It’s not about proving yourself to every skeptic but about keeping a stubborn tally of your own wins. Track them somewhere, even privately. Document what you launch, what you solve, and when the opportunity comes to advocate for yourself—or for someone else—those receipts matter.
When I left my senior engineering role at Monzo, a British challenger bank, to co-found a deep tech startup, the reactions were rather predictable. Why walk away from a secure, well-paid job, especially during a tech downturn? Why take the risk as a woman in one of the most male-dominated industries?
I didn’t brush those questions off. They sat with me, made me second-guess myself more times than it’s pleasant to admit. However, eventually, I realized the only way to build something truly different was to step off the safe path entirely.
Today, I’m a co-founder and Chief Scientist at Gradient Labs. Here, we’re building the first safe AI customer service agent for industries that have always been too complex—and too tightly regulated—for automation. We’re not just trying to make AI work; we’re trying to make it work safely, in places where getting it wrong has real-life consequences.
Building from a place of trust
You have to be intentional before the company culture calcifies into something you never meant to create.
Starting a company wasn’t about assembling titles and job descriptions. It was about building trust from the ground up. When we launched Gradient Labs, we knew we didn’t want to dive into endless Zoom marathons. Instead, we went to Seville, rented a house, and spent two weeks working side by side, debating, disagreeing, laughing, and slowly erasing the subtle hierarchies we carried from our past professional lives.
That decision wasn’t just aesthetic. Face-to-face, trust becomes something you live through: you see how people handle friction, notice who listens when it’s inconvenient, who changes their mind when they should. Those things are almost invisible in remote-only spaces, but they shape the culture in ways you can’t undo later.
While founding a team, or even just thinking about one, seizing early opportunities for unfiltered interaction is a must. Even a few days of working in the same physical space, with unstructured time woven in, can surface dynamics that otherwise stay hidden for months. You have to be intentional before the company culture calcifies into something you never meant to create.
Reclaiming the room
No one hands you credibility just because you’re present.
One thing I learned early: bias isn’t something you can outwork. It’s built into the room before you even walk in. For instance, people would often direct their questions to my male co-founders. Every time it happened, I made it a point to quietly, firmly, redirect the conversation.
Not with anger, but with certainty. No one hands you credibility just because you’re present. Unfortunately, many people still have to claim it, especially in traditionally male-dominated industries. You have to build spaces—teams, companies—where the right voices are amplified, not overlooked.
Hiring beyond the resume
We default to gender-neutral language across everything we do. It’s not a checkbox exercise—language shapes our reality.
So the hiring process was another thing I realized we needed to rethink. Bias doesn’t start in the boardroom; it starts in how we define ‘potential.’ At Gradient Labs, we look past the polish. We ask: what did this person build? Who did they lead? What did they change? Especially for women, who are often conditioned to understate their leadership, reading between the lines can reveal a very different, much richer story.
The company culture, too, has to be deliberate. We default to gender-neutral language across everything we do. It’s not a checkbox exercise—language shapes our reality. If we want a different future, it starts in the small, everyday details.
Finding power in transparency
One of the most powerful things I did in my previous job wasn’t tied to a technical achievement per se. It was being a part of a women’s network where we openly shared salaries, promotion timelines, and feedback scores. This transparency peeled back the layers of ‘maybe it’s just me’ spiral, and exposed the patterns that too often stay hidden. It taught me that silence only protects the system, not the individuals within it.
Being part of that community helped normalize the conversation before it became something more visible and structured. Even quiet transparency can build momentum over time. At Gradient Labs, we carry that spirit with us: transparency as a tool for collective progress, not as something to be feared. It’s baked into how we make decisions, how we talk about growth, and how we handle feedback. It’s not always comfortable, but it’s how trust is built and kept.
Turning underestimation into momentum
Being underestimated is exhausting, but it can also be powerful fuel. You don’t have to argue in every meeting, yet, still, you can make yourself impossible to ignore. Wins build momentum, and momentum becomes change for the people coming up behind you.
Essentially, it’s not about proving yourself to every skeptic but about keeping a stubborn tally of your own wins. Track them somewhere, even privately. Document what you launch, what you solve, and when the opportunity comes to advocate for yourself—or for someone else—those receipts matter.
The next wave is already here
If you’re wondering whether you’re ready to start something big, maybe know this: almost no one ever feels ready.
Gradient Labs is still in its early days, but we’re clear-eyed about what’s ahead. AI will touch industries that once swore it never could. And if we do this right, the tools we build will be ones that people can actually trust. Right now, in deep tech, it’s not just about who builds the future. It’s about who gets to imagine it at all.
If you’re wondering whether you’re ready to start something big, maybe know this: almost no one ever feels ready. Confidence often follows action. Start before the room makes space for you. Choose progress over perfection. You don’t need permission—you need a small first step, and then the next one. The next generation is already watching. Let’s make sure they see what’s possible.
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