We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Manuela Seve. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Manuela below.
Manuela, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How has Covid changed your business model?
At the beginning of the pandemic one of our investors gave us a call and told us to prepare for the world ending, so we created a doomsday plan, which took into consideration a scenario of 0 revenue for 6 months (the opposite ended up happening we grew 220% in 2020) we then factored in how much money we had in the bank and called in the whole team to announce that we would be making cuts to all salaries including the executive team, we asked for feedback and everyone agreed this was the right course of action.
During uncertain times, it’s important to be transparent with your team and let them know sacrifice will be made by all including the executive team. The phrase lead by example really says it all. We’ve always crowdsourced our problems and never blame anyone for solutions that don’t work. We know a lot of our plans will fail and that moving forward quickly is essential, but try to debrief and understand what actually happened.
I find extra motivation through the tough times, there’s a lot to keep you occupied and solutions to be found for several problems. I spent most of March & April in 2020 alone in a tiny NYC apartment working pretty much all the time, and not only did I raise our sales but we raised 100k from 200 individuals through equity crowdfunding. It’s important to celebrate all the victories even if they are small, this really does sustain your drive when things go wrong.
Manuela, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a 35-year old 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.
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 was named one of Bloomberg’s 100 Influential Latinos of 2022, and have spoken at numerous panels including at TechCrunch Disrupt, L’Attitude and NFT NYC. I recently partnered with NFT NYC to develop an interactive game to highlight Web3’s lack of diversity at this month’s conference.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
When we started the company we set off to raise an initial round of funding and we quickly found an angel that immediately understood what we wished to accomplish. We were raising $500,000 at the time, but he thought that wasn’t enough capital so he agreed to fund us for $1 million. Needless to say, we were ecstatic. Part of our deal was that we’d have to relocate to the most expensive city in the world, New York City. We came in the summer to meet him and finalize the deal. However, he delayed his trip several times, forcing us to move between hotels, friends’ apartments, etc.
We moved six times until we received the first wire transfer, which to our surprise was only $20,000. We had planned and budgeted for $1 million, but we only received a total of $200,000 over the course of a year.
Many times we thought of giving up, just packing up and going back to Brazil, but out of pure grit and some luck, we managed to build a business that had to generate revenue from day one. I wish I could point my finger at one source of motivation, but I’d say it’s the little things; small victories, winning our first B2B white label account, selling a couple of works to a designer. However, it would have been impossible to continue without a team. You really become a family, especially as we were going through all this at the same time. There was always a moment when someone was freaking out and the other one was cool as a cucumber.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Any woman who has set out to raise money knows the questions we face are 10 times harder than the ones posed to male founders. I’ve walked out of meetings with investors who showed no regard for understanding my business, but who were so aggressively confrontational it seemed as though the sole objective was to push my buttons and make me cry.
There have been other occasions where I have received comments on my Linkedin account concerning articles promoting female empowerment, with the commenter claiming that women’s brains were less developed than men’s brains. I could keep going on about this for hours, and it’s one of the reasons why I’m writing a book on the subject and collecting a series of interviews to build one central character that as the song goes, “is every woman.” And that’s part of the solution: Information, exposing the bigots and not standing for companies that blatantly don’t invest in women.
I believe in women supporting women. We need more unity within the female community and I feel like a great way to start is within your sphere of influence. Offering a “give” and an “ask” is super easy and it’s something I’ve been practicing. Find a woman in your world and do the same, then find another one and another one. Think of the things we can all achieve together.
Contact Info:
- Website: alphaa.io
- Instagram: @manuseve and @alphaaio
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuseve/ and https://www.linkedin.com/company/alphaa-io
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/motherofalphaa
- Youtube: @alphaaio5348
Image Credits