Jessica
Mansourati
Strategic Advisor and Program Manager at Uppsala Innovation Centre, Innovation Leadership Group
"Start before You’re Ready: A Practical Playbook for Women Building while Life Happens"
"Start before You’re Ready: A Practical Playbook for Women Building while Life Happens"
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Session: Start before You’re Ready: A Practical Playbook for Women Building while Life Happens
Many women hold back from venturing into tech and starting their own thing because life isn’t set up for a clean leap - a full-time job, responsibilities, or financial reality make the "all in" mentality unrealistic. On top of that, we often read the market in a way that shuts us down: if something doesn’t exist, we assume there’s no need; if it already exists, we assume it’s too late and the market is saturated.In this talk, Jessica Mansourati shares a practical, low-risk way to begin anyway. Inspired by the “build things that don’t scale” mindset, she’ll show how to start small on purpose: choose a narrow wedge, test your idea manually, collect real proof, and plan only for the next step. The goal isn’t to quit tomorrow but to build momentum, confidence, and audacity while you’re still balancing real life. Attendees will leave with a simple framework and concrete first experiments they can run in just a few hours a week.
Key Takeaways
- starting small
- venturing into tech
- entrepreneurship
- side-hustles
- confidence
Bio
Jessica Mansourati is a startup advisor at UIC (one of the leading Nordic incubators), where she supports early-stage founders with validation, go-to-market, partnerships, and building programs - including initiatives in defence innovation. She is a former startup founder (Antler Sweden’s first cohort and SSE Business Lab) and has worked with strategy and communications at companies such as Spotify and Nextory, as well as at Business Sweden USA, helping Nordic startups expand into the US market through partner and investor matchmaking. Jessica is passionate about making entrepreneurship and tech more accessible - especially for women building alongside real-life constraints.