Key Highlights from Our Conversation:

The False Confidence Trap

Early wins are dangerous. "One of the big problems I faced was that actually these initial moments are a bad signal that kind of makes you feel like you can do it all on your own," Benedetta explains. This creates a feedback loop where founders mistake small victories for proof they don't need help. "The biggest power of a founder is to surround themselves with very smart people who can do things for them." Most learn this too late, after isolation has already set in.

The Decision Avoidance Crisis

"Founders never want to take that decision. So you spend a lot of time thinking about how not to take that decision." Whether it's firing someone strategic, pivoting, or shutting down, founders exhaust themselves avoiding choices their gut already knows are right. "The decision usually is the right one—the first one that comes from your gut." When regulators forced her second company to close, she found new jobs for her entire team within a month instead of delaying the inevitable.

The Gender Gap Reality

"I see and envy sometimes my friends because my male founders can just go close a deal over a drink," she admits. It's not about capability—it's about access to informal networks where business actually happens. "There's still like a social stigma around it whereby it cannot be done that much and that often." This creates fewer opportunities for the relationship-building that leads to funding and partnerships.

The Support System Myth

"I actually have a lot more male mentors and people who support me than women. Women are really bad at supporting each other, which is really sad." The solution isn't waiting for formal mentorship. "I find my mentors are the people who are in my same journey"—peer founders facing similar problems understand current challenges better than distant advisors.

The Olympic Athlete Framework

Founders need systematic support like elite athletes. Her personal board includes: family who understand entrepreneurship, fitness ("Physical health—and I mean it more than by looking pretty—by really doing sport to sweat"), knowledge pursuit outside her field, and deliberate discomfort through exploration. It's about recognizing that peak performance requires intentional support systems.

The Passion Prerequisite

"You kind of have to have it in your DNA because it's a terrible career choice." Success requires finding problems that hurt enough to sustain you through inevitable failures. "You have to really truly believe that you're trying to solve some problem which visually hurts if you're not trying to do it." Without this deep connection, the rational choice is always to quit.

My Personal Reflections:

Talking with Benedetta gave me a beautiful new perspective on how to see the female founders’ dilemma. For her, there is no problem until you actually start to treat it as a problem. But let me get it straight, it’s not that there is a problem, of course we can’t ignore it. But what if we simply focused on building and treating each other as equals? Without overcompensating on both ends?! Maybe this is really the essence. Maybe this is what we will get to at some point, in society as well as in business. Treating each other, male and female, Eastern or Westerner, like human beings. Not as different from the other. For some, it may sound simplistic, but for me it’s an inevitable conclusion of the massive work we are all trying to do.

Besides this major topic, our conversation touched deep characteristics and patterns we see in every founder. The ego power game in the backstage, the “feel I can do it alone” presumption that makes us fall so easily into problems—but it’s the very same energy that pushes us to start impossible ventures. What I get from serial entrepreneurs like Benedetta though, is that as much as you can read about this in your early years as a founder, as much as you wish to avoid it, you still have to go through it on your own to learn it for real!