or PLATEAUING? https://aforceforgood.biz/quiz/

FFG Tool of the Week: https://aforceforgood.biz/weekly-tool/ 

The Book:  https://aforceforgood.biz/book/ 

Growth Accelerator: https://aforceforgood.biz/accelerator/ 

Welcome to the Wisdom of Women Show.

We are dedicated to amplifying the voice of women in business.

A new model of leadership is emerging and we are here to amplify the voices of women leading the way.

I am your host Coco Sellman, five time founder, impact investor and creator of the Force for Good system.

Thank you for joining us today as we illuminate the pack to unlocking opportunities and prosperity for women led enterprises by amplifying the voice and wisdom of women.

So today we have a founder forging fire starter.

With us we have Nomiki Petrola, a visionary product leader and tech founder transforming how women build and sell scale tech companies.

With 15 years of experience across healthcare, fintech, AI and enterprise SaaS, she has led product and strategy in some of the toughest sectors and broken countless barriers doing so as the founder of PDS Lab.

And now Theana.

Nomakee is creating unprecedented infrastructure for women tech founders guiding them from 0 to 1 million with clarity, connection and data driven insight.

Her platform, Diana is the first of its kind, a social network and data tool built specifically to close the gender gap in tech by matching women to the right support at the right time.

A mother of four textors, mentor and Harvard speaker, Nomake brings the rare combination of technical expertise, lived experience and radical clarity needed to help more women lead companies of substance and scale.

Welcome.

Noviki.

Hi.

Thank you so much for having me.

Coco.

I'm glad to be here.

We are so happy to have you.

I'm excited to share everything that you have going on with Iyanna.

So what is one book written by a woman that has significantly influenced your life?

My favorite book of all time written by a woman is Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck.

I believe that anything you do in life has to start with your mind first.

It has changed how I think and operate day to day for years.

It's my favorite book.

It's so wonderful.

What's one pearl that you sort of take away with you and inspires you to lead in a daily way?

Honestly, it's seeing all the women that I work with and the challenges that they overcome daily.

I'm inspired constantly.

There's never a day that I'm not inspired just by what people are doing out there to keep me driving forward to build the best platform for them.

Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck.

We haven't had that one on the show yet, so this is great to have this inserted into our conversations and for everybody to pick up a copy.

It's an excellent foundational book that anyone should be reading.

Regardless if you're an entrepreneurship or not.

It's something that we teach our kids to have a growth mindset.

My parents taught me.

It's.

It's changed my perspective on life and highly recommend for anyone.

I highly recommend you too.

It's a great read.

So one of the things I like to start with ever we have guests on the show is to invite you to look back over your life and think about the moments that shaped you, the moments that evaded the person that you are, what's important to you, what drives you and.

And why you do what you do today.

And so they could be moments of being overcome or overwhelmed.

Moments when you step forward and did something big or said yes to an opportunity, overcame a challenge.

So what are three big shaping moments of your life?

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that have impacted me is that I am one girl of four brothers.

My mom is an entrepreneur.

She has five kids and she's an entrepreneur for 30 years.

She just sold her company.

Being led by a woman back in the 80s and 90s.

Starting a company with five children in a Greek household is very uncommon.

She basically taught me the norm of being able to fight for what I wanted for equality.

Because when you have four brothers, the balance or it's very unbalanced on what the opportunities are.

But that general childhood of being pushed, having a close family unit and constantly seeing like what I wanted to change double standards that were maybe unintentional.

My dad's a great supporter.

But just generally there's double standards when you have four boys and a girl.

Being being able to call them out and then being respected for calling them out and trying to take change, essentially, that is definitely one of the biggest things growing up that changed how I operate as a human.

Another moment, I think the one that brings the most clarity to me is a couple years ago when we had a family event.

Our youngest was on a ventilator.

My husband and I was a head of product at an AI company at the time.

And I loved my work, but I definitely was hitting a growth tipping point where it was time for me to become an entrepreneur full time myself.

I'm calling the shots, making decisions, testing things out, taking risks, et cetera.

I didn't want to do it or I wanted to do it, but I didn't have the gumption to do it yet until my daughter was sick.

That moment brings a lot of clarity in how I now drive forward.

I quit my job the day I came home from the hospital and I've never looked back.

So I'm grateful for that traumatic event.

She's healthy now.

But that changed my perspective on life and same with my husband as well.

So that's the second moment.

There was a third moment too, also childhood.

I got into a fist fight with a child.

We were kids.

Yeah, it was actually.

It's a core memory of mine.

I got punched in the face and I came home.

I didn't fight back.

I just said, you know, I went inside, I held it in.

I remember probably seven or eight.

I mean, we're in the kitchen.

The kitchen had purple carpet.

This is a core memory, Coco.

Yeah, totally.

And my mom, she, in that moment, she always taught us like, you don't, don't hit, you respect others, you walk away, do all these things.

But in that moment, she was like, you fight back if someone disrespects you to that point, you fight back and reclaim your ownership and move forward.

And that's a moment that I haven't talked about ever.

I don't think in public, but it's a core memory.

I remember my mom sitting like slowing down to me, so we were eye level and her telling with conviction that it's okay to stand up for yourself and you don't always have to just sit back.

I'm very audacious in my language and now, but I was not always like that.

That's definitely a core memory that shaped a lot of how I react now and take care of myself.

Well, and what an amazing mentor your mother is.

Oh, she's next level.

I'm lucky.

I'm very lucky.

Really amazing.

And I'm curious, you've you daughter of five kids, one girl and four brothers.

Then you went through this experience where you had a family event where your daughter was very sick on a ventilator.

And I know from personal experience having a medically fragile that that's life changing.

And then this fist fight.

So what did you, what do you feel like?

You, what do you.

What who are you today because of those experiences, what do you feel like those experiences brought out in you a.

Relentless pursuit of just making a difference and standing up for, you know what's right.

All speaking up and doing my best to be a leader, to show others that you can stand up for yourself as well and that you can do whatever you want to do in life.

I have three girls, so I have four kids, but three of them are girls.

And I always tell My husband.

No matter what, my girls are going to know that they can do anything they want in life.

Those things taught me how to show them that they're capable of anything.

My daughter, my oldest, is eight and she'll ask me about business every night.

We switch rooms and say good night.

We get her one on one time with all the kids, and when we lay there, she's like, tell me about the founders you worked with.

I'm like, you're eight, meet and you love hearing about these things.

I'm going to teach you how to build a product.

And lovable.

I'm like, I'm going to teach you how to code.

She's so interested.

And that is affirmation that I'm doing the right thing, I'm on the right path.

Like, they can do anything.

They're interested in business.

They're interested in doing things that they love and that they know they can do it.

No one's telling them they can't.

And I think that's the biggest thing that's taught me how to be a better mom and show people you can do it, whatever the f you want to do.

I love that, you know, and I have a, I have a deep conviction that building business is creative.

Like, it's a.

It's so like building art in many ways.

It's a science and an art and it requires all kinds of super skills and it's punishing.

Oh, my God.

Exactly.

And, and so, you know, I have a, I have two daughters as well.

The gift I feel like, of being a mom and being an entrepreneur is that they get to see us out there taking big risks, creating things out of nothing.

And at the same time, anybody can start a business.

They can create code or build a product and sell it in some form or fashion.

And that's really.

I don't know, I just think it's powerful.

We're so lucky to be on this space where anyone can do anything because the technology is caught up.

Use the tools to your advantage and be okay with trying it and not second guessing yourself.

We do a lot of, like, mindset coach with our kids too.

One word they're not allowed to say in this house is can't.

Like they get told you can't say that word.

Reframe it right now of, okay, I'll learn how to do it and then I can.

Or training them early and young that possibilities are available to them.

They just have to believe in them.

Right, Exactly.

Reframing that idea.

Right.

It's, it's right now I don't know how, but I can learn and I can get somebody to help me or whatever.

Right.

It's very few things that we can't.

Right.

Like, you know, live without breathing.

People ask, like, are you going to be the technical founder?

Are you going to learn how to code that?

Like, no, I can, but I don't want to.

I'm going to do that so I can do these things instead.

But I'm sure in a weekend I can learn how to write some scripts.

But no, thanks.

Right.

It's not my highest and best.

Right.

There's.

Yeah, right.

Okay, so you've seen inside of powerful tech and you've built your own from ground up.

What truth about tech leadership did you have to unlearn in order to build something that really works for women?

That's a really good question.

For the majority of my career, the founders that I worked with, except for one who was a co founder, so not a solo woman, were all men.

They were wonderful.

They did exceptional things.

They gave me opportunity.

But something that I learned, shifting my focus to primarily working with women, was how they approach taking action.

And again, this comes down to mindset.

We know the odds are against us.

We know that we only get 2% of funding.

We know that 9 out of 10 businesses fail.

We know that the odds are against us.

So what I saw when I worked with those men is that they never second guessed anything.

They just kind of effed around and found out.

I try to instill that in the women that I work with because I want.

It's not an unlearning, I guess it's more of a how do I take this mentality and also teach other people to teach women to take this mental attitude of I can do whatever I want, like, no one's going to tell me not to, but with precision, right?

Like, women are very good at seeing a lot of data, a lot of perspective and in many angles and making a decision.

And I want to capture that ability, that superpower with the risk, excitement and bias to action and not overthink their decision making and do it faster.

Because I believe if they're able to do that, they'll reach their goals a lot faster rather than sitting in analysis paralysis and kind of marrying the two.

So I don't know if that's an unlearning, but kind of combining the two, that's something that I really work hard on.

I'm trying to tell women, you're badass at this.

You have these skills that you don't even know because they're second nature to you.

But I see them.

Let's put these other things on top of it now and see what you can do.

Let's put you in overdrive.

And the ones that take hold onto that, they do exceptional things.

It's really fun to witness.

So tell us, let's explain to our listeners what the is and why you created this particular platform.

Okay, for context, after I worked with all these men, as the first employee, I did product development, product design strategy.

I also dabbled in like quality assurance and testing and data analytics.

All these different things that, you know, entrepreneurs kind of do in a five or less team members in a company.

I did all the things.

What I found out when we went through that traumatic life event is that when women were starting to hire me or wanting to hire me to work on their product, they couldn't afford it.

And I didn't understand why.

I was in a bubble because I worked for all those men that had opportunity, had funds, had previously sold companies.

And when I jumped drastically to the other side, I saw, oh my God, that access is not the same.

How do I teach them how to do this?

So prior to Sayana, I built an accelerator.

The accelerator basically said, I'm going to productize myself.

Instead of paying me my rate, I'm going to teach you how to do it for a nominal fee and you're going to be empowered from it.

Then you own all the product knowledge.

I don't have to own it and educate you.

You're in it because that's the best way to learn, is by doing so.

I'm going to teach everyone how to do the things that I've been doing for years.

That went exceptionally well.

But when they started, it was because it went well.

I started to see systemic issues inside of the accelerator and more things started to come to light on pattern recognition, how they took action, what triggers made them want to keep going or stop.

Maybe it was mental, maybe it was in business, maybe it was past experiences, maybe it was home.

I was like, oh my God, I need to build this platform that takes all these learnings, puts the accelerator into a platform and puts them on overdrive with accountability and collaboration and community.

Women thrive in community, right?

We do so well when we're uplifting others.

We have a very give first mentality.

So how do we do that?

By creating this like circular motion of I'm going to give and I'm also going to take action.

I'm going to get from my business, like my business is going to reap the rewards.

And then I keep repeating this cycle in Dayana.

It's really doing that at scale.

The goal is to reach every woman at the idea stage and give them a personalized roadmap for their tech company so they can get to a million in annual recurring revenue with the thesis that if they have community and action to build momentum, they'll open more doors.

So if they want to go get funding, guess what?

You have the traction.

You just proved it.

You validated the business.

Now you have all these resources in front of you.

You have all this collaboration, you have all this networking.

You're going to be on hyperdrive and would be stupid not to fund you.

Right.

If you choose to be funded, of course.

So that's really what I'm trying to do in Dayana.

I think it's so cool.

What resonates for me is that anybody can read a book or take a class on how to build a business, but what separates the girls from the women are the ones that take action.

Yep.

They keep going, that keep trying.

They keep, you know, take making bets, making small bets, and keep moving forward.

That's what really creates the difference.

Right?

Not the analysis.

Not getting held back by the thousands of hurdles that present themselves as you're trying to build a company.

It's just like going to the gym, right?

Like, I want, by summer, I want to have a bikini body.

Okay.

Well, in order to do that six months in advance, you have to make a plan that you go to the gym five days a week and you focus on arms, legs, core endurance, etc.

So that you feel good by the end of that goal.

Right.

It's the exact same thing.

You're building a muscle physically in your business to get to the stage of what you want to do.

And you have to wait to see progress.

Like at the gym, you don't see progress.

The first four weeks.

The first four weeks, you start to feel better.

Eight weeks, people start to notice that you started to change, your body started to change.

12 weeks, you start to see the change.

Right.

So it's the same exact mentality in business over time.

You just have to keep going to start to see the progression.

Right.

And reap the rewards.

Well, you know the other thing, and I'm wondering if you can share how this might happen within the ANA and within the community and the structure that you offer.

As a founder, you don't have a full infrastructure, policies, procedures, tech, everything, like you're building everything.

And that can be fun and exciting, but if you can sort of Spin your wheels.

Yep.

Not, you know, not getting anything done.

Trying to make progress can feel hard because you're scattered and so many hats.

How do you help founders focus and do what they need to do?

Yeah, maybe talk too about.

I know you're very data oriented.

So how does data play into what you do with Fiana?

Data is really critical.

What we're building right now and it's launching like in the next 30, 45 days is milestone coaching.

So if anyone here run, you might be familiar with the Strava app or Apple Fitness, where you can see your progression and then you have challenges with maybe your husband or your partner or friend that you can see their rings close.

We're taking that progression mind into Dayana so that you get personalized goals based on where you are in your business.

It's broken out by four stages.

Idea, launch, grow and scale, which is revenue oriented because at the end of the day, we're not building hobbies, we're building revenue generating businesses.

And in those four stages, you're going to get a personalized roadmap of all the things that you need to be accomplishing and coach on one at a specific time.

So focus is actually a very critical factor in making sure that people actually move the needle in their business.

And the way that we're doing it is you can track all your milestones, save.

I'll just tell you exactly.

There's three top of minds that you're allowed to have, right?

There's always, at any given time, three things that you know are the most important, whether that's in a quarter or a monthly timeframe.

Then you always have the back burners.

Right?

Like there's always things that you should be thinking about, but they're not top priority.

Maybe that gets your extra attention later when you're tired and you need a break, you can add any back burner item that you want.

The milestone coach is going to take the one that you need to be focusing on right now.

And every day you're going to track how you did against that milestone.

For example, perhaps you're in validation and you need to do customer interviews.

You have to do a check in every day that check in is going to prompt our AI and the AI is going to give you suggestions, tasks, challenges.

Then you can track those in reports.

At the end of the milestone, you'll know how many days it took, how many days were you on a streak?

How many did you miss?

What were your achievements, what were your blockers, what were your wins?

So precision and focus is really important.

I'm doing that by giving them the guidelines of okay, here's the feedback.

The one on one, we know about your business, it's going to be catered to you.

Then on top of that you have the community where you're like, I need help.

This is what I sucked at.

Give me support, get other people's ideas, we meet every week.

Then you get that additional collaboration and accountability on top of your self propelling.

Right?

So that's literally what we're building right now.

I love it.

It's so great because I think we respond so well to having both a long term vision of where we're going, but then having immediate, like this is what I need to do today and, and how I can really move things forward.

And then if you do that subsequently over, you know, days and weeks and.

Months, you see progress, you see real.

And one of the things that I'm adding to the dashboard is your monthly revenue tracker and your growth tracker so that you can see exactly how it's impacting your numbers over time.

Maybe you tracked 10 out of 30 days for your challenge and you only like customers.

We're going to say try to track 10 more days and see if the numbers correlate.

It's all data, so show that data in a way that incentivizes them to keep going and doing more and pushing and making sure that they're moving the needle in the right way.

Amazing.

This is, I feel like this is so necessary and so needed.

Is your are most or all?

What's your breakdown of founder in your ecosystem system that are tech?

Are they all tech?

I specifically cater to women tech founders.

There's 27 industries and four stages of business.

78% of our founders are in the idea stage or building.

When I say idea, I mean there's a difference between I have an idea versus I'm building that idea.

We're the builders.

Like we're people that get shit done.

78% of them are building, prepping to launch MVPs.

We've already had several launch MVPs in our short amount of time being live.

So how I just totally going into this because I'm very curious.

So, so how much of the support and structure do you provide helps a founder figure out what their product is and then, you know, actually find which tools to use and how much of it is that kind of.

So we have a knowledge base that is catered around specific topics in those four stages as well.

So I recommend templates, tools that we like to use that are best.

These are things that I've used over my tenure.

Eventually we'll make this AI driven, so in the milestone traction and all those things will pull in.

By the way, we recommend these two books based on where you're at.

You should read these during your milestone or these are a couple tools that you should use.

The pros and cons of them make a decision for your tech stack.

So I'll be pulling the knowledge base, which is segregated right now, into the coaching so that you get really detailed.

This is what I should do.

A roadmap of every milestone and the journey from a long form.

Great.

What's.

What are the I know this is totally in the weeds but like what are some of your favorite building tools in the tech stack that you guide?

Those early stage idea founders and launch founders, what are you kind of guiding them towards?

So do you mean building your mvp?

Yeah, first at the idea stage of building your MVP and then I would love to know what you're using to help them launch test and what you're helping them to grow.

Oh sure, sure, sure.

So for ideas stage founder, I always tell them to try to build something on there.

Learn the tech jargon.

It doesn't mean you're going to be on there forever by any means, but there's enough tools out there right now.

We just partnered with Lovable and did a five day hackathon literally last week where 50 founders came in, built an MVP and today submitted it and won cash prizes.

For me and Lovables combined, it's not something that's scalable, but as a non technical person, specifically you should learn how these tools work so that when you bring on a technical hire or CTO or co founder that's technical, you can have an educated conversation on what a database is, how to what is an integration, what's an API?

You need to learn these things.

I always guide people go to replit cursor level, play with it, learn the terms, go through the documentation, etc.

It's incredibly powerful in terms of going after that.

My favorite tool right now is Customer IO.

It's my email marketing and transactional marketing campaign builder.

They are very data centric.

It's not for every everyone because you need to have an engineer that integrates all your data into the platform.

But I love them I tell everyone about them.

They're one of my favorite tools.

It makes it so easy to see every user.

I use it as a gut check when people apply and get in what, what's happening.

But in addition it makes me hyper segment things that I need to be communicating to groups of people and they do an excellent job at all the workflows.

Awesome.

And then later, what are you seeing?

So that's good for growing as well.

Is there any other tech that you find yourself really like, techie stuff?

You're.

Let's say I've done my idea stage, I've got my mvp, I'm growing and now I'm starting to incorporate more AI.

Or you, you're building your platform.

Like what are some of the things, how do you go about doing some of that work?

Right now there you have a difference.

For generative AI to use different tools like anthropic or OpenAI, they're super easy to integrate.

Like there's different models, you have to understand the cost analysis, do breakdowns, you have to understand how to prompt, you have to know what data to use inside of your platform.

The basics are you can easily put something in there that lacks context in a few hours.

Like it's super easy.

We're using, we're using OpenAI's models right now for this first section.

We're pulling in profile data from every account in addition to their milestones and what they're tracking so we can give them contextual data.

We're building a knowledge hub too.

So if you want to put your brand stuff, you want to put your voice, put it all there.

So anytime we give you a prompt, we're pulling this knowledge and giving it back to you intelligently.

Right?

So anytime it learn, it's going to continue to learn the more data that you give it.

I'm using OpenAI right now.

Eventually, when hopefully we scale, you know, tens of millions, hundreds of millions and we are doing, we're serving every woman that has a tech idea.

So we'll be building our own model.

We can be more intelligent.

In order to do that, you need data.

So it's a nice easy way to bring in other open source models that can help you because they have all the data.

When you're using your own, you need tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of data points for it to actually be intelligent.

I don't recommend doing that early on, but hopefully we get to that stage.

That's the goal.

And then we have a true data moat.

A true data moat is what keeps you from having any real competition.

Know that this is a big part of for you having women be involved.

The tech ecosystem is important to you economically, socially, even spiritually.

Can you say more about the role and important value of women in tech?

Yeah, the data is all out there.

63% of women outperform their male counterparts in leadership positions.

Women also return 35% return on investment to male led startups.

The data's there.

It's actually saying to me that we're not being invested in more.

But that's because generationally who's currently in the seats has not shifted yet.

What I'm going to anticipate happening in the next 10, 20 years is that does start to shift.

What I would like to start to see is that once we start, well, listen, we have to play the game, okay.

And the game is if we know we're not getting funded, let's prove that we should be funded.

Let's get people in our inbound saying we want to fund you.

The best way to do that is building better businesses.

Right.

Instead of saying we have an idea, will you fund us?

They're going to fund the male counterpart first.

They're going to felt they, they look like the investor.

The investors are 91% of them are men.

So they're going to invest in what looks like them.

Bias in what happens.

So instead of saying I want money because I have an idea it's better than his, let's actually prove it.

Give the numbers and show the traction.

Show what we've been able to accomplish.

That's really where I want to say can we shift the needle for women tech founders by proving everything that we're doing, giving them the groundwork so that when we go against someone that has an idea, we win.

Right.

So I'm, I'm hopeful that in the next 10 or 20 years, the generation starts to shift.

Who used to be investors are no longer in the seats.

We have newcomers, more women led investment funds are coming into play every day.

Every day.

Yeah.

So let's work.

We just gotta keep playing the game and try to beat them at it.

Right.

Because of access.

And while it's getting better, especially for pre seed and seed, as you go lock the chain of series abc, the number of investors that are really women focused starts to shrivel.

How do you think about that in terms of helping women in your ecosystem grow and what would be different that you would be supporting women given the later stages are harder to get money?

If I'm honest, I'm a bootstrapper myself.

Well, I think the funding game is definitely something we should be fixing.

Fixing.

99% of businesses are not venture backed.

So I think education on what is a venture backed business.

Is that the route that I want to go down?

Do I want to keep more of my equity so that when I exit I, I get bigger paycheck versus me playing the game and trying to do tech bro stuff, Make a decision for yourself what's best.

And it's okay if you choose to bootstrap.

Women are better bootstrappers.

There's data around that we know how to use our money to our advantage and play the game that way.

I'm more on the mindset of why don't you just build a badass business where you rake in millions yourself and then if you wanted to go down the funding game, you wanted to do that, by all means play the game, but you don't have to do so well that you have optionality.

That's kind of where I sit with that whole game and my vision of it.

I totally agree with you.

Don't let the funding hurdles take away your power.

Right.

Like you, you can figure out.

I, I, I am a big believer that whatever resources you have, you always have what you need to take the next step.

Some of, part of why I asked you about some of these tech tools is because these are tools especially early on, that if you get your hands in there and figure this out, you can keep figuring things out and at some point you'll have enough traction to afford either through funding or through your own generate.

You can take a loan, VA will step in, you can, there's different options once you get some traction that might not be available.

And so I think that's really, I think it's really great what you're helping women to do.

So it's not like, well, I have this idea but I can't do it because I don't have money.

Exactly.

And I think too this, we women are about the, the whole wealth thing going on right now.

Like the transfer of wealth is happening, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

I think we're in a very interesting stage of like what's happening in the ecosystem generally, not just in tech.

Where money's going, who's spending it, who's going to have the power.

I do believe a shift is going to happen.

I genuinely do.

And I also believe that women want to see more women succeed.

And because of that the transfer is going to happen from the boomers and the boomers coming down think it's going to trickle down it's going to take time, but I do believe it's going to happen.

There's more systems in place that we're aware of it now, we're hyper aware and we just need to keep building badass businesses like it's going to happen.

What do you see that's unique or different about the types of businesses, the ideas that are coming about with the women that are in your ecosystem?

You know a big thing that I noticed when I worked with men is that they're more revenue or money focused.

Only they cared about exits and an exit plan that was pretty status quo.

When I started to work with women only, I noticed a huge difference.

Where they wanted to make the world a better place, they wanted to have impact for other people and in their own personal lives and they wanted to solve real problems.

They didn't just be like I had 50 grand, I was going to go, you know, code figure out if I can make this work and send some ads to it.

The mentality of what they want to put into the world is very different and they put a lot of nurture and care into how they solve problems.

I'm not saying that every man is like that, but just using the, the last 15 years of my experience and if I were to just black and white to separate what the differences were, that is the biggest one that I noticed.

I completely agree with that.

When I first started creating a force for good, I didn't know that it was going to be specifically for women, but it was always intended to be purpose led, visionary entrepreneurs and, and then you know, like I didn't even.

I don't have to say purpose led anymore.

All I have to do is say women and it's, it is always purpose led.

Well, I shouldn't say always, but generally.

99 of the time it is right.

When women are successful, what they do with their success is so different.

Right.

You want to give back.

They want to give back in all the ways.

They want to make sure everybody's taken care of.

They're their families of course, but then their communities in the world long term.

That's what my husband, I always say like if this ever I don't have an exit plan.

I love my work so if I can work on this till the end of time, I will.

We always say what are our goals?

Have a good life, travel with our kids, take care of my parents, be able to pay off their, his parents debt, medical bill.

Just be able to make sure that everyone is healthy, happy, they can live their lives and experience life Right.

That's what we care.

That's the goal.

We're only here for so long.

We're not trying to become robots.

Like what can we do?

Just enjoy what we have?

You don't.

And the thing is, you don't need billions to do it.

You can build a very beautiful business that supports and serves your family.

You can always have optionality.

It's good to build a business that could be sold if you decide you want.

You know, it doesn't have to be billions at all.

It doesn't have to be hundreds of millions.

It can be whatever works for you.

You get that choice to make.

I'm curious to know what are the, the fears that you see that women experience experience and what are the superpowers that women entrepreneurs really, you see, you know, come out in the journey.

So things that are uniquely women fears and superpowers fears.

Imposter syndrome is pretty common based on years of being in male dominated spaces and their voice not being heard or maybe second guessing if what they think is right.

Even if it's like matter of fact.

Like you don't have to sound and use big words to be smart.

And I think when you're constantly in those spaces for so long, you get out of them, you're.

You second guess them.

That is definitely something I see is being afraid to just take the leap and not give a flying F U C K I literally hosted a webinar on this yesterday about building in public.

You have to not care.

I showed them posts of the names that people called me on TikTok and I'm like, you think I care?

I'm like, thank you for that feedback you just gave me, man.

Thank you.

I don't care.

Call me names, I don't give a shit.

And you have to get over that.

Like you have to be so mentally strong that that does not bother you.

So that's the one that I am constantly talking about is trying to get you over that fear.

Just keep going.

And I see it like when I see the founders all over link, they're doing it because this is their superpower.

When they do it, people come along, they are very good storytellers.

They understand how to connect with people really well and they know how to take that feedback and the audience that like connecting with them into building.

They're empaths.

They want to solve really good problems.

They're not afraid to get that feedback.

And I think that's one of their superpowers which is going to help them make better products.

Where is this all going, what is your dream?

What are you creating?

What is your vision that you are building with Diana?

You know the vision is static, right?

It's always, how do I put more power in women's hands?

And building software companies particularly love software.

So that's the angle.

But bigger than that, where I see this going too is how do I do this for cpg?

How do I do this for service based businesses?

Because ultimately, if I create the formula, the community plus action equals momentum.

If I create that and I prove it, I can expand to any industry.

For any woman that wants to build a strong business and help literally change the whole ecosystem, that's really what I want to accomplish.

I just happen to be testing it with women tech founders right now to prove I can do it.

So fun.

What about you personally?

What's important to you?

What do you want in your life a decade from now?

Well, I'm very fortunate to have four healthy kids and a husband that, you know, after how many years we've known each other since we were 12 and we saw, oh, really like each other.

That's wonderful.

Lucky.

I want to show my kids the world.

I want them to experience life.

I want to spend more time unplugging, being intentional.

You know, I can't unplug that much right now.

I'm building from scratch.

But in 10 years, I hope to be in a place where I, I can serve my family, where they reap the rewards tenfold and we can experience life and just be happy.

We're not big spenders.

Like, we're not, you know, we don't do the lavish lifestyle.

So for us, what that means is can we go to a cabin for a week and just spend time with our kid, laugh and play board games and things like that?

Of course we want to go to Europe and we go to Australia.

If we're lucky enough, we can do all those things.

But it's really just getting time.

You know, our lives are short.

They.

And like, even now my kids are little, two, four, six and eight, and I'm like, how is my youngest?

Two and a half.

Like, time is something we'll never get back.

So we value time that hopefully I get more time.

Wonderful.

And so if you could whisper one piece of truth into the ear of every woman founder, navigating doubt at the edge of a big leap, what would you say?

You can do anything you want to do.

Pardon my French.

It's literally, if you believe in yourself, then people will believe in you.

It's magnetic.

So just talk to yourself.

I do soft talk.

Just tell yourself I can do whatever I want.

Yeah, guess what?

You can and you will.

And so how can listeners be a part of your community?

Well, if you're building software, you want to build software.

This is the perfect place to join the best community.

These women are go getters and they're building really cool stuff and they love to collaborate.

We bring in experts, all the things but really the community is gold standard.

So you can come join.

I'd love to support you.

I'm there for you.

So how does it work?

You go to Theana IO and you click on Interested.

There's a join membership process and it's actually an application.

The application is making sure that the right people are coming in.

We don't want investors or advisors or service providers in there.

We don't want people selling to you.

We want the right curating, the right people.

So you apply.

If you are a founder, then you'll get into the platform, you can subscribe.

It's $99 a month or 990 for the year for all the toolings.

Like it's one static price for everything.

And then immediately you get thrust into me being like, hey, welcome by the way, we have three events this week that happened twice this morning from our two new members.

I'm like, are you coming to these?

I'd love to see you.

I currently right now meet every founder so there's a one on one with me because I want to make sure that I can build the support system for, for you.

So yeah, it's very personal right now and I'd love to support you.

Come on in, let's build this.

All right.

It makes me want to go build SaaS product right now.

Going at it again.

You never know.

I sort of dabble.

I keep saying the force for good in a format of a product.

You know where to go then Coco?

Yeah, I'll go, I'll figure out how to use.

What did you say lovable?

Yes, I can learn how to use lovable and go hack away, right?

Well, our listeners should also know that Coco is coming to join us in two weeks because Coco is a badass and she's going to come educate the founders too because her experience is we get experts like Coco coming in to educate and bring you access.

So welcome to Dayana.

Coco.

Hey, I can't wait.

It's going to be so fun and I've just had such a blast talking with you today.

No Mickey, it really is a pleasure and you are just a beautiful soul.

I love your energy.

I love what you're bringing to the world and I love how fierce and data centric you are.

It's just so amazing.

And for founders listening, this is the truth.

Whenever I meet somebody who is a gifted communicator that can also get into the guts of data, especially where it comes to building traction and looking at data and then following it.

This is not a strength of mine, but I'm always looking for people who can do this and who can teach others how to do this because this is what shapes companies being able to quickly scale.

It's the most efficient way to scale.

It's challenging, but it's efficient.

And you'll get there.

It'll get there.

You know, especially everyone to track everything because you get the aha moment faster than if you didn't track.

A great example of this is if you were doing customer interviews.

Make sure that they do AI transcripts for everyone and then we literally synthesize every single one so you get data within 3 to 5.

If you don't do that, guess what?

You pick out things that you remember but not necessarily were important and you don't see the pattern in all the data.

So I start people on day one, track everything.

Yes.

Oh, everybody go and check out this incredible product, this great platform theana.IO you'll see in the show notes you'll be able to find out.

Be sure to let Mickey know that you came from a force for good and the wisdom of women show.

Thank you for being here today.

Thank you for illuminating your knowledge and brilliance to our community.

We value your experience and wisdom and to you, our world changing listener.

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Let's go make the world a better place.

Cheers.