Rants of a Female Founder

“Oh, so you’re helping him out.”

It’s a response I’ve heard when I tell people that my partner and I are building a company together.

The conversation usually starts with someone asking us what we do. The difference between building a company together and “helping him out” might sound small, but it matters to me. Somewhere in that conversation, I’ve gone from being a founder to being the supportive girlfriend.

I started this journey in 2019 with Hire the Author, a booking platform for tech authors. Being a woman in tech already comes with questions about whether you really know what you’re doing. Build with your partner, and people sometimes don’t even get that far. They’ve already decided why you’re there.

Having someone to build with is a privilege. A partner who understands what you’re trying to do can be a huge source of support. But that support doesn’t make my work disappear. There are still products to build, customers to find, decisions to make, and the uncertainty of whether any of it will work. I’m building this because I want to. I have my own ambition, my own reasons, and my own stake in what happens.

And ambition itself seems to make people uncomfortable when it comes from a woman. She is easily labelled greedy, bossy, or someone who doesn’t care about anyone else.

A woman can be ambitious, apparently, as long as her ambition doesn’t inconvenience anyone.

She should still be available, accommodating, and on top of everything else expected of her. If she manages all of that while building her career, she gets praised for doing it all.

But what if she doesn’t want to do it all? What if she wants to give more of herself to her work for a while? What if she wants something beyond the career and life that other people have decided should be enough for her?

I consider time the most valuable resource a person has.

In most cases, time directly attributes to money as well. Yet I’ve heard people say, “It’s her own business, so she can accommodate other plans.” Somehow, working for myself makes my time seem more available to everyone else. What I accommodate is my choice. Owning a business doesn’t make my work optional.

On the surface, people might treat you as an equal. But when your work needs to take priority, or you’re less available for what they expect of you, you start seeing the limits of that equality. You can be just as accomplished as a man, or more, and still find that your time and choices don’t carry the same weight.

From what I’ve seen, a man starting a business is often recognised as someone taking a risk. He is being courageous, pursuing an ambition. A woman’s business is more easily treated as a hobby. Something she does to keep herself occupied.

This also changes depending on the kind of business she is building. With fashion, beauty, or food, people seem more comfortable believing that a woman is the person behind it. In tech, that credit feels harder to get.

I’ve seen this bias even in some of the brightest people I know—friends I respect, who probably don’t realise they’re doing it.

“Oh, she built this? She must have a team working for her.”

The possibility that she built it herself seems to need further explanation. I don’t see the same doubt when a man builds something.

And it goes beyond who gets the credit. It also affects who is allowed to get things wrong.

Think about the way people talk about driving. When a man causes an accident, people might say he drove badly. When a woman causes one, suddenly her being a woman becomes the explanation.

One person’s mistake turns into evidence against an entire group.

To me, one of the most important forms of freedom is the freedom to make mistakes.

To try something, get it wrong, learn from it, and try again without having your right to be there questioned.

For women, mistakes can feel much more public. There can be a whole audience waiting to say that you shouldn’t have tried in the first place. I think that pressure is the root cause of why women are perfectionists. When getting something wrong comes with that much judgment, you start waiting until you’re certain you can do it well.

From the outside, that might look like a lack of confidence. But there is a cost to getting things wrong, and you’ve learned to account for it.

Now put that pressure into entrepreneurship.

Building a startup involves trying things you don’t yet know how to do. You make decisions with incomplete information. Some ideas don’t work. You change direction. When you also feel that every mistake could become someone’s reason to dismiss you, it gets exhausting.

This is especially difficult in the early stages, when there may be very little evidence that things are going to work. Sometimes, someone taking you seriously or believing in what you’re trying to do is the support that keeps you going.

So when people dismiss your efforts, it can leave you wondering: why the hell am I doing all of this?

The journey itself is hard enough. It gets harder when people around you act like there is no journey at all.

Leaving freelance software consulting was a choice I made knowing that I was stepping away from something that worked. I wanted to experiment, push myself, and find out what I could build. I still don’t know if I can make this work, but I wanted to give myself the chance to try.

To a lot of people, though, my “real job” ended with my last contract. Until there is something they recognise as success, it’s difficult for them to see this as work.

For leaving, I’ve been called stupid. For wanting more, greedy. For choosing to prioritise this, ignorant of the other things I should be doing with my life.

I’ve been a rebellious person for most of my adult life, so making choices other people disagree with isn’t entirely new to me. But that doesn’t mean their words never affect me.

I’m fortunate to have a close circle who form a really good support system. Having people who take me and my choices seriously helps me get through the harder days, even when I don’t have much certainty to offer them—or myself.

And then there’s financial independence.

Of everything, my own hard-earned money has been the most empowering.

It has given me room to take an unconventional route, make mistakes, and decide how much weight I want to give other people’s opinions.

It’s much easier to disregard someone telling you how to live when you don’t depend on them to pay your bills.

I know I can’t change everyone’s mind, and I don’t want to spend my time trying. I have enough questions of my own about whether this will work. Whether I’m allowed to want it shouldn’t have to be one of them.

I chose to give this a proper shot. I want to put in the hours, make mistakes, and see what I can build. I don’t know where it will lead, but I want to find out without having to justify the decision at every step.