Navigating the Founder’s Journey

Yesterday, I attended the Women Founders' Forum 2025, a gathering of female entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders hosted by Google. It was an opportunity to step into candid conversations about the realities of starting, scaling, and sustaining companies. The range of perspectives—founders navigating their first year, leaders driving growth, and seasoned executives sharing hard-won lessons—made for a compelling and insightful event.

What stood out most was the honesty. There was no sugarcoating the challenges of fundraising, hiring, or staying ahead in an evolving AI landscape. The discussions cut through the usual startup optimism and addressed the real work behind building a company. Here are a few key takeaways:

The Founder Mindset: Building Beyond the Fundraise

One key discussion point was the idea that investor relationships should be approached like customer relationships—taking time to build and focusing on long-term value rather than just securing immediate funding. A strong theme throughout the event was treating fundraising as a tool, not the goal. Helen Altshuler, CEO of EngFlow, emphasized that founders should focus on long-term investor relationships rather than short-term fundraising wins. Investors want to see real traction, not just a compelling story.

Side note: I met Helen in ‘22 through FounderCulture, a founder community I was running, so it was really meaningful to finally meet her in person. 

The broader lesson? Sustainable businesses aren’t built on funding rounds alone. The founders who stood out weren’t just focused on raising money—they were thinking about product-market fit, customer trust, and long-term differentiation.

Technical vs. Business Founders: Learning to Speak the Same Language

A recurring theme was the challenge of bridging the gap between technical and business leadership. Founders coming from engineering backgrounds talked about the difficulty of learning go-to-market strategy. Business-driven founders spoke about struggling to grasp the intricacies of AI infrastructure and product development.

Nayul Kim, CEO of CLIKA, shared her experience of starting a deep-tech company with her husband as her CTO. The first year was filled with constant miscommunication—she wanted direct answers, while he wanted to walk through every technical step. Over time, they learned to separate "co-founder mode" from "partner mode." Her takeaway? Communication is the single most important skill for founders—whether it’s with co-founders, investors, or customers.

Adapting AI Messaging to a Shifting Market

The accessibility of AI tools has changed the startup game. It’s easier than ever to build an MVP, but competition has never been fiercer. Paroma Varma, co-founder and Head of Research at Snorkel AI, spoke about how her company navigated the shifting AI hype cycles. When generative AI exploded, some in the industry dismissed the need for data-centric AI solutions, assuming models like ChatGPT would handle everything. But as companies tried deploying these models, they quickly realized customization was essential.

Her takeaway? Messaging matters as much as the technology itself. It wasn’t just about having the right product—it was about making sure the market understood why it was necessary. Startups that can adapt their positioning as the industry evolves will have a significant edge.

How AI Is Accelerating Our Builds

Eylul Kayin, a VC at Gradient, shared how she’s seeing AI speed up time-to-product. “The speed by which people are able to build right now, to create software that has some form of automation that's useful to someone is crazy,” she said.

She quoted Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan’s tweet:

“While it’s become harder to fundraise, it also become cheaper to build things,” Kayin continued. “So I find myself in a lucky position of doing early-stage, small-check investing because I think that's the best way to do this job right now.”

The Emotional Toll of Founding and How Leaders Stay Grounded

The emotional toll of founding a company is significant, and the discussion highlighted how leaders stay balanced. Some prioritize walks and personal hobbies, while others lean on deep relationships with family and friends.

One of the biggest insights? Redefining success. Many founders talked about moving away from chasing external validation—whether from investors, press, or social media—and focusing instead on building something meaningful. The founders who had weathered the most challenges seemed to have one thing in common: they were anchored in purpose, not only outcomes.

Staying in the Game: What Sets Founders Apart

The Women Founders' Forum reinforced that there’s no perfect roadmap for startups. Some scale quickly, others refine their product-market fit over time, and many pivot along the way. But the common thread? The best founders stay connected—to customers, to co-founders, and to the mission that got them started in the first place.

For anyone building something new, these conversations were a reminder that the startup journey is filled with uncertainty—but the breakthroughs make it worth it. It’s about staying in the game long enough to reach them.

How This Connects to My Founding Journey 

As I’ve learned since founding Storytell.ai, creating something from nothing—a brand-new company, product, culture, and crew—is no small feat. You have to get up every day, willing it into existence, insisting the world should care. But the world will only care if you deliver value. That’s been our focus since day one. 

Looking across the global landscape, I have begun to wonder about the overall impact tech is having on our well-being, our connection to others, and society as a whole. A few truisms: 1) we will only have more technology, and 2) like many of you, I’ve felt inspired by magical experiences with tech. But how often does technology honor intentions and attention? Protect our privacy? Help us be better to ourselves and each other? 

In order to build a more humane future, we’re building humane technology into our product. Humane technology is a nascent movement, essentially where Privacy by Design was 5-10 years ago. Learn more about it through my humane tech initiative, or better yet, join us on March 11th as we build in public, with your help.