We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Manuela Seve a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Manuela , so excited to talk about all sorts of important topics with you today. The first one we want to jump into is about being the only one in the room – for some that’s being the only person of color or the only non-native English speaker or the only non-MBA, etc Can you talk to us about how you have managed to be successful even when you were the only one in the room that looked like you?
Being the only woman in various professional settings, I’ve encountered instances where I am judged for my gender. This only makes me fight stronger so that the generation after me does not have to endure the same sexism. Representation, women supporting women, and speaking out are key to change.
I remember a time where one of my LinkedIn posts advocating for female empowerment was met with disparaging remarks about women’s cognitive abilities compared to men’s. These experiences have motivated me to channel my energy into a rebuttal that went viral. Countless women reached out to me, thanking me for speaking out. Promoting awareness, exposing prejudice, and holding companies accountable for their lack of investment in women form integral parts of the solution.
For women navigating the tech industry, my advice is to acknowledge the male-dominated environment and leverage our unique skill sets, such as empathy and multitasking, to our advantage. Despite facing numerous rejections, it’s crucial to remain resilient. Find a woman in your world and support her, then find another one and another one. Think of the things we can all achieve together.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am a Brazilian-born, Los Angeles-based tech entrepreneur with a futurist mindset. I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Alphaa.io, a women-led Web3 company with a majority of female employees. Alphaa.io employs decentralized tools to simply and easily connect physical + digital assets through a white-labeled smart contract solution. Our partnerships and projects reflect our core values of sustainability and social responsibility.
Alphaa.io has been featured in the New York Times, Vogue Business, WWD, Yahoo News, and more. I was named one of Bloomberg’s 100 Influential Latinos and have spoken at numerous panels including at TechCrunch Disrupt, L’Attitude and NFT NYC. I recently partnered with NYFW to introduce interactive technology to transform the runaway into a phygital experience.
A bit about my background: I have been a thought-leader in tech for the past 8 years and have a background in finance. In 2015, I started to think about blockchain as a tool to change asset ownership. I began to develop the initial protocol for what is now Alphaa.io in 2017 with an incredible team of developers. Through our art and real estate licensing business we learned about asset ownership and transfer. This led us to build a certification protocol fit for our own needs that we have expanded across industries.
Along with our technology, Alphaa.io has also grown into an inspiring community of creatives and tech thought leaders. I regularly hold community events and educational programming for women in tech in Los Angeles, connecting women-run VCs and startups — all from my home-headquarters in Venice Beach. These events attract hundreds of attendees, with thousands applying to join the wait-list, and challenge the tech industry’s diversity problem. I am beyond proud of what my team and I have accomplished at Alphaa.io, and I am excited for what’s to come!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Don’t be afraid to ask questions when you are starting out. Reaching out. to someone you admire with a personal message and a pointed question could save you years of trial and error. In my early years, I would seek the advice of those I admired even if I didn’t always get a reply. Now, when people reach out to me with questions, I always try to get back to them with a thoughtful answer. My three qualities are:
1 . I used to think we were selling a product but I understand we are selling community and connectivity. Listen for pain points; is your product solving them? We adapted and built in a geolocation feature after multiple requests to include local attractions in projects, and that’s standard practice at Alphaa.io — start with the analog version then automate and build the platform tool. This design thinking concept is a great way to not waste resources with things no one wants but the founders.
2. Is your company’s mission and growth path clear to and supported by your stakeholders? Use the people around you for more testing and build an advisory board that won’t only build credibility but will also share past experiences they’ve gone through in their professional careers.
3. Do your team’s goals align? It’s important to bring the team into discussions good and bad. Every crisis brings with it a huge opportunity, instead of talking about the ways in which you could fail, motivate your team to be creative and pitch crazy ideas that could be applicable to the ever-changing world. But also have clear long term goals and processes, schedule weekly team meetings and encourage departments to do the same, by keeping the conversation open and compensating creativity the uncertainty becomes a part of the team’s life, as it should be in a startup regardless of the economic trends.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
Firstly take a breath, sometimes just stopping and taking a breath can change your entire perspective of the situation, ask yourself: “how many times has it been worse than this before? How many times have you solved it?” You’ll be surprised once the data shows you got this.
Meditating every day and just giving yourself the time and space to clear your mind. Feel into things, let the energy come to you, don’t force things to fall into place and you’ll find that your level of stress and overwhelm decrease immensely.
Finally, check in with yourself. Are you still in it for the right reasons? What can you do to not feel burnt out? At the end of the day it’s about: “Surrendering whole heartily and executing on your vision” my personal dharma. To achieve that you need to find a way to calm your mind and surrender to the chaos. Hot yoga, meditation, sauna, cold showers and cycling are all things that work for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: alphaa.io
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/manuseve/ & https://www.instagram.com/alphaaio/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuseve/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/alphaa-io
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/motherofalphaa?lang=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6NO1zr_NObuhfnYUeOfpGg
Image Credits
Image credits to Alphaa.io
