Start With Yourself.
Six weeks. A small room of women founders where nobody softens — reading Emma Grede's book the way it was meant to be read: honestly, through the lens of our own reactions, and into how we lead.
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Founding is lonely in a way that doesn't make it into the press.
Not the pitch-week loneliness. The quieter kind.
The sacrifices you're making you haven't said out loud. The ambition you soften in mixed company. The number you've never told a soul you want to hit. And — often worst — the people closest to you quietly coding your life as too much.
Emma Grede's Start With Yourself is causing a stir because she refuses to soften any of it. She writes plainly about money, motherhood, failure, time — including the weekend hours she blocks with her kids, which became one of the book's lightning rods. The public fight wasn't really about her parenting. It was about the older, unsettled question of who gets to decide what an ambitious woman's life should look like.
This club is for any founder who's been on the receiving end of that judgment. Whether it comes from a mother, a girlfriend, a partner, or the voice inside your own head that learned to repeat it.
“Ambition really requires discomfort.”Emma Grede
Who this club is for.
A quick, honest filter before you apply. Better to know now.
We are not here to debate whether Emma is right.
If you're still litigating whether ambition is allowed, whether wanting money is crass, whether it's okay to pour yourself into a company — this isn't the room. Emma has already made those arguments. We've already bought them. The work of this club begins where that debate ends.
And we are not here to wait for the judgement to stop.
It won't. The people closest to you are not going to suddenly understand. The voice in your head is not going to suddenly be kind. The Old Thoughts are not going to fully dissolve. We are not organizing our lives around the arrival of conditions that are never going to arrive. We are here to normalize our own entrepreneurship experience, metabolize what the book surfaces, and keep building anyway — this week, next week, every week. Integration, not processing. Practice, not venting. Forward motion while the judgement is still in the room.
This is your room if —
- +You are actively building a company. Not planning to, not thinking about it — building it.
- +You already believe ambition is allowed. You came here to live it better.
- +You want to integrate what you learn into your company this week. Not next quarter. This week.
- +You believe your reactions are information about you, and you want to get better at reading them.
- +You want a network of women who will come for each other — warm intros, honest feedback, real stake in each other's success.
This isn't the room if —
- —You want to debate whether Emma is right. That's a different book club.
- —You're looking for a space to process without integrating. Processing is valuable. It belongs in therapy, not here.
- —You want validation for staying stuck. Every founder gets stuck; no founder in this club stays there.
- —You want a low-commitment social hour. This is 75 focused minutes a week plus between-session work.
- —You're not actively building anything right now. Come back when you are — the book club will still be here.
The difference is not talent, not stage, not revenue.
The difference is orientation.
Not a typical book club.
Each 75-minute session weaves four threads together. Emma's book is the trigger. The reactions it surfaces are the material we actually work on.
The text
What Emma is actually arguing. We read her seriously, take her on her own terms, and trace the logic of her “Old Thoughts” framework.
The mirror
Shadow work. The parts of the book that irritate, trigger, or unsettle you are the ones pointing back at you. We read the reactions as information.
The reframe
CBT practice. Catching the specific thoughts running you, examining them, rewriting them into something true AND useful. Each session practices the move.
The lead
Leadership from a strong inner foundation. You cannot lead a company further than you've led yourself. Every inside insight gets translated into how you show up.
What you built despite.
Every session opens with the same five-minute ritual. Each founder finishes one sentence:
This week, despite ______, I built ______.
The judgement has not stopped coming. The people closest to you have not suddenly understood. The Old Thoughts have not fully dissolved. Good — we are not waiting for any of that. We are building anyway, and witnessing each other doing it.
Witnessed by the room. No applause. No fixing. Just witnessed.
Six weeks. One conversation.
Same day, same time, every week. Virtual. Room is sealed. We open each session on the emotion wheel.
Meeting Ourselves
Old Thoughts, the wheel, and the work we came here to do.
The People Who Think It's Too Much
On disapproval from the people closest to us.
Ambition, Scarcity & the Women We Compare Ourselves To
On wanting loudly, and the flash of something ugly.
Perfectionism, Money & the Fear of Being Seen Wrong
On putting your real self in the room.
Managing the Weather
Emotions as data. Failure as information. Not collapsing when things go wrong.
The Foundation and the Company It Holds Up
Starting with yourself. Then leading from there.
The room only works if it's sealed.
What's said here stays here.
Not in your next podcast. Not on LinkedIn. Not even as “someone in my book club said the most incredible thing.” The room only works if we can trust it.
No softening.
If you feel yourself about to caveat — “this might sound crazy but,” “I don't want to sound ungrateful,” “I know I'm lucky” — try the sentence again without it.
We come for each other.
Between sessions, we're not just readers. We're a network. Warm intros, honest feedback, the occasional 11 PM text. This is a relationship, not a subscription.
Everything in the room.
The book club is a Theanna member experience. Your $99/mo membership includes your seat, the book, and full access to the Theanna ecosystem for the duration of the cohort. Not yet a member? We're welcoming new members in — join Theanna and apply for your seat.
A free copy of the book
Sponsored by Theanna. Mailed to you before Week 1. Yours to keep, mark up, and dog-ear.
Six 75-minute live sessions
Same day, same time, every week. Virtual. Sealed room. We open each session on the emotion wheel.
Theanna Agent access
Theanna’s AI operator for the work between sessions — milestone tracking, growth experiments, customer discovery, and the daily build.
The Theanna community
300+ women founders building tech companies. Stage-based peer groups, warm intros, honest feedback, real stake in each other’s success.
Live workshops + expert sessions
Theanna’s quarterly programming on fundraising, growth, hiring, product, and AI tools — the operational scaffolding around the inner work.
The peer network for life
The cohort ends. The women you meet here don’t. Most book clubs end at the last page. This one becomes a network.
Two women, co-leading the room.
We are not facilitators reading from a script. We are founders in the same fight — building, raising humans, getting judged for it, and still going.
Sheila Pande
Founder, Tandem · Co-host
Solo founder. Single elder millennial navigating entrepreneurship in a life that doesn't look the way she thought it would. Brings the lens of someone building without the partner-and-kids picture the rest of the conversation assumes.
“Emma's book opened my eyes to how I protect my time and my ambitions — and gave me a new lens on how my physician mom did this while I was growing up. I'm co-leading this room because the conversation Emma started is the one I've been needing my whole adult life.”
LinkedIn →
Nomiki Petrolla
Founder, Theanna · Co-host
Founder and CEO of Theanna — the equity-free startup operating system for women founders. Non-technical solo founder, mother of 4, building publicly. Writes every day about ambition, motherhood, and the math of building a company without softening any of it.
“Emma speaks a truth that so many are afraid to hear. I'm excited to learn more about how to navigate this journey through her lens.”
A Theanna member experience. Vote on the next book club pick →
This cohort is full.
Spring 2026 applications are closed. First session May 15.
Our next book club launches in July. Want in?
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