Redefining What It Means to Be a Tech CEO
With perspectives recently spotlighted by Forbes on angel investing
Bienvenue! I am Marion Siboni, CEO and founder of La Creme de la STEM™, the only global, private network for early-stage female founders in tech and science.
I share valuable insights about entrepreneurship, community building, and inspiring women’s stories twice a month. 5,400+ investors, entrepreneurs, and operators have already subscribed. Join them! 👇
✍️ Current setting ✍️
📍 Writing you from: Breads Alone, one of my favorite pastries shop in the Catskills - great news, they sell some products in NYC farmers’ market!
☕️ Drinking: a hot latte with regular milk - my favorite one
🎵 Listening to: Wagon Wheel - Darius Rucker
Quick—close your eyes and conjure up an image of the typical high-profile technology founder or CEO. What is that person’s age, gender, ethnicity? Do you imagine a middle-aged straight white male, someone a lot like well-known figures Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, or Bill Gates? Chances are you do not envision a female GenZ immigrant from Greece who has founded a company developing an AI technology to enhance interpersonal skills and possibly save the world.
One of the perks for Founding Members of La Creme de la STEM™ is to be featured in the newsletter. I am very excited about this piece written by Tony G. Rocco, uncovering a success story in AI.
Meet Ioanna Mantzouridou Onasi, co-founder and CEO of startup Dextego. Ioanna hopes to bring to the male-dominated tech world a different perspective, one more characteristic of women than the typical male founder. “I do believe women care about different things,” she says. “They are more likely to care about the welfare of people.”
Her concern for the welfare of people is embodied in her company’s mission to “democratize human skills development” by using an AI coach to help people improve social skills. Dextego is currently focused on improving the soft skills of corporate sales people where those skills can have a dramatic impact on the bottom line. But in the long-run, Ioanna’s vision transcends the world of business, extending to the world at large.
“In my mind, the world in all aspects would be much better if we had these skills really honed,” Ioanna says. She offers as an example the United Nations, which “discusses the most important topics, from poverty to education to health care. Can you imagine how they would figure this out if they couldn’t communicate their points? It all starts with humans talking to each other.”
Ioanna believes that a female founder is more likely than a male counterpart to create a technology company with an idealistic vision like Dextego’s. The reason: a greater degree of emotional intelligence that gives them a more holistic perspective. “These tech giants have super high IQs, but their EQ is very low,” she says of the oligarchs who currently rule the technology world. “They can’t really sit there and think about what’s gonna happen in twenty years in terms of empathy.”
While no head-to-head studies have been done comparing female founders to male founders, a 2014 meta-analysis (Joseph Newman, Journal of Applied Psychology) found that women generally score higher than men on emotional intelligence tests, particularly in empathy, interpersonal relationships, and social responsibility. Another global study by TalentSmartEQ (500,000+ people) in 2019 reported women scored higher than men in 11 out of 12 EQ competencies, especially in empathy and relationship management.
For Ioanna, empathy is a natural part of her character. “I was always a very sensitive kid, always cared about societal things, and had that global vision,” she says. Having a wider vision is not unique to her, however, but a quality common to women in general, including those who start technology companies.
If female founders are to succeed in bringing a more inclusive vision to the technology world, they must overcome obstacles men don’t face. “It’s extremely hard to get funding in the tech space as a female entrepreneur,” she says, recalling the difficulty she had in getting funding for Dextego. “There’s a misalignment of values and beliefs and worldviews.” The statistics bear out this fact. At this writing, only about 2% of VC money goes to female founders, a number that hasn’t changed in a decade.
What can be done to mitigate this misalignment?
Organizations such as La Creme de la STEM in New York City, provide women with communities in which they can support one another in the pursuit of their entrepreneurial goals. “Community is very important to women. It gives them the strength to keep going,” Ioanna says. Community provides fulfillment on a personal level as well. “It’s so important for women to feel fulfilled in both areas.”
Armed with her vision of democratizing human connection, Ioanna represents something larger than a single entrepreneurial success story. Each time a female founder breaks through the funding barriers and values misalignments she encounters, she doesn’t just create a company; she expands the realm of possibility for the women who follow. More importantly, she brings to the technology landscape the very qualities—empathy, holistic thinking, concern for collective welfare—that Ioanna believes the industry desperately needs.
In a field often criticized for prioritizing disruption over human flourishing, that sensitivity isn’t a liability—it’s precisely the asset that could reshape what technology companies aspire to become.
Tony wrote a book called Women Rising: Transformational Tales of Rebirth and Renewal, composed of true stories of women triumphantly transforming their lives in a myriad of ways. Ioanna and myself are mentioned in it.
For a limited time, the author, Tony G. Rocco, is offering it for free in return for subscribing to his contact list at https://tonygrocco.com/contact/. After you register, he will send you the Amazon download link! Tony would appreciate an honest review on Amazon after you have read it.
🚨 Entrepreneurs Alert 🚨
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🔗 Community Building Thoughts 🔗
I am excited to join the 7th edition of the Transatlantic Leaders Forum in New York on November 19, hosted by Frenchfounders and co-organized with BNP Paribas Wealth Management.
“New Playbooks, Bold Moves” is an open call to every builder: to test, to adapt, and to create responsibly. At La Creme de la STEM™, our mission is to make STEM accessible, diverse, and irresistible. Because the future doesn’t need more fear around AI, it needs more curiosity, creativity, and courage.
Looking forward to exchanging ideas with global leaders shaping what’s next.
There is still time to register: https://lc.cx/2rJIz9
✨ Inspiring Women Stories ✨
This Summer, I had the immense honor to be featured in Forbes with two women I met over the past few years, and admire for their commitment to brining more women to angel investing, whether it is from a founding or an investor standpoint. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to help shine the light on their work, while being similarly quoted for my work with La Creme de la STEM™.
To partially quote the article:
“Marcia Dawood [is the] former chair of the Angel Capital Association. […] She sits on the SEC’s Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee, has invested in dozens of early-stage companies, hosts The Angel Next Door podcast, and recently published a book “Do Good While Doing Well,” which she describes as a 101 for women who want to turn purpose into portfolio power.”
“Loretta McCarthy [left] her career on Wall Street for Golden Seeds, one of longest-standing angel networks in the country, focused on women-led companies, where she is now Co-CEO and Managing Partner. […] Since then, Golden Seeds has invested over $190 million in 265 female-led early stage start-ups who have gone on to raise more than $2.2 billion.
To learn more, read the full story written by my friend Gemma Allen here
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