How Mariane Bekker Built a Global Founder Network of 200K Using Community

Founder community building, startup networking, and viral growth systems are changing how companies are built.

Mariane Bekker, founder of Founders Bay, built a 200,000+ founder, investor, and operator network in under two years by rethinking how tech communities actually grow.

In this episode of Peer Effect, she breaks down the exact “community flywheel” behind that growth - combining in-person events, social media distribution, and high-trust networks to create exponential momentum.

We also explore why traditional tech events feel exclusive, how founders can build stronger networks earlier, and why real-world community is becoming a critical advantage in the age of AI, remote work, and digital saturation.

This is a deep dive into:
startup growth, founder ecosystems, network effects, community-led growth, and modern distribution strategies.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hi, I'm James Johnson, founder and CEO coach. Welcome to Peer Effect, the podcast where your peers will tell you what's unlocking their 10 million plus business. My guest today is Marianne Becker, founder of Founders Bay. It's a community of 200,000 founders, executives, and investors built to bring more diversity into tech. And that's in just under two years so far. We're going to talk about the power of community and how to build it. Remember to hit the subscribe button before we get started. And now I'm with the show. So, Marion, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here again.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Yeah, I mean, we've known each other for a while now. It's exciting. I'm really, really keen to see how this is all kicks off for you, this community. But before we before we jump into that, what brought you to the idea of the community?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

So I I was always passionate about promoting more women in tech. So that's been my passion ever since I was really young. And one of the ways that you could do that is through community, right? So that's something that originally inspired me, but now I ran Founders Bay, we're a community of 200,000, and it started by accident. So I had a company, a recruiting company, which we talked about uh previously, and then I wanted to grow that company. I wanted to also like get mentorship on it, and I wanted to meet other founders who could help me out and can bounce ideas off. So then I started going to all these events, but I would find myself always being one of the only women in the room, and it was really, really hard to find out about the VC events. They were very exclusive. So then I'm like, okay, well, what if I start reporting on the events happening so that other women can find it? And what if I meet and I try to gather a community of women founders that could support each other? And that's how my community got built. And throughout the last two years, uh we've grown tremendously up to like 200,000 uh people now, and we just recently expanded to New York, which I'm super excited about.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Amazing. And is is that is that 200,000 women or 200,000 women plus allies?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

So it's no longer, it's not only a women community. So about 50% are women, 50% are men. Um, but a lot of what we do is trying to, you know, empower women to speak on panels, all our events compared to other tech events, 50% of the room is like mostly women. And then we have also a women-only event, but it's really a community for any founder, any VC with a mission of empowering everybody, regardless of gender, regardless of race, regardless of socioeconomic classes, etc.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

And what what do you think it is about this idea that has grabbed attention in the way that it has? Like clearly it kept from nothing to 200,000 in under two years is rapid. Why do you think that is?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

It's because, like compared to other communities, so right now, if you, for example, go to a tech event in San Francisco or a tech event in New York or really any places, you walk in and 95% of the room are all men, like women are not present. Then women are not present in these conversations, but yet we build 35% of all tech companies and we're 50% of all users. So who wants to walk in a room and not see diversity, right? It's not the same energy. So our event, our Founders Bay event, are completely different. You walk in a room and you see the world represented, you see 50% of women there, you see women on stage, so it brings a different kind of energy. So all our events now are always sold out, and similar for LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, we do a lot of social media. So I personally do a lot of social media. I'm very active on social, and eight out of ten of tech influencers are men, so women are not represented. So having this woman voice, one doesn't only attract other women to join our cause, but it also attracts men because they don't want to always walk in and have no women around. So that this really resonated with everybody. Every all the men come to me and they're like, Well, I have daughters, I have mothers, I love the energy at your event. So it's not only a community for women, it's just a community that represents the real world, and I think people are loving it.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

So if if you go back to these rooms where it's kind of like 2% women, despite saying sort of the the much higher participation rates, what do you think is has been driving that traditionally?

SPEAKER_00 4:53

I think it's because in like if you, for example, all the other events, if you look at the event, on the panels, typically there's almost no woman represented, right? So like women do not even see themselves represented in an event, or they go to the event and then they look around the room and they're the only women there, right? And whether you want it or not, if you walk in and they're in a room and you're the only woman there, you will be treated differently, right? And sometimes it's not a pleasant way to be treated, and who wants that? So as a result, it makes it that women do not want to come to those events. But what happens is that in those events, like when you start going to the event and building your network, that's how you get invited to other events, that's how you get your name out there. And traditionally, a lot of those events, especially like Founder VC events, have been very exclusive. People do not know about them, it's just invite only. And if women are not in that network already, right, it kind of propagates that. So that's how we're so different. Is that like every week I put like 10 events happening in San Francisco, 10 events happening in New York? So we are the opposite of exclusivity. We actually make it open to everyone. So one, women see each other there, but also know about these events and want to come and want to join us.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

So it's it's both the sort of just the awareness and then the actual experience once someone arrives.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

So when they arrive at the event, uh basically they are either greeted by me or my awesome community leader, Pramanya, and then they walk in, and immediately they don't, it's not a room just full of men, right? They see other women building the same thing, they see men who are supportive of our mission, and people just are there to help each other because, like, being a founder is such a lonely job, right? It is not easy to be a founder, and in our events, what we do differently is we remove the labels so we don't have people fill out their name because we don't want somebody to just talk to somebody transactionally, we want them to build real connections, but because we host so many events, right now it's a community, it's like family. People see others, they recognize, people see their friends there, so they walk in and immediately they feel like they are part of the room, they are family, and then we typically have panels that's kind of our signature event move where the panel also represents the real world. We typically have like fifty at least 50% women, men on the panel. We talk about real challenges, we don't keep it superficial, and then our panel is very like community-driven, so it's members from our community who are on the panel, and then we open up half the panel for questions in the audience. So, really, Founders Bay, it's not about one person, it's like community-driven. Even our workshop that we do, so we host like three workshops a week, it's all from the community. So, people from the community they want to grow their business, they give the workshops, they they get the visibility in the newsletter, but at the same time, it helps others because others get their knowledge. So, as you can see, it's like really by the community for the community, and it's like community who leads that the company.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Okay, and so once once you've got this community, so you've now got 200,000 people, so other founders listening and sort of the thing that they might like to do, like build communities. How can you how do you leverage that in terms of how do how do the members individually what are they getting from it?

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

And what's the sort of purpose from sort of a starting it perspective?

SPEAKER_00 8:30

So a few things. So as a founder, one, you want to get the knowledge to grow your startup, you want to hear from expert on what is happening in AI, for example. You want to hear on expert how do you structure your cap table, you want to hear about like best practices in hiring. So every week we have like three different workshops that you can join and just hear about that. So yesterday, for example, I did a workshop on how do you grow your LinkedIn branding. So we went through different profiles and optimized it, and then as a result, now everybody who attended gets an awesome LinkedIn profile. So that's one part. It's really like what you learn. The second part is the connection that you have. So in all of our events, we have tons of VC joining us. So during the event, you get these connections, and we have almost every one of our like breakfasts, we bring in like 10 VCs. Almost everyone, there's a founder that finds their VC and get funded sometimes on the spot. So that's the second thing is connecting with VCs, connecting with other founders. And the third thing is I vibe coded this. I'm a coder by heart, which I'm super excited about, which is our Founders Bay online platform. So people can go in, they can see all of the members, they can message them right away, and they then they can get in match with investors. We also have like deals with them, so we provide them deal with Brex, with Fidelity Shares, with UDOC. So, really, this platform online, anybody can sign up, they get access to the membership, they get access to the event, and we're really opening up a world to them where they don't have to feel alone anymore. They have the resources that they need to grow their startup.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

And you said that you're sort of you've just typed in New York. Are all of your events in person or are some of them virtual?

SPEAKER_00 10:18

So we have three different types of events. One in person in San Francisco and the Bay Area in general. We now started also doing events in New York, which I'm yeah, I'm very happy because I my dream has always been to live in New York. And then all our workshops are virtual. We also have virtual pitch nights, we have virtual group sessions where you get to you have a group of founders that come together, and then every week we meet and we kind of share war stories with each other.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

How how do you then maintain this sort of as you get to 10,000? So it starts off, it's very community. You walk in, you know people. It starts getting to a size where, let's say, at 200,000, you probably aren't gonna know everyone at that stage. How do you maintain that sense of community as you get bigger?

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yeah, so as we get bigger, so our events we still cap it to at most a hundred people joining. So it's not like you walk in a room and you see a row, and then it's just we have multiple types of events. So, for example, tonight we're hosting a woman in AI event, and that's just very specific to women. Then we have another event which is like okay, specific to founders who are fundraising. Then we have another type of event specific to AI. So we basically just create events and target it to different segments of that audience, but when you join the event, you still are only meeting like 50 to 100 people. And because our members are so engaged, by going to events, like every event, I know at least 10 people because they always come back. So it's more we didn't change the quality of the event, we just changed the frequency and the type of events that are happening.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

I suppose what I'm asking, like you could you can you can sort of ramp up the number of events. But I suppose the and you will see people when you go who you recognize as you grow, uh you will see people you recognize maybe less and less, unless just because you're putting on all these different events. How do you maintain that sort of community cohesion?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

And like the community feel, yeah, that's a good thing. So uh part of it is during the event, like we usually put panelists from our community. So the people that you've met at events, you see them on stage, you get to learn more about them. And also, I facilitate like we personally facilitate connections through event. Let's say I meet a founder and I learned that he is building or she is building in the fintech space. I'm like, oh, go and meet the other person. And then also now we build an online platform that before the event, you can log into the platform, you can actually see all of the people who are attending, you can message them and see their LinkedIn and kind of pre like get a meeting with them set up before the event. So at the event, you're like, oh, I saw this person online, I saw this person online, and then afterwards you can message them right away. So you continue getting these connections, but it is a hard problem. So we're always thinking about like creative ways to solve it.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

I think I think that's a great idea, sort of the pre-connection. Um we've all been to so many events where like there's bounds to be in this room people that I should be talking to. I'm just not gonna find them in the next hour or two hours, except by complete serendipity. Which is which is which is a poor business strategy.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Exactly. So that's why this platform really helps, because now suddenly you can see who it is, you can message them, even during the event, you can message them on the platform.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Nice. So how I think we're good to sort of jump back to sort of how you actually build it because clearly you get to the stage where you've got 200,000 people, you have events, like there's almost like a positive network effect where it starts growing, and you've you've got the credibility. A lot of people listen and go, okay, that sounds great, and I can see the benefit. I today have a community of I don't know, zero or a close group of friends. Like, how do you actually build a community from zero to two hundred thousand?

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Yeah, the reason why we grew this fast is because we ha we basically figured out a flywheel. And that's how you want to do it also for your startup is like if you want to grow fast, you gotta figure out a flywheel where every component of the flywheel builds onto each other. So our specific flywheel is we have the events component, right? During the event, people can people like can find us, and then we post our events everywhere. We post them on Luma, we post them on Cerebro Valley, we post them in all the like popular newsletters. So people find us during the event and then also our own community, right? The second aspect is keeping that community engaged. So we have a WhatsApp group that is very popular where people can communicate with each other, we have the online platform where people can message each other, and we also have the newsletter where we put updates. So if you think about it, like events bring more people to the newsletter, the newsletter brings more people to the event, that's part of the flywheel. The third part is social media. A lot of like communities, they don't do that aspect. We put everything we do on social media, so more people find us on social media. Through social media, they find our newsletter, they find our events. So if you look at the like three components, they're always all feeding onto each other because we have more people in the community now. Social media now we get more visibility because we have more engagement, because we get more visibility, you know, now we get more people at our events. So it's always a loop growing. So when you're building community, I really you know encourage you to kind of put these together, not just build something in in isolation.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

So I can see how that really works now. I mean it does feel like a very clever flywheel. Two questions then. How long did it take you to figure out another flying wheel? And at the beginning, it feels like let's say you're relying on so fine found on social media to get more likes. At the beginning, you don't have a thousand, ten thousand people liking stuff. You've probably got two or three, maybe ten. So so how'd you get through that early stage?

SPEAKER_00 16:47

So I started on social media uh because social media right now is one of the biggest distribution channels that exists. What you do on social media is basically you figure out what is unique about you and what do you love talking about. In my case, what was unique about me is that I've been a director of engineering, I was always one of the only women in the room, and I'm also a woman founder, so that's kind of what I wanted to talk about. So I figured there's two two different ICPs that would follow me: women founders or women engineers. So I started doing different pieces of content that would resonate with both, and then I would A B test what works, what doesn't, how many likes one gets, etc. But then to get visibility, what you do is like you identify basically 10 influencers on the platform of your choice. So for me it was LinkedIn, you see what content they produce, and you get inspired by that. So you kind of start doing social media, you stay consistent. So after maybe like two or three months of just doing that, I started having a small following uh of amazing women founders who were following me. And then I did my first event, which was a dinner at a Lebanese restaurant, and I'm like, okay, well, nobody's gonna show up at the event, it's okay. But you know what? Eight women showed up, and it was incredible. Eight women who followed me online showed up, and that was my first event ever. But those women they loved the event so much that then they started referring me everywhere. So then on social media, I started posting about that event, so that got a lot of post and visibility. So it was kind of by accident that it happened organically, but I would say like just be nimble and flexible and try out different things, be consistent. Like sometimes you're gonna put a piece of content even now that receives two likes, right? And you feel like it's the end of the world, but you know what? The next day you'll post another one and it'll go viral. So you never know what works and what doesn't. It's just about like keep trying.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

So it feels like you hit on your flywheel quite early then. In terms of but there was quite a lot of thought that went into it in terms of like your position, your personal positioning, testing what was working, and then doing doing more of what did work.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Exactly. So I act it was again, it was all by accident. Like I just wanted on social to talk about like being a woman in tech. I just wanted to follow my mission, right? And then I found people who resonated with me, and that's the beauty of social media is that you can always find people that share the same mission as you. And then it started probably working after like three to four months, and yeah, it was completely by accident. But then when once I figure it out, oh, that's the flywheel, that's how you grow, we just continue doing it like over and over again.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

So was that like were you actively sitting down, like drawing out your flywheel at sort of various stages? Or is it something that you now sort of can look back and go, oh, that's how it how it sort of happened?

SPEAKER_00 19:53

No, absolutely I didn't even know about the flywheel. I had read a book, and the book was about how do you grow your startup? It's through like this flywheel effect, right? And then when I started getting traction on social media and I started getting traction with my events, I said, and then I started looking at other community organizers, and I'm like, well, why are we growing so fast, right? Like, how do I maintain this community and how do we grow faster? And then I kind of remember this flywheel cycle, and I'm like, oh, okay, well, that's why it makes sense. It kind of on we did it by accident, and then it got unlocked by me. I'm like, okay, now I get it. This is why we're growing so fast, because like within a few months, there were communities that were there for like two, three years, and we overtook them in terms of numbers. We started being, and then they started reaching out, and I'm like, but why, right? Like what is unique about us? And then I realized it's the flywheel, but it's also our mission, right? It's like we are very strong in our mission. We do not like we always talk about it, and that just creates so much loyal following that it's something that you cannot reproduce anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Have you found that with sort of the change in maybe like political landscape and sort of the slight backlash or challenge to sort of the diversity message that has happened in the last two years, let's say, has that has that hurt or strengthened you?

SPEAKER_00 21:28

I think it's you know what? I think now like diversity and DEI, all the like words that were used in the past to help empower women are being seen as a bad thing, right? Just in general. And I do feel like that's why during at Founders Bay, like we don't necessarily all we don't say we're DEI group, right? We talk about how we are just an inclusive community. So I think it does it it it did definitely hurt women just in general because there was so Many programs, especially in corporate America, that helped women just you know get get on get the same opportunities that men traditionally had. And then a lot of a lot of women group around me in the last two years closed down because their funding got pulled away. So it definitely did hurt, but we're not letting that stop us. Like we're saying, you know what? If people fight against that, we're just gonna fight harder, we're gonna fight smarter, we're gonna play place the game, but we're gonna make sure that we come all together and we support each other in that. So I do hope I am hoping that we are gonna make a difference no matter what the environment does to us.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

And yeah, I mean you've traveled through over 40 countries, so you've got sort of quite a broad view of people. Has that changed about how you how you actually do bring people together?

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Absolutely. So everything I learned about community, I learned it by my my culture, by the Arabic culture. So I'm Lebanese, I grew up in uh Lebanon, and until I was like six or seven, and then I moved to Canada. But when I went to Lebanon, when I went back to Lebanon, like for example, I would be at my aunt's house, and then the neighbors would just walk in. Like every day, like five neighbors would visit my aunt, and then my aunt would go and visit the neighbor, and it's not it's unannounced, like there was no announcement. Take coffee, you go to your neighbor, and the neighbor welcomes you, and they open the door for you. And then if you have any trouble, you go to your neighbor and the whole neighborhood goes around you, and then family just helps out. So, that aspect of community, I really saw what it is to have a community where you're not living alone, like it is not an individualistic community. You can literally walk into anyone's stranger home and they would welcome you with open, open arms. And just seeing that inspired me for Founders Bam. Like, well, why can't we recreate that here, right? Why can't you have a community where you can anybody can walk in? We're gonna welcome them, we're gonna introduce them, we're gonna give them the resources that they need without asking anything back because we know that the community is helping us out. So that aspect, everything I'm learning, I'm learning from that. And another thing also, for example, in Lebanon, like because we're we're not an individualistic society, even the way that we eat, like we eat family style. We don't have this concept of you go to a restaurant and you order your own plate. Like you go to a restaurant and the whole meal you order, it's family style, right? And I bring that to my events as well. It's like let's experience food together, let's go to restaurants where we are family style, and it's it's been working well. I'm just like really enjoying enjoying that part.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

What what do you think then that founders do wrong when it comes to building trust within the community?

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Yeah, I think that's the number one thing I see is like a lot of founders, they are so scared to just put themselves out there and just talk about their idea and what they're building because they're scared that somebody is gonna come and like take their idea out. So at so they put like stealth startup and then they're very secretive. They don't say who they're talking to, they don't tell people like how much they raise or who they know, and they kind of go in this like, I am so scared to be out there because what if somebody just steals my idea? And that one, you isolate yourself, right? Because, like, if you're not sharing your idea, people don't know that they can help you, right? But if you go out there and you're like, hey, this is what I'm building, at the end of the day, it's not an idea that makes or breaks your company, right? It's your execution, it's your following, it's like your your own competitive advantage. So you are just not getting the feedback that you need to grow, and also you are isolating yourself, which means that your network is gonna be way smaller than if you go out and just shout it out of the rooftop, like, hey, this is what I'm building, I need help with XYZ. You'll see people just swarming around you helping you out, and I think that's the biggest mistake that I see.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

I think also the more specific you can be with your ask, the easy isn't someone to help you, isn't it? Isn't that right? Like you can go, if you're going, oh I need help. That's not that's not ideally I'm doing this and I need to meet this person who's got this set of skills, and that's a thing that really moves the needle. That is a very if someone can help you, that's a very easy thing for them to help you with because it's very low thought.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Exactly, exactly. And that's what community is, right? It's a group of people coming together, helping each other out. And then also people don't realize that, but there's actually this psychological effect that if let's say you feel that somebody does not like you, go and ask them for a favor. Why? When you ask somebody for a favor, right, and they do that favor for you, they're gonna start liking you right away because in their mind they already helped you out. That means that cognitively they have to like you, so then they start liking you even more. So it's like if somebody's helping you out, one, it's gonna increase their likability to you. There, you're gonna like them more too because they just did you this favor. So at the end, you build stronger relationships that way.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

That's very clever. How how did you figure that out?

SPEAKER_00 27:50

So I think I I am inert about psychology and I read Tons of Psychology books, and that was a way that you get somebody like you feel like they don't like you, so that's you just ask them to do a favor for you. It's kind of counterintuitive, but most people, when you ask them for help, right, whether they like you or not, they will help you out, right? Because it's very hard to say no, especially if you're in person. So that's how you get them on your side.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Hey, I'm British. We we we feel we have often feel very awkward about asking people for favors because we don't make people feel uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yeah, and actually it's the opposite. If you ask for a favor and they do it for you, it's gonna you're gonna get a loyal friend for life.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Sounds like you actually need to open the one in London and just change the whole culture. This this this is it's the next city.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

You know what's uh interesting is that our the second country that we're the most popular with is London. So after I expand in the US, I do want to expand to London.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

So for sort of founders listening to this, what's sort of the one thing that you would say they could do today that would help them either start or maximize their use of a community?

SPEAKER_00 29:08

I would say like start going to events if you haven't. Because when you go to events and you build those like one-on-one relationships with people, and then you continue going to the events and seeing them, then you one, you can meet investors, you can meet your clients, you can meet other founders, especially now, like with the rise of AI being everywhere around us, right? Like now you don't even need to go to a therapist, you can go and you can talk to Chad GPT. People need this in-person connection more than ever, and they are like really needing it. Like, we at the end of the day, humans, we are not meant to be alone, right? We are meant to live in a tribe. So when you start going and building your network, like there's so many opportunities that happen that you may not have thought of. Like for me, I started social media to really grow my business, but then when my social media worked, I closed down my business to focus on community. So you never know what kind of opportunities are out there for you. But that only happens when you start putting yourself out there and meeting people.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Now, founders often would say, I'm I'm very busy already. I don't have time to do a whole range of things. Going to an event can be tight time consuming, going to the wrong event can be could feel like a waste of time. What would you say to a founder going, I just don't I just don't have the time to go to events?

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Well, part of being a founder, right, means it's not only about like building the startup, it's about building relationships. So you need to find clients, you eventually need to fundraise. So you saying you don't have time for an event, you're missing the opportunity to actually meet like other investors, right? Like you need that, you need to meet those people. So I would say to them, like, it's just part of your role as a founder. It's to get clients, it's to build the relationship to fundraise. So don't see it as like you're wasting time, see it as an investment for the future when you want to fundraise, when you want to get clients. So you gotta find your your balance.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

I think it's a hard one to find, isn't it? I mean it becomes easier as you as you as you grow and get into like series A, series B, series A because you have a team to do a lot more of the data and you can be on the business. So for you for your for your members, what stage are they normally?

SPEAKER_00 31:39

Yeah. So the people who mostly attend events, so they're earlier stage, they're at the pre seed seed stage, just because like that's where going to event is so critical. Because at that point, like you don't have as strong of a VC network, right? You're still trying to figure out how to find product market fit. So having networking is very, very critical. At the point where you are at series A, series B, series C, you already raise like millions of dollars in funding, right? So at that point, you have a go-to-market team, you have an investor relation team, like you have people that could do that for you, and you already have the network built because you obviously raise a lot of money. So I do see mostly like early stage founders joining us, especially founders who are from other countries. So that's how we have such a big international. Actually, that's one when I segmented my list, that was the biggest surprise, is half of our audience is international. And I'm like, how is that? Because we are very like SF focused. And it turns out because when people come to the Bay Area or when people come to New York, they don't have a network, right? And again, everything is so exclusive that Founders Bay become their their door to Silicon Valley. So we're kind of the door into this like founder VC world.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Man, it's really it's really interesting, and you can see how much it's resonated by the fact how fast it's grown. But and thank you for honestly on like sort of the I think often it's tempted to go, oh, I had a master plan. And look, two years later, dunno. Whereas actually, as you said, like it's about being humble and sort of doing research but then iterating, and it will all come together. Sometimes the realization is like you put the post-rationalization on something that you were doing instinctively.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

Exactly. And also, I think that's something that I learned like from engineering, is like when I was managing the engineering team, it was not like having a five-year roadmap, right? It's about being very nimble, which is okay, I'm gonna plan out my next week or my next two weeks as a sprint, learn from that, and then update my plan as I go. And that way of building products far outweighed the old school way, which was like you plan out like five years in advance. And because at the end of the day, like, even if you have it's always good to have a north star. My north star is to really change things for women, right? Like that's that will always be my north star. But in terms of like day-to-day, being nimble and just saying, hey, I don't know what I don't know yet, right? Like, but I'm gonna try it out, I'm not gonna be scared to try things that are new, and then reflecting on it, what worked, what didn't work, and going all in on the things that work. So if you build that way, just having that attitude, you're gonna grow faster than everybody else because you're learning as you go, you're open for feedback and you're just improving whatever offering you're giving because you're listening to your customers, you're listening to people around you.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

But I think is that I think that what you're trying to do is just so like important that it feels like you've got to get both sides right there. You've got to have a message that actually really cuts through, and that people want to support because you have you've had the best mechanism in the world. But if that's not right, it's not gonna go very far. But at the same stage, like even I'm sure there are other people with a similar drive, but actually putting the flywheel and doing like doing it as a product. It sounds like you get both sides right, like have a message that cuts through and a flywheel that works.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Yeah, definitely. I think the mission side is so important, especially today, because everything now I feel like is AI generated, right? But AI cannot have like AI does not have a mission. There that's so human of us, it's our consciousness, it's what makes us want to do better, right? It's our it's our ability to be able to like have a retrospective and think, okay, well, why am I doing the things that I'm doing, right? What is the purpose? And that's gonna differentiate you, that's gonna give you an edge over AI because you're human, people will relate to you. So figure out like, you don't have to have the same mission as I do, but I'm sure that you're doing something you're not doing it randomly, right? Why are you doing that thing and just express it to the word, and then you'll see people who resonate with you, and you'll have like friends and allies that are gonna be there for you when you need them the most.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Well, Marianne, thank you so much for taking the time to do this, and lovely to catch up again.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

So nice to catch up, James. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

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