We’re Building the Spaces for Women to Build.

It’s International Women’s Day. I’m in Columbus, Ohio, running Startup Weekend Women. 54 hours. Real teams. Real products. One team built an MVP with real data and reached out to 2,000 agents. A student said she’d never been in a space where she felt she could build freely. This is what happens when you open the door.

It’s International Women’s Day. I’m in Columbus, Ohio, surrounded by women who showed up this weekend to build something from nothing. Startup Weekend Women. 54 hours. Real ideas. Real teams. Real launches.

I’m not here to give a keynote. I’m here because I know what it feels like to have no space that’s yours. To sit in a room full of founders and be the only woman. To wonder if the thing you’re building even belongs in the conversation.

It does. But someone has to open the door.

And when you do — when you actually open the space and say “come build” — incredible things happen.

What happened when we opened the space?

Let me tell you what 54 hours looks like when women are given the room to build.

One team built Land — a platform helping real estate developers in Columbus see zoning issues, reduce the manual paperwork and approval processes, and repurpose declining commercial spaces for new uses. Since COVID, commercial rents have been dropping across the city. Land highlights different use cases for underutilized properties so developers can move faster and smarter.

In 54 hours, the Land team built a working MVP with real Columbus zoning data. They reached out to over 2,000 real estate agents. They have a waitlist. They’re ready to pitch.

“I can’t believe how fast we’re able to get a product up and people on the waitlist. — Margo, founder of Present Quandary”

This wasn’t a hackathon exercise. This was a real company being born in a room full of women who decided to show up.

What happens when women feel safe enough to build?

There was a moment this weekend I won’t forget.

A student looked around the room and said she had never been in a space where she felt she could build freely and accomplish so much. Never. Not in school. Not at work. Not at any conference or meetup. This was the first time.

Think about that. A woman with ideas, with drive, with capability — and she had never once felt like the space she was in was built for her to create something.

Another woman — a millennial who came in not sure what to expect — said she didn’t realize how fast you could move. Three days. That’s all it took for her to go from “I have this idea” to “I’m getting traction.” She’s not stopping.

“When women are given the space, they don’t just show up. They build things that matter. They move faster than anyone expected — including themselves.”

Why does the AI gap between men and women matter for founders?

Harvard Business School published the data this year. Women are adopting AI at a 25% lower rate than men. Not because women can’t use it. Not because they don’t want to. Because the spaces where AI gets learned, tested, and normalized weren’t built for them.

Here’s the part that should terrify anyone who cares about the future of startups: AI users earn up to 10% more than non-users in the same roles. Women are 1.6x more likely to face layoffs in roles vulnerable to automation.

This isn’t a diversity talking point. This is infrastructure. If half the population falls behind on the most important technology shift of our lifetime, entrepreneurship doesn’t just slow down — it breaks.

“The AI gender gap, defined: Women adopt generative AI tools at a 25% lower rate than men — not due to ability, but due to lack of access, safe environments to experiment, and representation in the spaces where AI skills are built. Closing this gap is critical to the future of entrepreneurship.”

Why aren’t women adopting AI at the same rate?

The research is clear. It’s not ability — it’s environment.

Senior women in technical roles actually lead men in AI adoption by 12–16%. When women have the access and the environment, they don’t just close the gap — they outperform.

But most women don’t have that environment. They’re in workplaces where experimenting with AI feels risky. Where using a shortcut could be judged differently than when their male counterpart does the same thing. Where nobody’s saying “try this tool, break things, it’s fine.”

33% of US women have used generative AI compared to 44% of men. That’s not a preference gap. That’s an access gap. A permission gap. A “nobody showed me and I didn’t feel like I could ask” gap.

I watched that gap disappear in Columbus this weekend. Women who had never built a product were shipping by Sunday. That’s not a fluke. That’s what happens when the environment is right.

In my community — Women Build Cool Sh*t — 27 women across 27 states and 4 countries are building tech products right now. Nurses, engineers, astrophysicists, speech pathologists. When I put Claude Code in front of them and say “build something,” they build. The gap disappears when the space exists.

What happens if we don’t close this gap?

Women-led startups get 2% of total VC funding. Two percent. But they generate 2.5x more revenue per dollar raised than all-male teams.

There are 24.8 million “missing women entrepreneurs” in OECD countries. That’s not a statistic — that’s $5 trillion in unrealized economic value.

Now add the AI gap on top of that. If women founders can’t access, learn, and build with AI at the same rate, the funding gap widens. The revenue gap widens. The representation gap widens.

AI isn’t optional anymore. It’s the foundation. And if the foundation only gets built by half the population, the whole structure is weaker.

What do women actually need to start building?

Not inspiration. Not another panel. Not a hashtag.

They need what the women in Columbus had this weekend:

• A room where it’s safe to be a beginner. That student who’d never felt she could build freely? She built this weekend. Startup Weekend Women gave her that room.
• Tools they can actually use. I build with Claude Code because it meets me where I am — non-technical, moving fast, building real product. Women need to see other women using these tools.
• Numbers, not vibes. My community sees my ARR. They see my ad spend ($6K on Meta), my conversion rates (29%), my real results (2.9x ROAS). The Land team didn’t pitch a dream — they pitched real data, a real waitlist, and 2,000 agent contacts.
• Other women doing it. Not in a case study. In the same room. Building at the same time. Feeding off each other’s energy.

The good news: when women get access, adoption triples. Women’s generative AI usage tripled in the past year compared to 2.2x for men. The gap is closable. But it doesn’t close itself.

When you open the space, they build

I keep coming back to what I saw this weekend.

Women who walked in on Friday not knowing anyone walked out on Sunday with products, teams, and traction. A student felt free for the first time. A millennial realized she could move faster than she ever imagined. A team built a real company solving a real problem for the city of Columbus.

This is what happens when women are given the space. Not asked to prove they belong. Not told to wait their turn. Just given the room and told: build.

I’m running Startup Weekend Women in Columbus because talking about the gap doesn’t close it. Building spaces does.

I’m running Theanna — a platform for idea-stage founders to build, launch, and grow — because accelerators cost equity and access that most women don’t have.

I’m running Women Build Cool Sh*t because 27 women building real products in real time does more for AI adoption than any report from Harvard.

And I’m writing this on International Women’s Day because the conversation needs to shift. The question isn’t “why aren’t women using AI?” The question is “who’s opening the spaces where they can?”

I watched a room full of women answer that question this weekend. They didn’t wait for permission. They built.

A shoutout to Techstars

I have to give credit where it’s due. I was in the Techstars cohort last fall, and the reason I’m running Startup Weekend Women in Columbus right now is because Techstars doesn’t just talk about supporting women in tech. They build the infrastructure for it.

This weekend, Startup Weekend Women is happening in over 40 cities across 25+ countries. That’s not a marketing campaign. That’s a global commitment to giving women the space to build. First-place teams from each city get invited to a virtual Global Pitch Competition in May to pitch to Techstars judges.

If you missed this weekend, there are still Startup Weekend Women events coming up — Bangkok (March 13–15) and Dublin (March 20–22) are next. And if you’re building something bigger, Techstars accelerator applications are open — including the Space Accelerator with a June 10 deadline. Every program comes with a $220K investment, mentorship, and a lifetime network.

The women in this room in Columbus exist because Techstars said: we’re going to open the space. That matters. More organizations need to do the same.

Theanna’s mission is to help more women build businesses. Not someday. Now. In honor of International Women’s Day, we’re offering 3 months at 50% off with code IWD2026 — today only.