The Female Founder

People often talk about becoming a tech founder as if it requires becoming a different person. Different mindset. Different pace. Different rules. After building in retail and now building in tech, I see it differently. Some things changed. Many things did not. What changed was the surface area of decisions. Technology amplifies both speed and consequence. The feedback loops are faster. The margins for error are smaller. The visibility is higher, even when clarity is not. What did not change was the core work of being a founder. I still spend most of my time making decisions with incomplete information. I still navigate tension between vision and execution. I still manage energy, relationships, and trust as carefully as I manage strategy. What surprised me most was how transferable experience actually is. Retail taught me how to read customers in real time. How to operate when systems break. How to lead teams through pressure without hiding behind abstraction. Those skills matter just ...

There is a point in a founder’s journey where momentum becomes a liability. You keep moving because that is what founders do. You solve problems. You absorb pressure. You make it work. From the outside, it can look like resilience. From the inside, it can feel like erosion. I reached that point during a period of significant transition. I was navigating the sale of one business while simultaneously laying the groundwork for another. At the same time, I was dealing with increasing strain inside a founding relationship that no longer felt balanced or sustainable. Nothing was exploding. That was part of the problem. When situations are clearly broken, decisions are easier. When they are quietly misaligned, founders tend to normalize the discomfort. You tell yourself it is temporary. That it will settle. That pushing harder is the responsible thing to do. What changed everything for me was finding the right mentor. I did not need motivation or tactics. I needed perspective. I needed someon...

There is a moment many founders reach where the question is no longer what is optimal, but what is survivable. It does not arrive dramatically. There is no single event. Instead, it builds quietly through accumulated stress, unresolved tension, and decisions that feel heavier each time they are deferred. By the time you recognize you are there, you are usually already tired. This was one of those moments for me. From the outside, things looked functional. The business was operating. Progress was being made. But internally, the cost of each decision had increased. Conversations felt charged. Alignment felt fragile. I found myself carrying more context, more responsibility, and more emotional weight than I could easily explain. What made this moment particularly difficult was that the decision ahead did not have a clean, obvious answer. Each option carried real consequences. For the business. For the people involved. For my own sense of identity as a founder. This is where isolation beco...

When founders talk about decision making, intelligence is often the focus. Strategy. Analysis. Pattern recognition. Being the smartest person in the room. Those things matter. But they are not what carry founders through their most difficult moments. What matters more is experience. Not experience in the abstract. Lived experience. The kind that comes from having made irreversible decisions before. From having navigated consequences you could not spreadsheet your way out of. From knowing how uncertainty feels in your body, not just in your head. Early in a company’s life, many decisions feel theoretical. There is still time. Still optionality. Still room to pivot. As a result, founders often lean heavily on intelligence. They reason. They optimize. They debate. Later, the stakes change. Capital is involved. People’s livelihoods are involved. Reputation is involved. And suddenly, the cost of being wrong is not just financial. It is personal. This is where experience becomes decisive. Ex...

When people talk about cofounders, the conversation usually centers on alignment. Shared vision. Complementary skills. Trust. Those things matter. But they are not the whole story. What rarely gets discussed is power. Not the obvious kind. The quiet kind. The kind that shows up in who speaks first, whose opinion carries weight without explanation, and who is expected to adapt when things feel misaligned. In the early days of a company, power can feel invisible. Everyone is moving fast. Decisions are made informally. Roles are fluid. What feels like flexibility at the start can slowly harden into something else. Power shows up in small ways. Who sets the agenda. Who frames problems. Who is seen as decisive versus emotional. Who gets the benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong. These dynamics are rarely intentional. Most cofounders are not trying to dominate or diminish one another. But intent does not erase impact. Over time, repeated patterns shape how safe it feels to speak, to...