The ultimate partnership
⊹ A spark of Genius ⊹ Circe's spell book of ideas, people, and opportunities, curated to enchant your week
⊹ THE CIRCE BRIEF
Your Co-founder: Your Other Half.
Last week, we sat in a lecture hall at Berkeley Haas and listened to Jennifer Hyman, founder of Rent The Runway, tell her origin story. And we kept looking at each other with this little knowing smile, because so much of it felt like watching a preview of our own.
She talked about emailing 80 variations of Diane von Furstenberg's name until one finally went through and she landed a meeting. Anna and I did the same thing with Vicky Tsai at Tatcha. We typed every combination we could think of — vicky.tsai@, vickytsai@, vtsai@ — and somehow ended up on a Zoom with her the next day. She talked about meeting her cofounder by total chance, because they happened to sit next to each other in class. Anna and I were randomly placed in the same study group at Haas. (Jennifer Chatman, however you sort those groups — thank you.)
And she talked about knowing her strengths and weaknesses, and finding someone whose skills filled the gaps.
That one stuck with us. Because later that same night, we were driving to our own Circe event — a co-founder matchmaking lab we'd put together with AIX Ventures and The Tech Bros — and we found ourselves doing exactly that. Asking each other: what are you good at? Where do you fall short?
Here's what we landed on. Anna is deeply thoughtful. She sees details I blow right past. Her empathy makes her want to understand our sponsors, our members, our partners before making a single move. I tend to bulldoze when I'm excited about something. She thinks in years. I want things done today. We're yin and yang in how we execute, but we have the exact same vision for where Circe is going. And we have deep respect for each other. That's what makes me so confident about us as a team.
It also made our co-founder panel on Thursday feel especially timely. We hosted We hosted Isabel Rodriguez (Zolvo, YC), Anna Yuan (ScaleAgentic), Joana Ferreira (Cacade, a16z speedrun) and Mariana Barona (Synthera AI). . and they got really honest about what makes founding teams work (and what breaks them). A few things that stuck with us:
Your cofounder doesn't have to be your best friend. It's great when it happens, but some of the strongest partnerships look nothing like a friendship. What matters more is a completely shared vision for where your company and industry are heading. When founders disagree on that, the cracks show up everywhere.
Radical honesty came up over and over.
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You have to be transparent with each other, even when the truth is uncomfortable. If you want fundamentally different things, it's better to face that early than to let it quietly rot.
Isabela Rodriguez, Zolvo (YC P26)
And maybe the most important one: mutual, absolute trust. Trusting each other to do the work, to make decisions, and to make mistakes. When you let your cofounder mess up without punishing them for it, you make it safe for yourself to mess up too. That kind of environment changes everything — for you and for your whole team.⊹
⊹ CIRCE DEALFLOW
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Raising: Seed Round
Synthera is working on the next data layer for capital markets. They build proprietary generative AI models trained on historical yield curves, FX, and commodities data to produce synthetic market scenarios that capture the tail events and non-linear dynamics that traditional quant models miss. Led by Co-Founders Mariana Barona and Lukas Schreiner, the team brings expertise across quantitative finance and AI research.
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Raising: Seed Round
They building an AI-powered business development platform for architecture, engineering, and construction firms. The platform monitors thousands of government and private portals to surface matched Request For Proposals based on a firm's capabilities, then helps write the proposals to win them. Their platform compresses what typically takes weeks down to days.
⊹ TALENT MOVES
Cascade | Engineers and Growth Roles | SF
Reach out to Joana!
Hey Noah | Social Media Growth Intern & Manager | SF
Reach out to Danira!
Hostie | AEs, Engineers, CSMs, GTM Engineers, Chief of Staff, & Recruiters | SF
Reach out to Lizzy!
⊹ CIRCE MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Susan has built products across every major technology wave: the early internet, mobile, SaaS and now AI. She's done it from large tech companies, from inside universities and as a founder herself. She's also spent much of that time hiring, mentoring and backing other founders and operators, which is one of the reasons she's happy to support and be supported by Circe.
Career Strong grew from what Susan saw across every era: the systems meant to help people make good career decisions were built to serve institutions, not the people making them. Career Strong combines human guidance, evidence-based methodology and AI-powered tools to help people build career management capability they own for life.
⟡ EVENTS
Hosted by Circe | MAY 8
We’re trading pitch decks for deep breaths and Slack pings for moving meditation. Join Circe at Vuori on Union Street for an intimate evening of movement, breath work, and reflection!
Women in Health +HealthCare Dinner | TBD
An intimate dinner with founders, operators, investors, and builders in the space.
If interested email us!
⊹EXPERT OF THE WEEK⊹
Grab A Coffee With Leia
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Operations Consultant & Strategic Facilitator
Leia doesn't show up with a pre-built playbook, she builds systems and processes with the people actually doing the work. Her approach is human-centered, which means the businesses she works with end up with operations that people genuinely want to use. She partners with small and medium-sized businesses that are scaling and realizing their operations need some real attention and also works with individuals navigating personal or professional transitions in a coaching capacity.
If any of that resonates, she'd love to connect. Grab a coffee chat with her — even if it's just to swap stories.
⟡ Want your company, job openings, or your brand featured in next week’s spark?
Busy, right? That’s the life of being a woman! There’s always so much happening and life moves far too fast, but we can’t forget to recognize how awesome you are make sure you’re always in the loop!
We are so excited about allll the things we’ve got going on—and coming up. We hope you’ll be the biggest part of it!
Thank you for joining us in this journey of creation and empowerment.
