This morning I walked into the Women Founders Summit, a half-day event in Tempe built by women founders, for women founders. Forty-five of us in one room, all running businesses under $1M in annual revenue. Not a someday-I'll-raise crowd. Builders, in the early and scrappy stretch.
I'll be honest. When it started, my internal dialogue was going off. Why are you here? You should have gotten your doctorate. Blah, blah, blah.
Then I sat, listened to the speakers, and met the women around me. Something settled. I am here. This is who I am, and who I've been all along.
This post is the first in a series. Over the next several weeks, I'll share what I learned from the summit, from my podcast, and from my own years in marketing.
Natural light, good parking, and a room worth showing up for
Samia Kohler, founder of Event Sphere Solutions, who co-owns the summit with Katarina Lujic, CEO of GTM Lab, opened with a confession. When the organizers went looking for a venue, they had exactly two must-haves: natural light and parking. Not a keynote lineup. Not a swag budget. Light, and a place to put your car. Her company helps Phoenix restaurants and venues book and run events, so she knows what makes people walk in the door.
That sounds small until you've circled a garage for twenty minutes to sit in a windowless ballroom. Details tell people whether you were thinking about them. The hosts at Cognite delivered on both.
Three women from their team, including Director of Build Engineering Elise and Chief of Staff Ashley Bishop, shared how they've grown inside the company, from engineer to director and from intern to senior AI engineer. They also run a women's group there that's built by its members, for its members. That phrase stuck with me all day.
The lineup was stacked. Sharon Rose Ducati opened with grounding and gratitude. Amy Leigh Looper led a TEDx self-trust workshop. Jane Sorenson Herthel gave the building and revenue keynote, and Gina R. Smith ran a growth workshop that asked a question every founder should sit with: can your business handle success?
Big thanks to the sponsors, speakers, and volunteers who made the morning possible, including Cathedral Collective for the free professional headshots.
Five things I can't stop thinking about
Selfishly, I knew it was going to be an awesome summit the minute I saw Lauren Fitzpatrick Shanks arrive. She was the very first guest on my podcast, Women [In]…, and she's an amazing leader. She was joined on the leadership and mindset panel by Nancy A. Shenker and Jade Nangah, with Samia Kohler moderating.
Between the panel and the Q&A, they covered a lot of ground. Here's the short version. Each of these gets its own post in the coming weeks.
1. Women pitch their résumés. Men pitch their ideas.
Start with the number. Startups founded only by women received about 1.1% of US venture capital dollars in 2025, according to PitchBook data. Not 11%. One point one.
The panel explained what that looks like from inside the room. A woman walks into a raise and spends the first 45 minutes proving she belongs there: her degrees, her track record, the hard things she's already done. A man walks in and starts with his idea. One founder, a former aerospace engineer, has opened every pitch for six years with an engineering background that has nothing to do with her product, because it's what gets investors to listen. Another kept getting asked who really built her software. The men pitching beside her never were.
I wish these were one-offs. They aren't. Everyone on that stage agreed this is the norm, and the room nodded right along. That's tragic in its own right.
As a marketer, I'd call it a positioning tax only women pay. Until it's gone, the panel's advice stands: show investors your whole band, not just the lead singer, so the proof is in the room before you have to say it.
2. Go where the money is
Arizona isn't the tech hub the headlines promised, at least not yet. One founder's biggest investors are in New York, California, and Texas. And VCs rarely show up early. Early money is bootstrapping, angels, friends and family, and investor clubs. VCs arrive once your product works and makes money.
That's a mindset shift as much as a money one. Your market was never just the zip code you live in.
3. Write the prenup before the pivot
When should you pivot, and when should you hold on? Set your pass/fail criteria before you run the test, while you still love the idea. One panelist called it a prenup for your A/B test. And most pivots aren't rebuilds. If the product works but the audience doesn't, you're changing who you sell to, not throwing work away.
This is exactly how I want clients to run a campaign. Decide what success looks like before the data shows up, not after.
4. Your loudest critic lives in your head
One founder left a corporate career full of promotions and found the steady stream of nos brutal on her confidence. Her advice: keep betting on yourself, and stop comparing your middle to someone else's highlight reel. Two more ideas from the panel: action doesn't need a feeling attached, and rest is a strategy. One founder stepped back from everything but client work for three weeks. In those three weeks, three new clients signed.
Given where my head was at 9 a.m., I felt this one in my chest.
5. Finding your voice after years of being someone else's
A marketer in the audience asked the question I hear from clients all the time. She'd spent her career as the voice of other companies, and now it was her turn. The panel's answer: start imperfectly. Ask three friends for three words that describe you. Show up in rooms. Pick a rhythm you can sustain. One panelist traced about $1 million in revenue to a monthly newsletter she's sent for 15 years.
The irony isn't lost on me. Telling other people's stories is easy. Telling your own is the hard part. This series is me doing it.
Built by us, for us
The thread through the whole morning was community. Not the networking kind where everyone says life is lovely. The real kind, where you can say things are hard and someone hands you an intro, a lead, or a reminder that you've done hard things before.
My favorite story came at the very end. One founder hosted a virtual game night during the pandemic to test an idea. Her first two clients came out of that room, and so did her pivot from consumer to business. It wasn't her idea. It was the people in the room.
That's the case for showing up, even when your inner voice is asking why you're there.
Next week: why the pitch room still plays by different rules, and what to do about it. If you're building something and want a sharp, honest marketing partner in your corner, The Cheeky Rooster is here for it.