In this keynote-style talk, Maren Nelson (founder of Clara Labs) shares her personal journey from a psychology/neuroscience student in Texas to a tech entrepreneur focused on AI-powered intelligent assistants and women’s empowerment. She recounts an early internship in New York, a pivotal conversation with venture capitalist Charlie O'Donnell that highlighted the importance of network building, and the subsequent creation of Interact—a community of 100 young technologists designed to help members expand their networks and pursue ambitious goals. Despite numerous rejections, including from a close friend, Maren persisted, raising sponsorships, taking personal financial risks, and ultimately shifting her ambition from becoming a VC to founding her own companies, including Clara Labs and a second, now-failed venture. She emphasizes the value of embracing defeat, quoting Maya Angelou, and urges the audience—predominantly women—to take their dreams seriously, view “no” as a sign of meaningful pursuit, and celebrate International Women’s Day by supporting one another. The talk blends personal anecdotes, lessons on networking, resilience, and a call to empower women in tech.
Chapters
Hi everyone! Is this right volume? Do we feel good? I can't see any of you really directly, so bear with me. Firstly, I am so excited to get to be here. I was told this event is 75% women. My glance at your very dark faces suggests that maybe it's even more so. I'm Maren. I founded a company called Clara Labs. Clara is an intelligent assistant that helps do menial work that you would otherwise have to manage on your own. And we are very, very big on empowering women. Tomorrow is International Women's Day. Encourage your company to do something. It'll be awesome. So, as I was preparing for this talk today, I was trying to think about the things in my life that had brought me to you guys in the first place, right? I'm 25. When I was 20, I did not have some perfect vision or perfect path that told me that on this day and time in the future, I would be giving a talk about my company that builds an artificial intelligence that you can talk with. That was not really in the cards for me. So I wanted to tell you a story that kind of winds back to when I was 20, and the narrative that has brought me to all of the successes and happinesses that I have had as of yet. When I was 20, I got an internship. I spent my summer in New York City And I'm from Texas. I was studying psychology and neuroscience. Yeah, right, hook 'em horns for any of you who went to UT. And getting to spend a summer in New York was this kind of dream. I had, over the course of the past several years, fallen in love with the idea of building technology, of being a technologist. Coming from a humanities background, coming from really loving people, The idea that you could build things that people would work with every day just really, I fell in love with, head over heels. I started to see human beings as technologists, right, to create all these theories about the future. And I became convinced, outside of knowing any venture capitalists at all, that the way that I was supposed to become a technologist was by becoming a venture capitalist, right? To be there in the weeds, I had this whole vision, in the trenches with the founders, building the companies, it's gonna be so great. And so in my time in New York, I was lucky enough to build a relationship with one venture capitalist, a man named Charlie O'Donnell, who founded a fund called Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. And the last day that I was in New York, we were getting coffee, and I told him, Charlie, you know I'm very smart, I have lots of great qualities, I'm very interested in being a venture capitalist out of undergrad. "how do I do this?" And his response to me was like, "Maren, there are only perhaps 2 people a year who become VCs out of undergrad. You just don't have a big enough network to be valuable to a venture firm." To which I, you know, kind of immediately hear and I'm walking away and getting into the subway thinking, "Okay, Charlie didn't just tell me no, he just told me that in the next 9 months I need to somehow build a big enough network of people such that I am valuable to a venture capital firm." I ended up founding a community called Interact. You're welcome to go to joininteract.com if you're curious about it. Of 100 young technologists that come together every year and meet and build relationships with each other because they, like me, often haven't built big networks of people who help them kind of see their dreams through and who connect them to their next opportunities, connect them to the paths and the careers and the lives that they're aspiring to and the impact that they're aspiring to. It was an unbelievably challenging community to build. The first person who rejected me after Charlie, approximately 20 minutes later, right as I got out of the subway, having thought about this, was my best friend Michael Achillian, right? I call him, I'm like, "We're gonna bring 100 people to Austin! It's gonna be the best! They're all gonna come to South By, we're gonna get badges for everybody, we're gonna host everybody, 100 people in Austin, South By Southwest, it'll be really easy, we'll host You know, 6 or 7 events, super, super chill. And he was just like, "Maren, this idea is stupid. This is never working." I think though, back to that first weekend and to having been able to build that first community of people and the number of nos that it took to get to that moment, to get to that group of people, how absolutely spectacular and impressive every single one of them was, and how much they've all changed my life, and how much that community has changed each other's lives. And the thing that I remember, of course, is that by that point in time, I was no longer actually interested in being a venture capitalist, right? My path and my ambition had changed. I went on to get a lot of jobs to work in venture, But having built Interact, having gotten all the nos, having raised $50,000 in sponsorship, having thought that I was going to have to take out a $20,000 personal loan, having promised a million things to a million people, and really carrying all that weight, I became convinced that the thing that I wanted to do was to build something myself, and that I had the capacity to do that. And so, my dream changed. My dream changed in a really big way, and I subsequently ended up founding not just Clara, but another company that's already failed. Lots of failures behind me. So, I think the thing that I wanted to share with you guys is much better said by a woman that I love named Maya Angelou, so I'm gonna directly quote her and not botch it. She says, "You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, and how you can still come out of it." If there's anything that I could do, and having talked with all these awesome women who are very smart and very articulate backstage before this, if there's anything that I think any of us could encourage you to do, and encourage ourselves to do and remind ourselves of, it would be to remind you to take your dreams just desperately seriously and to take your lives very seriously. I think that it is a gift to get to find something that matters enough to you that it's worth rejection, right? Something that is a vision that you have to see through, such that you are excited about being told no hundreds of times. Because I think that those visions, right, those things that we want to hear no for, that we accept the nos for, are the things that make us each kind of come alive. And I think that that's just one of the greatest gifts that we get to have as people, and one of the things that we should share and encourage in each other. So, celebrate International Women's Day tomorrow. Remember Maya Angelou if you ever need support, and please just, if there's something that you want and you're told no, don't think that you have to know the perfect path to the thing that you're trying to get. You don't. You just have to know that you care enough about something that no is an acceptable answer. In most cases, not all.
