Having the Strength to Walk Away
Welcome to the Eighty-first edition of Unstoppable Founders!
👑 #Unstoppable Female Founder
This week, my Unstoppable Female Founder is Nina Mohanty, co-founder and CEO of Bloom Money - a woman who is a force for change!
Last June I hosted a lunch for female tech founders in London which is where I first met Nina and learned about her passion and near obsession with the problem Bloom Money is solving. Since then, I've had the pleasure of getting to know her on a more personal level, and she has very quickly become a woman I have tremendous admiration for. She is fearless, resilient, ambitious – and funny as hell! She is that fierce warrior you always want to have in your corner, armed with a high intellect and relentless determination.
Born and raised in Silicon Valley and never saw herself becoming an entrepreneur. Rather she trained in ballet for 17 years, considered becoming a paediatrician at one point and even considered becoming an astronaut, but never an entrepreneur. Until she did!
After graduating University from CEMS in France, Nina struggled trying to find her first job, until a friend suggested she apply for a role at Mastercard. ‘ "I grew up in the 90s, I knew the Mastercard ads, but I didn't actually know what they did. I thought they were a bank.’ Nina landed the role that would spark her love of Fintech. From Mastercard to launching Starling Bank's first current accounts, from Bud during open banking's initial launch to Klarna during the birth of Buy Now Pay Later, Nina has consistently been at the forefront of the industry.
As she worked on these groundbreaking products, she couldn't help but notice that most of these financial products were being built for a white majority, and she couldn't help but think, 'but what about everyone else?'"
Nina is also the daughter of immigrant parents, her mother being from Taiwan and her father from India, her knowledge and experiences with money always included a ‘hui’ or a community finance pot.
“My grandmother was a trusted person in the village and so she would run the chit funds there. So I had seen this behavior in my family,"
But it wasn't until a British-Jamaican colleague mentioned their own "pardna" system that she realized the universal nature of these community finance practices. For example, in Taiwan it’s called ‘hui’, in India it's called ‘chit funds’ , in the Caribbean it’s called ‘pardna’, in Nigeria it’s ‘ajo’ and around the world a large majority of cultures have a similar community finance component.
The concept is beautifully simple: a group pools money together monthly, and each member takes turns receiving the full amount. It's microcredit built within communities, born from necessity when traditional banks wouldn't serve immigrant populations.
The more banks and investors told Nina her idea wasn't for them, the more obsessed she became with solving the problem. And that's how Bloom Money was born, a digital platform that honors traditional communal money practices while providing the security and convenience of modern fintech.
Bloom Money is creating financial infrastructure for communities that had been systematically excluded. They are now helping to build users' credit profiles and developing investment products specifically designed for diaspora communities who are "straddling countries" – making it as easy as clicking a button to invest circle payouts into pensions or other wealth-building vehicles.
Taking from Jack Dorsey’s quote, Nina is quite literally building what she wishes to see in the world and being recognized for it. She has been named to Forbes 30 under 30, Innovate Finance's Women in FinTech Power List, and most recently a nominee of Veuve Clicquot's Bold Woman Award. She is a powerhouse and absolute legend!
Interested in learning more about Bloom Money and how you can get involved?
Check out their newly launched Crowdfund or download the Bloom Money app!
📣 #TheRant
Having the Strength to Walk Away
Over the past few weeks, I've spoken to and heard about several female founders who've made one of entrepreneurship's hardest decisions, to close their businesses.
These are women who are extraordinary, they took a leap of faith and they backed themselves completely. That within itself deserves recognition! Creating something from nothing, building, leading, taking that first swing requires absolute audacity and I commend them for it.
However in entrepreneurship, we rarely acknowledge, let alone celebrate the courage required to step back and say, "I've given this my all, but it's time to close this chapter."
There is so much profound grief that comes with making a decision of this magnitude and the mental fortitude it takes to face this reality. It's a courage that should be acknowledged and celebrated. Making the decision to wind down isn't waving the white flag and surrendering, it's demonstrating executive leadership at its most difficult time. It requires tremendous bravery.
Yes, we know the statistics. Roughly 90% of startups don't make it. We understand the odds intellectually. But when it's your late nights, your sacrifices, your team looking to you for answers, it all becomes deeply personal. The emotional weight of letting go is substantial. Likened to the loss of a loved one, your business is your brain child brought to life through sheer will and determination.
For the founders who have recently made this decision, remember that trying and not succeeding will always require more courage than never trying at all. It wasn't a failure, it was a learning experiment. You took a calculated risk, gathered invaluable data, and made a considered business decision. For the founders navigating this transition right now, please know you have my deepest respect.
We need to normalize celebrating these stories alongside the big milestone successes. The women who recognized when something was no longer serving them. Who had the vision to start something meaningful and the wisdom to know when to redirect their energy toward new opportunities.
Your willingness to share your experiences openly makes the path easier for the rest of us. Whatever your path may take you next, you’ll always have a cheering section backing you and supporting you.
💰#HypeCorner
This is where we cover funding rounds raised by female founders and their teams across Europe. With less than 2% of VC funding going to female led startups, the HypeCorner is simply our way of congratulating and celebrating these founders!
🇺🇦 Iryna Sukhomlyn Co-founder & CBO of RMachine
🇪🇸 Anna Bedmar Co-founder & COO of Habitacion.com
🇪🇸 Inés Arteaga Artiz CEO of BIOM Bioinspired Materials
🇩🇰 Mette Louise Vestergaard Carstensen Co-founder & CEO of Augmented Hearing
🇬🇧 Prof Kate Black FREng Founder & CEO of Atomik AM
🇨🇭 Jean Marie Duvall & BingMei Hao Co-founder of ReproNovo
🇨🇭 Sofía Radley-Searle Co-founder & COO of Axmed
🇫🇷 Dominique Costantini Co-founder of OSE Immunotherapeutics
🇳🇴 Karin Gilljam Interim CEO & CSO of Regenics
🇪🇸 Valeria Bellani Founder & CRO of Shalion
🇸🇪 Cathrin Johansson CEO of MedVasc
🇹🇷 Irem Sumer & Simay Kahraman Co-founders TaleMonster Games
Huge congratulations to these founders and their teams. Wishing you all continued success!
🎤 Events for founders
🇬🇧 {London} SXSW lands in London June 2nd - 7th taking over the city merging creativity, culture and technology. SXSW London are now taking applications for musicians, film makers and speakers!
🇪🇸 {Madrid} South Summit Madrid - June 4th - 6th brings together global innovators, bold entrepreneurs, leading corporations, and visionary investors. Early bird tickets now available.
💻 {Virtual} Unstoppable Healthcare Demo Day - June 13th - Join us we showcase the female founders powering the future of Healthcare. In our first Healthcare Demo Day, we will feature founders building across Healthtech, Biotech, Femtech & Medtech within Europe. If you’re a founder, Investor or ecosystem partner focusing on these sectors, join us! Grab your FREE tickets here. Interested in presenting your startup? Apply here!
🇫🇷 {Paris} VivaTech - June 11-14th- is the world's rendezvous for startups and leaders to celebrate innovation. It's a gathering of the world's brightest minds, talents, and products.
🇳🇱 {Amsterdam} European Women in Technology is a must for your calendar, happening June 25th & 26th. 5,000+ women in tech, diversity advocates, allies and change makers for Leading the Digital Revolution!
🇬🇧 {London} Sifted Summit is back 8th & 9th of October, bringing together 3,000 founders, startup and scaleup operators and investors to celebrate the resilience of the ecosystem and how its leading players are preparing for the long-haul.
🇫🇷 {Paris} unlockVC (formerly WVCE) is hosting its annual Summit from the 13th - 15th of October. This year unlock vc are bringing 30 exceptional female founders to meet 400+ active female investors - Applications are now open until 1st August!
👑 UNSTOPPABLE FOUNDING MEMBERSHIPS Now available! Inside the Community Hub you’ll gain access to the resources, networks and capital you need to build and scale your business. From helping you secure capital to building traction, everything you need as a female founder, all in one place!
☀️ Have a wonderful weekend! ☀️
Jen
PS- Are you a female founder just getting started and not quite how to structure your go to market, build your brand frameworks or what to expect from the fundraising process? Drop me a note, Id be happy to hop on a call and help!