Fundraising in Times of AI
Female Founder Roundtable
Hosted by Moon Creative Lab
May 21, 2026
20:30:00
In-Person Event
PaloAlto, UnitedStates
Join us for a candid, high-signal Female Founder Roundtable focused on the real (and often messy) realities of building and fundraising of a startup.
Women-led startups receive just 2–3% of venture capital funding despite consistently outperforming on capital efficiency and returns. They generate more than 2x the revenue per dollar invested yet raise significantly less capital, with smaller checks and fewer opportunities.
And at the earliest stage, when there’s no traction to rely on, access, credibility, and investor trust become the hardest barriers to break.
This is where most founders get stuck.
Join us for a real, unfiltered (and slightly unhinged-in-a-good-way) conversation on what it actually takes to raise capital in the current market when you're building with limited proof, limited access, and no room for wasted time.
We are bringing together women founders from first-time to repeat entrepreneurs who are navigating or have recently raised funding, sharing real insights on how they moved from idea to investment.
The candid conversation will explore:
- How to understand what investors actually look for at the earliest stage
- How to access the right networks and get in front of investors
- How to find the right investor fit and avoid wasting time on the wrong ones
- How to build credibility and craft a story that earns investor trust early
- How to use AI tools to identify the right investors, craft outreach, and refine your pitch
- How to fundraise without losing momentum on building your company
- How to navigate bias, uncertainty, and high-stakes decision-making
Expect practical advice, honest experiences, and actionable strategies. We will break down common fundraising mistakes.
Designed for aspiring and early-stage founders, operators, and investors, this special edition offers a transparent, behind-the-scenes look at how funding actually happens and how more women can successfully raise, build, and lead from day one.
This event is open to all genders.
Limited Capacity
Seats are limited to keep conversations meaningful.
Hosted By
Agenda
Speakers
Lesya Hendrix
Founder & CEO, Spacer Robotics
Lesya Hendrix is the CEO and Founder of Spacer Robotics, an early-stage construction robotics company building fully autonomous robots for foundation work on commercial jobsites. Before founding Spacer, she spent over a decade in hardware engineering and manufacturing scale-up at Tesla and Nuro, working across programs from Giga Texas to autonomous fleet operations. She's passionate about bringing physical AI out of the lab and onto the jobsite.
Akylai Kasymkulova
Founder, Human Delta
Akylai Kasymkulova is Co-Founder and CTO of Human Delta, a company building the knowledge infrastructure for the agentic enterprise. Originally from Kyrgyzstan, she graduated high school with the country’s highest academic distinction and went on to study computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, one of the top CS programs in the U.S. There, she conducted large-scale AI and systems research at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, working on problems at the intersection of data, infrastructure, and machine learning. She later became one of the youngest Central Asian recipients of the O-1 visa for individuals with extraordinary ability. She co-founded Human Delta with her longtime friend and collaborator, with the mission of solving a fundamental blocker to enterprise AI adoption: organizational knowledge is not structured or reliable enough for AI systems to operate on. Human Delta works with large enterprises to surface, structure, and validate institutional knowledge, turning fragmented documentation and tribal knowledge into a continuously maintained source of truth that AI systems and agents can rely on. The company is backed by investors including Afore Capital and Susa Ventures, alongside leading operators and angels, and is already working with enterprise organizations such as Disney to deploy its platform in production environments.
Jessica Liew
CEO & Founder, Intriq
Jess has spent over a decade doing what most people only theorize about - walking into the world's most complex organizations and fixing them. As a Senior Vice President at AlixPartners and FTI Consulting, she led high-stakes engagements across Fortune 500 companies and global conglomerates, architecting growth strategies, operational overhauls, and market expansions that moved billions - not basis points. Her client roster includes large cap funds such as EQT and TPG. She built and commanded teams of 50+ consultants across North America and Europe, delivering in environments where being wrong wasn't an option. Over 10+ years, she didn't just advise on transformation - she drove it, owning outcomes from the boardroom to the frontline. At Alix, she built her reputation in the unmapped. Covid was the proving ground — when industries lost the ability to model their own futures, data was the only thing that kept decisions honest. She left consulting not because she ran out of road, but because she saw a problem worth owning entirely. Intriq is the solution to the data problem in corporate finance. And she's building it with the same precision, urgency, and zero tolerance for mediocrity that made her one of the most sought-after operators in the industry.
We’ve got three good reasons for you to apply to join this event:
- Meet women in tech leaders and get inspired by their journeys and stories.
- Expand your network and establish relationships with fellow women in technology.
- Connect with leading tech companies, explore global industry trends and identify career growth opportunities.
