A Stadium of 85,000 People, and One Question I Did Not Expect

Last Saturday, a friend invited me, last minute, to a David Guetta concert at the Stade de France. The biggest stadium in the country. 85,000 people. I almost did not go. I am so glad I did.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, he stopped the music. He had just played his very first hit, a record from more than 20 years ago, the one that started his whole career. And he asked the crowd one simple question.

→ Raise your hand if you were already here for me when this song came out.

Thousands of hands went up. Mine was one of them. He told us he recorded that song in a tiny studio right here in Paris, back when nobody knew his name. Then he said thank you. To the people who showed up before any of it was obvious.

I stood there, in the middle of that crowd, and I thought about the last 2.5 years I’ve invested into building my online accelerator for women in tech. About every person who said yes to me before I had a single result to show. This is what that night reminded me about firsts, and why I will never stop overdelivering for the people who come first.

The People Who Said Yes Before I Had Any Proof

When I launched the very first beta version of my accelerator, I had nothing to show. No case studies. No testimonials. No track record.

My first client was the wife of one of my INSEAD classmates. She had a business idea she had been quietly developing for a while. She saw a post about my early offer, sent me a message, and enrolled. Another tech executive joined in that same first round, so I had 2 people.

They were not buying results. There were none yet. They were buying belief.

Then I went on my second maternity leave, and I rebuilt the whole program from scratch based on what I learned in that beta run. This time, I did the thing I had resisted for a long time. I ran my own Weatherproof Business™ method on my own business, start to finish, exactly the way I teach it to clients. It worked.

When I relaunched in June 2025, five women trusted me with their ideas. Two of them, Ruxandra and Mona, did remarkable work. Ruxandra ran 7 customer interviews in 8 weeks and landed her first client in testing. Mona built a waitlist of 16 beta users before she had built a single feature of her Strong Again app.

They gave me my proof. They gave me my motivation. They are still with me today, and I still overdeliver for them. You give everything you have to the people who come first, because their yes was the real risk.

Every First Is Awkward, and That Is Exactly the Point

The firsts are never smooth when they happen.

My first podcast interview was so bad that I never listened to the recording. The second one, I forced myself to listen, and I cringed the whole way through. I rushed. I filled every silence with filler words. It took me about 10 interviews before I started to actually enjoy it, before I stopped scripting my answers and learned to trust the conversation.

→ There is no skipping to your tenth. You start at one.

This is the part most people get wrong. They wait to feel ready before they begin. But readiness does not arrive before the reps. It comes from them. Your first version will not be your best version, and that is not a reason to wait. It is the reason to start.

I am genuinely afraid of public speaking. And yet there was a first masterclass, a first keynote, a first event in a physical room. I delivered my first in-person masterclass for the Professional Women’s Network in Paris, after having taught it online to more than a thousand people. I spoke at the Yale Club. My first keynote is coming up at API Days. Every one of those was a first. Every one was uncomfortable. Every one made me better.

From a Room of 15 to a Masterclass That Sold Out

Here is the part I will never forget.

My very first masterclass, a little over two years ago, was about 15 people in a small room. At least 10 of them were my family and my closest friends. My mother. My brother. My husband. My best friends. I asked them to play along in the chat, and they did, full out, so the room would feel alive.

I have now taught that masterclass to more than 1,500 people. It became so oversubscribed that it blew past my 500-person Zoom limit.

But none of that happens without the room of 15. You do not get the room of 500 if you are not willing to first stand in front of the room of 15 who love you.

This is what I want every woman reading this to hear. The people who believe in you early, when it is not obvious, when you have nothing to show them yet, are not a small thing. They are the foundation. Honor them. Overdeliver for them. And when it is your turn to be someone else’s first, take the chance, even if your hands are shaking.

We Never Forget Our Firsts

We never forget our firsts. Our first client. Our first yes. The first person who handed us an opportunity we had not yet earned.

For years, I kept one of my most valuable tools quietly inside my program. It is a method to help you find a business idea, using my own coaching approach and design thinking, that you can work through on your own in about a week to a month. So many women tell me the same thing. They want to build something of their own, but they do not have an idea yet, and they do not know where to start.

So I am finally releasing it as the Weatherproof Business™ Ideation Lab.

The first 30 people get free lifetime access, before the price begins to rise. The one condition is that you actually start within 30 days. I am doing it this way on purpose, because the earliest believers should always get the most. And because I never forget my firsts.

If you have been carrying the quiet wish to build something of your own, this is your invitation to be one of the firsts: JOIN HERE