Most founders build their financial position in the wrong sequence: They build a company, close investment rounds, and hope that the exit secures their wealth. Ana Herrero-Wallace argues that this sequence leaves founders exposed in exactly the moments that matter most: when a bad investor is at the table, when a customer relationship has turned toxic, or when the company needs a decision that requires you to walk away from something.
Ana is a financial independence mentor and educator, investor, and author of the book ‘Still Thinking? Act.’ Her argument is straightforward. Financial independence is not a reward at the end of the journey. It is the thing that gives you the agency to make better decisions throughout it.
In this episode, we talk about what that actually looks like in practice:
- Building a financial floor while you are building a company,
- Understanding the mindset scripts that keep founders underpricing and over-justifying, and
- Knowing the number you actually want before you walk into a funding conversation.
Hit play below to listen to the full conversation. Or keep reading for practical takeaways, highlights, and trends from the episode.
Practical Takeaways for Founders
Many founders carry two patterns into fundraising without realizing it. They tie their sense of worth to what investors will accept, and they wait until everything feels ready before they act. Ana addresses both directly.
Know your number and ask for the amount you really need
Most founders anchor their ask to what feels justifiable given the traction, the market size, the comparable rounds. Ana’s advice is to start from a different question: what do you actually need to build this company on your own terms? That number is often larger than the justified number, and the gap between them is where founders lose negotiating ground before the conversation even starts.
Build a financial floor in parallel with your company
A financial floor is not an exit outcome. It is a personal asset base you build while the company is running, liquid enough to give you options. Ana is specific about liquidity: for founders, having accessible capital is often more valuable than owning a home. It is what allows you to walk away from a bad idea or to hold out for the right investor.
Her advice to procrastinating founders: Start before you feel ready
Ana’s book is called Still Thinking? Act for a reason. She shares that waiting for the perfect moment has a compounding cost most founders underestimate. Her practical suggestion is to start small: one account, one decision, one deadline you hold yourself to publicly. For founders, this applies as much to pricing and fundraising timing as it does to personal investing.
In the end, capital is not validation. It is a tool that determines which investors you can choose, which customers you can walk away from, and how much pressure you can absorb without making a decision you will regret.
Know a founder who needs to stop thinking and start acting? Share the episode with them using the buttons below.
Or scroll down for magic moments.
Highlights and timestamps
| Time | Highlight |
|---|---|
| 00:00 | Introduction |
| 02:28 | The Impact of Financial Trauma |
| 04:56 | From Scarcity to Abundance Mindset |
| 08:01 | The Shift to Entrepreneurial Thinking |
| 10:58 | Playing to Win vs. Playing Not to Lose |
| 13:53 | Understanding Money Mindset in Women |
| 16:54 | The Systemic Issues Facing Women in Finance |
| 19:37 | Negotiating Financial Independence |
| 22:40 | Balancing Care Duties and Financial Awareness |
| 27:47 | The Importance of Conversations and Data in Gender Equality |
| 33:58 | Financial Independence: A Key to Empowerment |
| 48:07 | Overcoming Perfectionism and Procrastination |
| 52:45 | Navigating Bias in Parenting and Decision Making |
| 53:17 | From Overthinking to Action |
| 54:25 | Learning from Financial Mistakes |
| 57:23 | The Importance of Setting Deadlines |
| 58:08 | Reclaiming Agency through Investing |
| 59:36 | Wealth as Freedom vs. Accumulation |
| 1:02:32 | Shifting Focus from Accumulation to Freedom |
| 1:05:57 | The Impact of Women Investors on Startups |
| 1:07:16 | Men’s Role in Supporting Women Investors |
| 1:08:40 | Empowering Founders through AI Coaching |
3 Magic Moments In The Episode
During our conversation Ana shares that she once lost 96% of a £10,000 investment in mining stocks after following a tip driven by fear and greed. She tells the story without drama. The loss taught her more about the psychology of money than any of her gains had. That psychology runs through everything in this episode.
The moment that shaped everything
Ana was 12 when her father lost his job. He had an MBA, a PA, a chauffeur, and a career that looked permanent. When the phone stopped ringing, it never really started again. What Ana describes is not just financial loss but the disappearance of her father’s confidence and agency, almost overnight. That moment became the foundation of her conviction that financial independence is protection, not ambition.
The question that changed her trajectory
For years, Ana made decisions designed to avoid losing rather than to win. Her friend Joanna Leemann saw it clearly and asked her directly: wouldn’t it be better to just play to win? Ana describes what followed as raising her standards: deliberately seeking out people she found more successful, letting go of the comfort of a corporate career she was good at, and building from a different position. The shift was not about confidence. It was about choosing a different game.
The story of Michiel: The power of asking.
As part of writing her book, Ana interviewed fifty women. She shares the story of a woman she calls Michiel. This woman left her career in London to follow her partner to Amsterdam. She learned the language, built a life there, and supported his career for eight years. When they broke up, she was not legally entitled to anything. But she looked at the numbers, calculated what her unpaid contribution had been worth, and successfully negotiated compensation.
These three moments connect. The father’s story explains why Ana built her framework around agency. Joanna’s question explains why she teaches founders to raise their standards before they raise capital. Michiel’s story explains why she argues that unpaid work has a value, and that women can ask for it to be recognized.
Which of these moments resonated most with you? Or was there another magic moment for you in the episode? Drop it below or slide into the DMs on LinkedIn or Instagram!
The Quote from the Episode
"Ask for the number you want, not the number you think you can justify or that you can get." - Ana Herrero-Wallace
This is Ana's answer to a single question: what lesson would she embed in the AI funding coach I’m building for female founders? Most founders, she argues, have never been asked that question directly. Everything they build from the answer is either honest or it isn't.
The quote connects to something larger in the episode. Knowing your number is not just a negotiation tactic. It is the point where financial independence and fundraising strategy meet. A founder who knows what she actually needs is negotiating from a much better position than one who is trying to guess what an investor will accept.
If you know a woman who could benefit from a shift in money mindset, tell them about the episode.
3 Trends I’m Seeing Across Conversations
Part of our conversation is about systemic biases and the need for role models. These are trends that appear throughout all episodes of the podcast. This conversation adds a new layer to each of them.
The system was not built for women, and the data shows it
Ana is specific about this in a way that goes beyond the usual framing. The Dutch pension gap is 30 to 35% lower for women than for men. That is the direct consequence of a system that rewards part-time work, which women disproportionately take on, without accounting for the long-term financial cost. This pattern appears across many episodes, most recently in episode 155, where Beata Wandachowicz-Krason showed it in FemTech funding.
Role models need to be relatable to be useful
Ana makes a point that is easy to miss: the financial independence space is largely shaped by US-centric male voices. The frameworks exist, but they were not built for a woman in Amsterdam navigating a Dutch pension system, or a system that relies on unpaid labor. This is a thread that runs through the show. Women need to see someone who looks like them, operates in their context, and has built something from a starting point they recognize. A role model who does not share your constraints is not always a useful guide.
How girls are raised shapes how founders negotiate
Ana describes a pattern she sees consistently: girls are socialized to be perfect and quiet, while boys are encouraged to take bold risks early. By the time a woman sits across the table from an investor, that socialization has often already shaped her ask. She is more likely to request what she can justify than what she actually needs. This is not a recent observation. In episode 114, Catrine Rehnberg traced similar patterns in how early risk aversion is built into girls through upbringing and education.
A system that was not built for women produces a shortage of relatable role models, and girls raised to be cautious enter that system already negotiating against themselves.
🗣️ What’s a trend you noticed while listening? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
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Coming Up On Women Disrupting Tech
Most people know what they need to do to lose weight. They just don't do it. Zoe Pineau spent years asking why, and the answer she kept coming back to was not willpower or motivation. It was friction.
In episode 158 of Women Disrupting Tech, Zoe shares how losing 150 pounds led her to co-found Fitly AI, a chat-based fitness agent that removes the admin burden of macro tracking by letting users log their entire day in a single sentence. We also talk about what six years of building a fitness app that went nowhere taught her about differentiation, and how AI compressed the next build into one month.
In the clip above, Zoe explains why friction is the real reason most people cannot lose weight and keep it off. Hit play, and if the conversation resonates, subscribe below to find our full conversation in your inbox on 25 June at 8:00 CET.
What I Want to Leave You With
Most of the advice available to founders assumes the exit is where financial independence begins. Build the company, chase valuations when closing rounds, and hope the outcome delivers. Ana’s point is that this sequence takes agency away from founders.
She argues that financial independence is not an outcome or a reward for building a successful company. It is something that is best created while building, so you can build a company on your own terms. That distinction changes how you think about pricing, about fundraising, and about which investors you are willing to walk away from.
If this makes you want to reflect on your own finances, listen to the full conversation with Ana Herrero-Wallace on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. And if you are a female founder navigating a funding conversation, take a look at FundingCoach.ai.
About Ana Herrero-Wallace
Ana Herrero-Wallace is a financial independence mentor and educator, investor, and former US-licensed equities trader with over twenty years of experience in corporate technology and finance, including management roles at companies such as SAP and Workday.
She is the founder of AdaInvest, a platform offering practical financial education and investing guidance for professional women. Her work centers on helping women move from a scarcity mindset to one of financial agency, through coaching, community, and a monthly free webinar series built around her Wealth Framework.
Ana is also the author of the book ‘Still Thinking? Act., A smarter money guide for women’ that challenges common financial myths and offers a practical path from overthinking to action. She is based in the Netherlands.
You can connect with Ana and subscribe to her newsletter on LinkedIn or visit AdaInvest at adainvest.co.
Listen to Episode 157 on Spotify or Apple
How Female Founders Build Financial Independence Before the Exit With Ana Herrero-Wallace | Ep. 157 - Women Disrupting Tech
Events that Women Disrupting Tech Must-Attend
Some great events take place this spring. Below are some that you definitely want to check out. For a full overview of all events, including links to buy tickets, please check the events page.
Featured Event: Understanding Women's Health - 24 June 2026
Learn how hormone cycles or perimenopause impact your life, and discover more about conditions like PCOS or Endometriosis at the quarterly Understanding Women's Health Events hosted by Kasia Pokrop.
Women's health is a topic near and dear to my heart. Which is why I'm happy to support and attend the events that 3mbrace Health organizes at Equals every quarter.
Men are expressly invited to join. In fact, send me an email if you want to be a women's health pioneer. More info and tickets can be found here.
Diverse Leaders in Tech Events
If you like being in the know about what is happening in the DEI space, Diverse Leaders in Tech is the place to be.
Every last Thursday of the month, they have monthly in-person meetups for tech people, HR leaders and supporters of diversity to exchange insights, tackle challenges, and take action. It's a vibrant, safe space where diversity is celebrated.
You can find their events on the website. Joining your first event is free.
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