🎙️ EP64: Dream Bigger: Nikki Barua on Building an AI-Native Company Without… | InvestHer Podcast

Hi there. Welcome or welcome back to InvestHer Podcast. I'm Anne Ravanona, your host and funding friend, and I'm so glad you're here. InvestHer Podcast exists for one reason: to share the real, unfiltered stories of funded women founders, investors, and ecosystem changemakers from around the world, and to give them the visibility and airtime they deserve. Because here's what we know: women are building extraordinary businesses, and yet their stories are still too often missing from the conversation. We're here to Every episode, I sit down with someone who's in the trenches of building, funding, or backing women-founded ventures. And we talk about the real stuff, the pivots, the rejections, the fundraising lessons nobody tells you about, and the wins, because there are plenty of those too.

Now, I can't wait for you to hear this.

Let's dive in. In every previous tech wave, humans had time to catch up. This time, we don't. AI is racing ahead. And for many founders, especially women, the old playbooks for building and funding companies simply don't work anymore. My guest today, Nikki Barua, is a 4-time founder, author, keynote speaker, and CEO and co-founder of Flipwork, an AI-native company she's building without raising a cent. Nikki believes your real unfair advantage isn't the tools you use, It's how uniquely human you are. In this episode, we explore how she's using AI agents to replace traditional execution, helping leaders create their own AI twin, and why now is the perfect moment for women entrepreneurs to rethink identity, funding, and growth from first principles. Let's dive in.

Welcome back to InvestHer Podcast. I'm Anne Ravanona, your host, and my guest today is Nikki Barua, 4-time founder, author, keynote speaker, and CEO and co-founder of Flipwork, an AI-native company helping people reinvent how they work. Here's what makes Nikki's story so timely. She can raise capital, she's done it before, but she's building her fastest-growing company yet without raising a cent because she believes AI has completely rewritten the rules for founders. She's bold, Contrarian, full of wisdom on mindset and betting on yourself. Nikki, welcome.

I'm so thrilled to be here, Anne. Thanks for inviting me to your show.

So let's kind of kick off. I like to kick off with one fun fact about yourself that people wouldn't know if they were Googling about you.

I am a painfully shy introvert.

No!

Yes. I have quite a bit of public visibility, so it's the one that most surprises people that I would much I would much rather be in a library all by myself surrounded by books. You know, and that's sort of my favourite place and favourite thing to do.

I love it. That really is a surprising fun fact. You've got me there, Nikki. There's no way I would have thought that from our past conversation.

So, okay.

Let's start off by saying you've built 4 companies. So what makes this season different before we get into this current business? But like overall, you've built 4 companies. What's new about this one?

What's really new about this experience is it breaks all of the rules of entrepreneurship and business building that I've learned the hard way over the last several years. You know, when you build a company and you've got experience and the next time you do it, there's a different level of confidence that comes about because, you know, you're an experienced founder. So you sort of, you know, learn from the mistakes you made the last time or you have sort of an internal intuition built on what works, what doesn't work, the landmines to avoid. And so you keep getting better and better as a founder with experience. This one basically means all the old playbooks are dead and you have to completely, you know, start with a beginner's mindset and none of the old rules translate perfectly. And so it forces you to get into a place of not only deep curiosity, but it's pretty humbling to Okay, it's pretty much like I'm a first-time founder because the environment and the circumstances have changed so much that if I'm arrogant in thinking that I've done this before, so I know how it works, I'm actually going to apply the wrong rules and build it the wrong way. So I'm back to being a beginner. This is what's different is I'm a rookie again.

Oh my gosh, I love that. And I mean, that's— it's very impressive and humbling to hear you say that. But I think it's also because you know what's happening. And so you're, you're saying that very cognizant, uh, and yeah, very cognizant of the current situation in AI. So, but let's start. Yeah.

And, and the thing is, this is true whether you are an entrepreneur or an executive. I, I think the most dangerous thing anyone can do right now is believe that the expertise you've gained, uh, applies just the same way it did before. Mm-hmm. And I think it's important to really challenge, you know, your own beliefs. and be open to sort of letting go of the past and unlearning all of the things that got you to where you are and be completely open to a whole new way. And, and you'll be surprised how exciting and exhilarating that new experience is because you're kind of discovering all kinds of things that were never possible before.

Oh my gosh. So I'm excited for this conversation because I know you're gonna take us on a roller coaster, but I'd like us to start with the kind of origin story. So when you set up your first company, you I found out a statistic. You gave yourself a $5 million target that you wanted to reach in your turnover in the first year. Tell us a bit more about that and what you learned about women and raising and making revenue on that journey. Yeah.

It's so interesting how our frame of reference kind of defines the box we put ourselves in. So prior to starting my first company, I worked at a public company and had a senior leadership role there and I managed pretty large accounts and I, my P&L was pretty large and my book of business was pretty big. And my average deal size ran, ran in the tens of millions of dollars.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so because I was used to large deal sizes and, you know, doing business with large enterprises and, you know, uh, like even thinking of doing a $5 million deal would've been a small deal, uh, from the world that I came from.

Mm-hmm.

So when I left my corporate career and started my first business, that's the frame of reference that was anchored for me, that, you know, it's easy to make millions of dollars and to land those contracts. Because of that, to me, I set what I thought was, you know, sort of an easy target for year one of the business, which was, oh, it should be easy to make $5 million annual revenue in my first year. Because prior to that, I was making hundreds of millions of dollars annually. And I gave myself a pass that I'd only do $5 million because I thought, well, you know, I'm starting from scratch. People don't know this business or the brand. And, you know, it's going to take some time to kind of ramp up from ground zero. So I thought, okay, that was sort of an easy target to set. And, um, I did not hit that target in year one. Um, I think we did a little over $4 million. And I was incredibly disappointed. I mean, I was just beating myself up about just failing in my first year and, uh, just absolutely heartbroken that I'd somehow failed in this business that I'd started. And, uh, you know, it's only after, I think it was 2 or 2 and a half years in, I started winning all kinds of entrepreneurial awards and for high growth company. And, and I remember one of the first awards that I got, I get a call saying you're amongst the top female entrepreneurs, you know, and, uh, and I actually thought it was a spam call and I was like, mm-hmm, you gotta be wrong. Like, there's no way. I mean, cuz against my own, uh, expectations, I'm failing miserably. I'm not hitting any of my targets. And every year I kept doubling the target, right? So it's like $5 million, $10 million. So I'm like disappointed that I'm not meeting my own targets. And here's somebody else, an external authority considers me a top entrepreneur. And I was like, surely you've got your numbers wrong. This does not make sense. It's only after I discovered sort of like what it really looks like for women entrepreneurs, how few make it to even $1 million annually. And even the ones that do, it takes them years to get there. And then the ones that go past $1 million, that's a very small percentage. Um, and, and to stand out within that group, to not only have crossed that in year one, but also to have done that against all odds and, and, uh, you know, to be an immigrant female and non-white, all of these sort of diversity labels that suddenly got put on me. And I stood out in this very small group that had achieved something. And that kind of blew my mind. And looking back, I think the singular reason that my numbers or my business growth was different was because the frame of reference was never attached to, you know, what is possible for someone like me. The frame of reference was entirely based on what I'd seen. And so my big takeaway is if you can see it, you can be it. But the reverse is also true, that if you don't see it, you, you don't believe you can. And so it's really important for people to anchor at the right level and let go of assumptions that tell you otherwise.

So, and I'm so glad you brought it up because that was my next question to you. You, when we were talking last week, you told us a story, you told me the story about where, if you can see it, you can be it, what that means to you at a personal level. So tell, tell the, tell our listeners a little bit more about that because like you're talking about having role models that are of different scale. And so what happened in your own story that, that means that you had a different frame of reference that you've just mentioned?

Yeah, I think for me, uh, my childhood upbringing and the experiences I had certainly shaped what I believe was possible for me, uh, both with my mom and my dad. Uh, my mom was a completely self-made entrepreneur who started from scratch, had no resources, no support, no capital. And, uh, I, I had a front row seat into watching what entrepreneurship It wasn't the recognition and the awards and the wins on the outside. I saw on the inside the level of hustle, the grit, the resilience, and the sacrifices someone actually has to make. And seeing that up close gave me a very realistic view of exactly what it takes. That in order to achieve something great, you have to be willing to put in the work. You have to embrace discomfort. You have to embrace pain. You know, the struggle is what leads to the success. And you can't simply assume you get a bunch of lucky breaks. And so it sort of managed my expectations differently, you know? And to me, the big takeaway from that was if I want to— if I have big dreams, I have to be willing to make big sacrifices and live differently from regular people. You know, I can't have the same sort of weekends off or—

Mm-hmm.

have time for lots of things. I have to be okay with making whatever sacrifices are necessary in pursuit of that big dream.

Mm-hmm.

So that was one thing. But the other story that was so defining for me was the, you know, when, when I was, I think, barely about 8 years old, my dad created a collage of, you know, with pictures of powerful women leaders. And in the center of that collage, he sketched out my face and wrote my name. But he never said a word about it to me. He just kind of gave me this visual of, you know, all these powerful women. And so I saw my— every day I'd open my closet door and see that collage, and I would see myself at the center of, you know, powerful women. And I became really curious about them, and I learned about their stories. And what I discovered was they had all dedicated their lives to impact and to service.

Mm-hmm.

And in order to make, uh, a huge difference, they sacrificed and they bet on themselves and they took bold risks. And so what I was seeing real time with my mom, I was also learning was true, you know, of all these incredible women that I was surrounded by. And so it really not only gave me that visual imprint of, you know, what greatness looks like, but also what it actually takes. And that sort of set the— you know, that became the frame of reference for me. It wasn't— but if I had ignored all of that and just looked around the environment in which I was growing up, you know, in India back in the '70s and '80s, I might have chosen something very different. Because what I saw around me was that women were sent to school to become suitable wives, and most of the moms stayed at home. And there weren't like big career choices, a lot of options out there. If I paid attention to what was real around me, I would have chosen safety and comfort and a much smaller life. But And seeing the collage that became the visual imprint and seeing my mom play it out in real life, that became the thing that completely changed the trajectory of my life.

I love it.

I love it.

So now fast forward to Flipwork. So tell us about Flipwork. Like, what's your why? What it is that you are building? And let's start there.

So I've been in technology for over 25 years and I've seen every wave of technology disrupt the status quo, changed how, you know, companies operate, what leverage it gives to people and all of that. But every wave of technology has given enough space for people to adapt to it. So you think about the internet era and you had, you know, 20, 30 years to adapt to it. You could still have a brick-and-mortar store and do business if you didn't have an online store.

Hmm.

Right? There was plenty of time to adapt to that. Same was true of mobile and cloud and all these other technologies. What's different with AI is that time to adapt has radically shrunk. Now AI is racing ahead at a pace where humans are really not designed to adapt at that pace. And so to me, the big calling was really about— I believe that the greatest technology on planet Earth is actually the human being.

Hmm.

And I don't want humans to get left behind and be replaced by AI. What I see is a future where humans are amplified by AI. That means we have to co-evolve alongside AI instead of AI racing ahead and us getting left behind. The challenge is, you know, in order to close that exponential divide, the answer is not AI training. The answer is not more tools and licenses. The answer is learning how to reinvent how you think, how you work, how you lead. And there was nothing out there in the market like that. And that's why I founded Flipwork, was really on that mission of helping people become exponentially capable while remaining human and learning how to operate with AI as their partner. And, you know, at Flipwork, we've, you know, since launching, you know, in early 2026, we've just seen a meteoric rise in our business. But more importantly, in the impact that we've been able to create for, you know, people just feeling terrified or concerned to feeling absolutely unleashed and excited about the future.

So tell us a bit more about exactly what you do and how do you help people optimize their humanness and adapt quickly to AI?

So there's 2 things that we do. The first is we start with a diagnostic that helps to assess where people actually are. So this is a psychometric assessment that identifies their— not only their own AI readiness, but also the environment in which they operate. So it measures them against 2 dimensions to figure out what is their archetype and what we're finding. And we've done this across the globe and our dataset, what it has revealed is a huge perception gap.

Mm-hmm.

Even the people that think they're pretty advanced with AI because they use ChatGPT all day long and they use it for lots of different things are actually nowhere along where they could be as a true orchestrator of AI. So the first thing is that diagnostic, and it's not pass or fail, uh, report. It's really a compass. It helps to understand exactly what their bottlenecks are, what their strengths are, and where they should go. From that assessment, we then, uh, you know, invite people into an 8-week sprint.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and that sprint is the transformation, uh, experience. And that's where they go step by step, uh, through every part of changing how they think, how they work, you know, what workflows to build, what tools to use. But more importantly, it shifts them. It creates a safe space for them to to shift from being the expert that they're known as to being an explorer who's comfortable, you know, leaning into this new world and dealing with uncertainty and feeling okay with the discomfort of not knowing.

Mm-hmm.

So it creates sort of this safe lab-like environment where they can experiment and master the skills, but really find a unique way to do that. And that 8-week experience is entirely personalized to each individual because it's mapped on their diagnostics. So the diagnostic feeds our platform and our AI platform basically knows them exact— meets them exactly where they are, but knows them entirely. And over the course of the 8 weeks, what we're also doing is extracting what makes them uniquely human. And then at the end of the 8 weeks, they essentially have what we call a reinvention passport, Mm-hmm. which is their encoded judgment that they can then embed into any AI tool. So essentially, you're going through this transformation process for 8 weeks, but you leave with your AI twin that then allows you to amplify who you really are.

I love that. And is this at an individual level in the sense of a consumer level, or is it also at enterprise level where you do it for corporates and other organizations?

Most of our work is actually corporate, uh, where enterprises, uh, you know, uh, leverage the Flip Work Sprint for large teams of people. Uh, but we also have, uh, a quarterly, like sort of consumer level, uh, you know, sprints that we offer every quarter. Um, and, and most of them tend to be entrepreneurs, um, because Because, you know, that's where the huge advantage is. If you learn how to, you know, leverage it, then you have massive opportunity to gain in your business.

And what would you say is your USP at Flipwork versus all the AI tools that are out there and the courses and the YouTubes and the et cetera, et cetera? What's your USP?

Um, quite simply, we're not AI training or an AI tool. Um, what we are is a personal intelligence system that extracts what makes you uniquely human. And allows you to amplify what that is. And, and so that we're an operating system for human transformation. You know, we're not there to teach you AI. We're not there to like give you a tool that makes you, uh, gives you the same power as everyone else. One of the challenges that's happening with, um, AI is that we all have access to infinite intelligence.

Hmm.

But we have the same level of access. What that means is if we're all using the same powerful tool, we're all getting the same kind of output. The only thing that will differentiate anyone and anyone's personal USP is what you do that is unique, your special sauce embedded into that AI. You are the differentiator. The challenge is most programs and training and tools only focus on the homogenous part.

Hmm.

What we do is make the output different. by helping you figure out why you are different and how to encode it.

So what does that look like practically, Nikki? So for example, imagine I've done the diagnostic. How do you measure my humanness? Like, and what are— what's unique to me in my way of looking at the world or solving problems or answering questions?

What exactly do you cover to be able to then help me on my journey? Yeah, so I know you're going through an assessment of, you know, we— it's a 29-question psychometric assessment. So you answer those questions, but it's also benchmarked against our global dataset. So we know kind of where you fall within that. From there, you get a personalized report. And by the way, this diagnostic is free for anyone to try out and for individuals to try out. Um, and so from there you get an automated report personalized to you that not only helps you identify your own bottlenecks, um, and strengths, but also gives you the exact steps that you could take.

Mm-hmm.

Um, if you choose to enroll in the sprint from that, the diagnostic is then fed into our platform, our operating system. So it kind of takes your unique information and codes it into that. But there's also other onboarding questionnaires and things that help us help our AI tool learn more about you. From that point, as you're going through the process step by step every week over the 8 weeks, you're interacting with Flippy, which is our AI change agent. It's your AI guide.

Mm-hmm.

And Flippy, as you're interacting with Flippy, it learns more and more about you. And it's taking you through a very personalized reinvention journey that is unique to your profile, your industry, your role, and Uh, with the goal of you excelling in what you do rather than the generic one-size-fits-all. So it's a, you know, we have a proprietary methodology for change and transformation. And so Flippy guides you through that methodology, but it's not just giving you the same one-size-fits-all. It's actually helping you figure out what's right for you. So it's a totally personalized experience. And, and that's why as it's learning about you at the end of the 8 weeks, it produces produces artifacts. There's about 18 different artifacts that are produced. You can download that, and then, you know, if you use Claude or ChatGPT, upload it into that, and suddenly you have your AI twin. That is, instead of getting generic output, now you've got something that is entirely personalized to you and everything that you do going forward.

Amazing, amazing. It sounds super exciting, to be honest. And, and so You are an AI-native company from day one. So what has building an AI-native company from day one been like for you? And, and what has that made possible now that earlier companies couldn't do? Like, now we— it's possible. So you have that perspective. So share a bit more about that, because I want to help more women entrepreneurs in particular to become AI-first and to, to really start embedding that into everything that we do.

Yeah. What, what it required for us to do from the beginning was challenge every assumption. Um, everything that we know how to do, we basically created a, a pattern interrupt and said, what if this was done by AI first instead of a human, instead of a process or a tool? Um, and so every single thing we experiment— experimented with how it would look like if we started with AI at the center instead of—

Mm-hmm.

us at the center. And in some cases, we were able to make that transition 100%. In some cases, it was like 70% AI and with 30% human. In some cases, it took us somewhat there but not quite. But in every single instance, it created a kind of innovation that would not have existed without posing that challenging question. So whether it was literally from the time of, um, incorporating the company.

Hmm.

Every single step of the way to like product development, to, um, backend operations, to marketing, to sales, customer service, every single thing, we kind of went step by step and said, how might we do this differently? And in the process, we discovered not only new ways of solving the same problem, but we also discovered the number of tools that already exist, all these new tools that are coming up that we would've never heard of if we had not started to look for Mm-hmm. Every single step we, so for someone else to follow this, what I would say is whatever you're doing in your business, take any function.

Hmm.

Map out that function step by step. So let's say it's marketing. What do you do in marketing step by step? Design a workflow around that. Now take every step of that workflow, and if you did not do it the same way, if you had a blank slate and you had to design this AI first, what would that workflow look like? And then what are the tools that exist that could take over even that process part of it? If you start looking for that, there are so many things already. There's literally already 40,000 tools out there, AI tools out there. Most people don't know what they are, but you can't find them if you don't start looking for it. So that's what we did in our case, because we were founding the company from the start, we didn't have existing processes to overcome. So we had the luxury of saying, okay, blank slate of paper. You know, now what I had was the frame of reference of having built something a certain way in the past.

Mm-hmm.

So I took that as the starting point and said, what would this look like if it was completely new?

Mm-hmm.

And then we started exploring tools, and then we started building agents. Then we started building teams of agents Mm-hmm. that work with each other. Then we started putting guardrails and rules of how the agents, what the performance expectations are, you know, what they can't and cannot do. And, and we had an entirely new operating system that I can't even imagine, you know, building that way. And so it's not only unleashed the level of speed with which we operate and the leverage and scale we've been able to achieve, but the impact it has on your bottom line is unbelievable.

And I think that's such a key message. It's like we don't— we should— I don't want to say we shouldn't. We're invited not to be intimidated by AI, but to use it, you know, to leverage our own intelligence strengths, our own level of expertise, and then to be able to use AI more efficiently and to check it. Because that's the thing. I mean, to your point, you have all these years, decades of experience. You're very quick. You'll be able to spot when it's hallucinating, when it's making a mistake. Whereas, you know, some other people who blindly will feed in prompts, pre-formatted prompts they get off a course off the internet, as you say, that's the other deviant that you could— or deviation. Whereas you can basically we're just creating and training machines on more same old, same old, same old that's been garbage in, garbage out. So I like the way that you've, um, that you've, that you framed it. And I, I know that in our conversation we talked about, um, uh, mindset and first principles. I'm going to come back to that in a second, but I'd like— before that, I'd like to jump in just quickly into your funding journey so far, because across the 4 companies you said, Nikki, you know, you raised money in the past. Can you walk us through— you raised some money, but this it's different. So I want you to kind of bring us to that journey so far and, and why it's different this time.

Real quick, Anne here. InvestHer Summit 2026 is coming to Paris in October, connecting global scaling women entrepreneurs with investors, corporates, and others to scale faster. Save 20% with early bird tickets at investhersummit.com. That's investhersummit.com.

So one of the things that AI has enabled that is the golden age of entrepreneurship, I truly believe this is the greatest time to build a company. And what it looks like for anyone is entirely different from what it was like before. AI has reduced the cost of execution and the need for resources to produce the same outcome compared to before. So what that means fundamentally is you just need a lot less capital Or need almost no capital at all. Right. And, and so, but to get there, you have to break your own belief system of what you, you know, because most people feel like, oh, I have this idea, or I want to build this product. I want to do all these things. I want to do a ton of marketing, but I don't have the budget for it. And, and because I don't have the budget, I can't, you know, lean into higher growth or chase a certain market. So we put all these constraints on ourselves because we believe that we need money to do all Today, with AI by your side and creativity and, you know, the bravery to try something you haven't done before, anything is achievable. And so for us, it was sort of a no-brainer of like, we're building an AI-native company. Until we get to the point where our growth is constrained by capital, we just don't need any of it.

Hmm.

And that almost forced us to say, how might we get to this outcome without raising capital? without any money put into it, right? And, and so it forces you to think differently. Um, the other part that I would say is that, you know, this is not about chasing technology for the sake of technology.

Yeah.

What's most important is figure out the number one business objective. Mm-hmm. That is important to you at this stage. Maybe you're a well-established business and what you really want is more freedom for yourself, more free time, you know? Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, use AI to achieve that outcome. Maybe you are at that growth stage where where revenue is growing, but profit is severely constrained and you need more bottom line earnings, use AI to achieve that goal. Figure out what's most important and then apply AI in that context. And you'll find that you don't need the same kind of resources as we used to need to get to that output. And that's really the key thing. I think what Sam Altman said that, uh, the CEO of OpenAI, uh, in an interview said that, you know, in the next decade we're gonna see a solopreneur business that gets to $10 billion in revenue.

Mm-hmm.

And, um, whether those numbers turn out to be true or not, I do believe you're gonna see a lot of small businesses, including solopreneurs, get to massive multimillion-dollar earnings, um, without outside capital, without needing large teams. And, uh, you know, it's, It's truly allowing us to chase our dreams without the constraint of, uh, and limitations of resources.

Like, and so in the past, in your previous businesses, you had to raise money. It was a choice. How, how did that go? Like, what was that like, just really quickly? And then, okay, how is that different now?

Yeah, I mean, when you're building a product company, um, especially a software or tech product company, it does require, you know, both, um, you know, highly paid, uh, talent, uh, to do that. Uh, you know, engineering talent is expensive. Um, as well as, you know, the, all the other things that go into product development and launching a product company. It fundamentally has a different arc than a services business.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, you know, where you're not just selling your time and your expertise, but you're investing ahead of the sale. You have to invest a lot in building things, and only after it's built can you actually monetize the product. And so that upfront need to build a product, um, and the team required to build that product can get very expensive. So that's where raising capital becomes a necessity. Um, and, and even today, it's not like capital is not required. There are lots of industries where you can do it without raising capital. For example, SpaceX could not send, you know, rockets into space space by bootstrapping that business, right? So there's clearly, uh, you know, capital-intensive industries that are still there. But I would say for majority of businesses today, uh, if you are thinking that you are— that's your dependency, think again. You might find that there's— you can go a lot further without any need for capital.

And so today we are a tech product company, um, but we've been able to get there without raising capital simply because we've So, okay, I think one of the things you mentioned when we were prepping this conversation was around your thesis that AI agents replace 50 engineers, can replace 50 engineers, and capital-free acceleration, which is what you've just talked about. So tell us a bit more about that. So you're not going to raise this time. So what does a no-raise path look like for you? What does that path look like for women entrepreneurs? I want to go straight into the women founders. Is it liberating or is it a catch, given that we're highly constrained by access to capital at the moment?

Yeah, I think it's actually liberating because it doesn't mean you never raise capital, but it liberates you to not— to not be dependent on capital to build your business. We've seen the stats are terrible for, you know, the amount of capital that flows into women-owned businesses is a single-digit percentage.

Yeah.

And so for a lot of female founders, you know, they're not able to pursue their dreams because they can't get the capital that they really want. Well, today, if you don't need that kind of capital and you can build differently, that means you can still pursue your your, you know, business, uh, ambitions. You can still start and grow your business. And at the time that you, you know, do believe additional capital will grow you further, you now have leverage because you're not starting from zero.

Yeah.

You're going from a position of strength with a successful business, um, and, you know, proof behind it. And, you know, even if you choose to raise, what's most important is you raise on terms that are favorable to you. What I've seen with a lot of female founders is the desperation to raise any kind of capital puts them in a position with terrible terms, um, you know, that lock them in or take away, um, their control of the business. And, and that's something that, uh, is, you know, sort of the losing argument, right? So even if you do get the capital, you end up getting capital at terrible terms. Well, that's, that's not a great outcome for anyone.

Mm-hmm.

So to me, it's like, one, you can get started without it. And 2, if you choose to raise it, Um, you know, at a future date, you can do it on much more favorable terms.

So I love that. So just, can you drill down a little bit more in your experience and your advice on that one? Like, in when, when to raise in the AI era, right? So if you've, you've already kind of tested stuff, you're already getting revenue, you're going— when would you say, given what you've just said about the AI era and what we're in, when is it a good time to raise?

Then?

I can speak for our journey of what I would see. In our case, I'm hoping we never have to raise or never need to raise. Yeah, I would say I never need to raise, you know. So the timing really would be when we want to raise. And what would define that is that we see a massive market opportunity that we could get to faster Yeah. By raising capital.

Yeah.

So it's the growth trajectory, not the, you know, hey, we're still testing and learning a whole bunch of things and we need, uh, capital to do that because, um, it really changes the direction. So now if we feel like we're missing out on something simply because, uh, you know, or our timing is impacted, that we're not able to get to something faster, um, because of that.

Okay. So I now want to drill. Thank you for that, 'cause that's very clear. And I think that's a very important message, Nicky, that you've just said. And it's about giving power back, like owning our own power, seeing our power, and not being dependent on systems that were built in a different time, not for now, right?

Yeah.

So I want us to kind of, now this is the perfect time for us to talk more about mindset, AI, women, all of that, and so on. I remember you mentioned something to us. Tell us about your idea about shifting identity. I want you to talk about that because that was so powerful when we had a conversation about that. What do you mean about like shifting your identity before you go into the room and as you go into certain situations? Tell us more about that, and particularly for women.

Yeah, you know, a lot of challenges that we encounter Are challenges because of where we— where our current mindset and our, you know, uh, personal self-belief lies.

Yeah.

The best way to overcome a bigger challenge or a new challenge is to become the person who would easily overcome that. If your current self can't, you know, win against against this giant monster, then become the person who can easily beat that monster. And so that requires a reinvention of your identity because identity can be shifted immediately. Skills can't. Skills take time. Competency takes time.

Mm-hmm.

But self-belief and identity can be shifted immediately. And, and to me, it's about architecting the person you need to be who And this can apply whether it's business or personal, whether it's a negotiation or a pitch. In any of those situations, the first time we do something, there's a natural sort of fear and hesitation because we're missing the proof that we've— we can do it well. That's all that confidence to me is simply evidence of success.

Hmm.

And the situations where we feel less confident is when we're not doing it well. It's not necessarily because we don't have that capability within us. It simply means that capability has not been tested and therefore we don't have the evidence of success. And because we don't have the evidence of success, we feel like we're less than. Well, one way to do that is take on the identity of someone who has tons of evidence of that and how might they behave in that situation? What choices would they make? What kind of, you know, gravitas would they bring into that situation? into that scenario, take on that identity, and then you'll be able to get that outcome.

Okay, so I want to— can you give us an example of how you've done this for yourself at any moment, Nikki? Because like, you've done it, you've done it, you've perfected this, and you probably are still doing it. We all— and I think we can all learn a lot because it's— this is a real skill. You, you mentioned, you know, there's some reasons why you've learned these skills. Maybe take us a little bit back into, you know, how and why you may have learned some of this about identity shift, and then maybe I wonder if you could let us a little bit into an example of how you tried it for yourself and what came out of it for yourself?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, for me, one of the breakthroughs that led to this insight was realizing that so much of the identity that we hold is made up. You know, we make it up for ourselves, right? construct about, you know, who we are, what we're great at, what we are terrible at. It's all based on our self-belief.

Hmm.

And we think it's fixed, that whatever that is, it's either fixed or it changes very, very slowly, right? So it's gonna take me 10 years to get great at something. Um, and what happens as a result is that identity becomes the lens with which you see the world. And if you see a limited view of yourself, you're gonna see limited opportunities. communities and limited things that you'll pursue because that's the lens you're applying. And for me, the breakthrough was realizing just like we, our biology changes all the time, our cells are changing, you know, everything about us can change. So why are we holding onto a fixed identity then? It makes no sense. And who says the identity we have right now is the right one?

Mm-hmm.

I mean, you can choose whichever one you want. And, and so I, you know, started to observe people, very successful people venturing into entirely new realms, but being able to sort of, you know, make that leap with so much more confidence and a much faster speed. One of the examples was Beyoncé, you know, where she had tremendous stage fright. And, you know, although she was a gifted singer and talented performer, she had tremendous stage fright. So she constructed the identity of Sasha Fierce, that every time she went on stage, she became Sasha Fierce. And over time, being that person, she was able to execute her performance on stage with confidence. But what she was also doing during that time is building evidence for Beyoncé, the old self, to say, okay, I've actually made the leap now. And soon you become that identity. So for me, that was— those are examples that started to give me a real framework to say, okay, how can I become that? Who's the hero in me? And how can I create sort of a, you know, a character that I can step into, um, and, and lean into that situation with confidence so that I'm giving my current self, you know, more evidence of who I actually am capable of?

Hmm.

And, and that's really the exercise to go through is that, um, right now we are living in a time of incredible change. change, filled with possibilities. Um, and it's removing the— a lot of the, the gates that held people back, you know, all of the, um, uh, you know, obstacles that prevented particularly female founders from, you know, stepping into opportunity, from, uh, pursuing, you know, the— their dream business or scaling it faster. All of those obstacles that existed.

Mm-hmm.

AI is removing a lot of those obstacles. We're— it's such an incredible time, but in order to seize that opportunity, you have to step into the identity that wins in this era.

Mm-hmm.

If you're still holding onto the past self of saying, well, this is the only way I know how to run a business, or, you know, I'm a female founder and so therefore nobody's gonna invest in me, or I don't know if I can scale successfully, I don't know if I can build something big. You're simply going to see the world from that lens instead of seeing what's available to you and seizing and capitalizing on it.

So tell us a bit more, and thank you for that, and I think the Beyoncé example is a great example. Tell us a bit more about first principles. It's something as well that you brought up. Tell us a bit more about how, like, for people who don't know the concept of first principles, maybe start there because you've kind of mentioned it's peppered in everything you do and how you do it. So let's kind of strip it back because I liked in, even in the description where you said, okay, with this company, with Flipwork, we're starting like, okay, first principles. So maybe share what, what it means, first principles, and then why and how you think this is important as a lever to help more women entrepreneurs, especially in this AI age.

Yeah, um, first principles thinking is so core to physics and math, right? It's, it's basically not going with conventional beliefs and actually deconstructing any concept or any commonly accepted idea into what is really true. And the simple way to do that is if someone says, this is how a company can only grow, let's say, 10% year over year, and therefore you tell yourself, well, my business can only grow 10% year over year. First principles thinking means, well, is that really true? You know, what might make it not true? What is the thing that actually causes businesses to grow past 10%? How do I look for evidence and how do I find examples to the latter? So, if you kind of— to me, the value of first principles thinking is it prevents you from getting stuck in commonly held beliefs. Because if you follow commonly held beliefs, you're gonna get commonly, uh, generated results.

Mm-hmm.

Well, I want exceptional outcomes. I want exceptional timelines. Uh, and, and for that, the most important rule is don't, don't follow the herd, you know? And, and, uh, just because everyone says that's true doesn't mean it has to be true for you. And that means you have to go into, uh, everything that you might have believed for your whole life too. And that's okay. You know, to say what new ideas do— will actually get me to my desired outcome. So know exactly like what's important to you, but then don't accept that it can only come to you in a certain way, you know, and be willing to challenge that. And part of what this also does is being comfortable with failure. being outside of the herd, right? Like being okay being different, being okay being disliked. And I think that is something that, you know, I find that especially even within my circle, women particularly struggle with that, you know?

Yeah.

Not being comfortable being disliked or being judged or being criticized or, you know, doing something that others aren't doing. You know, if you, if you want something exceptional, you have to be okay being different.

Yeah, that's so true. And like, okay, so now I wanna circle back into why for women entrepreneurs it's extremely important to be AI first and why what you're doing, your solution's gonna help more women and everybody. Of course, it's not just for women what you're— what you've built. Um, how important is it like for women to be in using AI on a daily basis, growing, learning, as you said, cultivating their curiosity, getting into this persona, this kind of alter ego persona to explore even more greatness in themselves. How can— how important is that when it comes to, like, we've got to be in the game, in the machine, also to untrain the bias that's inherently built into us? Let's talk a bit more about bias that's in there.

Yeah.

What's your take on that?

So, you know, I don't think bias is built into AI. AI simply learns from the inputs it's provided. So it's not inherently biased against any one group. But it takes the data that it's fed and it learns from that. So an example of that is, you know, if historically most CEOs have been male, which Which is true, right? That's just a fact. If you look at CEOs from the time of companies existing, well, they've been majority male. And so if you feed it a list of CEOs and it sees that it's majority male, it's going to— it's simply one way to think about AI. It's the world's most advanced autocomplete. So if you say, hey, who's the likely CEO of this future company? company, it's going to look at past data and the patterns and predict the future based on past patterns. And so it's naturally going to lead towards a white male CEO. That's because that's the data. So that's really where the likelihood of bias emerges. But that also then makes it important for more participation now.

Mm-hmm.

Because, you know, in order to change the future, it's not going to change it if that data isn't there, if that participation isn't there. The other important thing is what is happening right now is so incredibly game-changing for us as humans, for our society, for business and economy, and the opportunity to solve really meaningful problems because we now have the technology to be able to solve it.

Hmm.

If women don't participate, paid, you're not getting a chance to shape the future. And you're missing out. This is not just about building your own little business and making a profit. This is about— I feel like this is the greatest modern-day Renaissance period.

Mm-hmm.

You know, and, um, there's so much possibility and so much excitement in what is going on and what we can actually do to build a better world that not taking a chance and not fully leaning into to that is a huge miss in terms of contribution, let alone your own business, but in terms of, you know, your contribution to building a better world. This is a leadership moment. So to me, it's not— everyone should be participating, you know. And if, if your reason for not doing that is because you're afraid or you don't want to take a risk or you don't understand the tech, you know, overcome that. Don't miss out on the greatest wave in modern in history. And finally, the other data point to keep in mind, and the research shows this, is that women are 25% behind men in terms of AI adoption. And the real challenge is not fear of AI. It actually becomes a logistical challenge because for a lot of women, they have Their, uh, household responsibilities. They're the primary caregiver in most cases. They have their business or professional responsibilities. So juggling those 2 is hard enough that learning how to reinvent yourself and work differently and master AI is like a 3rd job.

Mm-hmm.

And, and so often what happens is women don't do that at home, but expect to figure it out at work. But if they're corporate employees, a lot of companies are not providing the right kind of capabilities for that kind of transformation. So they don't do it then. And so they're less capable, less advanced. And so it shows in their results against the male peers. The male peers have better results. So they get promoted or they advance in their careers. But also a lot of companies are laying off people. Well, who are they more likely to let go of? Someone who's advanced or someone who's being left behind? So it's sort of a vicious cycle that lack of capability leads to poorer results, you know, has a bigger impact on your output and your outcomes, and therefore puts you more at risk. And the same is true for entrepreneurs. If your business is not becoming AI native, you will get replaced in the market by someone whose business is.

Yeah.

And so this is not just about a nice-to-have. This is an existential threat. On one end, that's the threat. But on the other end, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something great.

And when you think about funding, the world of funding, what needs to change in the funding ecosystem for women entrepreneurs now given this context with AI? Because the majority— it's a fact, again— the majority of funding around the world is going into AI because this is a huge revolution. So what needs to change in the funding ecosystem? change in the whole ecosystem? And what's the place that we women can take? Because you've been really strong in advocating, say, this is the time you've got to take— not just create a seat at the table, but you bloody well need to lead it, you know? Don't be holding back. So yeah, what's your take on that?

Well, one thing that I've observed for a lot of women-owned businesses, they tend to be focused on meaningful problems. that people struggle with, right? There's so many new women-owned businesses coming out around, like, you know, female health or, you know, around aging and things that are, like, really meaningful problems or household care. These are problems that deserve to be solved and need to be solved.

Yeah.

And they're led— many of them are led by women. And so if the funding opportunity to me would be really focus on people solving meaningful problems. And as long as they're built to be AI native, they're going to have an advantage because there's going to be a bigger market for those kind of products and services. And that's where, you know, the capital flow should go. Not everybody needs to go build the next AI chip company or the data centers or the space shuttles.

Yeah.

There's a lot of problems that we face as humanity that need solving. And that's the place to not only build, but Yes, I agree.

So what, what would you say, apart from Flipwork, what are your favourite resources for founders reinventing themselves now in this AI age?

Um, well, there's, uh, I'm an avid consumer of, uh, books and podcasts. I'm constantly reading. And so one of the things that I do is I distill a lot of my insights and learnings into my weekly newsletter. newsletter, um, called the Reinvention Roadmap.

Mm-hmm.

So I invite people to check that out as a, it's a weekly playbook that gives you one idea to, you know, breakthrough idea every week.

Mm-hmm.

Um, one of my, uh, favorite podcasts is, uh, David Senra, who, um, does deep biographies and, uh, also does features on, uh, great, uh, entrepreneurs.

Mm-hmm.

And that's a terrific resource. that I, I like things that have depth.

Yes.

So I don't go for the, you know, like the 5-minute prompts and, you know, like the, those kind of resources. But, uh, also, you know, I live in the world of AI and tech. So for me, a lot of the things that actually bring, uh, more imagination and creativity is going completely analog.

Yeah.

And, and going back into history and, and, um, you know, the arts and the humanities. And I think That's the part that as human beings we're so gifted with is the power of imagination. That's the one thing that we have that makes us different from any other being, right? It's the power of imagination. And that's not gonna come from some AI-generated output. That's gonna come from within you. So lean into the things that spur your imagination, that fuel your creativity, that make you feel more connected to nature and to each other. You know, that, that's what I would share.

I love it. Okay, so where can we find Flip Work, your newsletter, your book? How can we connect with you, Nikki?

So it's all available on my website, nikki-barua.com. You can find my newsletter there, also connect to Flip Work, and I would You'll know exactly where you stand and you'll know where to go from there.

Wonderful. So any last message to our listeners? If you had to leave them one last message, what would it be?

Dream big. There's never been a better time to not only dream big and even bigger, but to actually bring those dreams to life. This is not a time to think about it. This is a time to actually do it. You have infinite intelligence that you can access, and the cost of execution and all of the resource constraints are nearly gone.

Ah!

The only thing that you need at this point is to follow that big dream and to lean into your curiosity, be brave enough to take action, and be humble enough to learn as a beginner every day.

Couldn't have put it any better myself. Thank you so much, Nicky. I mean, it's been a wonderful, wonderful conversation. I have loved, loved it. And thank you for being so well-rounded, going into the tech, going into being the future. You're a total futurist and in there creating it with us, as well as being inspirational and giving us some hints and tools as to how we can move ourselves on our own transformation. So thank you so much, Nikki. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Likewise, Anne. Thanks for having me.