⊹ the circe brief ⊹
Recently, we sat down with Valerie Chapman, co-founder and CEO of Ruth, to talk about go-to-market.
Naturally, we ended up talking about layoffs, LinkedIn bios, hot girls, skyscrapers, personal branding, and the gender wage gap.
If you missed it, here’s what Valerie taught us:
create your reality
Valerie spent a decade in the city, working at startups including Wunderkind and Compass. She was building her career in the way many of us have been taught to: get the job, work hard, climb, repeat.
Then came layoffs. More than once.
At first, she read them personally. Then she started to see a different pattern: maybe job security was not actually security at all. Maybe being tied to a company title, a manager, or a biweekly paycheck was more fragile than building a name people could find, trust, and hire directly.
So in 2023, from her apartment in Brooklyn, Valerie made herself a promise: she would never let one employer control her livelihood again. She opened ChatGPT and asked a very modern question: what could I be known for?
She uploaded her résumé and asked the model to position her as a LinkedIn thought leader. It produced a long document. She started posting.
What followed was 125,000+ followers, 140 million impressions, 200+ brand partnerships, and women’s hackathons in San Francisco and NYC skyscrapers, as well as a freshly announced partnership with Google.
personal branding is career insurance
After her layoffs, Valerie changed her LinkedIn headline from a job title to a statement of value:
“I help women use AI to build powerful personal brands.”
The shift was immediate.
Within weeks, she was charging $3,000–$4,000 for personal-brand coaching. By December, after being laid off in October, she had secured her first brand deal with LinkedIn.
Her advice:
“Stop looking for a job and be the job.”
A company can take your title away. It cannot take away your audience, your expertise, your perspective, or the relationships you have built around your name.
start with the statistic that triggers you.
We love this framework because it is more honest than asking yourself to dream up a grand mission from scratch.
What makes you mad? What feels unfair, inefficient, or painfully ignored?
Valerie found the statistic that would change the direction of her work: Gen Z women were using AI tools 25% less than men.
If women were adopting AI at a slower rate, Valerie wondered, what would that mean for a wage gap that already exists? Would AI close it, or accelerate it?
That question became Ruth, an AI company built around helping women become more visible, negotiate, expand their networks, and build careers with more leverage.
For us, is the stubborn metric that hasn’t budged in a decade: Only 2% of VC funding goes to all-female founder teams.
The things that frustrate you are often the things you are uniquely equipped to change.
make your positioning painfully clear.
Most LinkedIn bios tell us where someone works.
Valerie’s [“I help women use AI to build powerful personal brands”] tells us who she helps. That little change is what made women find her and ask for help.
That is the difference.
When your positioning is clear, people know whether to follow you, hire you, introduce you, or invite you into the room. And they begin associating your name with a specific kind of value.
Then you have to repeat it.
Again. And again. And again.
Valerie’s point was that people need to see something many times before it sticks. Now, there is another audience to consider: the models and algorithms shaping how people search for expertise online.
Your body of work is teaching both humans and machines what you are known for.
your go-to-market channels should compound.
Content is not separate from community. Community is not separate from events. Events are not separate from partnerships.
Valerie has used inbound brand requests for LinkedIn content as an opening to pitch event sponsorships. A one-off $5,000–$10,000 brand partnership can become a six-week relationship.
This is the kind of GTM thinking we want more of: not adding another channel for the sake of it, but connecting the channels you already have so every piece of momentum creates more.
polish and vulnerability can coexist.
Valerie’s world is visually powerful: tailored suits, ambitious venues, rooms full of women building companies.
But she is also direct about rejection, layoffs, financial uncertainty, and the days when she does not feel motivated.
That contrast is what makes the brand believable.
“If your brand is always perfect, no edge, it comes off a little corny or too girl boss.”
We could not agree more. A personal brand does not need to be a flawless highlight reel. The tension: the difficult moments, the pivots, the uncertainty… That’s often where people find something real to connect to.
women should own the storytelling around AI.
There is a lot of discourse around women becoming more visible online, particularly in San Francisco’s startup scene.
Valerie’s take: keep your eyes on the mission.
AI is fast becoming foundational infrastructure. But it is also cold, technical, and deeply in need of human storytelling.
“AI is not sexy. The only way it’s going to be cool is if women take over and do the storytelling.”
We think she is right.
The next era of go-to-market will not just belong to whoever builds the best product. It will belong to the people who can make others care.
So: change the bio. Post the idea. Make the ask. Host the event. Build the room. Repeat yourself until people know what you stand for.
Because your name, your community, and your point of view might just be the most durable assets you ever build.
-Isa and Anna ⊹
upcoming events
last week for early bird ticket pricing for tech week masquerave!
oct 5 | tech week masquerave | RSVP
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sep 27 | women in GTM: Valkyries suite | RSVP
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oct 17 | girls run + brunch | RSVP
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sep 27 | AI for Social Good by Valerie Chapman | RSVP
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sep 29 | Portraits & Positioning for Women Founders | RSVP
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oct 2 | cherry launch party | RSVP
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check out our full calendar of events.
That’s all from us this week! We’re so happy to have you follow long in our journey, and if you want to officially be part of our community, you can apply here.
This article was really inspiring and full of great ideas. I want to implement what Valerie did in my own life. Thank you very much for sharing.