Most of my work comes down to one thing: helping founders get clear on their edge before they go raise. This month the exercise came back around to me.

The venture fellowship I’m in has you build your secret sauce in one of the first sprints. VC Lab defines it as your credible edge, the pattern in your real wins, audited honestly and compounded over time. You have to be able to articulate it to the people deciding whether to back you, whether that’s an LP choosing your fund or a founder choosing you for more than a check.

This practice carries over into any competitive work. If you can’t articulate your edge, you waste time spinning your wheels, looking for deals and connections in all the wrong places. You can send the emails, post the content, show up everywhere, and still stall, because you were never clear on what you offer that’s uniquely yours.

So I spent time on my fingerprint, what I can do differently, and better than the rest.

My edge has always been relationships. Two decades in PR and communications, most of it with early-stage founders trying to break through the noise. What I actually do well is see who belongs in a room together and reach out with no agenda attached. When someone tells me what they’re building, my first instinct is to think about who would love it. That instinct compounds quietly over a career.

Naming it is the easy part.

When I moved to Barcelona, the meetings came easily. People were curious and friendly, glad to take a coffee. But curiosity opens the door, it doesn’t do the work. You demonstrate your edge in real time, in the introductions you actually make and the support you actually give.

You can tell people you’re a relationships person. You can show them your LinkedIn follower count or resume. They do very little on their own. The proof is in how you show up, the connections to create and genuine support you give.

Where the audit ends the action begins. Once you define your secret sauce you still have to demonstrate it, room by room, to people who are going on what you show them until you give them something better to go on. So before anyone scales outreach, these are the four questions I start with:

• What’s your edge, in one plain sentence?

• What can you claim vs. what can you demonstrate, and are they one and the same?

• Which two or three rooms do the people you want to know actually gather in?

• How will you build proof as you go, so each room starts warmer than the last?

Once I ran the audit on myself, something obvious spontaneously surfaced: where I want to point all of this. By defining my secret sauce, I clarified my thesis — because the two work in tandem.

I’ve spent my career in wellness, broadly defined, and watched the category drift toward what’s expensive and exclusive. I’m drawn to the other end of it, making wellness accessible and affordable. I want to back startups that can meaningfully help more people for less. That’s where real innovation lives.

If you’re about to pour real energy into a raise, or any push where you need people to back you, start by naming your edge and getting honest about what you can prove. Then go demonstrate it, in real time, in front of people who are going on what you show them. It’s the least glamorous work in the process, and it’s the part that makes everything after it matter. It’s most of what I do now at FUTUR Advisory. I help you hone your narrative so you can feel confident in the rooms where you haven’t built a reputation yet.

How did this land, and what are you working on? Reach out, I’d like to hear it.

When we were building Yoga Wake Up, I sat across from investors before I understood what they were looking for.

We had reasons to be confident. The market was enormous, the idea was novel, and the early traction was real: App of the Day, thousands of installs almost immediately, press that came to us without much chasing. We set our sights on venture capital rather than a smaller angel round, and on paper we had the case for it.

Then I got in the room. We were way out of our league. I didn’t fully own our metrics which was (in hindsight) shameful. I understand today that this is priority #1 when you pitch. Our deck was polished but didn’t quantify our success or clearly hold the vision for where the company was headed. When a VC asked the obvious question, what makes you different from Headspace, the early darling of the category, I didn’t have a great answer. I let skeptical, heavy-handed investors tank my confidence meeting after meeting. So I stopped taking meetings.

Looking back, we gave ground far too easily. When people we saw as sophisticated signaled doubt, we absorbed it. A company that quietly shrinks to fit other people’s doubt tends to prove that doubt right. We decided to grind without outside capital and we grinded…to a slowwwww “bootstrapped” — resources-strapped side hustle.

Meanwhile, the category kept moving. The companies that went on to define it did one thing much better than we could. They told a clear, confident story about where they were headed, and they kept raising on it.

While I take responsibility for the struggle to realize our greatness, I will reason that the founders the room trusted by default were often the ones it already recognized: finance-fluent, practiced at framing a company in the exact language investors reward. That fluency is a genuine advantage, and it isn’t evenly distributed. For a while I read it as simply unfair. It is. The more useful conclusion took longer to arrive. That fluency is learnable, and its absence costs good companies their shot. Mine included.

It took most of a decade to name what I’d watched happen. The founders who won had something I hadn’t developed yet: genuine conviction, and the ability to convey it. Investors are trained to recognize the difference. Because if you can’t confidently tell your story, how are they going to believe you can sell it?

What VCs are actually seeking

Venture math runs on the power law. A small number of companies return an entire fund, so investors spend their time seeking outliers - rare business deals that produce outsized returns. The signals they’re trained to look for:

• A blue ocean: an untapped market with little competition

• Giant market size

• Novelty

• No entrenched incumbents

• Network effects, where the product gets more valuable as more people use it

• Winner-take-most dynamics, where the market consolidates around one or two players

• Exponential growth: the ability to capture a big market faster than competitors can respond

• Defensibility: once you win, you’re hard to displace

Every founder chasing venture money works to check these boxes. What took me too long to learn is that checking the boxes isn’t what wins the room.

The missing variable

Put two founders in front of an investor. Both have the blue ocean, the network effects, the credible shot at winner-take-most. One tells the story with real conviction. The other recites the same facts and hedges.

More often than not, the first one raises — because at the earliest stages, the founder is the evidence. Traction is thin, the model is a hypothesis, the market is a bet. What an investor is really weighing is whether you’re the person who can build this, and conviction is part of how they read that. It’s your own confidence in the outcome, and a room can tell the difference between a founder who believes she’ll win and one who hopes she might.

But it can’t be manufactured

To be clear, because I missed this one too — I don’t mean “fake it till you make it.”

Borrowed confidence can get you a second meeting at the earliest stage, when everything is presumed and little is proven. It rarely survives diligence. The moment the story outpaces the economics, when the unit economics don’t hold or the moat isn’t real, the confidence becomes a liability, and experienced investors are trained to find that gap.

So the goal is confidence that has caught up to the substance you already have. Most founders I meet are sitting on a genuinely fundable story without the confidence to tell it like it’s fact.

The Founder Confidence Checklist

Here’s how to get your ducks in a row before your first meetings, so your certainty is earned rather than performed:

1. Can you confidently explain your business in one sentence?

2. Do you know which power-law signals are your strongest? You don’t need all eight but you do need to convey clearly how you win.

3. Have you stress-tested your own economics before an investor does?

4. Can you name your closest competitor without hedging or dismissing them? “We have no competitors” reads as naïve.

5. Do you know your numbers inside out and can you explain how you’re solving for the ones that are problematic?

6. Can you tell the story of why you, why now?

7. Have you said it out loud, to a real person, enough times that it sounds like you? Ninety percent of confidence is preparation.

Clear this list and your pitch will be unstoppable.

How I help founders tell their story — confidently.

I started FUTUR Advisory because I kept meeting founders with genuinely fundable companies who were telling the story as if they were asking permission to exist. I recognized it, because I’d done it.

I spent nearly two decades in PR before I sat on the venture side, and I’ve since been a founder, venture scout and communications director. FUTUR sits at that intersection. I help early-stage founders build the investor narrative before the raise: positioning, founder story, messaging, the pitch, the competitive story, so founders can confidently pitch, raise and respond to difficult questions with tangible evidence to land the meeting with successful results.

The power law is real. So is the founder who checks every box and still can’t make the room believe it. If that’s you, book time with me. Let’s discuss how to get you raise ready!

I chose this path because I find people interesting, and I love seeing what goes into someone’s success. Early in my career, a mentor told me: never dismiss someone for being too small or too inexperienced. You never know where someone’s going to end up. Be curious, not transactional. Treat everyone with respect. Twenty years later, that advice continues to shape how I approach meeting new people.

So I’m excited to share that I’ve been accepted into Cohort 7 of the Venture Institute, VC Lab’s nine-week program for people building careers in venture capital.

Every participant takes the Mensarius Oath — an ethical code for investors covering integrity, fairness, transparency, and respect. That last one hits home: a commitment to treat individuals and opportunities with the attention they deserve. It’s the same principle my mentor handed me two decades ago.

The more time I spend in venture, the more convinced I am that VC and PR are fundamentally the same business: both built on trust, long-term relationships, and betting on people before the rest of the world catches on.

The next nine weeks cover everything from thesis development to deal flow to working with LPs. I’ll be sharing what I learn. And if you’re a founder or investor and want to connect, please do— I want to meet you!

More soon.

Is it okay to say that after all these years, I still haven’t quite landed on life’s purpose?

I know I am not allowed to say it’s to achieve, although achievement gives me purpose… it also creates joy, a sense of accomplishment, and the intrinsic motivation to, well, achieve more! And I do love a good challenge.

But therein lies a conflict.

Do I achieve with the best of my abilities if that means day in and day out aiming for the sky? Who has the time for all that achievement when they also want to cook dinner at home, have an active social life, take long walks, and occasionally get lost on Instagram Stories catching up on friends?

How does one kick ass at work and in family life, personal life, and health — without burning out? And what about the stress that comes with trying to be a 10 in all areas of life and somehow always coming up short?

If my early morning “deep thoughts” resonate with you, then welcome to my Substack.

But first, a quick and important note — it’s more for me than it is for you. I am working out my own thoughts here in real time. For a long time, I hesitated to share publicly. So I’m using this space to allow myself not to be perfect — a place to share ideas as they’re forming, not once they’ve been neatly resolved (which, for me, used to mean never shared). It’s a practice, let me tell you.

I’m also recognizing that through vulnerably sharing, I’m developing my own inner voice. With every post, maybe she’s getting a little louder — and hopefully clearer.

I plan to write weekly, and for now, it’s free. And above all, this is an experiment in thinking more clearly, sharing a bit more openly, and caring a little less about how it lands.

So as I journaled my thoughts in these last days of 2025, I landed on this idea of confidence again.

Confidence to take on your ambitions and not just contemplate them. Confidence to be fully yourself, say what you mean, and mean what you say. How many of us actually have that kind of confidence?

In venture capital, confidence has another name: conviction.

Conviction is why you believe a founder or a company has what it takes — and just as importantly, why and when you don’t. After trying VC on as a Fellow at Alumni Ventures in 2023, getting my MBA, and returning to the work again recently, I’ve realized this isn’t just something I want to do professionally. It’s part of a larger life chapter I’m stepping into: building the confidence necessary to develop conviction.

Making my voice heard. Believing that it matters.

And it does matter. Especially because I’m a founder myself, I understand the responsibility that comes with a “yes,” and with a “no.”

Last week, after submitting diligence on a company that didn’t pass my review, my husband Joaquín said, half-jokingly, “You just shattered some founder’s dreams.” I paused for a moment — and then doubled down.

They simply didn’t give me the confidence or conviction I need to bet on them.

What’s interesting is that the more deals I look at, the more founders I meet, the more bets I make or pass on, the sharper that conviction becomes. And for me personally, that’s the real work: learning to trust my judgment. Building confidence through repetition, responsibility, and honesty.

It’s something that excites me most about this path — not just the career, but the personal growth that comes with it.

It feels like a turning point, not because I suddenly have all the answers, but because I’m willing to stand behind my thinking as it forms.

Confidence first. Conviction follows.

There’s an added layer of growth I expect to come not just from developing conviction, but from sharing it publicly and consistently. As with contributing regularly to this Substack, vulnerability, I’m learning, creates its own kind of confidence. A flywheel that encourages clearer thinking and less self-censorship with each cycle.

If you’ve also spent time contemplating confidence, such as its power in supporting the achievement of one’s goals, I’d be curious to hear — please drop a comment below or shoot me a private note. What actions have you taken in life or at work to develop your confidence and strengthen your conviction, thus, making your voice heard?

Ultimately, if they were to stand alone, my assessment would remain, but referencing them side-by-side offered more insights —some which I felt compelled to share with you!

(Obviously, I won’t name the companies and I won’t share identifying details.)

Here’s what stood out, what piqued my curiosity, and what I’m now paying closer attention to when evaluating companies in this space.

1. The AI-Native Intelligence Play: Strong Wedge, GTM in question

One of the three companies clearly differentiated itself by leaning hard into AI-driven insights, social listening, and a thoughtfully constructed tech stack. Rather than being “yet another creator tool,” it positioned itself as an intelligence layer — closer to how brands understand culture, not just how they execute campaigns.

This matters. The differentiation isn’t AI as a feature, but AI as an intelligence layer. Most incumbents look backward; real-time cultural listening is difficult to retrofit — and even harder to replicate without owning the data pipelines underneath.

That said, strong product vision doesn’t automatically equal readiness to scale.

Two things gave me pause:

• Founder-led distribution as the primary growth engine. Reputation can be a powerful early advantage, but it’s not a substitute for a go-to-market strategy. At some point, you have to answer the uncomfortable question: what happens when the founder isn’t the channel?

• The “$0 CAC” claim. This almost always signals one of two things: either the company is still very early (which is fine), or it hasn’t yet engaged with the hard work of building repeatable acquisition. “Zero CAC” is rarely a durable metric — it’s usually a phase.

None of this negates the wedge. But it does raise questions about sales maturity, organizational readiness, and whether the company is prepared to move from founder-driven traction to institutional growth.

2. The Fair-Pay Marketplace: When Founder-Market Fit Is Undeniable

Another company stood out immediately — and emotionally — because the problem it was solving was clearly lived.

This wasn’t a deck-first business. It was a response to structural unfairness: creators doing meaningful work, enterprises extracting value, and compensation failing to reflect actual impact. The product, the flywheel, and the traction all reinforced the same story.

What impressed me most was the stage mismatch — in a good way. This felt like a Series A company operating on seed terms:

• Real usage

• Clear two-sided dynamics

• Evidence that creators were willing to pay because the value was tangible

These are the investments that feel good to make. They’re mission-driven without being naïve. They solve a real economic imbalance. And they align incentives in a way that’s hard to fake.

The real risk here isn’t product-market fit — it’s buyer behavior at scale.

What I’d need to believe for this company to win is that:

• Premium, authentic visuals actually matter to enterprises

• And that when credibility, trust, or narrative are at stake (journalism, employer branding, DEI, storytelling), buyers will choose quality over free

The concern isn’t creators. It’s whether large organizations will consistently resist the gravitational pull of cheap or royalty-free alternatives.

3. The Big Vision, Thin Proof Company: Where Trust Starts to Fray

The third company had ambition — but ambition alone doesn’t carry diligence.

What was missing wasn’t polish. It was ground truth.

• No clear unit economics

• No bottom-up projections

• Numbers that felt curated to impress rather than structured to inform

To be clear: missing milestones is not a red flag. Early-stage companies miss milestones all the time. What is a red flag is failing to lead with what was learned.

I’m far more comfortable with:

“We didn’t hit X, here’s why, here’s what broke, and here’s what we changed.”

Than with optimistic top-down math that sidesteps feasibility.

At pre-seed and seed, honesty is a form of competence. Without it, it’s difficult to assess whether the company is building software, services, or something in between — and whether it can scale without becoming bespoke and relationship-driven.

The Bigger Takeaway: Signals > Sectors

Taken together, these three companies reinforced a few truths I’m now weighting more heavily:

• Founder-market fit shows up in behavior, not just narrative

• Capital efficiency is about learning velocity, not just burn

• “AI-powered” means nothing without owning the data and pipes

• $0 CAC is not a goal — it’s a starting condition

• Honest misses beat polished projections

• The creator economy is not winner-take-all — but defensibility still matters

The market is massive and fragmented. There’s room for multiple winners. But the companies that endure will be the ones that pair clear wedges with credible execution paths — not just compelling stories.

If there’s one meta-signal I now trust most, it’s this:

The best early-stage companies don’t try to look bigger than they are.
They try to learn faster than everyone else.

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