Description

Nomiki Petrolla gets told to think smaller. A venture contact - someone who didn’t know her well enough - looked at her vision for Theanna and decided the problem she’s solving is probably just a “lifestyle business.” Nomiki, who has been obsessively building for 15 years, collecting data points and ignoring the noise, heard the feedback and thought: no thanks. Then she moved on.

What you'll learn:

• Why “think smaller” advice usually says more about the advisor’s belief in you than the actual size of your idea
• How to turn founder feedback into data - and why documenting everything changes the way you filter signal from noise
• The four things your inner circle actually needs to have (hint: one of them is macro and micro-economic fluency)
• How Nomiki found investors, founders, and $138K in ARR through organic TikTok - by building in public before it felt safe
• Why the self-work isn’t a side quest - it’s the whole game for founders who want to think and build big

About Nomiki Petrolla

Nomiki Petrolla is the Founder and CEO of Theanna, an AI platform that combines community and adjacent systems to help women builders create companies. She started Theanna because she identified systemic gaps in how women founders access product development knowledge. Before Theanna, she spent 15 years in the zero-to-one stage of business, surrounded entirely by founders and builders. She’s been networking that long too, which is why her founding engineer is someone she worked with in her first job in 2012. She lives all of this out loud on TikTok, which is also somehow where she found investors.

This episode is a masterclass in data-driven discernment — how to collect feedback obsessively, filter it ruthlessly, and trust yourself anyway. Especially when the feedback is coming from venture.

TIMESTAMPS

• [00:00] The Bad Advice
• [00:39] Meet Nomiki Petrolla, Founder & CEO of Theanna
• [01:01] Think Smaller? 
• [03:06] Filtering Feedback with Data
• [05:05] Document and Analyze Advice
• [06:35] Gut Checks and Trusted Circle
• [08:58] Finding the Right People
• [10:10] Networking and TikTok Flywheel
• [14:40] Mission Values and Why It Matters
• [18:27] Family Support and Relationships
• [23:07] Reframing Think Smaller
• [25:20] Closing and Call to Action

📩 Subscribe to the newsletter: lindsaytjepkema.substack.com 

🔗 Follow Lindsay on LinkedIn

🔗 Follow Nomiki on LinkedIn

🌱 Learn more about Theanna: theanna.io