914 Susan Sly:

Wings of Inspired Business Podcast EP914 with Susan Sly

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Susan Sly:

For years I’ve been likening AI to a puppy. You bring that puppy home and it’s like having a newborn because the puppy has to get up, it has to go outside to pee, or sometimes it pees on the floor. It’s not very well trained. And then you have to put the guardrails in, and you have to train it in different simulation styles. So, the puppy eventually learns, okay, if I need to go outside to pee, I scratch the door, I go outside, I pee. So, training an AI agent or any form of AI is like training your puppy. You’ve got to continually give it new stimulus. Reinforcement learning, I give the puppy a treat if it does a good thing.

Susan Sly:

And the same thing is true of any AI agent. It’s going to come down to how that agent receives reinforcement learning and the data that it was trained on. So, when I look at some of the really good AI agents, they’re not just something that someone cooked up in a lab and then sent into the real world. They’re trained on real world data in a lab environment, and then they’re put out in a small test environment before they’re out there in the world for people to engage with.

Melinda Wittstock:

Pretty soon companies large and small will increasingly be “staffed” by Agentic AI, that is, proactive and adaptive AI agents specifically trained to complete tasks without human intervention. Agentic AI is continuously learning from feedback, handling intricate situations with multiple variables, allowing it to make informed decisions in complex scenarios across all aspects of a business. Today, we open up this Pandora’s Box with serial entrepreneur Susan Sly, founder of AI-powered menopause app, thepause.ai. We talk ethics, diversity, inclusion and transparency in the use of agentic AI, what it all means for the future of business as well as humans, the future of work, women’s health, and much more.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring serial entrepreneur who is an award-winning innovator in AI. Susan Sly is the Founder and CEO of thePause.ai, an AI-driven platform dedicated to revolutionizing menopause management through personalized, gamified solutions. Last November, thePause.ai secured first place in the HITLAB x Versalie™ Innovation Challenge, standing out among hundreds of competitors for its innovative approach to women’s health. Susan also co-founded RadiusAI, a visual intelligence company specializing in the retail and healthcare sectors, earning the prestigious AI Innovator at The Edge award from VentureBeat in 2022, surpassing notable companies such as Boston Dynamics and Ford for its cutting-edge computer vision technology. Last year, Susan was voted one of the top women in the world in real-time AI.

Melinda Wittstock:

Susan will be here in a moment, and first:

[PROMO CREDIT]

Eight years ago, I started this podcast because I wanted to help women succeed as entrepreneurs. Over the years, I’ve driven more than $10 million in sales to the women I’ve featured on this show, and this year I’m taking my investment in female founders to a whole new level as a venture partner of the new firm Zero Limits Capital, where we’re dedicated to investing in highly scalable seed stage startups founded by women. We’re looking for innovators with exciting new applications of AI, Blockchain and other emerging technologies that make a social and sustainable impact to change the world. Is this you? If it is, take a moment and tell us about your opportunity at bit.ly/ZLCintake – that’s bit.dot.ly/ZLCintake – capital ZLC lowercase intake.

Melinda Wittstock:

As financial markets and Silicon Valley’s deep pocketed AI investors reel from the impact of China’s DeepSeek, an open-source AI model able to process faster, at same levels of accuracy for a fraction of the cost – we can bet on one thing: AI is fast changing business and our world, the debate now about just how democratized, transparent, and accessible it will be for everyone to improve their lives and businesses.

Melinda Wittstock:

Back in 2020, long before ChatGPT burst on the scene, McKinsey predicted that by 2030, 800 million jobs would be displaced by AI – staggering numbers since accelerated by the pandemic and skilled worker shortages. The pace of innovation is staggering, first the buzz around generative AI and now all things agentic. Think about it for a moment: What if many of the functions in your business, from market research to A/B testing copy, from coding to customer service, AI agents doing specific tasks and communicating autonomously with each other across workflows to aid and speed innovation, productivity and performance? In this brave new world, ethical dilemmas loom large: Who trains the AI? What biases lurk in the data? What happens if an agent goes “rogue”? Transparency in AI is vital to ensure it benefits everyone fairly.

Melinda Wittstock:

So today, and fresh from the stage at CES, AI innovator Susan Sly shares her insights on the transformative power of agentic AI, its massive implications for the workforce, and why every company needs an AI ethical roadmap and specialized steering committee to guide its AI decision-making and innovation.  We also talk about the vital role women entrepreneurs must play in AI to assure it serves everyone without bias, plus how Susan herself is using AI to help women with menopause management.

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Susan Sly and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Susan, Welcome to Wings.

Susan Sly:

Melinda, thank you so much for having me. And to all of your listeners, I just want to acknowledge them for tuning into such amazing content. I’ve been going through your shows, and I love what you’re doing in the world.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, thank you so much. I think as women, if we can elevate each other, we all do better individually too. So that’s the whole ethos of this. And so, by just featuring women who are doing amazing things and overcoming adversity and innovating as you are in AI and so many other fields, I mean, I think it just provides inspiration and strength to all of us. So that’s kind of the point. And I didn’t make it to CES this year. I wish I did, because you were on the stage talking about agentic AI, which is the new buzzy and yet transformational opportunity, really, in the AI space as we move into 2025. So, tell me, what’s your perspective on agentic AI?

Susan Sly:

Oh, that is a great question. Two years ago, everyone’s talking about generative AI, right? And so, with ChatGPT, and if we look at the adoption rate, it was just crazy. This year at CES, agentic AI was a big topic. And for the listeners who don’t necessarily know, there are different types of AI. So my past company that I helped to scale, we were doing computer vision AI. So that is where you have security cameras and the AI is interpreting what is happening in the scene with the, the humans or machines or whatever it is. And then generative AI came along, and it was like, okay, now we can look at this AI being able to interpret the words and produce output. So, if we think about ChatGPT, I put in a query or I say, hey, ChatGPT, make my resume better or read this slide deck and tell me how to pitch this, that it’s pulling from such significant amounts of data to be able to have those outputs.

Susan Sly:

So now we have agentic AI, which essentially I want everyone to think about like an AI agent and imagine having a little army of highly brilliant humans that can process so much data at one time that they can even dialogue between each other. And Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of Nvidia, was talking about what they’re doing with their models at Nvidia, which is just mind blowing, very humanoid looking agents. And think about it this way, that we will have in the near future, Melinda. An AI agent that does one thing and then it talks to another agent that does another thing. And then that comes back to the Human to make the actual decision. So instead of us sorting through, you know, so much data that the agents disseminate the data for us and then we make the final decision.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. So, this has massive implications not only for just the way companies are run and who we hire, like smaller teams, ostensibly doing more, but massive implications for the workforce with your…

Susan Sly:

No question.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So, like, there’s a lot of kind of, I don’t know, from paranoia to terror. Like, is my job going to be, you know, taken over by one of these agents and, and maybe. Yeah, it, it, it will be. Right.

Susan Sly:

No question. Yeah. McKinsey, back when they did their, their big AI study, they estimated this is before the pandemic, so it came out in 2019, and they said that by the year 2030, 800 million jobs globally would be displaced with AI.

Melinda Wittstock:

800 million… 800 million.

Susan Sly:

800 million. And the pandemic sped that up. Because what happened, I was deploying computer vision during the pandemic and suddenly we had these large enterprises saying, we don’t have the workers, or we can’t have the workers. And so, we’re going to shift money to our productivity budget and where can we use robotics, where can we use AI? And that was really the beginning.

Susan Sly:

So, to be able to say, okay, well, before we had AI agents before, they weren’t very good. You know, you call as an example Marriott, and you’re going to speak to an AI agent. And Marriott, if you’re listening, you really need to update that agent is not very good. Then you have, Walgreens has an AI agent. And you know, sometimes I yell at it. Melinda is like, speak to the pharmacist. I don’t want to talk to you because you’re not good. But then there are other companies that their AI agents on the front end are becoming so much better.

Susan Sly:

They invested in that, and they realized that a lot of like in say, the call centers, at least that a lot of that front end work could be done by a really good agent. They didn’t need as many humans. That’s just one example. But we’re seeing it across almost every single sector.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, I mean, you can have an agent write your code or do the QA for your code. You could have an AI agent do all the competitive research for your business. You could have an AI agent organize your schedule. There are so many ways in which this is going to roll out and a lot of it probably will be kind of wonky for a while too, right? So do you think that really the companies that are going to, excuse me, the companies that are going to do well here and by extension the workforce, are the people who really understand this and know how to use these, streamline them, make them efficient, effective, that’s basically the future for people in this equation.

Susan Sly:

Absolutely. And I don’t want to sound callous, but you and I are both businesswomen and we know that at the end of the day, for any company, it comes down to profitability. And if they have to be beholden to shareholders, the shareholders. Why is it that Meta stock goes up when they announce we’re laying off 5% of our workforce, the underperformers, or why is it that any large company, when they say Starbucks, we’re shutting down stores, underperforming stores, their stock goes up because of course, their margins go up. So, what these companies look at and say, well, what is our greatest asset? It’s our best performing humans. What is our greatest liability? It’s our worst performing humans. So, if we’re going to do these mass layoffs, where’s the opportunity for AI agents, robotics to be able to replace them? And I think even as my kids are, they range in age from 15 all the way up to 20, 27. And I think about myself as a mom and what I am telling my kids to look at pursuing for their careers versus what I was saying for my older kids when they were younger. And it’s changed quite significantly.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, what do you tell them?

Susan Sly:

Oh my gosh, I, you know, probably need a glass of wine to go through that part of it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, I’m in the same boat. I’ve got an 18-year-old and a 21-year-old and, and you know, and they’re both in that, that moment, like, okay, so, wow, this is changing so fast. So where do I fit? Yeah, well.

Susan Sly:

One of many things I love and appreciate about your show and your interview style is this, this concept of, of realness. So, we’ll just have a, you know, straight talk. So, our, our oldest daughter, Avery, she graduated with a marketing degree. A lot of what she learned is already obsolete. And so, we have generative AI that can generate images, we have generative AI that can produce slide decks, that can produce videos, even with OpenAI’s model Sora. So, you know, it’s, it’s kind of like I just spent all that money. And her first year she went to BU that cost us like 90 grand, right? So, I spend all this money on her degree it’s already obsolete.

Susan Sly:

Then our son, who is neurodivergent, he did a degree in design, and he loves art. That’s his go to, it’s his comfort for his soul. And he fortunately was learning some AI tooling. So, his degree isn’t fully obsolete. He graduated in 2024. But then I have another one studying entrepreneurship. I’m like, yes, keep on going with entrepreneurship because entrepreneurs solve problems. And then the youngest one, she loves the tech stuff.

Susan Sly:

She got a 3D printer for Christmas. She started crying. She loves that. And I’m saying, listen, even surgeons will have to understand robotics and AI. So, whatever you want to pursue, make sure you have that engineering background because how do we adapt to this new terrain? It’s, it’s, we have to be able to use these tools. Workers who can’t use the tools, with the exception of some sectors, like certain jobs in construction as an example, certain manufacturing jobs, they’re going to be okay for a while, but that’s not the long term.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it’s just, it’s changing so, so fast. So, with the agenda, what’s your perspective on where they’re at? It’s kind of an uneven field, right? In terms of what makes them work really well and, and what doesn’t. And, and I guess by extension, I mean, are you using agentic AI in, in your, your own company?

Susan Sly:

The way it operates, I could talk about AI for days. You asked a brilliant question and what makes an AI agent better than another AI agent? And it ultimately comes down to the data. So, I’m going to give this example. For years I’ve been likening AI to a puppy. So, if any of the listeners have ever gotten a new puppy and you bring that puppy home and it’s like having a newborn because the puppy has to get up, it has to go outside to pee, or sometimes it pees on the floor. It’s not very well trained. And then you have to put the guardrails in, and you have to train it in different simulation styles. So, the puppy eventually learns, okay, if I need to go outside to pee, I scratch the door, I go outside, I pee.

Susan Sly:

But then you take the puppy to the dog park and the puppy’s like, this is in my backyard. There are all these dogs around. What do I do? I don’t even know. And then you bring the dog home, and it pees on the floor. Right. So, training an AI agent or any form of AI is like training your puppy. You’ve got to continually give it new stimulus. Reinforcement learning, I give the puppy a treat if it does a good thing.

Susan Sly:

In AI, we, reinforcement learning is giving the AI feedback. Thumbs up. That was great. Thumbs down is not the right answer. And the same thing is true of any AI agent. It’s going to come down to how that agent receives reinforcement learning and the data that it was trained on. So, when I look at some of the really good AI agents, they’re not just something that someone cooked up in a lab and then sent into the real world. They’re trained on real world data in a lab environment, and then they’re put out in a small test environment before they’re out there in the world for people to engage with.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Well, so on that data piece, it’s kind of like garbage in, garbage out, right? And this gets really interesting on the ethics in terms of who has trained the data, what are the biases in the data? For instance, how transparent is it? I mean, is. Are we training something to, I don’t know, I don’t know, be misogynist or be racist or whatever, or are we training it to be inclusive, for instance? There’s a good big debate around that, like, how, how is that data being trained? And what is it? What is the data set? So, and, and I suppose when we get into the transparency, how do we know?

Susan Sly:

Oh, my gosh, you know, do we have three hours?

Melinda Wittstock:

The big questions of our time…

Susan Sly:

And, and with your background, and you’ve been having these conversations for years, we’ll talk about this initial data piece because we have seen this go horribly wrong. And I’m going to use the example of Twitter. So many of us, myself included, before Elon bought the company, suspected that there were biases built into the algorithms. And because one would go on Twitter and suddenly they’re served up the, you know, whether it’s a political affiliation or a celebrity or whatever that. Wait a minute, I don’t align with this, right? So, let’s say years ago, I go on Twitter, and I’m being served up all this Kim Kardashian content. But I don’t watch Keeping up with the Kardashians. So, the algorithm might be biased to get me to want to be curious. And it’s a thread you pull on a sweater.

Susan Sly:

It’s like, suddenly I’m watching all the Keeping up with the Kardashians just to use, you know, a nonpolitical example. So, we knew there were biases. And then when Elon bought Twitter, and he disclosed. Yes, there were biases, right? We know that that’s happening with social media. We have also seen it happen in health care. Let me give an example.

Susan Sly:

So, 70% of the data set for women’s cardiology in the United States comes from middle aged white men.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. Isn’t that crazy? I know. That’s insane. Like, right?

Susan Sly:

Yeah. And yet cardiovascular disease kills more women than the top five cancers combined every year. How many of those women are dying because they’re getting recommendations that aren’t for them? Our hearts are different sizes. The. You know, if someone’s from, say, India, her blood vessels are different than someone who’s not. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

[PROMO CREDIT]

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Susan Sly, serial entrepreneur, award-winning AI innovator and the CEO and founder of thePause.ai.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Susan Sly:

The real key to creating an AI agent is to have data that is trusted and verified. And I was. Melinda. Oh, my gosh. When I was at CES, I heard this guy say on stage, and he. He was like, all the data that’s ever been created on humans is already verified.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, my goodness. Really? Wow.

Susan Sly:

…and I laughed out loud. And you could have heard a pin drop because my girlfriend was moderating the panel, and afterwards she said, oh, my gosh, Susan, I heard you laughing.

Susan Sly:

When we look at the data desert as an example that is women’s health, when that data set was created mostly for men. That’s just one of many examples where women have been underserved because of bad data. Another one is the Women’s Health Innovation Study that happened in 2002 that was done on women in their 60s. And prior to that, 22% of American women were on hormone replacement therapy. We know ESTROGEN protects the heart. We also know not everyone is a candidate if they’ve had cancer. But after that, doctors took all of their patients off HRT. And to fast forward time, even though that study was 23 years ago, less than 5% of women are on HRT. And some physicians, and I’ve interviewed them, have spoken about this, that may have cost 90,000 women a year their lives since that study. And so Fast forward time, 2 million women may have died because of bad data.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, wow. Okay. So, I mean, this is where the data is really vital. And the ethics of the companies using this data, but then of course, the ethics of the companies that are providing all the large language models from which that derives. So how do you. I mean, it’s a huge problem. We face that at our company, at Podopolo, the podcast platform, we have all kinds of different ways of dealing with all the hundreds of millions of episodes that we’re analyzing in real time and overtime for generative and increasingly agentic use cases. It’s hard work. It’s hard to get it right. How do you get it right?

Susan Sly:

That’s a great question. I don’t think, you know, transparently anyone has, you know. Right. The. I usually, I think here’s, here’s always been my belief since I started working in AI, is it starts top down with a board. Any company using AI is now an AI company. So, whether you’re target, or you are the, you know, CVS or whoever you are, if you have any AI tooling, you’re now an AI company. So, my question number one is, who on your board has experience scaling AI? And I’m not talking about an AI influencer.

Susan Sly:

I’m talking about someone who actually has been there, done it, dealt with the ethical questions, knows how to pull in multiple stakeholders, knows how to ask the right questions. Every board in 2025 needs to look at their board makeup and say, do we have someone who has that experience? That’s number one. Number two is, do you have an AI steering committee? And if not, you need to. And that has to be brought together with different groups of people. What a lot of people think is, I’m just going to leave that to my tech team. I’m going to leave that to people who have a background in IoT. No, you need to have people from HR, from legal, even your customer care, your people, and bring together this small steering committee of folks who have different perspectives. And then the third thing is, do you have your own AI mission statement and your own AI guardrails in place.

Susan Sly:

Because before you go looking for solution providers or before you even try to validate, if the AI is something that makes sense for you as a use case, if you don’t have these things internally, you’re going to fail. And we see a lot of AI experiments fail, but we also see them have some pretty devastating consequences. And as we look at, even with Meta and as of our recording, I have to go back and look, but Zuckerberg last year announces this AI committee and it’s five guys, 51% of their users on Instagram and Facebook are women. And there’s not one woman on there. This is not a DEI issue. This is a commonsense freaking issue that your people guiding your AI need to represent the end users of your AI. And that’s just one of many examples. We still see high suicide rates amongst young girls and the devastation of social media, and yet they have an AI steering committee that doesn’t even have a mom on it, which is insane.

Melinda Wittstock:

And this is the guy that says the companies need more masculine energy.

Susan Sly:

Oh yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s kind of almost Orwellian, you know, I.

Susan Sly:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

And, and these are, these are the things that that are, are very concerning. And, and this is why I am such an advocate for investing in and supporting women and diverse teams in AI. Like, our voices need to be at the table, which is why it’s so important. The work that you’re doing, the work that we’re all doing in these spaces. Absolutely vital.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think this is really interesting about the having, having a clear vision and mission statement as you wade into this world, which we all have to. All business owners, like all businesses will be AI businesses, right? And I think we’re at such early stages of even thinking about this and I think we will see a lot more unfortunately tragedies perhaps before people wake up. Like, I think about Character.ai and I think about that bot that basically influenced a kid to commit suicide.

Susan Sly:

Oh yes. And other, you know, I think about how it changes us as a global society. I, I read Melinda, that in Japan girls prefer AI boyfriends to real boyfriends. I know we may laugh and as moms, you know, I think, okay, I’d rather my daughter, my youngest daughter maybe have an AI boyfriend, real boyfriend. But I’m sure my husband would be like, yes, that’s a great idea. But how is that going to shift us as a society. And how is that also going to create impossible standards? One of the things I said, it was a bit controversial a couple of years ago was that AI would replace influencer marketing and people thought I was crazy. But then Mango came out last year with their spring campaign and it was all AI generated the clothing company based, they’re a Spanish clothing company and the. It was absolutely beautiful. So suddenly much growing up with Barbies as you and I would have with these impossible proportions and, and you know that no one in reality has a body like Barbie and it’s been, studies have been done and she would literally fall over. She’s got these teeny tiny feet, she’s top heavy, she’s. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Susan Sly:

But how many women of our generation compare themselves to Barbie? And I know I did as a, you know, as a brown woman growing up in a really small town on the Canadian U.S. border, I, you know, I would come home and literally look in the mirror and start crying because I wanted to be like Barbie. I wanted to be blonde haired, blue eyed and that’s what I felt was normal. And how devastating is this going to be when we start to see more and more people comparing themselves to even more impossible standards? There are now the AI Beauty Awards and people create AIs that you know, essentially have a beauty competition. And I’ve looked at the candidates for this competition, Melinda. No one could look like that. Like no one.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. So, this is, leads me to believe that mental health is going to be a growing industry. I mean it already we’re seeing the impacts of so much of this already. Just the impacts of social media, the impacts of like disinformation supercharged by AI. The impacts of these as you say, like impossible standards which kind of existed in the world before AI. AI can kind of accelerate that, but it also could be used to ameliorate it. So, it all comes down to the choice, I guess that you’re making as a company. And back to those, the, the ethics.

Susan Sly:

Absolutely. And to your point, what we’re already seeing with mental health is agentic AI to be able to. It’s two in the morning, you know, you don’t feel like there’s anyone you can talk to. I think we are going to see more lives saved with AI agents that help to focus with mental health than we will as a deterrent. I really believe that because people who are deeply struggling sometimes they don’t feel they can talk to anyone. So, I think there’s a lot of upside. The agents obviously have to be trained, people have to be willing to train their AI agents on some really hard stuff. Even what we’re building at the Pause, our AI agent that one of the first things I said is, let’s test her on.

Susan Sly:

A user says, I want to commit suicide. Because for menopausal women, it is one of the fastest growing suicide demographics. Yes, I, it. I could. I wish I had an answer. I don’t know. I really don’t know.

Susan Sly:

I was startled when I read that and.

Melinda Wittstock:

Just that women feel like, I don’t know. You know, it’s interesting on this podcast, there are so many women just on the pattern recognition of the almost a thousand interviews now that I’ve done that women really come into their strength and power in those years, like, even as entrepreneurs, like, doing a lot of their best work. Maybe it’s because it’s like, okay, I’m past all that weird comparison stuff. I figure out who I am. I don’t have any F’s left to give. I’m, you know, I’m in it. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

So. So you see women actually really being at their most powerful in those menopause years.

Susan Sly:

Yeah. Well, firstly, a thousand episodes. Like, kudos to you. The, the stat for Anyone listening is 90% of podcasters haven’t produced a new episode in the last 90 days. So. Melinda, you’re. You’re amazing. Firstly, first and foremost, you know, peer to peer, you’re crushing it.

Susan Sly:

You said something so interesting. You know, for a lot of female entrepreneurs, late 40s, 50s, like my, you know, I’m 52, it’s like, yeah, we have no Fs left to give us. Like, I’m just going to, you know, I’m going to be resourceful. Female led startups are 68% more profitable their first two years. We all know women receive 2 1/2% of, you know, only women led pitches to VCs only get funded 2 1/2% of the time. The numbers haven’t changed. And now the VCs are using AI algorithms.

Susan Sly:

But it’s based on, if you only funded two and a half percent of those pitches, then you, your algorithm’s already biased and skewed toward men. So that’s always concerning for me, especially, you know, in a fundraising round. Are they, you know, is the VC using AI? If so, then I’m probably already selected out. Just because there’s a 97, 7.5% chance that they’re only using data from this bigger group of people. Right. So, to go back to what you were saying this, this concept of why women struggle. McKinsey came out with a report and said that 41% of women who are perimenopausal, menopausal, want to quit their jobs in the United States. And these women are all in middle management because they don’t feel supported.

Susan Sly:

25 million women right now in the United States are experiencing menopause symptoms. And they’re not just hot flashes and, you know, and brain fog. There are so many more. Itchy skin, frozen shoulder, the list goes on and on and on. And they’re suffering. They’re. The data shows that on average they are going to take more sick days because they just can’t function. So, if you don’t feel supported, you’re not feeling supported at work.

Susan Sly:

Maybe you don’t have your voice at home. Maybe you’re struggling in your intimacy with your partner. You’re feeling very alone, you’re feeling marginalized. That is a compound effect. We are doing a horrible job as a society to women who have raised children, volunteered at schools, supported people out in their communities of supporting them when they get past 40. It sucks. And we spend over 40% of our lives in menopause. Like seriously.

Melinda Wittstock:

This is a great segue into the work that you’re doing with the Pause AI. You’re using AI to revolutionize menopause management. Right? Personalized solutions, gamified solutions. This is awesome. So, tell me about the company and what it’s doing and how you’re using AI to assist with this.

Susan Sly:

Absolutely. And in 2018, I co-founded a computer vision company. And under my tenure, we were the first company to really scale computer vision. And I learned a lot. And I kept on thinking, what else can we use AI for? What other problems can we solve? During the course of that time, I kept thinking connecting with women who were senior leaders of all of these big companies. And we’re not talking about AI. And I’ll tell you a quick story, Melinda. So, I was at the Women in AI event that was co-hosted by HP and Nvidia and it was back in 2023.

Susan Sly:

What they do is they bring 30 women together and you talk about AI and then you go to a fashion show, and you get on a party bus with champagne. It’s the best. Like every year, whatever’s going on my calendar, if, if I’m one of the fortunate people to go been two years in a row, I drop everything. It’s A great event. So, we’re on the party bus and we’re having champagne and we’re not talking about AI. Like, we’re all in AI. The girls are like, how much sleep did you get? And then one girl goes, three hours. And then another girl goes, do you have brain fog? She’s like, yes.

Susan Sly:

And then one of my girlfriends is like, can you solve this with AI? And I said, it’s so funny because I’ve been thinking about this. How do we solve for this? So, I started with the concept, Melinda, that the data doesn’t exist, number one. Number two, any data that does exist is either inaccessible because it’s guarded, it’s medical data, or it’s insurance data, or it is user self-report data. So, you see as an example, you see your physician. I don’t know if anyone here has ever fib to their physician. But like, how many days a week do you drink? And you’re like one, but it’s really five, right? Like, you know, whatever. So, there’s a lot of self-report data there. So, I said, in order for us to really solve for this, it goes back to when my girls were little, we went to American Girl in New York.

Susan Sly:

And maybe some of the listeners can relate to the story. And I remember when they launched ‘just like you’ dolls, and my husband’s family is Dutch. And the, you know, I come from a mixed background. And so, I wanted, like, I wanted a doll that looked just like my daughters because, you know, again, growing up with Barbie right there wasn’t. So we go to New York, they get the just like me and they’re all excited. And I kept thinking, what if we could do that for menopause where a woman’s recommendations were tailored just like her. So, if you’re from originally from India or you’re mixed race and you’re Chinese, Jamaican or whatever, whatever your background is, your age, the type of menopause. There are 10 different types and phases that you would get those precision recommendations.

Susan Sly:

So, we started, and we launched a consumer app. And so that’s where we’re at with our MVP right now. And women, if you have iOS, you can download it in the app store, just the Pause menopause app. And when you come onto it, you’ll answer some questions. It’ll tell you what stage you’re in. And then we have our AI agent, Harmony. She begins to engage with you. You can ask her anything.

Susan Sly:

She’ll give you work out plans, recipes, she’ll even be your best friend. Things that women don’t want to talk about. I don’t know if you’ll have to edit this out for the E rating, but vaginal dryness, intercourse is painful. You can talk to Harmony about that. She has been battle tested by people who are experts in mental health, by physicians, all sorts of different sexual wellness. And then the platform’s gamified. So, we make it fun and engaging. So doing those lifestyle things, whether it’s getting 30 minutes of movement a day or it’s not drinking 21 days out of the 30 days of the month, all of those things, we have that gamification aspect.

Susan Sly:

So, building that coming in, giving women a tool that gives them this instant gratification. We still have a lot of product on our roadmap and with your background, I know you can fully appreciate that. But that’s just where we started. And now we anonymize everyone when they come on the platform. They create anonymity avatar. They can’t even upload a photo. So, we’re getting amazing data that is helping us create these precision recommendations. And I’m so excited because I got a message from a friend who’s using the app and she’s like, Susan, I have never gone 21 days without drinking as an adult, like in a row.

Susan Sly:

And she said, thanks to the app, the accountability harmony, I just completed my 21 days. I’m sleeping like a baby. I feel so much better. And she wasn’t drinking every day. A lot of women in this cohort, you know, they might drink wine, you know, five, six times a week. Gwyneth Paltrow said at one point she looked back, and she went a whole year where she didn’t miss a day of drinking wine. So, it does happen. And that’s just one of the things the app does.

Susan Sly:

But it’s, we’re already getting amazing lifestyle transformations which translate into those physical transformations. And again, we have a big roadmap ahead, but that’s what we’re building.

Melinda Wittstock:

That is so exciting. I see so many women doing amazing things with AI and health, right, in that kind of personalization way, whether it’s like around mental health, whether it’s around the menopause area where you’re working, or just even around maternal health, around all these different things. There’s so many different applications and sort of exciting innovations. So, kudos to you for, for doing that. And you mentioned it’s an MVP and a big roadmap. And I know what that’s like, right? Where your work is never really done. Where do you see the company going ultimately, what’s your big vision for it?

Susan Sly:

Oh, great question. I feel so grateful to God that I’m a second time founder. So, you know, in your experience, Melinda, there’s a checklist and sometimes I wish I could speed up time, but I don’t. But I do. You know, I’m like, okay, so we’ve got to get the idea. We were very fortunate when we started because once it was announced in the media that I was starting this company, Microsoft reached out to us and they said here, we’re going to give you a ton of technical credits. You can build your stuff, which is awesome. Then Hewlett Packard reached out and then you’re the first interview to hear this.

Susan Sly:

And now Samsung. So, we’re just so grateful. We have this amazing support. And then 13 women, myself included and my co-founder wrote checks to launch the company. Now we’re doing our seed round and we’re scaling. So, in our product roadmap in phase one, I, I’m a girl, I love phases. Just give me, you know, phases and don’t make them more than three. Right.

Susan Sly:

We’ve got three phases, of course. So, this phase one is getting that early user feedback, and we are customer focused, data driven. So, it’s amazing what the gals have said that things that I didn’t anticipate were going to be big deals they, they love. I’ll give you an example. We have daily affirmations. We’re working with our AI to customize the, the affirmations. So, if you’re feeling a little low that day, you would get a different affirmation that someone is feeling great. Like keep, you know, keep charging, you’re doing amazing versus like, you know, are you okay? Or something like that.

Susan Sly:

And that the AI agent is, we’re training her to be able to be sensitive to how that woman is feeling. We integrate with right now Apple Watch, but we’re about to release being integrated with Samsung, with Oura Ring, with Garmin Fitbit, even a scale, I don’t know. The tech team knows which scale it is. I really don’t go on the scale, so that’s not my vibe. But we give you your daily resilience score. We’re tracking those trends. So, 90 days from now, so as we, we go into whenever someone’s listening to this to timestamp, It’ll be in Q2 of 2025. Then we will be going into employee benefits.

Susan Sly:

So, we have a lot to build in the app. We have these amazing testers. Anyone can download it right now for $3.99 for a month. And, and I just want to disclaim this, and I’ll stand on my little soapbox, and I think you’d be here with me. Melinda, Software isn’t free to build and I’m not a charity, I am a businesswoman. So yes, we charge. There are other companies that will spend millions of dollars, and they’ll launch a free app as a women led startup that is scrappy and I’m bootstrapping a lot of the company with my own personal resources. So, we do have a $3.99 thank you for it.

Susan Sly:

That price will go up at the end of Q2. But this early fee feedback is amazing. People want, they want more meditations in the app. It’s interesting what they’re asking for, but we’re building it in flight and we’re taking all the feedback. It’s so fun.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s fantastic. And you mentioned this is your second time out as a founder, right? Because previously you did Radius AI. That was your last company, right? The visual intelligence company. So, what did you learn from Radius in terms of. I mean we all know, right? Like I know this five. I’m on my fifth. Right. There’s stuff that goes wrong, there’s stuff that you can’t control, there’s timing issues, there’s like a million things that you, you don’t even know what you don’t know, right? So, what were some of the lessons and maybe some of the heart palpitating moments from the first one that inform you now?

Susan Sly:

Oh gosh. Yeah. And, and this is another conversation for coffee or wine. The. I’m going to start with the. There’s a checklist. So, I wake you up at 2 in the morning, I’m like, girl, we’re starting a company. And you’re like, okay, all right.

Susan Sly:

Are we going to do an equity raise? Yeah. Okay. Call the attorney. Okay, so we, okay. What, you know, what is our potential IP? Okay, we gotta register some trademarks, we gotta buy a domain. We have to, you know, how much are we going to raise? What are we going to dilute, how many shares are we going to offer? What’s the ESOP percentage? So, we go through all the checklists and that was building. I’ve had many, many other entrepreneurial ventures.

Susan Sly:

I owned a digital marketing agency. I scaled a company in health and wellness and CPG. But this was my first time building an AI company where we were, where I wasn’t bootstrapping it, so I learned a tremendous amount there and I’m so grateful for that. The other thing I would say lesson learned that founders, certain kinds of founders underestimate, is the power of relationships. So, one of the things for me and some of my team that I worked with, they are actually working with me here now at the Pause, but taking the time to build the relationships. Our days are often crazy as founders, and it’s easy to push things to the side. Oh, I’ll get back to so and so later. I’ll do it later; I’ll do it later.

Susan Sly:

Take at least 20% of your day for relationship building, because that changed things for me so dramatically. So, when we were deploying something that had never been done, you know, when you’re doing something that has never been done before, it’s going to cost a lot of money. You’re going to have to sell people on why it’s even needed and building out those relationships. And the dinners I had with people, the coffees, the traveling for the meetings, it was a lot of work at the time, but those relationships carried with me into this company. So, as I said, when I started this company, HP reached out to me and Microsoft reached out to me. And I was so grateful because those were the past relationships and other ones too. The other thing I would say that I learned is as a woman, I really needed to have my voice. And there were many times that I gave away my power because I didn’t have a PhD in computer science. I haven’t written a line of code since 92. That’s another story. I was working on early facial recognition algorithms encoding from 1992 while I was in university. But I haven’t written code in a long time. I went back to school. I went first to MIT, Sloan, and then last year in 2024, I graduated executive education on the engineering side of the house. But I told myself, myself that I wasn’t technical. And as a result, people said, oh, Susan’s not the technical one, but I knew the whole GPU catalog from Nvidia.

Susan Sly:

I knew how to put together an architecture stack for computer vision. I learned how to ask the questions about latency, about getting buy in, about having these various stakeholders, about looking at the different data policies that vary from state to state, not just country to country, country. And so, I learned a lot that I brought here. And I would say it’s definitely helped me speed up time, Melinda. And I’m so clear about where I’m going that that’s what I say. Some days I feel like you know, I’m Dorothy and I just want to tap the red shoes and like kind of go fast forward because I know where we will be. But at the same time, it’s the lessons I’ve learned that allow me to handle some of the startup challenges with a lot more grace than I would have if it was my first time.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. You know, it’s so interesting that you mentioned with the technical founder piece. I, I made those mistakes very early on as well. Even though I was started to innovate in AI and natural language processing and all these things like back in like 2010, 2011. But I didn’t have a degree, like I haven’t, I don’t have a degree in anything that I’ve ever done.

Susan Sly:

Very few people do.

Melinda Wittstock:

I mean, and so it’s an interesting thing because I think women get very head up about like, I need all these credentials, I need to prove my competence. I need to know. You just have to just like do it right. But it’s like this, this internal mental game we have with each other. Like with. Sorry. It’s an internal mental game that we have with ourselves. So how did I become an award-winning journalist? I never went to journalism school.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know, I, I got experience, you know, on my student newspaper or how did I become an entrepreneur? I didn’t go to business school. I didn’t. I don’t have a degree in computer science and yet I’ve been innovating in AI and all things technical for years. So, I just say that to younger women that like, yes, by all means get educated, but the credential and to your point about the relationships are really critical as well. But just don’t hold yourself back by that kind of credential.

Susan Sly:

Yeah, my gosh. And I mean seriously. And we’re asked different questions, and this isn’t to shame men. I have an amazing husband. I was raised by a single dad who passed last year. His name was Joe. Like, I didn’t have a relationship with my mom. This is not to shame men.

Susan Sly:

This is just to be very clear on the data. Women in a VC situation are asked different questions. Even, you know, recently I was just asked a question I’m certainly sure they wouldn’t have asked a man. And you know, women are asked things like, how old are your children? And it’s this nice chit, chatty thing. They start with the VC at the beginning. It’s like, oh, so how old are your children? How are. You know, what they’re really trying to find out is, are you going to Leave. How committed are you to the startup? They aren’t asking men the same questions.

Susan Sly:

I know guys that have gone into a VC with literally an idea on a napkin and they get a million dollars. The I have a friend, and I won’t name his name, he’s very, very accomplished. He laughed at me. I said, would you take a look at this pitch deck I have? And he’s like, I have never done a pitch deck. And he’s done. Several companies funded out of Silicon Valley could just walk in the room and people pull out their checkbook, right? And it’s as women, we’ve got to be scrappier, we’ve got to be more resourceful, we’re going to raise less money. Female angel investors tend to write smaller checks initially.

Susan Sly:

I think one of the biggest things I’ve learned. Sorry to go on the funding rant for a moment. Is especially for female founders, if you are going to raise money that you’re more than likely going to raise less in the beginning unless you have a seasoned track record and you’re more than likely not going to be able to pay yourself out of the gate. But, but you will be more resourceful, and you have to trust yourself. You are the same girl that had kids at home and you’re like, ah, I don’t have time to go to the grocery store. And you MacGyvered a meal that is Michelin three-star meal out of a can of tuna and a pack of frozen beans. Because you’re so damn resourceful, you figure out a way and you bring that grittiness to your startup, and you will get to profitability faster. You will defy the odds.

Susan Sly:

But women startups are still getting acquired for less money. They have lower valuations; they have a harder time raising money. If you know that that’s going to be the landscape, you just have to adapt to that terrain.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, 100%. And this is one of the reasons why I’ve recently become a venture partner of a VC that funds women led startups. Right? Because I think as women we have to start being the change that, that we want to see in the world and genuinely really investing in each other.

Susan Sly:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like I started with this podcast to do that. I’ve driven lots of business to a lot of female founded startups that I’ve featured. It’s somewhere in the 10-million-dollar mark now over the years doing this show, which is awesome but like I actually really want to invest and encourage other women who have wealth to invest and not just keep deferring to their husbands, you know, like, oh, my husband, yes.

Susan Sly:

Preach it. Preach it, sister. We turned investors away. I had one investor say he was the guy. I don’t understand the problem statement. I said, no, you probably don’t. That’s okay. The 13 women who wrote checks, we said we set some KPIs.

Susan Sly:

I did this differently too. I have an abundant mindset, and this is not to sound airy fairy. I’ve done speaking events in front of 20,000 people, multi speaker events like Tony Robbins is a speaker, I’m a speaker, you know, you know, so on and so forth. The I think that the big piece around it is, is that not all money costs the same. And Melinda, you know this, and I know this. So, what we looked for is what was that investor going to bring to the table? So, all of our advisors on our website are all investors. One is the former head of the, the president of the Menopause Society for North America.

Susan Sly:

One is an SVP of scale for a major system integrator. All of these girls and now there’s a couple of guys and you can see them on the website. They all have extensive networks. Because I have seven startups that I’ve invested in my personal portfolio and the, you know, it’s been interesting to watch investor Dynamics and then be on the other side of it, have how the board engages with investors. And I said, you know what? I, I would, you know, I do not need to take money if you’re not bringing anything to the table and you’re just going to call me every 30 days and say when are we selling? No. So I feel like, and I, I just want this to land in the right way. I feel like an investor relationship, say your fund. If you invested in us, not only do I want to know what you’re bringing to the table, but I also want to make sure we’re a shining spot in that investor’s portfolio.

Susan Sly:

So, we do things differently. I do monthly zoom calls live with all of our investors. They don’t just get an email once a year. They come on, we tell them, we swot test. These are our strengths right now. These are our weaknesses, opportunities, threats. This is what we need from you. Could you share our podcast, the Menopause Health podcast.

Susan Sly:

That’s one of the lead bangers we have out there in the world. Could you share this post on social media? We’re getting ready for a fundraise. Who do you know? So, we have these community times and Melinda, it’s really cute. One Day, the girls are like, drink. Some of the girls were drinking wine in the investor meeting. But it’s like these girlfriends who meet up once a month. It’s the best. And we just decide to do things very, very differently, because why we can.

Susan Sly:

And to your earlier point, I have the experience. It’s not my first rodeo. And so, I look at the funding pieces so differently. And even with some of my choices, in terms of the conversations we’re having, I’m. I’m already a no, even when that VC reaches out, because I don’t want to just be another check mark in their portfolio. I want to have a relationship. I want to learn from them and grow from their experience.

Melinda Wittstock:

Very, very wise advice, I think. I mean, it is. It is a relationship. And you’re right, not all money is. Is the same. So, we should be qualifying those investors as much as they’re qualifying us. Gosh, Susan, I could talk to you, like, a lot, a lot, a lot longer. I mean, my goodness.

Susan Sly:

I have 50 questions for you, sister. We’ll have to reciprocate. You’re going to have to come on raw and real, because now, like, we want to continue the conversation.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, gosh, I would love to do that. So, yeah, I’m all in, 100%. And so, Susan, I want to make sure everyone knows how to find… It’s the pause AI it’s in the App Store, right. IOS at this app stage. And how else can people interact with you and get to know you and invest in you?

Susan Sly:

Oh, absolutely.  I’m very active on LinkedIn, Susan. Sly. So, I’m right there, and then they can connect with me. My personal website is www. If someone is interested investing. We have just launched our seed round, and I like to raise the minimal amount of money for the highest impact.

Susan Sly:

If someone is ISQ qualified, you’ll know what that means. Please do reach out and we can have a discussion and see if you’re a right fit for us. But yeah, we. We would love it. And we love female investors. Like, go, girls, let’s go out there and make a lot of money and create positive change in the world.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Susan Sly:

Thank you for having me.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Susan Sly is the Founder and CEO of thePause.ai, an AI-driven platform revolutionizing menopause management through personalized, gamified solutions. thePause.ai secured first place in the HITLAB x Versalie™ Innovation Challenge in November 2024.

Melinda Wittstock:

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Melinda Wittstock:

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