My parents are at the table with me. It is December 1989. I look at them and I say, calmly:
“Ceaușescu will get killed. And Daddy will get hurt”

Ceaușescu was the president of communist Romania at that time

As she hears my words, my mom’s face shows terror. My father does not look at me and just looks at the wall

Apartments in Romania are bugged during this time. We know ours is, because our neighbor is part of the Securitatea (the secret police) and would tell us stories we didn’t want to hear when he got drunk. Like how he put pillows over people’s faces while they slept, to suffocate them. Or took them to prison for the smallest things

This neighbor knew way too many details about our life that we never shared with him

My parents know all of this but I am five and naive

We are not supposed to say the president’s name and the word kill in the same sentence. Even in our own home when there is no one around. We are not supposed to say it and we are not supposed to think it either

My mother tries to save the moment. “You had a bad dream.” She says it loudly while staring out the window as if wanting to make sure everyone else outside hears her too

Then changes the subject, my father gets up and nobody ever mentions it again

Days later, the revolution begins and by Christmas, Ceaușescu is dead

And my father is hurt exactly as I said (this is a story I am leaving for another Substack post)

Five months later, I am in the kitchen again, and I ask my mother a question that has been on my mind for hours

“What should I do if there’s an earthquake tomorrow while I’m alone with my sister?”

We have never talked about earthquakes her and I and there has been nothing on television. She laughs it off and tells me not to worry about things like that

But I won’t let it go. I ask again and again like little kids do when something is important to them. Eventually she gives in, mostly to make me stop, and shows me where to stand and how to hold my sister

On the thirtieth of May, the ground shakes in one of the biggest recorded earthquakes in Romania

I am alone in my home, terrified, and I hold my sister exactly where my mother showed me

I was six years old, and I learned that what I know to be true ( but hard to explain) is dangerous to say out loud . And that the people I love need me to stay quiet

It took me another four decades to understand that my mother’s face in that kitchen was not only about me saying “forbidden” things out loud

I thought she was afraid of the neighbor and microphones in our home

Of course she was, that was a new fear generated by the Big Brother surveillance from the communist times

But underneath it all was a much older fear that I only understood under lots of therapy…

In the villages where our family came from, a woman who knew things she had no way of knowing was not called gifted. She was called “crazy” or “witch” by some. Or told she’s working with the “devil” by others. People came to women like that at night, when a child had a fever and there was nowhere else to go . And then maybe crossed the street from them in daylight

So the women in my line learned the only lesson that kept them alive. You keep your mouth shut. You do not tell people what you see. You especially do not tell them what is coming

And then communism arrived and made it worse in a modern way. The state didn’t use the word “witch”. The state said it’s superstition hence the enemy of the scientific spirit and a hindrance towards evolution

So when I said the president would die, my mother wasn’t only hearing a strange child in a bugged apartment

She probably felt the terror of the witches burnt previous generation ago

So she what many women in my previous generations did to keep a girl safe and told me it was just “a dream”

I learned to stop listening to voices no one else could hear, and to start focusing on what everyone else could see

I became a very good student. Always top of the class, focused only on things we can see and measure. I studied computer science. I became a person who makes decisions from data. I built a company. I live in Sigma dashboards on top of Snowflake, in pipeline reviews and win rates in Salesforce. If you had asked me three years ago whether I was intuitive, I would have insisted data is a lot more important

Then therapy happened and all the memories that i stored far away started to come to surface

I started remembering those kitchen conversations from December 1989. As the memories came back, my senses started unclogging

It is June 2025, past midnight, in a hotel room. I wake up all at once, and there is a voice in my head, and it is not frightening. It is kind. It says:

You will hear a fire alarm soon. Don’t worry, everything is okay. I just woke you up gently so you don’t get scared in your sleep. There will be a fire in the hotel, but you will be okay. Wake up your husband too, so he’s aware

I lie in the dark, awake, thinking about how strange that was yet feel certain it’s true. I wake up my husband and tell him not to worry

A few minutes later, the alarm goes off

A refrigerated truck had caught fire outside. The firemen arrived at the hotel fast and took care of it. Nobody is hurt. And I probably feel the calmest person in the hotel because I had been told in advance by something that did not want me to be frightened

I know that as I recount these stories, I might lose some of you

And I know exactly why, because I have had forty years to practice the words that are in your head right now

That it’s all just coincidence. Or that the order in which things happened made it all to unfold like it did

For instance, in the hotel event above you might argue that I smelled the smoke before the alarm (because bodies notice things minds don’t) and I woke up because some part of me registered the burning smell and built a story around it

You might argue that in 1989 I overheard adults whispering and repeated it back without understanding. That a child predicting the fall of a dictator in Romania that December is not a prophecy!

That my mother must have mentioned earthquakes at some point, and I forgot she did

And that my founder girlfriend, the one whose due date I knew before she told me she was pregnant, had probably declined a glass of wine

And that my sister, the one I was certain was pregnant two days before she called to tell me, is my sister. I have known her face since she was born so i noticed the subtle changes

I agree with all of your rationales, because I made every single one of those excuses myself. Oh how many excuses I made for each and every single one of these events

But the problem is that it isn’t one isolated event. It keeps happening - the samples above are just a few. And at some point the odds on the pile of coincidences just stop mathing

Which brings me to something more recent

It is just past midnight. I am at a late dinner with my husband and François, his new friend, whom I have just met. There is wine, after a music show we watched together. It is an ordinary night

I look at the clock: 12:05

I do not know this man. But a knowing comes to me, very clearly

And I get the reflex I normally do. The “don’t say it, they’ll look at you the way your mother looked at you”

But this time around, after lots of therapy I say it out loud

“It’s past midnight. Happy birthday.”

He stops and his whole face opens up with joy. “It is my birthday. How did you know?”

“I know things and I have no idea how I know them”

I had spent four decades believing that the “woo woo thing” inside me was dangerous to the people I loved. But this man in front of me, this new friend, beamed at me with joy instead

Months later, I am at a conference and a stranger walks up to me. Not a friend of a friend but a stranger with a lanyard just like mine

She says, “I’m sorry, this is going to sound strange.”

I smile, nod and tell her that’s fine (because it’s been that kind of year)

She says, “Your grandmother is here. The one who died ten years ago. The one with the big mole on her nose”

And then adds, “She wants you to know she’s happy you’ve awakened”

You might assume a big chunk of our brand visibility comes from all my musings online. Probably because three years ago I finally starting posting on social media and some of my posts and collabs amass a LOT of views (like this one with a million views)

But our company brand became recognizable a lot earlier. Our peak valuation came in 2022 before I had amassed any followers

Figured an essay on the complexity of building a brand is in order

What I learned from my co-founder

Since this is my first company but the 6th for my co-founder - most things I’ve learned from him

When we started Chili Piper in 2016 Nicolas - said co-founder - would take three hours for lunch. French style with lots of sea food and Sancerre. The conversations would take and turns in a million directions at once

Meanwhile I’d try to be on my phone and sometimes my laptop with hundreds of tabs open. Certain I needed to fix a customer bug of some kind. Always in my head. Always focused on the financial parts because of all my Eastern European trauma

Most of the things he was showing me during these long lunches would get us to build one of the most powerful brand in tech

If you follow Nicolas on socials you might find him funny. That’s probably the main reason why I was attracted to him in the first place (yes I’m married to my co-founder)

Yet that’s not what made me want to tie the knot

I married him because he made me believe in myself to do things I didn’t know were possible to do

And almost everything I know about brand, I learned from him

Who would have thought that with the “french” and their long lunches i’d be learning the basics of brand?

I added a few “spices” of my own. I’ll get to those too

Culture is the base for “vibes”

When you interact with a company, you can feel whether the humans inside are thriving or exhausted. You always feel it. You just don’t always know that’s what you’re feeling.I suppose it’s what most people call “vibes”

To allow humans to thrive we built a culture most people would call insane. Some samples in the post below:

We’re obsessed with internal vibes. And we extend that to our events as well

Try to find another CEO who does all that. I’d like to meet them

Stories that make you feel

When Nicolas told me a story while we were dating, he’d take an ordinary moment - like a car ride - and turn it into something I’d look forward to listen to

He’s a natural at it because he knows to build tension throughout. Then drops a line that lands so hard I laugh until my jaw hurts

I would have followed this man to the end of the planet. Because of how he made me feel

How the story makes you feel is the core of it

We use his sense of humor a lot in our campaigns ! For instance one of our most iconic pieces of swag is our hot sauce that we created from scratch with an organic producer in LA. We put the label “Light a fire under your SaaS” and the first batch (524 bottles) had a 24x ROI

Creativity sparks when you’re in a playful or peaceful space

People ask how we put out the campaigns we put out with so few marketers

Because peace of mind is rare now. So is playfulness. You only get it if you take the time to pause. You know, like take the time to enjoy your food on your plate

You rarely see it these days. Maybe in parks where a lot of little kids play

Everyone is doomscrolling with a sandwich in their hand while vibe coding 7 projects and still there’s always something that makes them feel behind. Anxious. Like they should try to be better. At what?

We always chasing the next thing anxious we are not good enough

And if there’s no peace in our heads, it’s rare for creativity to find space to flourish

That’s why everyone has creativity constipation

And it’s why we stand out . We manage to escape the cyberpsychosis AI brings about

Nicolas in his long lunches takes the time to chew, observe the flowers, smell them. And somehow his peace of mind and love for just soaking in the moment is contagious

We give back

Nicolas insisted we create a foundation as soon as we raised money. Because of his upbringing. In French culture, there’s a lot more attention to impact. They know that the ecosystem has to thrive together. Always mindful of the impact on the bigger scale

We’re not optimizing only for capital

We invest most of what we have - money and free time - in the projects related to Center for Nonviolent Communication.

That’s because we have employees in 40 countries that are covering the entire socioplitical spectrum. Not only republicans and democrats. But Israelis and Palestinians. Russians and Ukrainians. We get together in person and experience this kind of diversity in beautiful ways

We can only build what we build because we work at peace

My own spice

I believe the brand went nuclear because on top of Nicola’s wisdom I brought in the spice

That’s the Romanian in me. Latin blood with some Eastern European fire

Visual Obsession

I obsess over visuals differently than most people

I drew our logo myself. By hand!

Most CEOs hire someone for that. I couldn’t help it

The way i couldn’t help co-creating some of the swag in our swag store

I grew up loving geometry. Then painting. I loved that art could make you feel something - joy, calm, anger, sometimes confusion

Confusion is underrated

When something confuses you for half a second, you have to look. You have to figure it out

That tiny pause is rare currency on the internet

That’s also what I do when I dress for a stage. I want you to look. I want you to feel something before you scroll past

My costumes are purposefully picked to make people pause. Even as a kid I used to provoke with my outfits because it was my only form of rebellion

Yep that’s me in pink spikes

Most brands play it safe with their visuals. What I call forgettable because they blend in

I’d rather make you stop

Even if you stop because you’re not sure what you’re looking at

Distribution

Our marketing team is pretty lean. Until recently we only had 2 marketers. For $50M org are that’s pretty insane (maybe too insane?) . Founders ask how we do so much with so little

We automate a lot of it with AI tools . Because that’s what we sell: AI experiences for marketers to turn visitors into pipeline. So we have to be the proof that it can be done

But we are also very clever on the distribution front

We get free brand views everywhere in our ecosystem. Either through partnerships or clever product hacks

Here’s one sample only (because I won’t give away all my secrets to our competitors!):

I told our product team to keep the meeting reminders branded Chili Piper . Hundreds of thousands of meetings get booked through our software daily. Every time someone gets a calendar invite from Meta or Verizon or any of our customers, they see our name!

I’m ok with big risky bets

I’m ok with us taking risky stances. Like supporting a big cause that might be controversial

I post things that end up in Reddit threads where people make fun of me. I am not afraid to say the wrong things

I don’t take it personally. And it’s not because I have no empathy but it’s because I’ve decided my worth doesn’t come from what people say about me. It comes from inside me

That’s how iconic brands get built. By people who feel safe being fully themselves

I wish more of us did

Because when we are brave enough to break the mold we get to achieve the impossible (take Liquid Death marketing as a sample too)

And somehow, in our case, people think we’re managing the balance of the cringe just fine

I dream big

I hesitated adding this last part here. Because it’s a tad woo woo. But I believe it’s a key ingredient

When we started I had zero experience building a company. But I thought to myself: $1bn company ? Of course it’s possible. I’ve seen it done so we just have to be creative and resilient enough to get there

People have called me delusional. They’ve called it a distortion field in other contexts

I call it limitless creativity. Or unshakable belief. If my mind can create it, it must be possible

I’ve believed that since I was a kid in Romania. Our toilet was a hole in the ground my grandpa dug so I come from very modest upbringing

They called me crazy then with all my crazy ideas too. Because no one else from a shithole village achieved financial abundance yet I was sure I will achieve it

I don’t think it’s possible to achieve a big brand without a strong belief that you can

My husband still calls me delusional from time to time . Because he keeps forgetting that I’m always right

My definition of a brand

A few months ago, two people told me - separately - that they teach Chili Piper as a case study in their marketing classes

One at Stanford. The other at a school in Edinburgh called St George’s

Now that it’s official and I’m in a syllabus I allowed myself to come up with a formula

It’s actually pretty simple:

Brand = what people feel about you (vibes) × how many people feel it

Most brands today feel shallow and with no backbone. I believe if there’s nothing real to feel, no amount of distribution can save you

You can pump money into ads. Pay influencers. Post every day

But if the thing inside doesn’t have legs, people feel it

I started this company in 2016 not knowing what brand was

Now I take three hour long lunches where I’m just present without devices too. Because that’s how inspiration comes through

P.S. I wrote this in first person. Most of what makes this brand work lives in other people’s hands. Our marketers turn the chaos in my head into actual campaigns that get executed. Our engineers ship the ai web experiences that put our name in front of hundreds of thousands every day. Our sales team shows up with big smiles every day despite all the rejection. Our people team keeps evolving our culture and makes it better. To allow us to be fully ourselves at work

Everyone contributes to what you all feel when you interact with our brand. I am just the amplifier and the one who holds belief

Not by spending too much as you’d guess but by trying to sabotage our roadmap

Every time a large chunk of cash landed in our account, he’d want to change direction. “We need to rethink this. This isn’t the right model” He genuinely believed his rationale

The “pivots in strategic direction” felt completely real to him. He had long documents to justify it

Luckily the person who loves him unconditionally (aka me) was by his side to see the patterns

Because if I zoomed out, the pattern was easy for me to see. The trigger was NOT the market moving in a new direction. The trigger was large contracts “closed won”. Customers paying us ~ historically considered good news in business :) ~ would send him into a a crisis. He would say “we need to talk “ and get me to do long walks around our WeWork in LA in Culver City at that time

We were building something that worked but for him that was terrifying

I’ll come back to him at the end, because his story has an ending. And the ending is the whole point of this essay

Here’s the thesis for this long article: money is not the problem

Our relationship with it is. And that relationship is almost never something we chose. We inherited it ~ from a parent, a family, sometimes an entire country (like in my husband’s case). And it runs our decisions while we think it’s “our own good reasoning”

This kind of trauma is hard to see in ourselves because it always has good rationale. I’ll do a little detour to explain how I managed to see the patterns in my husband

My mom’s $200

My mom made about $200 a month to take care of our family in Romania. She was working 3 shifts at a chocolate factory

I was 5 when I started taking care of my one-year-old sister alone at home. I started working my first job at 8. I’ve told these stories before as my origin story. But recently I sat inside her experience of it for the first time. Watching your kids have to work that early? And not being able to protect them because you made too little money?

That’s terrifying for any parent!!

If your worth comes from the money you bring home, and the money is never enough, you learn to hate the game. You watch wealthy people adorn themselves in useless bedazzles while you fight for existence. So you conclude the system is unfair

And then, worse, you start bashing yourself for not providing enough

This is the original wound - we feel we’re not enough

We all have bruises from capitalism. But I believe the bruise is not from money. It’s from the story we built around it

My dad played a different game

My dad didn’t make much more. But he loved capitalism. He was possibly its only fan in the village where they both grew up. It’s the reason he left the village and my mom followed him. He wanted to be part of it

Because for him, money was a FUN game

You learn, you play, you get better. Some years the game paid off ~ like the year he worked in Austria and saved enough to buy me a computer when I was 12, which in 90s Romania was roughly like coming home with a spaceship. Neighbors came to look at it and some touched it gently, to confirm it was real. It had 4 megabytes of RAM and we thought that was the coolest thing there was!

As you can see my parents were unknowingly running a controlled experiment on the psychology of capitalism (with two opposing worldviews), and I was the test subject. I still hear their voices debating in my head often (picture of my parents below to make it more vivid)

As you can tell from picture above my dad is also a very funny guy. I am extremely grateful to him for all my humor. I’d be dead without it

From my dad I also learned to look again at things I used to judge. That $1,000 bag that seems like pure vanity from afar? Someone poured creativity into designing it. Someone else poured sweat to make it. Someone traveled far and shipped it. Someone sold it. Someone is right now writing its social media product description trying to come up with the best viral post without using AI

An entire ecosystem got paid because of that “ornate bedazzle” . The object I resented was feeding families but I would have blind to it without my dad showing me the full picture. All the parts

That doesn’t mean the system isn’t flawed. Nobody needs ten $1,000 bags gathering dust in a closet (and i’ve seen a few of those) ~ at that point the closet is just becoming a museum . But because of both my parents, I can hold both truths: the ecosystem working together is real, and the money could flow toward better things once we start understanding it better

The man who got everything

If money itself were the answer, Markus Persson would be the happiest man alive. Science would study him and there would be pilgrimages

You might know him as Notch. He built Minecraft mostly alone, and it became the best-selling game of all time. I know his story because my kids are obsessed with this game

In 2014 he sold Minecraft to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. He bought a $70 million mansion in Beverly Hills ~ reportedly outbidding Beyoncé and Jay-Z

(this will be the single most “winning at capitalism” sentence ever written on substack :))

He partied in Ibiza with famous people. He had, on paper, completed the game. You know, Everything

Then in 2015 he started writing publicly about his actual life. He’d never felt more isolated. He said that once you get everything, you run out of reasons to keep trying. He’d sit at home ~ alone, in a palace with more bathrooms than one can dream of ~ waiting for friends with jobs and families to have time for him. He’d taken care of his employees in the sale, and they resented him anyway. He found a great girl; she was scared of his lifestyle and chose a normal person instead

The man out-bid Jay-Z and lost to a guy with a Toyota

You can call him a villain. I just see a lot of wounds that never got to heal. The man who built infinite worlds for hundreds of millions of kids couldn’t build a path for himself

I always apply curiosity over judgment

Not because I’m a saint ~ I’m not , I still make lots of mistakes ~ but because curiosity is the only lens that lets me see the wounds

It’s the curiosity that allowed me to see the patterns in my parents and my husband

What was actually blocking my mom

It wasn’t laziness because she’s a force of nature ~ she worked 3 shifts, managed a household as my dad was often away and somehow had time to care for everyone around her. She has loads of energy, extremely high emotional IQ plus the spirit of an artist. I’ve learned more about art from her than from anyone else. For instance when she would get her Christmas bonus she’d take me and my sister to the theater and go on stage to give roses to the artists.

She was extremely compassionate too. Once a year she’d had us gather all the toys we haven’t played with (the two-three extra we had) + smaller clothes and donate it to kids in orphanages. Going to orphanages and seeing the lights in the kids eyes and all the hugs would make us feel extremely grateful for the little we had

My mom was not able to fully achieve her potential because of trauma. Layers and layers of it.

My mom had her trauma under scarcity. Notch had his under abundance. My husband mid-success sabotaging us. Three completely different “cash” balances. Yet I see same underlying problems

Healing happens in many ways ~ therapy, meditation, plant medicine, community, love. But we barely fund any of it, because it’s hard to measure. It’s easy for a wealthy person to buy the 100 pairs of shoes to try to fill the holes in their hearts. The shoes arrive next day premium delivery

Healing is never two days

So it’s much harder to fund a retreat center when you can’t verify the outcomes and don’t know if you’re financing a real transformation or a very well-marketed con/guru with excellent social media skills

So how do we heal this?

Here’s what I have so far (i’d love to hear what you’d add?):

1. Find the money story you inherited

You will see more about this on my husband below. Start asking yourself whose relationship with money are you living ~ your mother’s, your father’s, your whole country’s? Write down your earliest memory of money in your home. That memory is still making your decisions today.

You can’t rewrite a contract you’ve never fully seen ~ and most of us signed one very early on before we could grasp its complexities

2. Separate your worth from your income

I believe this is the original wound. And the worst one.The $200 didn’t make my mom worth less; the system just told her that story. The system didn’t see the impact her love for everything made on my work

Every time you catch yourself calculating your value in dollars, notice it. That’s the bruise talking and somehow it always talks in a very confident voice because it wants your attention

3. Treat money as a game but remember that not everyone is here to play the game

This is my dad’s gift. When money defeats you, ask: what is this teaching me? Players who decide to get into this get better. Victims stay stuck

And remember it’s one game among many, like soccer. Some people get really good at it. Some prefer not to play. I’ve been to many funerals recently and not once did I hear liquidity being spoken about. There are many other games worth playing

4. Heal before ANYTHING

If trauma is blocking you, no Claude productivity system will fix it. You cannot color-code your calendar way out of a trauma. I know, because initially our company was building an enterprise level calendar. It’s beautiful but the trauma didn’t care

Out of all the things I’ve tried for healing trauma (and I documented quite a few here on Substack inclusive of psychedelics) for me there’s one thing I go back to again and again. And these are the events organized by this foundation that me and my husband help with all our might

5. Redirect one adornment

If you have surplus: this year, take the cost of one thing you’d buy purely for status and put it into someone’s healing instead. Or your own healing. A therapy fund. A retreat from the above link. A session with a shaman. We don’t need to fix all of philanthropy at once. Just one conscious redirect

The old system is collapsing in public, and that’s a good thing

What’s true for a person is true for a civilization: we can’t heal what we refuse to see. And right now, we’re being forced to see. A lot. Some of us would like to see slightly less, actually. Too late it seems

Look at the Epstein files. For decades that whole world ran on opacity ~ money moving in the dark, reputations laundered through “philanthropy” and proximity to power. Then Congress forced everything into the open, and out came presidents, princes, billionaires, university leaders, all tangled. The halo of “celebrities” or “important government figure” cracked in real time for all of us to see

(Fair disclosure: I didn’t vote for Trump ~ but I can appreciate the disclosure happening under his administration, as flawed as everything is right now. Life is complicated. So am I. So is this paragraph)

It’s tempting to conclude everything is rotten, sell your belongings, and go live in a cave that has solar panels. I looked into it too. But it’s just running away from ourselves

Because you can take the human out of the full eco-system but not the eco-system out of the human. We are made to be social and care for one another

Also, I see the opposite in all the ugliness that’s being surfaced. It’s the system finally showing us its flaws ~ which has been there all along ~ so we can rebuild it consciously

This is collective shadow work (that’s how my therapist calls it) . It’s all painful and humiliating and necessary

My husband couldn’t heal his money story while it stayed unconscious, and we can’t heal our systems while the flaws stay hidden

A generation that watched its most “important” people get exposed will never again accept “trust us” as an answer. They will have to find strength deep into their shadows. That’s the gift I see inside the ugliness

Back to my husband

I promised you an ending

It took a lot of therapy, introspection and a lot of love, for him to see what was actually happening

In French culture ~ and especially in his family ~ it’s gauche to even talk about money. There is no dinner conversation in France where you talk about money. You can discuss philosophy, infidelity, and the failures of every government since 1789 all at once. But ask someone what they earn and watch an entire table discover their cheese needs urgent attention

I know this because in Romania it’s not gauche to ask about salaries so I tried (my Chinese friends know this all too well 😅)

And France has had literal revolutions over money. People are still in the streets protesting over it, generation after generation. It’s practically a national sport. I experienced it two weeks ago at Cannes in the heat because they are protesting against Air Conditioning too. And I love them for it

So deep in his nervous system , money accumulating didn’t mean safety. It meant becoming the kind of person bad things happen to. Historically speaking ~ the kind of person who ends up in a tumbrel. His nervous system had never seen a tumbrel (adding a picture below for reinforcement) but it was not taking any chances

His nervous system did the only rational thing a nervous system knows to do with danger: get rid of it. Sabotage the money before the money sabotages you

Especially because his own dad was afraid of it. My husband grandma was adamant that money should be avoided at all costs

That’s what makes inherited money stories so dangerous. They don’t feel like trauma. They feel like your own reasoning. My husband wasn’t pivoting a SaaS company. He was fleeing the French Revolution with Google Docs and modeling his own dad’s fears

Here’s the good news: once he could finally see the story in his mind with love, the story lost its grip

The pivots eventually stopped. The strategy docs stopped ~ well, the panic docs stopped; he’s still French, there will always be docs to debate everything

The company he almost sank is the company we’ve been building together ever since: 37 countries now, growing nicely, cash in the bank, thriving employees who can be themselves , and a foundation that invests in healing trauma through preventing violence in our own heads

Nothing about the market changed. Nothing about capitalism changed. The only thing that changed was his relationship with money

I believe money is just a current and ~

once

we heal the trauma

demand transparency

build the capacity to look at the ugliness

~ the current starts moving toward life

You’d think I’d be mad. But instead I was just sad then . Sad to see your son not have you near on his most joyous day

Your son is so strong in the way he carries his emotions. He never shows any sadness . I can see that’s his way of protecting us all- just like you taught him

He never showed any sadness at our wedding but I knew it was somewhere deep inside

His focus on joy and caring for people is the reason why I fell in love deeply with him. It’s in everything he does. And I know it comes from you- the smile he saw on your face when you cooked, all the postcards you sent to celebrate all the moments, the hope you held for tomorrow

I didn’t speak the same language as you did. So at times I felt our relationship was somewhere lost in translation. But I felt I always got the essence. You loved your son just as much as I do. And wanted him to grow into the best possible version you felt he deserves to

I also understood that one of the most important trait for you to grow in him was resilience

I see the resilience you taught him every day - in the way he picks himself up no matter what and keeps going. You taught him that

And I want you to know: I see in him the same extraordinary capacity you always did. I will keep that alive. I will remind him, every day, of his worth, of his strength, of everything he can create. I will carry that torch for you

You finally warmed up to me when I birthed your grandchildren. Probably because it became a lot more real and you understood I was not just some flickering love

Since then you only showed me love. And gifted me this beautiful necklace that I wear everywhere. The first necklace you bought yourself when you finally earned your first money

You are leaving 11 grandchildren behind. 11! Them and their parents seem to have picked something else from you. The implicit understanding of protecting one another no matter what . Even we disagree

Your love is everywhere, even now. It’s in your way the families you created help one another. It’s in the way Nicolas holds our children. It’s in the way he looks at me, like it’s still the first day we met. It’s in the strength he carries. You gave him all of that. And because of you, it will always be here - with me, with him, and with our children

With all my love,

Alina

There’s a meeting on my calendar in eleven minutes. Some product roadmap review. I already know the roadmap. What I don’t know is whether my body is, right now, in the middle of losing a pregnancy

This is my third miscarriage. I thought it gets easier but it never does

Between my husband and I we have four kids. Two I gave birth myself, so I know what it is like to create life. Nothing truly prepared me for the joy I felt when I held my babies in my hands

But nothing prepared me for feeling the loss of life inside my body either. There are no words for it, which is maybe why nobody says any

They are diametral opposites of each other. The joy of creating life that is impossible to put in words. And the sorrow from losing it

When it happens to someone else, it’s abstract. A life that was never seen, so there’s nothing to attach to. When it grows inside your own body, the attachment is already there

You form ideas of what your life might become. You catch glimpses of movements down below your stomach. You start dreaming about the day you’ll meet the human being brewed inside you. You feel your body reorganizing itself for an important duty

You change what you eat, how you move, how you shop. You read every ingredient list, because you’ve been entrusted with something precious that is being made, mysteriously, in your womb

And then one day your body lets it go. With no warning

If it’s early (and it was always early for me. first trimester every time) you don’t even get certainty. Is this cramping or is this loss? Is this bleeding normal? I bled in both my full-term pregnancies too. So you sit there, in the most intimate grief a body can hold, asking Claude and ChatGPT. Or texting your doctor Not sure if you’re allowed to mourn yet

The body is wise. It knows when a pregnancy is viable and when it isn’t. I know this intellectually. Yet it did not stop me from blaming myself for all the evils in the world

The loops made no sense. Maybe it was the sip of coffee. The bite of tuna. The stress. The stretching. The sun. The humidity. The plastic water bottle. The frigging non stick pan. Or maybe the microwave? The detergent. The sound of my self-blame was never-ending so I decide to blame on some invisible microplastics though I don’t believe my own lies

I am supposed to be the protector of life inside of me but my enemy is invisible and ineffable

When the self blame in my head got too loud, I would think about my mother

In Romania, when her body let go of a baby in the third trimester, abortion was illegal. Every miscarriage was automatically a police matter. So while her body was ending a pregnancy she WANTED, a group of uniformed men showed up to question her choices and treat her like a murderer. Take my self-blame and multiply it by a thousand, then put it in a uniform and have it interrogate you while you’re still bleeding. While you’re still mourning. While you’re holding what you thought would be most love you’d ever feel

We haven’t come as far from that as we think

Pregnant humans are supposed to eat perfectly, in an era when we can’t even agree on what’s killing us and what isn’t. They’re supposed to handle stress perfectly: no alcohol, no mushrooms, even half the breathing techniques are off-limits. They’re supposed to handle pain perfectly with just music. No Tylenol, No Advil. And they’re supposed to do all of it serenely. Not be hysterical about any of it

And when they lose the pregnancy, they’re supposed to hide it. Because it’s just so hard to talk about in public

How do you tell your manager you need a few days off because you’re not sure, but your body might have lost a life? How do you ask for bereavement leave for something humans still argue about ? whether it’s real, at how many weeks it becomes real? You form the deepest connection a body can form, and when it doesn’t go all the way through, you don’t get to mourn it. You get uncomfortable questions instead

I’m a CEO. I had no one to tell and no good way to tell them. I’m supposed to have it all together. Level-headed at all times. All the answers. No tears because it’s cringe

I don’t have the answers. My doctor doesn’t either

Readers will want me to end this with a lesson. With what the loss taught me, the gift hidden inside the grief. I’ve looked. It isn’t there

It just sucks. That’s the whole takeaway. It sucked the first time and the second time and the third time, and it never once asked my permission or offered me meaning in exchange

The ONLY THING that changed for me is that I’m done hiding it

Right now, eleven minutes before some product review somewhere, a human is sitting at her desk wondering if her body is in the middle of a loss, rehearsing how to sound normal on the call. I can’t make it suck less for her. But I can stop pretending it isn’t happening, so she knows she’s not the only one performing fine while grieving something the world has a hard time talking about

It just sucks. You’re allowed to say so

I was reminded of that moment last week

I had just been interviewed by about my journey as an acting CMO - about how I cut our marketing team from 22 people to 2 to keep the company alive

A decision I had made two years ago that I’m detailing below

The thumbnail of the podcast has me smiling. The title makes it sound like the cut is something I’m celebrating (see below)

Someone called me out on it. Rightfully so. And I’m glad he did

Because here I am. Humming. Worse: Humming in public. As a privileged CEO. While people’s livelihoods are being torn apart by the AI wave

Close to 1 million people have been laid off in tech since 2022, according to FYI

And that’s just one slice of what’s happening. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of Americans don’t know where they’re sleeping tonight.

At the same time, we have companies generating a billion dollars in revenue with a few hundred employees. The wealthiest 1% of Americans hold wealth equal to that of the bottom 90% of Americans combined

These are the most banana times we have ever existed in. The gap between the haves and have-nots is unrecognizable

I am now in the middle of all of it. I’m not Anthropic. We’ve come close to bankruptcy at least twice when we started.. But now I’m far from homeless - we have good EBITDA and growth

I haven’t always been here

For the first 40 years of my life, I was not. I come from a literal “shithole” village in Romania ( my grandparents had a hole in the ground we shat on). Most days I had no idea if I’d eat the next day. I started working when I was 8

My mom worked three shifts in a factory for $200 a month

I came to America because I no longer wanted to fight for existence

I climbed the corporate ladder and I hated every part of it. Rules that made no sense. The political games. Backs being stabbed around me left and right

By 2015 my salary was $300K and I couldn’t believe my luck. I thought it was everything I had ever fought for. I no longer had to fight for existence

But I was empty inside

In 2016, I started Chili Piper with my husband. I wanted to write the rules differently. Build a company I wished I had worked in. A company my kids would be proud to work in someday

And as you know GenZ is made out of a different material

In our company everyone works from wherever they want (we were full on remote since 2016!- before covid)

Every decision - the good ones and the bad ones - is transparent. All our financial numbers and our board decks are also available to everyone

We invest a lot in training our team to collaborate and to communicate because we have folks working in 40 countries (imagine the Russians working with Ukrainians and the Palestinians and Israeils in the midst of the war..)

People can rewrite their own job descriptions to do work that brings them joy and gives them most energy, as long as it contributes to the growth of the company

That’s the part I’m proud of

Yet there are now parts that are really difficult to navigate

I’m not just observing the wave that’s taking people’s jobs. I’m part of building it

The agents that replaced most of those 20 marketing roles - we built them. I designed them. The platform we sell to other companies lets them do the same thing inside their own teams. Every Chili Piper customer who automates a workflow is one more person whose old job description doesn’t exist anymore

I can’t pretend that’s not what’s happening. I can’t sell agents and act surprised that jobs are changing because of them

When I had to make the cut two years ago, time was not on my side. It was that or the company would have been dead. My cost of acquisition was too high. There was no luxury of doing it slowly. Of letting things change with grace

That’s the truth of it. It’s ugly. It’s not a story I want to tell with a smile

So what do I do now?

If I’m going to build the thing that takes the soul-sucking work away, I owe the people whose work it was a real answer about what comes next

Not “AI will save us all.” That’s the lie founders tell when we don’t want to sit in the discomfort

The real answer, the one I actually believe:

The marketers and humans who thrive on the other side of this are the ones who become architects of ai agents instead of operators of tasks

They stop spending their day soul-sucking tasks. On manual lists, manual triggers, manual sends. They start designing the systems that do that work. They get more leverage, more creative range, more time for the parts of marketing that are actually fun - the storytelling, the taste, the strategy, the human-resonance stuff LLMs are still mediocre at

That’s the bet I’m making with my own team. It’s what we’re building our platform to help other marketers do

Because it’s the only joyful path I can see from here to a world where marketing work feels less like survival and more like creation

The process of creation is beautiful and joyful. Executing 100 manual tasks with no creativity less so

I don’t have a clean answer to the suffering happening in our industry right now

What I know is this: I can show up to this moment with the most grace I can muster. With as much heart and compassion as I can muster

I continue to keep my joy in the middle of it. But not in the way the thumbnail made it look.

But joy as a practice is the thing that keeps me capable of showing up at all. Without it and the gratitude that I carry with me at all times I wouldn’t be here

I would have given up a long time ago

Yes later I also understood what my husband was doing in the living room that day after my aunt died. He was not insensitive to my pain. He was humming because that’s his way to cope. Without his singing he drowns in the pain too. It’s his “stimming” response (worth googling this worth if it’s the first time you come across it)

That still doesn’t excuse my thumbnail. I still own that one- THe title and the smile made it look like I was celebrating something that is not worth celebrating

I’m flawed in a million ways -including the flop in association of that smile with the topic

But I keep showing up, trying to do better, because I want to help write better rules for the silly corporate game we’re all playing to the best of my capability

And maybe - as we get to the other side of this wild wild west moment, with AI as an actual tool in our hands - we can write rules where humans don’t have to worry about surviving, and work can come from a place of joy

We can only get there from a place of kindness and transparency. Especially toward those who are suffering right now

One small update towards the end, and I want to be careful about how I share it:

The team of 2 has grown back to 6 now. And they might be expanding at the rate they are going. They’re operating with the kind of joy you rarely see in our corporate world

I’m not sharing this to justify the layoff. I’m sharing it because even after the hardest decisions, there are still people on the other side doing work that feels joyful and alive

That’s the work I’m trying to do

I took the mic and asked one question: “Are you brave enough to be who you are?”

I picked that as a theme because I believe that’s the most important question we need to ask ourselves entering the new “vibe” era

Let me explain

My biggest unlocks in life never came from listening to what society wanted me to become

They came from one question: who am I, and what am I here for?

It’s really hard to hear the answer. We ignore all the signs. We keep overworking in a job we hate.

We force a relationship that was never meant to be. Seeing friends we no longer vibe with

We’re not used to paying attention to the signals. It’s not a skill we were taught

But my radar for what the universe sends me is high. I pick up on the slightest discomfort and turn it around

My back hurts before a meeting? I take that as signal

My body feels exhausted at work? I take that as a bigger signal

I move towards reducing unnecessary suffering

My kids call it #JoyMaxxing

It’s the reason I quit my corporate career and started a company. The reason I followed the love of my life to a different continent. I don’t allow myself to stay stuck in low-density energy

And that’s why people call me brave. Imagine that : they admire me just for following where my vibes are taking me

So in this new era of vibe coding we figured we’d go vibes conference all the way

I have a problem writing this article because vibes are notoriously hard to explain

In AI, LLMs are the same way. You can ask an engineer how a model “decides” what to say next, and even the engineer will trail off into something abstract about probability distributions and training data. We don’t really know

But we know when one is good. We know when one is bad

Same with friends. You can’t list five reasons you vibe with someone. You just do. You know within ninety seconds whether the date is over

Same with events

You walk into the room and within thirty seconds you know if this is going to be a good three days of your life or three days you’re trying to escape

The energy has to be right. And the energy can’t be faked

I’ll do my best to describe how we do it

Because I’m an engineer I’ve been refining the equation. Here’s what I came up with:

Event vibes = (Fun × Trust × Zone of Genius) ^Location

If any of the three is zero, the whole thing collapses. Yet each one of them is very difficult to get right

Let me break each one of them down to the best of my ability

Fun

You can’t fake fun

Conference organizers try to get this one right but many have forgotten how to play. They take themselves too seriously and it feels forced

Kids know how to play naturally by just going with what’s most alive, with where their energy pulls them to

This is the area where we put most emphasis

We learned to have fun from our chief fun architect: my co-founder. He’s in play mode every day so he’s contagious

As an example of how we did this part this year: we started our welcome reception with a jam sesh we called vibe music. Anyone who knew how to play an instrument could go on stage and just vibe a song with the group

You might think it’s a recipe for disaster but somehow everyone had fun despite the less-than-impressive melody resonance. It was the joy that mattered

We always pick fun things to do because we never take ourselves too seriously

One more thing about fun: we protect it on purpose

Sometimes a person walks in playing the victim. Or is never satisfied. Or pulling everyone into a downward spiral

You can have compassion towards that person and still recognize their energy isn’t compatible with the room’s

Fun can be killed in seconds by one person who isn’t yet vibing. The host’s job is to shield the field and be creative on how to handle the disruptions and it’s probably the hardest part . The same hard a parent has to handle when their kid has a tantrum in the supermarket. They have to be gentle and keep their vibes high at the same time

Why does fun even matter?

Creativity only shows up when people feel safe enough to play. Safe enough to hum the wrong note. Safe enough to look ridiculous for a second

No play? no creativity. No creativity? no new ideas. no new, upgraded, versions of ourselves

What you can steal: replace one polished networking reception with something that requires participation. Karaoke. A jam session. A drawing wall. Give your attendees “permission to look ridiculous”

Trust

This is the harder one. Because it’s the hardest to build and can break in a second

Trust gets built in the conversations and in the space between sessions

Most conferences run a panel format. Three experts on a stage. One moderator. Two hundred attendees. No one is really listening, including the panelists

We do something different. Jeffersonian-style

Everyone gets to speak on a topic. Everyone listens

The host’s job in a Jeffersonian conversation is to remove blame and create safety to disagree. Allow everyone to feel heard. And remind everyone no one is perfect

Most people have never been in a room where they could say a half-formed thought without getting interrupted or criticised. So they don’t speak. So nothing real gets said

When you take judgement off the table, real things get said

When real things get said, people remember the conference for the rest of their lives

We also teach our team who’s embedded in our conference how to listen during these conversations. Most don’t know how. We listen with 100 tabs open in our head, planning what we’ll say back. That’s not listening

Real listening is hard. So we model it

We also teach our team how to restore peace when something gets heated. Because something will get heated. The point isn’t to avoid conflict. The point is to know how to come back together after it

Another trick we use: no slides, no laptops, no phones in the room as much as humanly possible

People can do computer stuff alone

The whole reason they came to the event was to escape the cyberpsychosis:we don’t drag them back in it

Zone of Genius

This is where we differ most from how conferences are usually run

Most events feature speakers because of their titles or because of ROI (who pays the most). We feature people because of their zone of genius : the specific thing they do better than almost anyone else

Some of our best speakers don’t have famous titles. They have a zone of genius. A topic they could talk about for ten hours. A skill they’ve sharpened until it’s almost unfair

It looks like magic from outsiders. Because when someone is working out of their zone of genius it almost always looks like magic

You can feel when a speaker is in their zone of genius. Everyone is engaged

You can also feel when a speaker is going through the motions. The energy drops ten degrees. People pull out their phones

We also pick speakers who are open to learning, not just teaching. Real experts know how much they don’t know. They come hungry. They ask questions from the audience . Everyone learns to get better

Same applies to attendees. We curate the room around shared zones. So when people connect around Jeffersonian tables, they connect on the thing they actually care about - not on small talk about flights and weather

And here’s why the vibes events formula works:

When the zone of genius meets joy and a safe environment built on trust: something happens that looks like magic from the outside. Time flies. People put down their phones. Real things get said. Humans connect and make new friends

AI is finally giving more of us access to this. We can offload the parts of work that drain us and spend more time where we’re sharpest. Where we think things from scratch. Re-think the org chart

Most people will use AI to do more of the same.

The interesting move is using AI to clear space for the part you do best

The same logic around the zone of genius applied inside our team as we organized the annual event

Our VP of partnerships brought the belief that we can make it happen, our head of events was the vibe architect, our events operations made sure we did things on time, our PMM that we get the right outcomes , our head of customer success brought his best vibes and DJ voice as an MC, our head of brand must fun swag

The most important part is that we operated like a swarm. Each person in their zone of genius. No one is forced to do something they’re not

That’s the only reason it works. We #joymaxx when we focus on the things we’re good at

As you can see even running the event splits along zone-of-genius lines

// I believe it’s essential that every event needs a vibe architect. The person who feels the room and can pivot in real time. Music not getting through? Switch it. Keynote not matching the space or the energy? Pivot

The vibe architect can almost never be the same person planning the details. Swag, schedules, catering, rooming lists - that’s a different brain. Linear, meticulous, beautiful in a different way. Most people are one or the other

Location

No matter how good your event is, if the location has bad vibes, the humans inside feel it

That’s why we get particular about where we run things. Location is the amplifier on everything else

Please don’t confuse boogie with good vibes

One year we ran an event in the Sahara. This year, the desert again - but on native land, held by people who love their communion with nature and respect the rhythm of the place

There’s something about experiencing the stars with no buildings around

Something even more special about being on land cared for by humans who treat it as sacred

Your nervous system feels it the second you arrive. You immediately calm down

Optimize for the kind of place that helps human feel ready to experience community. Sometimes that’s a desert. Sometimes it’s a barn. Sometimes it’s a beach town nobody’s heard of

Just don’t book the conference center next to the airport because it’s “convenient”

Convenient is the enemy of vibes

The math

We started doing “vibe” events this way because our team told us our internal company events are the best and we should share that with the world

Also because we got tired of attending conferences that felt like plastic carpets and pitch slaps. We wanted to be in rooms where we could exhale

It turns out other people did too. The testimonials at our events are always above benchmarks

Now we’re launching a community where humans and agents vibe on the same frequency together. To elevate each other.If you want in, come here

We’d be sharing hacks to be operating in #joymaxxing vibes with agents

And now I want to leave you with the question I opened our annual conference with

Are you brave to be who you are?

The reason events have high vibes is because the people in them stop being someone they are not. They can finally be themselves. They allow their imperfections to shine through

Same with friendships. Your vibe is because you stop performing. You can be yourselves

You can’t really engineer vibes. You can only stop the things that block them from thriving

And the thing that blocks them most, every time, is the version of yourself you keep performing for the world

I didn’t say anything. I smiled. I handed him a flyer. The job paid 10x what I made as a math tutor and my best friend had vouched for the company - one of the most reputable one in Romania at that time

For the audition they asked me to wear shorts or a swimsuit. I had told myself this was normal. That should have been the red flag

I got paid and I never went back

Somewhere in those teenager years between man treating my body as possession , and as a victim of sexual abuse prior , I had made a decision far more consequential

A decision I wouldn’t understand for another 26 years: When my body participated in anything sexual I would dissociate most of the times

So here I am now married, in my forties, paying thousands of dollars to a tantric yoga teacher to bring it back online. And potentially have me experience ecstasy

Ayaya. I can’t believe I wrote that last line. Talking out loud about sex would have me blush in a nanosecond just months ago

I was raised by the maternal line of a very religious family. Grandma in the church choir. Mom who wants to bring a priest into the house for bad energy. In their world, sexual energy is not pursued. It is used for babies. That’s the entire job description. And the only one allowed

So if my mother reads this - hi mom. Open mind, please. Or close the tab. I love you either way

The course was twelve weeks. Thirty minutes of solo practice daily, one hour a week 1:1 with my teacher, dense esoteric reading. The premise , stripped of its esoteric vocabulary: integrating your human body into the whole human self brings back energy, vitality, creativity. Cosmic orgasms as a side effect

I signed up to answer one question. Is the way I dissociate from my body trauma, or is it just who I am?

My husband happily agree we parted with the money. I had nothing to lose except a chunk of cash and possibly some shame and fear associated on the topic

Here’s what I found, in no particular order, because that’s how it came

FEAR

The fear was the hardest thing to break.

In the world I grew up in, if you “pursued” sexuality, the man had the right to your body at the smallest flash of it. Any revealed skin was evidence. The woman asked for it. This was the consensus in the world I was brought it

So as a teenager I covered everything. Huge sweaters. Aloofness. A loud personality of bookworm, not interested, please look elsewhere. And under the covers, erotic literature. Crop tops to parties when I could rebel. The human part of me kept trying to come up for air, and every time it did, a grown man would teach it to go back under

The booth was just the most explicit version of a lesson I had already learned.

In the course, I started to understand something obvious that had taken me twenty years to see. No matter how well I hid that part of me, it still existed. It had just gotten extraordinarily good at going offline

I am still learning to process this fear. I’m not done. The Epstein files keep reminding me the dark version of this is much bigger than my own story

SHAME

Then the shame, which was worse.

Shame and fear were tangled together every session. I literally could not say the word sex out loud. As if my grandmother could hear me from her grave. As if she might appear in my living room with a rosary and a look

How dare I pursue this?? What a luxurious topic. Shouldn’t I be doing one of a million more useful things? So many people to take care of. Sex is a selfish endeavor

Where did I learn that?

Most of the women around me had been cheated on. The men in our family pursued their sexual desires and the impact landed, every time, on a woman I loved

As a child I learned to recognize that impact before I even understood it fully. And I drew the only conclusion a child could draw: sexual expression is selfish, and it causes damage

Untangling that took most of the twelve weeks. I am still not done

TANTRIC PRACTICES

Somewhere in there, I made the practices my own

There are very specific things to do in a very specific order, repeated many times

At first all of it felt uncomfortable. Some practices I hated. Some I loved. Some I felt nothing

My teacher never corrected my intuition. She had me try everything, and then let me keep what resonated. This was the first time in my relationship to my body that someone with authority said: your sense of what is right for you is the authority

I cannot overstate how foreign that was

MUSIC

Music was the unlock I didn’t see coming

Specific sounds, integrated into specific practices, would change the entire course of an experience. I never understood, as profoundly as I do now, how much sound changes what we feel

——

And then, the part I almost can’t admit to a tech audience: I had to slow down

Because of Claude - because of my work - I am in some flavor of cyberpsychosis most of the day. Fully immersed in unlocking the next level of corporate consciousness, agentic deployments, the next thing. Most days I forget I have a body at all

When I do somatic work, the mind thrives too. Turns out if I integrate my body somehow the full equation produces more

So - did I reach the ecstatic nirvana the marketing promised?

I’ll let my husband answer to the transformation . He said something along these lines to me a few days ago:

“How lucky am I that I get to intertwine super narrow technical discussions on agentic enterprise deployments while also traveling to seventh heaven with you in between”

The girl at the booth would not have believed this was a sentence in her future

I am still learning to believe it is a sentence in mine as I am still learning to turn on fully my instincts. I would imagine it’s always work in progress but I’m grateful to have discovered a whole new dimension in my pursuit to learn to be a better human

when your brother gets a bigger piece of chocolate

when he gets two extra minutes of iPad

when anything feels unequal - you notice. and you make sure everyone, especially the adults, knows

your brain is doing its job and that’s because…

a long long time ago, when people lived outside with no big houses and no stores, kids had to pay really close attention. if your brother got more food, maybe that meant there wasn’t enough for you. so your brain learned to watch. to compare. to say “hey! that’s not fair!” because staying safe meant making sure you got your share

it’s not just humans. baby animals do this too. puppies, kittens, baby birds - they all push and wiggle to make sure they’re getting enough

but those times are long gone for us humans - you are safe now

you have a home. you have food. you have people who love you more than anything in the world

you don’t need to count every minute or measure every piece of chocolate to know that you’re ok

so here’s what I want you to try to do instead

i want you to try something new

instead of looking for all the things that aren’t fair

start looking for glimmers

what’s a glimmer you ask?

it’s a little flash of something good. like a sparkle. like a tiny piece of magic you almost missed

your brother got 2 extra minutes of ipad?

pause. take a breath. your brain is trying to protect you and that’s sweet of it

now look for the glimmer

you got 2 extra minutes of quiet where you learned something. that’s a gift

you noticed your brother charged his ipad ahead of time. now you know that trick too

see? there was something good hiding right there

when you start looking for glimmers instead of looking for what’s unfair, something amazing happens

you start feeling rich. heart rich, brain rich

that’s a superpower most grown-ups never figure out

if you learn it now at 7 you’ll be ahead of almost everyone

so next time you want to say “it’s not fair” remember

pause

breathe

and look for the glimmer

i promise it’s there

“Somehow love always wins”

That’s what I texted my husband

But 20 minutes earlier… a man holding a gun had asked me how much I would charge to sleep with him

It’s December 1, 2025 in Brooklyn. It’s early in the morning and the cold pierces my bones despite my layers. I have a wooly hat, scarf, a long oversized coat, boots. No skin visible. A detail that proves important later

I grew up listening to violence through thin apartment walls. One time bullets flew right in them. My body has learned that when hard moments approach it needs to slow down

I walk next door to my favorite hip hotel. It has a strong scent - like cedar and expensive soap? I always love the music they play. And love their chia pudding even more . I sit in the lobby to eat it

A man approaches. Asks for the nearest ATM. He looks rushed and sweaty. I give directions while barely looking up

Thirty seconds later he reappears from the direction I was just pointing at

“How much would you charge to have sex with me?”

My brain lags - it’s too early for an odd question like that

I scan myself. Boots. Coat zipped to chin. No eye contact exchanged earlier. No flirtation

Why would he think I’m for sale?

While my mind slowly runs calculations, my body does something else without me even noticing

It slows down. No fear , no anger . Just stillness that’s familiar. And compassion through all my pores

“I’m sorry,” I say slowly “Are you asking if I’d have sex with you for money? If yes , that’s not my thing “

“Yes. that’s easy money you know ?” he says. He’s sweating more now. And his pupils are extremely dilated. I’ve seen that look before - the terrified look of someone who just took a high dose of something that takes control over their bodies

“It’s not my thing,” I repeat. Mostly to myself

He looks confused - almost destabilized by the lack of reaction

And swiftly turns toward the exit

That’s when I see it

The gun

hanging casually in his hand like an accessory that doesn’t belong in this scented lobby with its curated music and polished vibe

And time bends

The receptionist is still smiling at someone. The spoon is mid air in my hand. The music continues. No one else seems to see what I’m seeing

A young man. Maybe someone’s son? Holding a gun. Sweating and shivering. Asking a woman old enough to be his mother to sell her body

As he walks out I’m realizing : I had been speaking calmly to a man with a gun

And he had been absorbing that calm

No fear or frustration for him to push against

As he walks out , only then does my body registers the information fully

I tell security that they might have to be mindful . They ask if I want to call the police

I check my body before responding

Still calm - it somehow learned long ago that this state is disorienting to troubled man

So I say I don’t need police to feel safe but if they are concerned happy to help in the process

I leave my number and step back outside into the cold

I text my husband:

“Somehow love always wins.”

We didn’t have a clear “vision” for what we were going to build, the way everyone said we should. Instead, we had one simple question, which turned out to be much harder than we expected:

Could we build the kind of company we ourselves would have wanted to work for?

We wanted company that creates abundance for us and for others, but also one where people reach their fullest potential… and feel joyful while doing it

Ten years later, this is what we’ve managed to build so far. With the good, the bad, and everything that doesn’t show from the outside

By some metrics, we’re “successful” (we sold a portion of shares at a valuation close to a billion). By other metrics, not as much (it took us ten years to reach a size that some newer, AI-native companies reach in just a few months today)

But by the metric that matters most to me:

Am I happy?

The answer is very simple: yes. VERY

My kids can testify on this one. Because I get excited about work the way they get excited about legos and Minecraft

And I want to tell you why. Bear with me

What surprised me most

My inner world shapes the company more than I ever imagined

In retrospect it seems obvious . Yet somehow this took me by surprise

A company ends up resembling the inner state of the person leading it

When I’m calm, curious, and deeply convinced we’ll make it, the company runs well

When I get pulled into fear, doubt, stress, or contraction… it shows immediately

Even if I don’t say anything out loud, people sense it. The team senses it. My co-founder senses it

It was a difficult realization, because it means I have to take care of myself seriously

As a responsibility and that’s hard for me because I have always thought of it as a luxury

I’ve never had the luxury to sit still and just calibrate my energy

Yet I learned that self-care is can’t be optional. Even when my inner voice screams loud that I shouldn’t be “taking breaks”

And it’s hard, because when you’re building a company, it always feels like “too much is at stake” to slow down

It’s even harder when you’re also a mother, a wife, a friend, and the child of sick parents

There were long seasons where I carried multiple emotional states at once, stored in separate drawers inside my brain, and still had to show up as someone clear, steady, capable of making good decisions

Every single day

Culture isn’t written. Culture is lived

I learned this too:

Culture isn’t a “values document.”

Culture is the actions you take every day. With intention

We wanted to grow our people the way we grow ourselves and our children (together we have four!) : with freedom, with trust, with agency. With the belief that they’re capable of more than they can currently see

From that came a few principles we refused to negotiate on:

Things we believed in strongly:

1) Freedom of place and agency

We’ve been remote since day one. And we still are

Even before COVID

Because the world is beautiful and deserves to be lived

Because family life matters too

Because people have more energy and dignity when they get to choose their life

That freedom matters deeply to me. And it mattered deeply to our team, too

We also genuinely believe that anyone on the team should be able to change things inside the company when they see something that isn’t working.

And that gave a lot of people courage.

Many people who started with us in junior roles grew into Director and VP roles, because they learned that growth doesn’t come from “time served.”. Tenure as they call it. It comes from initiative and outcomes

2) Transparency

We work towards radical transparency

We share how we make decisions and why

We share the numbers

We share the good news, and the bad news

We believe people can handle reality when they’re treated like adults

And surprisingly, that creates more courage and ownership… not more fear

And probably even more importantly: we don’t have to share the burdens alone. I can’t emphasize how important this part is. No one should shoulder hard things alone

I’ve been writing about our decision memo process in the past. It’s hard but one of the best decisions we ever made

3) Skills that stay with you for life

We didn’t want people to be great only inside Chili Piper

We wanted them to leave this experience more mature, more capable, more powerful

To know how to communicate. How to collaborate. How to resolve conflict

We work in more than 40 countries. Different people, different cultures, different perspectives.

Diversity is beautiful, but it doesn’t work unless people know how to disagree without harming each other.

My co-founder and I disagree often. Sometimes loudly

But we do it with respect and a shared focus on the outcome

And I’ve seen it with my own eyes:

when done well, diversity and differences of opinions doesn’t divide a company

It makes it smarter

Culture became our brand

Over time, I noticed something interesting:

The way we treat each other became the way the world experienced us

Customers, partners, and prospects feel the atmosphere

They can sense the respect we all have for each other. For what we have built together. They can sense how we show up for each other when things are hard

I’ve come to understand that brand isn’t marketing

Brand is the experience you leave behind

And one of the most emotional moments for me was realizing that our brand is now studied in university marketing courses

I got goosebumps when I heard that. I still do writing about it now

I never imagined something I built would end up in a course students learn from

What became clear to me in these ten years

Even though this is my first “real” company (built some when i was 8 and 12), I’ve come to know something for sure:

I’m built to be an entrepreneur

It’s not glamorous (it’s really not!) and it’s not easy

But in a strange way, everything about me fits in this role

My temperament. My history. The way my brain works

Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. And it shouldn’t be

It asks for too many things at once intensely:

Resilience, patience, courage

It asks you to hold uncertainty

It asks you to get up again and again when things are impossibly hard

But because of my history

Over the years, I built mental models that help me look at failure and learn from it without lying to myself

&

hold calm conviction in the middle of doubt

while continuing to care deeply about people without collapsing under it

And probably the most important part: I no longer confuse volatility with danger

In a company, there are up days and down days.

Before, the “down” scared me

Now, it still hurts sometimes… but it doesn’t scare me the way it used to

I learned to carry pressure. To metabolize it somehow. I don’t run from it

And I think that’s why I’m happier.

Because the work is hard, but it’s mine. it’s aligned with who I am

It’s a beautiful realization to come to: that your work aligns with who you were meant to be

What almost broke me

Pricing

For a long time, our pricing was too low

In the beginning, people compared us to Calendly, because that was the part of the product they could see externally. And that comparison shaped years of decisions

Because of that, we’re behind on revenue compared to other companies that started around the same time.

And yet… I don’t know if I would change it if I could go back

Because it forced us to build fair and transparent pricing

And I genuinely love that we remain one of the few SaaS companies with transparent pricing.

I hope others follow

Migration

The platform migration was brutal

An entire year of late nights, issues, stress, fear… and the feeling that anything could break in production.

We lost customers during that time, because they were disappointed

But it had to be done

Because the software we built ten years ago couldn’t support the scale we operate at today. Millions of dollars in transactions that happen on our platform depend on a stable foundation

The layoff

We had one layoff. And it was awful. I still feel as if someone punched my guts everytime I go back in time to thinking about it

We did everything we could to help people leave as safely and supported as possible, and many ended up finding better-paying jobs afterward

But for me… it was devastating

For about a month I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. I ended up in the hospital.

I questioned whether I was built to be a CEO, because I couldn’t just “pull myself together” quickly like I thought I should

For a while, I thought that meant I was weak

Now I see it differently.

I broke because I cared. And caring is not a flaw. It’s a strength

I fell apart and came back wiser. Because I had a good support system around me. The support system of CEO friends is essential

And now I do everything I can to avoid another layoff in the future

What I protect fiercely now

My energy

Whether I like it or not, the company depends on my energy

And I have energy and joy when I’m working in my “zone of genius.”

The rest, I try to delegate: either to AI, or to part-time help

That helps us avoid burnout

It’s hard, and we’re still learning how to do it perfectly for everyone… but it’s a principle

Trust-based relationships

I care deeply about partnerships. I care deeply about trust

Even with competitors

I truly feel happy when others do well. Heck i even cheer on competitor launches

Not because I’m naive, but because I’ve seen it: ecosystems win long-term

Abundance for everyone is a discipline

Hard to practice, especially in a world where so many people still operate from fear

When we got lucky

There were moments when we got lucky.

We were able to do secondaries not only for founders, but also for early employees and investors

There’s something deeply beautiful about creating abundance for others

About seeing people who believed early in you breathe again, buy time, feel safe

Wealth, when done well, isn’t extraction as many people tout capitalism to be

It can be a force that lifts many lives in communities. I want to do that again

It’s one of the most meaningful parts of building a company for me: creating abundance for others at scale

The tension I learned to accept

I still feel frustrated that we’re not further ahead

And I think part of me will always feel that way

But I’ve made peace with it

Because I’m not driven only by the destination.

I’m driven by what can be created along the way

And I think that tension… is one of the engines that moves people forward

Looking ahead

For the first time, I’m writing a ten-year plan

A plan built around joy and abundance for humans

I know it sounds funny when you’re building a SaaS company with AI agents for B2B… but I love it

I’m optimistic about AI. I see AI as a tool that can help us make better decisions and solve big, complex problems

I imagine myself running this company into an absurd old age (150 maybe 😄), so I’m optimizing for joy and abundance

Joy is a harder constraint than money

But it’s a far more interesting puzzle

And that’s why I’m still here

So here I am, ten years in:

I’m no longer trying to prove I can build a company where my husband and I thrive.

I’m trying to see how long I can build one where everyone can thrive

It’s a complicated, intense, beautiful puzzle

That idea made sense to me

If you don’t believe you can win, it’s really hard to

You second-guess every move. you use brain power on back-up plans instead of creating paths towards success

Sports teams understand this well
They train belief in addition to intensive practice

So this seemed obvious to me:

If athletes train their mindset, why wouldn’t we?

And yet… I couldn’t move forward with it fully

I felt blocked for months

Till it finally hit me a few days ago (thanks to a podcast discussion about this topic)

I couldn’t fully move forward with it because

I didn’t want to train people to hold fake positive beliefs

I didn’t want to tell them, “Everything is fine, just believe harder.” Because that’s just pretending

How can you force someone to believe they’ll succeed when they’re scared?

They might have valid fears:

• What if a competitor eats our lunch ?

• What if the product ships late?

• What if sales misses the number?

I don’t have those fears cause I’m built differently. But I’m a founder, I’m supposed to be fearless. Yet I can’t expect this from everyone. We are all built differently

Telling people to “stay positive” or emulate my beliefs doesn’t remove fear
It just teaches them to hide it

Which is the last thing I want to do

Humans don’t work that way

We are codependent

Our success depends on other people showing up

So belief isn’t just personal
It’s relational

For most people fear is very rational

That’s how I finally got it

I realized that for someone to believe in success they have to get to a place where they have CONVICTION WITH WELL STATED BOUNDARIES

I call it:

Grounded Conviction

Think of it like sports

A great athlete isn’t confident because they repeat affirmations

They’re confident because they know:

• what they’re great at

• what they’re not

• and how the team around them plays

Grounded conviction has two parts

Part 1: Belief in yourself

Self confidence starts with self-knowledge. And a lot of hyper awareness

You have to know clearly:

• your zone of genius

• where you create the most value

• where your strengths align with the team’s goals

And just as important:

• what you’re not great at

• what drains you

• what you should stop doing

In sports, no one expects the goalkeeper to score every goal

In companies, we often expect people to do everything and that makes no sense

We are all born with limitations

Grounded conviction comes from knowing our roles in the field

How do you build that self-knowledge?

Feedback. But not the passive kind that comes only once or twice a year.

You have to seek it

That’s hard because feedback can bruise the ego. We learned to hide our imperfections. Someone stating out loud something we didn’t do right hurts us. Because we get afraid we might get “punished”

Yet without it, we don’t improve

And feedback alone isn’t enough

The real work is receiving it without collapsing

Owning it and taking action

That’s where confidence actually grows

Not from being told you’re great. But from understanding where you shine and where you might need to let go and leave space for others to chime in

And that’s where most progress happens

Part 2: Belief in others

This part is harder

We trust ourselves because we live in our own heads

We don’t trust others because we’ve been hurt before. I’ve yet to meet a human without scars

So our brains learned a shortcut:
Predict danger early and protect ourselves

Someone misses a deadline

Someone says a word that we might perceive as dangerous

We jump to conclusions about who they are and what they’ll do next

We apply labels on them and we lose our belief in them

But teams don’t win like that. Because no one will EVER be perfect

In great sports teams, trust is built through repair and our ability to learn to grow our trust in humans around us

Belief in others grows when two things happen

1. Fears are voiced, not buried

Concerns need to be said out loud. Often . In a way that doesn’t create damage

Clear and calm, from compassion. Without blame

Without attacking others to learn to co-create solutions. You become creative

I believe speaking up is critical

Because silence doesn’t protect teams - it just breaks them

Encouraging people to speak up when they feel hurt is my favorite activity these days

And I do that by example. I talk about the most uncomfortable topics in public. I’m still learning too

2. People show they can hear feedback and act

Trust increases when someone:

• listens

• takes ownership

• tries to improve

That’s the moment belief shifts . To evidence This is what good feedback really does

We’re not “being nice.” We’re not avoiding discomfort

But keeping people responsible while staying human

That’s hard
And it’s a skill that needs training

In our personal lives too. I work on this every day. It’s a frigging hard skill to develop

YET I THINK IT MATTERS A GREAT DEAL

Because in winning teams they don’t hide the fears

They work with it

They build accountability with compassion for self and others

That to me is grounded conviction

Not fake positivity

And I can’t wait to work with my team to build on these skills. It’s a hard puzzle but it’s the most beautiful puzzle I can think of

I was 5 and my sister was only 1 year old - alone in the apartment

They had decided we would be alone at home for 3 hours every day as they were taking different shifts at work

My parents felt the luckiest when they got jobs in communist run factories. They finally “made it “ to a union sponsored small apartment in a communist block

They were coming from the village where they lacked electricity and basic sanitary conditions. Their toilet was a hole in the ground and they barely had shoes to go to school

Once they had me and my sister complications arrived

They had to go to work  to have food to survive but so did everyone else in the neighboring blocks

Those hours alone with my sister matured me faster than I was ready

I had to change the “diapers “ which was just a cloth that got washed by hand. Because we didn’t have a washing machine

I was always afraid I’d break her somehow

The break

Eventually a childless cat lady across the street befriended my mom

She found out we’re alone and volunteered to come check on us on the days she was available

She was working for the government at that time as a translator for foreign affairs

Sometimes they didn’t have any foreign visits and she was able to come by

She’d bring us cakes she’d bake. We hadn’t seen cakes before

She’d bring us bananas . We hadn’t seen bananas before

She’d bring us tea with lemon and honey. We’d think it was the best magical liquor

She would drop by and teach me languages

The languages she spoke inspired me. Because it looked to me as if it was what was freeing her of the hardship we had

So I was fascinated

But most importantly she had escaped from her violent husband and she was free to do whatever she wanted . She’d buy “superfluous” things like paintings and nice shirts

She didn’t have a cat in her home but she had two stray ones she’d fed. And a playful dog in her apartment

The light I needed

She was my light when I grew up . Not only because she was free from financial burdens

But because she was the only one at that time who truly had time to see me fully

My parents where in constant exhaustion from 12 hours shift where they worked with their bodies in standing position without breaks

Visea, because that’s what her name was , was not exhausted. She was thrilled to be with me

And she was the first one to remark on my beautiful brain. She’d encourage my curiosity with books

She’d marvel at my capacities and as a result made me believe in my self

She’d often call me a genius trapped in a kids body. That left a big impression on me. No one else saw any genius in me before . I was only seeing myself as a burden to my parents. I was trying to be quiet and helpful

I’d be no one now if she didn’t believe in me when I needed it most

I don’t know if she ever understood the magnitude of what she gave me

She never raised a child of her own

But she raised something far less visible and far more enduring for me:

a sense of being seen

Every language and culture I explored later, every curiosity I followed, every moment I trusted my mind instead of shrinking - traces back to those afternoons across the street

The world often dismisses women like her

But I am here because one “childless cat lady” chose to spend her time on a five-year-old who needed to be seen and believed in

Years of therapy
EMDR
Hypnotherapy
Body work
Energy work

Author’s note:
This is a personal account of trauma healing. It discusses MDMA-assisted therapy in a clinical context. Please read with care and skip if this topic feels activating

And my trauma runs deep

Sexual abuse
Extreme violence
Brushes with life-and-death situations more than once
Extreme poverty

And just a lot of terrible situations that I don’t wish on anyone that I will spare you the details of

I stand now tall writing to you because I just never gave up trying to recover

A modality I never thought I’d try

One of the modalities I eventually tried was MDMA-assisted therapy

Writing that sentence alone still surprises me

Because I was scared shitless to try . Drugs of any kind terrified me

I have grown up seeing a family member getting destroyed by them . The dependence and the damage that I was affected by first hand that made me the least likely candidate to try

I didn’t condone drugs. I didn’t judge others who used them, but I was firmly in the “not for me” camp.

I was the good girl. No drugs.

Outside of one spiced cookie in Amsterdam, this door was closed

Until late in life, when trauma had me holding on by a thread

I had seen people around me transformed in quiet, positive ways. Remembering things they had forgotten. Reclaiming parts of themselves that were no longer available

And because this work was done in a controlled, therapeutic setting, with trained professionals, and because I saw no addiction patterns afterward, I eventually allowed myself to consider it

With a lot of fear because I didn’t know how my body will react. Especially because my body is extremely sensitive to any kind of medicine

Before each session

Before every session, my body would shake visibly

I was terrified of what I might discover. Of what might surface. Of what would change once I saw it

The therapist was exceptionally kind

A weighted blanket. Soft music.
A clear rule: nothing happens unless you are ready.

Only after my explicit consent would she offer a small capsule with water.

About an hour later, my body would soften.

Warmth.
Relaxation.
An unfamiliar sense of compassion.

Fear receded. The effort to keep parts of myself hidden dissolved. What had been guarded no longer felt dangerous to approach.

Each session began with an intention.

One session, I asked to understand why my body shook late at night before sleep. A recurring event I had never fully understood.

During the session

The sessions lasted around ten hours. For some I was told there’s a second capsule. For me one was enough

Memories emerged slowly. Carefully. Almost respectfully

Not as shocking revelations. More like a door opening just enough for light to enter

I won’t share the specifics of what I saw. But details surfaced from events I had completely forgotten

At first, I doubted them

They felt distant. Foreign. Almost fabricated. At times I was worried I was inventing stories to make meaning

And yet, every time I reached out to a friend or family member afterward, the facts were confirmed.

These things had happened

Understanding why those memories were buried took time

Eventually, it became clear: at the time, I simply couldn’t process the emotions. So my body stored them away so I could survive.

It was not some sort of malfunction, rather a form of protection

During sessions, my body moved in whatever way it needed

Sometimes I paced and spoke continuously, articulating insights clearly as they arrived
Sometimes I stayed under the weighted blanket for hours, silent but deeply engaged internally
Sometimes I danced
Sometimes yoga poses emerged spontaneously

Often, I shook.

The kind of shaking you see in animals after trauma, once the danger has passed.

The therapist normalized it. Encouraged it. Helped me trust that my body knew how to release what it had been holding

To me, it felt like letting go of years of stored fear

After

By the end of each session, I felt calmer.

More at peace with myself
More understanding of who I had become and why
More accepting of what had happened

And most unexpectedly: more compassionate toward myself

I had spent a lifetime berating myself for small mistakes. This was new.

“Self-love” feels like a clumsy phrase to me. But it’s the closest approximation of the state I was in

By early evening, I was ready for sleep

The therapist provided electrolytes, vitamins, and clear guidance to rest

I slept deeply for about ten hours.
The days that followed were quiet, contemplative

My body felt like it had processed something significant and needed integration time

Two days later, the therapist would call to help me make sense of what had surfaced

These sessions were spread across eighteen months. Slowly. Intentionally

I needed time between them to integrate, to stabilize, to let deeper layers reveal themselves when they were ready

Patience mattered

What surprised me most

I didn’t come out angry

People often expect rage. Or revenge. Or a demand for balance for all the people that caused me harm

What I felt instead was compassion

That doesn’t mean I lack boundaries
It doesn’t mean I tolerate violence

It means I chose to end the cycle without perpetuating it

I felt compassionate and firm

What this did and did not do

MDMA-assisted therapy did not magically heal me fully

The work continues. And likely will for the rest of my life.

But it did something essential:

It gave me permission to look at myself with grace.

And I don’t believe that would have been possible without this modality, and without the presence of a skilled, empathetic, human therapist

This part matters deeply to me

No amount of journaling, self-reflection, or AI conversation can replace healing that happens in the presence of another regulated human nervous system ( I measured this with my Oura ring like the geek I am)

Healing is relational and this experience was one chapter. Not a full cure

Just a doorway that allowed me to meet myself more gently

And for that, I am grateful

Recommendations

A few important recommendations I’d strongly emphasize based on my experience if you’re considering this work:

1. Only consider MDMA-assisted therapy in a legal or clinically supervised context. Laws vary widely by country and state. Do not bypass this
   

2. The therapist matters more than the substance. Deep training, trauma literacy, and attunement are non-negotiable
   

3. Go slowly. Integration time between sessions is as important as the sessions themselves
   

4. Do not do this alone. This is not recreational use and not self-guided work
   

5. Listen to your body. If fear feels overwhelming or destabilizing, that is information worth honoring
   

6. This is not for everyone. And that’s okay
   
   

Disclaimer:
This essay reflects my personal experience only. I am not a medical professional, and this is not medical advice. MDMA is a controlled substance in many jurisdictions, and its use may be illegal outside approved clinical or research settings. Trauma healing is deeply individual, and what helped me may not be appropriate or safe for others. If you are considering any form of trauma therapy, consult qualified, licensed professionals and follow local laws and medical guidance

There’s a moment every tech CEO eventually hits

It usually happens late at night, after the last Slack message is sent and the last fire is put out

You stare at your screen, at the numbers everyone worships - ARR, EBITDA, CAC, NRR- and ask yourself:

“Is this all there is?
Is this all I’m sacrificing my life for?”

I’ve had these moments myself so I know them too well

Through layoffs, near-death quarters, hypergrowth, fundraising, board pressure, and parenting two little humans who expect me to transform into funny Minecraft characters at bedtime despite all the stress

And in every one of those moments, the same realization kept returning to me:

We built capitalism to serve us. Somewhere along the way, we started serving it

The old model we built years ago is cracking

The old CEO model is collapsing. And i know because i organize hundreds of dinners with CEOs. We have :

• Revenue growth as the only purpose

• Burnout masquerading as “leadership”

Many CEOs feel this deeply, even if they don’t say it publicly. How can they? They are supposed to show a “we got this under control” face to everyone who blames them for all the things that go wrong

Because here is what most CEO know but only few (maybe just me?) say out loud:

We are often exhausted
We feel often alone
We secretly wish someone would pat us on the head and say, “You’re going to be ok!”

The good news is that exhaustion is not a personal failure

It’s a systemic symptom

We’ve run companies built on operating systems that no longer map to the reality we live in

40 years ago Edward Freeman had called it out (and called it Stakeholder Capitalism) but he was too soon. Also not enough

After years of tweaking and tweaking the system towards one that matches what i think future companies should do …

I am feeling that we’re finally cracking it. Not perfectly

But I finally got to a place where I no longer operate out of exhaustion
And I operate out of joy

This is a big deal for me

I know that is a luxury but I think it’s a luxury that is available to everyone who’s part of this system. Provided we put our heads together to solve for it

And oh boy…

that changes everything

Conscious Capitalism is not fluff

When i mention conscious capitalism at loud at dinners I notice that people look at me puzzled. Some have no idea what I’m talking about . Others hear conscious capitalism and might think of something fluffy

Others resonate. This post is for those that resonate

I personally believe this is the next evolution of business. And I need help to make it better

It’s built on a simple premise:

A company should grow the people inside it - not consume them!

Not by being “nice”
Not by avoiding conflict
Not by pretending things are perfect

But by designing environments in which people can tell the truth, contribute transparently, and operate from autonomy rather than fear

And ideally operate with purpose

This is how we built Chili Piper. Not because we’re saints. But because after being fired twice and watching all the ways remote decision-making breaks… I vowed to build a company where:

• Decisions are transparent

• Ownership is distributed

• Mistakes are celebrated

• Conflicts are navigated with curiosity, not punishment

• People get to experiment with their roles

• Human beings - not job titles- are the moat

• Humans have agency within the rules they are co-creating

None of this is “fluffy”
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done

But it’s also the only thing that still works in this new era we’re entering

Why?

Because AI is automating everything except our humanity
Because software product moats evaporate
Because distribution channels shift overnight (AEO anyone?)
Because younger generations refuse to suffer the way we did

And because CEOs need a new source of power. That no longer comes from control (or fear or losing control)

And I call this new source of power “Influence”

Influence comes from trust
Trust comes from transparency
Transparency comes from consciousness

Conscious CEOs operate differently

They’re not trying to look powerful
They’re seeking a different power. An inner power
And inner power that doesn’t try to control comes from joy

Which means:

• They don’t pretend to know everything

• They don’t hide the numbers

• They don’t posture when things go wrong

• They replace hierarchy with clarity of purpose

• They let people work with their own rhythms

• They aren’t scared of divergent opinions

• They build companies that expand human potential not compress it

• They understand we’re not separated

For me all this is not theoretical. It’s how we operate at Chili Piper

Capitalism isn’t the problem

Unconscious capitalism is

The kind where we hustle ourselves into numbness
Where we sacrifice family for “shareholder value”
Where we scale but do not evolve

Where we build powerful products on top of disempowered people
Where CEOs disintegrate under the myth that they must be superhuman

Yet

The world does not need superhuman CEOs!

I found the hard way they don’t exist anyways

It needs conscious ones

The CEO of the future is a systems architect of human potential

Not a dictator
Not the “smartest person in the room”
Not a micro manager
Not the martyr who ties their nervous system to every board KPI

A conscious CEO understands:

• Influence > control

• Alignment > pressure

• Transparency > secrecy

• Curiosity > certainty

• Autonomy > surveillance

• Purpose > fear

And for me this is where it gets exciting:

I believe conscious companies will outperform unconscious ones
Because humans who feel expanded outperform humans who feel threatened

So…

This is my invitation

To every CEO who feels alone
To every CEO who is tired of pretending
To every CEO who wants to build something that matters beyond ARR or AI credits
To every CEO who is brave enough to lead from their higher self, not their fear-driven self

This is your call-back to maybe re-consider re-designing your organization
Your permission slip to rewrite the rules
Your reminder that you are not insane for wanting a new path. For wanting joy. Or a one week vacation. Or a dinner with your family

The next era of capitalism will not be built by those who optimize the fastest till they dig themselves into a hole

By those who understand that a company is not a machine - it is a living organism. One that evolves

And evolution starts with the person at the top

I need help to make it work. This is why I’m starting to write about it. Because this is the hardest puzzle I’ve ever had to deal with

My brain alone is not sufficient to solve for this. I have too many limitations to crack this alone. I still make a million mistakes

I looked up at companies like Patagonia and WholeFoods trying (heck John Mackey even wrote a blueprint for Conscious Capitalism ) but I got disappointed. Because as soon as they scaled they broke

Other tech companies like Salesforce or Microsoft also talk about empowering people but their current structure still priorities optimization over humanity. They still have old models built in

Benioff talks about creating an ecosystem that gives back but there’s dissonance in what he says and does. Probably because of the enormous pressure around him

I don’t want leaders who talk about conscious capitalism. I want leaders who live it

Those barely exist in companies that scale

For now. But I’m not giving up. Because I see glimmers of it in what we do at Chili Piper. And I’m making lots of new friends who are starting to seek it too

The Only Power Move That Actually Scales

I grew up in a very hard environment during communism in Romania where people under harsh survival used their power to control

I saw power used as a weapon long before I understood power as a tool

For years, I avoided it

I didn’t want to become powerful because I saw that meaning I would inflict pain on others

I feared becoming like the people whose wounds dictated their behavior

I was afraid to grow the company because I was afraid I would become like the kind of power I was trying to avoid

But eventually, to lead people across the world in 40 countries, I had to heal my relationship to power

Here’s what I learned:

Power is clean when it’s used with consciousness. When it’s used to influence for the greater good

Power is corrosive when it’s used with fear

Conscious capitalism is simply this:
Using power without leaving a wound

A CEO can fire someone with dignity
A team can disagree without dehumanizing
You can compete without poisoning the well
You can scale without burning lives in the process

I believe it’s the only strategy that will actually work long-term.

Transparency at the core

People love to say transparency is a management tactic
At Chili Piper it became part of our culture

We made every financial number visible
We opened up every decision.
We trained people from countries in conflict to collaborate - Palestinians with Israelis, Ukrainians with Russians - because consciousness doesn’t exclude by nationality. We use help from this organization to train our teams

People don’t talk about this in the business books

But this is what conscious capitalism actually looks like in the wild for us:

• Creating psychological safety where war zones still echo inside the people on Zoom calls.

• Teaching teams that truth is brings clarity.

• Reminding them that disagreements are not danger; they are just different lenses through the same problem

• Building systems that reduce suffering instead of amplifying it.

Capitalism is just a container
Consciousness decides what flows through it

Human-Centric ≠ Anti-Business

Some people think that when you put humans at the center, you sacrifice growth

This is a fundamental misunderstanding

Humans are the growth engine

When people feel safe, they innovate
When they feel seen, they collaborate
When they feel trusted, they take ownership
When they feel inspired, they have energy to sprint

At Chili Piper we trust our people fully:

• We don’t monitor their hours. We don’t have tracking software on their computers.

• They work from anywhere they want.

• They can take breaks to pick up their kids whenever they want.

• They can take breaks to walk in nature whenever they want

We just help them to the best of our capacity to meet their numbers

Conscious capitalism is not “be kind and hope revenue appears.”

Capitalism Is Not Broken — Our Consciousness Around It Is

People love to blame capitalism for every wound on Earth.

But capitalism is simply an amplifier

It amplifies the consciousness of the leaders running it

When leaders are unconscious, capitalism becomes extractive
When leaders are higher consciousness, capitalism becomes regenerative

What we call “conscious capitalism” is actually capitalism done at its highest operating frequency

It is capitalism without the survival-based distortions
Capitalism without the trauma patterns replaying themselves in boardrooms

The Future Belongs to the Soft and the Precise

I strongly believe that the most powerful leaders in the next era will not be the ones who can dominate a room. They will be the ones who can hold complexity with their heart

I used to think my sensitivity as a woman was a liability
Now I know it’s the asset that gives me access to information other leaders cannot yet perceive. But i believe this is available to everyone to access. Man or woman or anything in between. It’s just forgotten

Final takeaway

If you strip everything away - the markets, the models, the frameworks, the dashboards - business becomes one question:

Can you create prosperity without losing your humanity?

My answer is yes.
Not just yes - it’s the only sustainable way

They create a world where growth does not require sacrifice,
power does not require harm

Is it hard? Incredibly hard. Sometimes i feel like banging my head on the wall as I feel alone in trying to figure out this super hard equation. But my hope is that if I open up more about my challenges maybe just maybe others might chip in ideas

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately - with Roxana our head of marketing- because we’re hiring. And it’s not easy to figure out the right skills

The Many Faces of Product Marketing

Product Marketing means so many things to so many people. So it’s been a tough role to hire for even before AI automated big parts . Myself I used to have a large team of product marketers in 2021. And unfortunately we had to part ways because it was not working. I’ve learned a lot since then

In theory, product marketers are the stewards of:

• Positioning

• Product launches (inclusive of enablement)

• Pricing

• Competitive and market intelligence

• Sometimes customer marketing ; the voice of expansion, retention, and advocacy

It’s really hard to do all these things well

Heck, it’s even hard to nail one of them. Just think of how complex pricing alone can get. I still have some PTSD from our own pricing

But 2026 makes it even trickier

AI didn’t simplify product marketing through all the automations - it is raising the bar

A lot of competitive intel can be automated now - YES
Insights from customer call recordings, emails, community chatter, sales enablement assets - all can be synthesized in minutes. And done so by persona and team size (we do this in Gemini with all our data)

Decent landing pages can be spun up now by anyone who’s “vibe coding”

So the question becomes:

What does great look like when machines can do the mechanics?

Beyond the Mechanics

I asked this question to my network recently. More than a hundred leaders chimed in, and the consensus was clear:

“The real differentiator now isn’t who can write better messaging or run tighter launches - it’s who can design and orchestrate the GTM system that keeps product, marketing, and sales aligned around the same source of truth.”
— Luke Farrugia

In other words, the best PMMs are systems thinkers
They connect the dots that AI presents but also keep a pulse on from the parts that are not seen by AI.

Yes they get from the data customer feedback to help with positioning updates. Yes they get intel from win/loss data to evolve the narrative . AI helps with all of that

But they also keep a pulse on intonation, on reading the human vibes in the room. And that’s hard

AI exposes some data but it’s not the full story

The Human Layer: What Machines Can’t Replace

“EQ is the common thread between change management and storytelling. The ability to talk to customers, ask the right questions, and distill insights — that’s what AI can’t replace.”
— Shaalin Parekh

I loved that one. Because it nails what’s really happening:
AI has eaten the mechanical side of the role. But the emotional side - the translation, the empathy, the taste - is what remains human. I see it time and time again but it’s hard to explain in words for those who haven’t seen how great looks like

It’s like trying to explain how a lemon tastes like without ever trying or smelling one. And without having experienced a orange either because that’s cheating

I digress. They are basically the meaning makers

The Rise of the Meaning-Maker

“The PMMs who will continue to succeed in the age of AI will be the ones who are meaning-makers.”
— Megan Pratt

I couldn’t agree more.
When everything is automated, getting to the right story- to clarity - is hard

Roxana - tells me she sees it kinda like this

Great PMMs don’t drown in everything everyone pours at them
They sift through signals in the data, the words customers actually use, and add in the tone in their frustration, the unsaid truths that can only be gathered at happy hours and add the shift in what “value” means to them

They find meaning where others see data.

As Lindsey Tishgart wrote:

“AI can summarize every call, every data point… but it lacks true subjectivity. Great PMMs have instinct. They know which insights actually matter.”

It’s intuition built from proximity - from listening to real customers outside of zoom -at dinners and happy hours. Not just transcripts

The Translator Archetype

Several people described the modern PMM as a “translator” as well

Between product and revenue. Between engineering and storytelling. Between what’s real and what’s promised

“They need to speak Product, Client, Support, Sales, and Finance. They read their audience and that’s how their storytelling lands.”
— Mindy Barenblat

This ability to translate across functions - to find shared language when departments are misaligned - might just be the most underrated superpower of all

In our case we align ourselves on QHMs (aka qualified held meetings) since we can get a lot more precise in what we all look at

Cherry on the Top - The Diplomat

Hiring product marketing in 2026 means looking for someone who can read the vibes in a room. Can hear what’s not said. But the cherry on the top comes from those who can also is be able hold contradictions:

• Analytical but deeply empathetic

• Strategic yet tactical

• Storyteller and systems architect

• Influencer without authority

Or, as Adena DeMonte beautifully put it:

“The best product marketers are the politicians* of the company. Without ownership of anything, they gain support across teams with often conflicting views and steer the ship forward.”

Low ego. High EQ.
Mini CEOs who lead with influence, not title.How hard is that?

*I’m sure that Adena meant the diplomat in this context. Because we all tend to form some sort of allergy to using the word politician in any context these days :)

The Three Rarest Traits

So if I had to distill everything above. From my own experience and the hundreds of comments that followed - it comes down to three things:

1. Change management . The PMM is 80% emotional support and 20% project plans. They’re the calm in chaos, helping teams shift direction without losing trust.

2. Storytelling . Not just messaging, but emotional translation.
   They make the customer the hero and the product the guide.

3. Big-picture clarity – They understand what metrics matter, why they matter, and how to align the org behind them.

“That combination of change management, storytelling, and strategic insight is a rare trifecta.”
— Kam Hossieny

So, Who Are We Really Hiring?

We’re hiring translators of chaos. And drivers of alignment.

As Kristie Conner said:

“Great product marketers don’t just do product marketing. It’s not just a job — it’s a way of seeing, connecting, and shaping what’s next.”

So yes, it’s hard to hire for

But when you find the right one - that rare person who can blend systems thinking, curiosity, and emotional intelligence - you’ll know to cherish them

Because suddenly, the noise turns into beautiful music that everyone can resonate with

If you’ve hired a great PMM recently, what traits made them stand out?
I’d love to see what I missed but others might benefir from

My heart is beating fast
Part it’s my nerves, this is my first newsletter
Part it’s the exhaustion, it’s been an intense week in San Francisco, and I still haven’t recalibrated. Heck I even rode a bull this year and my hips are still screaming from it

I decided to start writing because my team keeps asking me to share what I learn each week about AI, from our customers and what it means to stay human through so much change

So I figured… why not open-source it?

And what better place to begin than the largest SaaS event in the world?
Dreamforce brought nearly 50,000 people in San Francisco and myself I met hundreds this week

It was overwhelming and inspiring at once. What was inspiring to me personally was to see the diversity on stage at the keynote below . I loved seeing so many women presenting

Besides the beautiful display of diversity here were my takeaways

The Art of First Impressions

This week I was reminded how much first impressions matter

We all perform little rituals before meeting others: we research, we dress up, we rehearse our confidence

But we forget that the true impression rarely comes from us. It comes from our ability to be of service to others

That’s hard to do these days

Our minds are noisy. Our inboxes and feeds are very loud too

Being truly curious about another person (and listening without rehearsing our reply) feels like a lost art

Yet it’s also the skill that defines great sellers, leaders, and humans.

Buyers are inundate by choice and they have a lot of pressure to get things right. Helping them is never about the perfect pitch. It’s about truly understanding the internal chaos they’re navigating

It’s work in progress for me too. I keep practicing. And I still mess up.

Messing Up Gracefully

Last night, at a customer dinner, I said something unintentionally hurtful.
I realized the damage only after the words left my mouth

Repairing that kind of harm is hard. Even when the intention is not matching the impact . It’s also very hard to predict precisely how much our words will impact someone

We each carry our own stories, our own sensitivities

As a CEO, my words carry more weight than I often remember. That’s both the privilege and the burden of the role

It means my smallest misstep can ripple in ways I don’t intend.

I’m grateful my team calls me in - not out - when that happens.
Feedback is uncomfortable, but it’s the only path to growth.
Especially when there’s an imbalance of power.

I’ve learned that my leadership skills don’t come from being right. But from being willing to make amends

On Power and Responsibility

Marc Benioff opened Dreamforce with a political statement that quickly made headlines
I don’t know if he did it intentionally to provoke, but it was yet another reminder how much weight a few words from a powerful person can carry

People expect leaders - CEOs, presidents - to row in the right direction. With all the right words

But we’re all limited humans, operating in flawed systems that exaggerate our influence

I believe no one person should hold that much power

Our systems give it to them . And that’s the problem

I’m actively trying to change that within my own company

To flatten hierarchies
To make decisions more transparent
To build a culture where power is distributed. It’s not easy. But it feels like the only path forward

The Job Market Whiplash

San Francisco feels strange right now

I have friends getting seven-figure bonuses to join AI-native companies.
And others who are equally talented who’ve been on the sidelines for a year

AI is simultaneously creating and destroying roles. Which is painful. And unsettling short term

But I think there’s beauty in this chaos too

Because it will push more people to build new things. Build new businesses.Smaller. More nimble

To delegate the soul-crushing parts of work to machines
To rediscover the kind of work that sparks joy

Because when we operate from joy, we become unstoppable
It’s the unfair advantage.

The kids who are staying up till 2AM coding the next thing are having the time of their life. I saw huge smiles on their faces when they see what their thumbs can deliver to millions of users

Thriving at Work

I meet a lot of teams. And I notice that those thriving in this economy aren’t the biggest or the ones most funded

They’re the ones who truly love what they do

They’re curious, adaptable, and unafraid of change

Take the SDR role for instance One of the hardest in GTM
You get rejected for a living. Yet I’ve seen SDRs thrive by blending their humanity with automation: using AI for insight, then breaking the rules to add human touch

I brought one of our SDRs, Vitor , to Dreamforce. Watching him navigate chaos with ease reminded me what “thriving” really looks like: doing the kind of things that no AI can do. He learns information about his prospects that no AI can get online. He truly listens. He knocks on doors. He knows to open them

Our SDR team consistently beats plan because they learned to work with the system not get defeated by it

Learning from Each Other

If there’s one thing I hope you take away from this first post (if you read so far) it’s this:
Thriving at work isn’t about avoiding pain.It’s about staying curious through it

Ask yourself:
What would make me thrive at work?
What could I delegate to AI or to others - so I can spend more time doing the things that make me come alive?

That’s the question I’m sitting with this week. And I hope you’ll sit with it too. If you want to share your learning below I’d appreciate it a whole lot

Afterword

This week reminded me to look for joy inside the chaos

Because my kids and husband were with me, I felt whole
Because my friends were there for the events we hosted, I felt supported
Because my team showed resilience, I felt proud
And because I spent four hours coding with 400 engineers on Amazon Bedrock, I remembered where my own joy lives - in building things with engineers that make humans a little happier

*I opened with emotion on purpose. Because I want to normalize it.
We all have feelings, but we often hide them at work, afraid they’ll crack our “professional” shell

Yet emotions are simply signals. Data from the body
When we listen to them, we understand ourselves better
And when we understand ourselves better I believe we can lead and live with more peace

Thanks for reading and following along. Next week I will talking more about product marketing that’s on top of mind for me and can’t wait for your thoughts on it,

Alina

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P.S These notes are written from an AI hub in San Francisco where I’m hosted by Annette . Another fellow cofounder friend who’s building a cool startup to help b2b content teams thrive. Give her a follow