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Womansplaining AI · October 1 · 38 min

Okay, Let's Slow Down

Bella Pivo is 23. She's an analyst at FoundersEdge, a pre-seed fund in Boston, so she sits in pitches every week and sees what gets funded years before the rest of us feel it. She's been posting on TikTok for ten years, since she was 13 and learning sign language to keep talking to her sister, and she has over a hundred thousand followers to show for it. She is, on paper, the person everyone listening to this show thinks they're behind. And her intake form said it baffles her how many young people want to start startups, and that the AI bubble comes from moving fast and breaking things when nobody is actually building anything. So we asked. Bella laughs at 19-year-olds who pitch "15 plus years in the accounting world" (you're four years old), and then explains why she says it: young founders are attacking trends, not problems. The internet was a new world to build. AI is a shit ton of data to interpret, and interpreting it well takes the kind of expertise you get from having lived inside an industry. Her two curses of San Francisco, the curse of Zuckerberg and the curse of Cluely, explain why the money keeps flowing anyway. Then the part that made her mom say, so you're in charge of making sure people don't have jobs. Bella lost friends after graduation for taking the VC job. Her answer to them: if we don't have the language to speak, we will not be able to have a conversation. The people most against AI are exactly the people who should understand it best. The back half is the hopeful part, and it's the reason to listen. Bella explained ETL (extract, transform, load) to a group of college freshmen and they came back a week later having vibe-coded an app with a backend. Building with AI is a puzzle, and you don't need deep experience to notice that two pieces connect. She also has a theory about tech influencers who need you to need them, and a better idea: a digital garden. Seedling, growing, evergreen. Logan stages her personal-website intervention (Namecheap, $11.99, don't use GoDaddy). Bella dictates a prompt you can paste into your own AI to find your own themes. And her first project was a beat studio, because she'd just watched the Michael Jackson movie and wanted to make disco. Also: Bella's therapist gets an email about what makes a person interesting, the pendulum theory that made her bet against STEM, why improv is a lost art, and Mara's closing position that what we all need are our own personal disco creators. Find Bella at bella.garden and bellapivo.com. What needs womansplaining? Leave us a voicemail at womansplainingai.com/answering-machine or email ask@womansplainingai.com. Anonymous is fine. Your question could be the next drinks round. In this episode 00:00 Cold open: "So you're in charge of making sure that people don't have jobs" 00:30 Meet Bella: 23, pre-seed VC analyst, ten years on TikTok, on both sides of this at once 01:33 The intake form: "it baffles me how many young people want to start startups" 03:02 Learning ASL at 13 for her sister, and why she started posting 03:17 "15 plus years in the accounting world." You're four years old 04:24 The assembly that said employers would never hire you; keeping the account a secret 05:12 It's no longer cringy to have the following 05:40 Bella's fun fact: "personal branding" only peaked as a search term this year 05:58 The job she got because of social media 07:03 The pendulum theory: everyone went STEM, so she bet on communication 08:02 The bet paid off: founders now ask her for storytelling and pitch help 08:22 Improv is a lost art form (one of her very hot takes) 08:26 Empathetic design and the Northeastern class called Innovation! 10:17 Young founders are attacking a trend, not a problem 11:14 Mara: this is why we started Womansplaining AI 12:06 Bella lost friends after graduation. Her mom's line 12:55 "If we don't have the language to speak, we will not be able to have a conversation" 13:17 The people most against AI are the right people to be informed 13:43 Logan: Mara's phrase, fierce ambivalence 14:34 When people are uncertain, they cling to what's familiar. Y2K and the calculator 15:35 "Okay, let's slow down." Logan on why she hates "future proofing" 16:06 When did you last hear a pitch from a founder who never had the problem? Literally yesterday 16:35 The two curses of San Francisco: the curse of Zuckerberg and the curse of Cluely 17:53 The internet was a new world to create. AI is a new world to interpret 18:26 The data moat, and why young founders don't have one 19:23 The college freshmen who'd been told to "use AI" and had no idea how it worked 20:07 ETL: extract, transform, load, explained with your inbox and your calendar 20:55 They came back a week later having vibe-coded an app 21:08 Building with AI is a puzzle (also her college essay) 21:46 Logan's devil's advocate: it wasn't just the explanation, it was who delivered it 22:49 Tech influencers rely on you relying on them 23:44 Being an interesting person is really hard 24:33 "I'm gonna have to email my therapist." Curiosity, observation, strong opinions easy to change 25:20 Mara on building in public, and Logan's "learning in public" 25:52 The DM about bella.garden from a podcast host 26:38 Digital gardens, Zettelkasten, and Luhmann's 90,000 handwritten notes 28:05 Bella's thesis: the future of thought leadership is a personal website 29:07 Logan's intervention: Namecheap, $11.99 a year, don't use GoDaddy 29:36 Second brain vs digital garden 31:10 Seedling, growing, evergreen 32:22 "Let's stay in the front garden. It's really messy in the house" 33:03 The prompt: Bella dictates what to paste into your AI right now 34:26 Greg's research hack: top three to five, never just "research" 35:14 Logan: start small 35:36 The beat studio, and the Michael Jackson movie 36:23 The most optimistic ending in a while 36:51 "Forget curing cancer. What we all need are our own personal disco creators" 37:34 Where to find Bella About Bella Pivo Bella Pivo is an analyst at FoundersEdge, a pre-seed venture fund in Boston, where she sources founders, sits in pitch meetings every week, and runs Ditch the Deck, the fund's live product-demo series for AI founders (no slides, 200+ attendees, Boston, New York, and San Francisco this year). She learned American Sign Language at 13 so she could keep talking to her sister after her sister lost her hearing, started sharing it on TikTok, and that account is now verified with more than 100,000 followers. At Northeastern she ran IDEA, the student-led venture accelerator, and created Pitch-A-Thon, an undergraduate pitch competition across ten Boston-area universities. Everything she builds lives at bella.garden. Find her at bellapivo.com, on LinkedIn, on TikTok at @bella.pivo, and on Instagram at @bellapivo_. Resources mentioned bella.garden, everything Bella has built, including the Beat Studio bellapivo.com, startup storytelling from a VC point of view FoundersEdge, the Boston pre-seed fund where Bella is an analyst Zettelkasten, Niklas Luhmann's note system that digital gardens descend from Andrej Karpathy's site, the personal wiki Logan mentions Wispr Flow, the dictation tool Bella uses to talk to her AI Mara Bolis, "The AI Gender Gap Paradox," Stanford Social Innovation Review, where fierce ambivalence comes from EP 24: Guten Tag, Tech Bros, with Zara, our youngest guest and the other side of this conversation EP 28: You Can Come to the Hackathon Clueless, for the "you are not too late" companion

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Bella Pivo is 23. She's an analyst at FoundersEdge, a pre-seed fund in Boston, so she sits in pitches every week and sees what gets funded years before the rest of us feel it. She's been posting on TikTok for ten years, since she was 13 and learning sign language to keep talking to her sister, and she has over a hundred thousand followers to show for it. She is, on paper, the person everyone listening to this show thinks they're behind.

And her intake form said it baffles her how many young people want to start startups, and that the AI bubble comes from moving fast and breaking things when nobody is actually building anything.

So we asked. Bella laughs at 19-year-olds who pitch "15 plus years in the accounting world" (you're four years old), and then explains why she says it: young founders are attacking trends, not problems. The internet was a new world to build. AI is a shit ton of data to interpret, and interpreting it well takes the kind of expertise you get from having lived inside an industry. Her two curses of San Francisco, the curse of Zuckerberg and the curse of Cluely, explain why the money keeps flowing anyway.

Then the part that made her mom say, so you're in charge of making sure people don't have jobs. Bella lost friends after graduation for taking the VC job. Her answer to them: if we don't have the language to speak, we will not be able to have a conversation. The people most against AI are exactly the people who should understand it best.

The back half is the hopeful part, and it's the reason to listen. Bella explained ETL (extract, transform, load) to a group of college freshmen and they came back a week later having vibe-coded an app with a backend. Building with AI is a puzzle, and you don't need deep experience to notice that two pieces connect. She also has a theory about tech influencers who need you to need them, and a better idea: a digital garden. Seedling, growing, evergreen. Logan stages her personal-website intervention (Namecheap, $11.99, don't use GoDaddy). Bella dictates a prompt you can paste into your own AI to find your own themes. And her first project was a beat studio, because she'd just watched the Michael Jackson movie and wanted to make disco.

Also: Bella's therapist gets an email about what makes a person interesting, the pendulum theory that made her bet against STEM, why improv is a lost art, and Mara's closing position that what we all need are our own personal disco creators.

Find Bella at bella.garden and bellapivo.com.

What needs womansplaining? Leave us a voicemail at womansplainingai.com/answering-machine or email ask@womansplainingai.com. Anonymous is fine. Your question could be the next drinks round.

In this episode

  • 00:00 Cold open: "So you're in charge of making sure that people don't have jobs"

  • 00:30 Meet Bella: 23, pre-seed VC analyst, ten years on TikTok, on both sides of this at once

  • 01:33 The intake form: "it baffles me how many young people want to start startups"

  • 03:02 Learning ASL at 13 for her sister, and why she started posting

  • 03:17 "15 plus years in the accounting world." You're four years old

  • 04:24 The assembly that said employers would never hire you; keeping the account a secret

  • 05:12 It's no longer cringy to have the following

  • 05:40 Bella's fun fact: "personal branding" only peaked as a search term this year

  • 05:58 The job she got because of social media

  • 07:03 The pendulum theory: everyone went STEM, so she bet on communication

  • 08:02 The bet paid off: founders now ask her for storytelling and pitch help

  • 08:22 Improv is a lost art form (one of her very hot takes)

  • 08:26 Empathetic design and the Northeastern class called Innovation!

  • 10:17 Young founders are attacking a trend, not a problem

  • 11:14 Mara: this is why we started Womansplaining AI

  • 12:06 Bella lost friends after graduation. Her mom's line

  • 12:55 "If we don't have the language to speak, we will not be able to have a conversation"

  • 13:17 The people most against AI are the right people to be informed

  • 13:43 Logan: Mara's phrase, fierce ambivalence

  • 14:34 When people are uncertain, they cling to what's familiar. Y2K and the calculator

  • 15:35 "Okay, let's slow down." Logan on why she hates "future proofing"

  • 16:06 When did you last hear a pitch from a founder who never had the problem? Literally yesterday

  • 16:35 The two curses of San Francisco: the curse of Zuckerberg and the curse of Cluely

  • 17:53 The internet was a new world to create. AI is a new world to interpret

  • 18:26 The data moat, and why young founders don't have one

  • 19:23 The college freshmen who'd been told to "use AI" and had no idea how it worked

  • 20:07 ETL: extract, transform, load, explained with your inbox and your calendar

  • 20:55 They came back a week later having vibe-coded an app

  • 21:08 Building with AI is a puzzle (also her college essay)

  • 21:46 Logan's devil's advocate: it wasn't just the explanation, it was who delivered it

  • 22:49 Tech influencers rely on you relying on them

  • 23:44 Being an interesting person is really hard

  • 24:33 "I'm gonna have to email my therapist." Curiosity, observation, strong opinions easy to change

  • 25:20 Mara on building in public, and Logan's "learning in public"

  • 25:52 The DM about bella.garden from a podcast host

  • 26:38 Digital gardens, Zettelkasten, and Luhmann's 90,000 handwritten notes

  • 28:05 Bella's thesis: the future of thought leadership is a personal website

  • 29:07 Logan's intervention: Namecheap, $11.99 a year, don't use GoDaddy

  • 29:36 Second brain vs digital garden

  • 31:10 Seedling, growing, evergreen

  • 32:22 "Let's stay in the front garden. It's really messy in the house"

  • 33:03 The prompt: Bella dictates what to paste into your AI right now

  • 34:26 Greg's research hack: top three to five, never just "research"

  • 35:14 Logan: start small

  • 35:36 The beat studio, and the Michael Jackson movie

  • 36:23 The most optimistic ending in a while

  • 36:51 "Forget curing cancer. What we all need are our own personal disco creators"

  • 37:34 Where to find Bella

About Bella Pivo

Bella Pivo is an analyst at FoundersEdge, a pre-seed venture fund in Boston, where she sources founders, sits in pitch meetings every week, and runs Ditch the Deck, the fund's live product-demo series for AI founders (no slides, 200+ attendees, Boston, New York, and San Francisco this year). She learned American Sign Language at 13 so she could keep talking to her sister after her sister lost her hearing, started sharing it on TikTok, and that account is now verified with more than 100,000 followers. At Northeastern she ran IDEA, the student-led venture accelerator, and created Pitch-A-Thon, an undergraduate pitch competition across ten Boston-area universities. Everything she builds lives at bella.garden. Find her at bellapivo.com, on LinkedIn, on TikTok at @bella.pivo, and on Instagram at @bellapivo_.

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