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Women Tech Founders - The Messy Middle
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| With founder/CEOs Ananya Jain McLaughlin (FullCircle), Sri Ramaswamy (Charlee AI), Jiayue He (Ergeon), Jenny Chen (Puzzle Exchange). |
| Venue, 50 Beale St, San Francisco |
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Jan 29 (Thu) , 2026 @ 06:30 PM
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FREE |
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/-122.39632416,37.79137802,13,0,0/550x200?access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoiZ2FyeXNndWlkZSIsImEiOiJjamtobmRiYmgwb3gwM3F1a2o2Mmd0YWw3In0.DinA62CR3-OKtf3axa5O7Q)
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| DETAILS |
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Unpack the raw truths of being a woman tech founder in the messy middle-hard lessons, real challenges, & what it truly takes to keep build
Most people only see the highlight reel: the launch, the raise, the we made it post. The ugly truth is that every overnight success you admire lived in the Messy Middle first, & founders stay in this phase far longer than anyone openly admits.
This is the stage before momentum, before validation, before clarity shows up. It is confusing & lonely, & it demands a kind of courage that does not look like confidence. It looks like belief without proof.
This night is for the people who are in it-to tell the real stories, to share what actually helped, & to remind each other that they do not have to go through it alone.
Because the Messy Middle is not a failure. It is not a pause. It is the work. And every breakthrough you admire once lived here too.
[See full event details at https://greyjournal.net/event/ugly-talk-women-tech-founders-the-messy-middle/]
Why You Should Attend
Building something real (startup, product, community, creative business) & feeling the fog
Tired of polished panels & want honest, usable conversations
Craving clarity + community
Curious how other women founders navigate the hard parts without pretending it's easy
Who You'll Meet
Ambitious women founders from the Bay Area & beyond
Female investors & investors actively backing women led companies
Community builders supporting the women founder ecosystem
Ananya Jain McLaughlin - CEO of FullCircle
Ananya Jain Mclaughlin is the CEO of FullCircle, which powers the technology behind the likes of Andrew Huberman's premium supplements brand Momentous, Grammy Award-winning Cyndi Lauper's fanbase in 43 countries, & other enterprise customers. FullCircle began in mental health by supporting 3M people during covid & quickly earned recognition from Forbes & the royal family's Princess Diana Award. That work revealed a pattern: as the number of customers grows, providing each customer the same attention is challenging for almost all businesses. Seeing how quickly customer relationships may break down at scale, FullCircle built the customer journey technology layer that enables brands today to deliver hyper-personalized attention across every moment of the customer lifecycle. Prior to FullCircle, Ananya studied engineering. The US government fast tracked her to citizenship under the 'exceptional talent' category.
Sri Ramaswamy - CEO of Charlee.ai Inc
Sri Ramaswamy is the Founder & CEO of Charlee.ai, a patented risk-intelligence platform that turns unstructured claims language into actionable signals. With 22+ years across insurance, analytics, & AI, she pioneered Charlee's Claims Graph RAG & pre-trained language models built on 60M+ claims to predict litigation, improve reserves, & surface potential fraud. ARM-certified with decades in tech, Sri turns unstructured insurance data into measurable outcomes. A frequent speaker & mentor, she advances practical & ethical AI that delivers operational value at scale.
Jiayue He - CEO & Founder of Ergeon
Jenny He started Ergeon after learning through her own home renovation that construction was inefficient for everyone involved. She became a licensed contractor, mapped the failure points, & built a platform that makes outdoor projects fast, transparent, & fair. Ergeon's end-to-end software lets customers design, price, & manage projects online, while vetted local installers deliver on-site. By combining technology, AI, & disciplined operations, Jenny's woman-led company delivers faster timelines, clearer pricing, & steadier work for installers-proving that modernizing construction is as much about people & process as it is about tech
Jenny Chen - Founder of Puzzle Exchange
Jenny runs a health community called Puzzle Exchange, a health community with 100+ SF-based healers to support you in building the right health plan (and the right doctor for you, not the best) through curiosity, real conversations, & practical tools. Prior to Puzzle, Jenny runs a AI social listening platform & a social commerce agency that worked with over 200 DTC brands & provide consulting to global brands such as Louis Vuitton, Google, Armani, & Dior.
What We'll Talk About
How a modern company is adapting AI by breaking things while running a 200-person team across 30 countries
How a founder bets on herself & her family-leaves a high-income job, takes unpaid time, & spends 14 years building a product while growing 100% organically & self-funding sustainably, even as everyone questions the path.
How a woman founder takes on an industry no one else wants to do, & ends up capturing 50% of the U.S. market
How a woman founder starts with a bold filter, only wanting to target companies with $30M+ revenue & then keeps growing beyond that as the company evolves, the market pulls, & the ambition expands.
Puzzle Exchange - Building the right health plan through curiosity, real conversations, & practical tools.
Supported By:
GREY Journal - Media partner spotlighting modern entrepreneurs (featured on Apple News + Google News).
Venue Partner
Persona - An online identity verification platform that helps businesses, from any size & industry to collect, verify, & manage user identities throughout a customer lifecycle. Available in over 200 countries. Starting at $0.
About Ugly Talk:
Started in 2019, Ugly Talk has been transforming business setbacks into breakthrough aha! moments by hosting unfiltered, no-nonsense events where battle-tested entrepreneurs share their raw lessons & insights.
With a growing presence in cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, & Miami, we've built a vibrant community of thousands of founders & industry leaders making a profound impact on the entrepreneurial landscape.
Official Website: UglyTalk.com
[See full event details at https://greyjournal.net/event/ugly-talk-leveraging-ai-to-optimize-ecommerce-logistics-and-profits/]
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