UGLY TALK: WOMEN TECH FOUNDERS #SFTechWeek
Important Attendance Information:
Due to building security requirements, all attendees must be on the pre-approved guest list to gain entry. Please ensure you have registered in advance.
Please note: This event is now at capacity. We are unable to accommodate additional guests or walk-ins at this time.
💡 What’s the Ugly Truth
In the heart of the world’s most ambitious startup scene, women founders are still being told the playing field is “better than ever.” The numbers disagree. In 2025, women-led startups in the U.S. pulled just over 2% of all VC dollars — in SF, that means the game is still mostly played without you on the roster.
Even for seasoned founders, the warm-intro culture of Sand Hill Road keeps capital locked behind closed doors. Investors still pitch men on “market domination” and women on “risk mitigation.” AI, deep tech, and SaaS get the headlines, but the bar for women to raise in those sectors sits higher — and often comes with double the scrutiny.
In a city obsessed with the “next big thing,” women founders are forced to prove their staying power before they’ve even gotten a fair shot at scale.
🎯 Why You Should Attend
Because the SF hustle isn’t slowing down, and neither are the expectations. You’ll hear from founders who’ve raised in the most cut-throat funding climate in years, navigated the old biases wearing new disguises, and built companies that punch through without losing themselves in the process.
If you’re building in tech — whether it’s AI, enterprise, consumer apps, or the next category-breaker — this is where you’ll learn how to navigate the maze, spot the landmines, and find your people.
🙋 Who You’ll Meet
Women tech founders from pre-seed to Series B .
Investors and ecosystem builders with deep roots in SF’s venture scene.
Operators, mentors, and allies who’ve seen the game from the inside and want it to change.
🎤 Who’s on the Panel
Mehak Aggarwal - Co-Founder of Sybill
Founder and head of AI at a silicon valley startup Sybill that’s raised $15M+. She’s also an engineering nerd. Sybill is AI sales assistant who can answer deal questions, create sales assets, and automate grunt work like meeting prep, email follow-ups, and CRM updates.
Haruka Takamori - Co-Founder & CEO of Syval
Haruka Takamori is the founder of Syval, a money journaling app that helps people quit impulse buying and understand the emotions behind their spending. She grew up in Taiwan in a single-parent household and later worked at ByteDance, in investment banking, and in venture capital. After overcoming her own shopping addiction, Haruka moved to San Francisco to build Syval. Inspired by personal experiences with financial instability, she is committed to making financial wellness accessible to all. Beyond startups, Haruka is trilingual and an active advocate for founder wellness and mindfulness practices.
Alyona Mysko - Founder & CEO of Fuelfinance
Alyona Mysko is the CEO and Co-Founder of Fuelfinance, an AI-powered financial planning and analysis platform built for SMBs. Before starting Fuel, she spent 10+ years as a CFO helping founders handle messy spreadsheets and build forecasts. Now she’s scaling that superpower with AI, giving founders real-time visibility into their numbers and faster decisions without hiring a full finance team. She’s a Masters of Scale podcast guest, a HubSpot INBOUND speaker, and finalist in the $1M Pitch Competition by Hubspot. With Fuel, customers manage over $400M+ in P&L, including companies like Hampton, ColdIQ, Oceans, and others. Fuel’s mission is to save SMBs from financial mistakes, and unlock trillions of dollars in global GDP.
Moderator:
Jenny Chen - CEO of WalktheChat
Jenny runs a performance marketing and data analytics agency that used AI to drive strategic insights for global luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Armani, and Chaumet. A recognized leader in social media and e-commerce within the fashion space, she spent 12 years in Beijing before moving to the U.S., where she lived in five cities across both coasts over 6 months before finally settling in San Francisco.
💬 What We’ll Talk About
Why SF’s “open network” is still a closed loop without the right intros — and how to break in.
The new face of bias in venture: same double standard, now dressed in AI hype and “metrics discipline.”
Surviving the hyper-competitive pitch circuit without burning out.
What’s working right now for women raising in SaaS, AI, and other high-growth sectors.
Building companies that scale on your terms, not just your investors’.
🤝 Co-hosted With
Global Entrepreneurs Hub - Silicon Valley’s $1M+ ARR+ Founder Community.
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 and industry to collect, verify, and 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 and insights.
With a growing presence in cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Miami, we’ve built a vibrant community of thousands of founders and industry leaders making a profound impact on the entrepreneurial landscape.
Official Website: UglyTalk.com