A stage can make you famous, but it cannot guarantee you power.
We sit down with Olivia Hervy, Chief Ecosystem Officer at VivaTech, to ask a blunt question: who gets the mic in tech and who gets overlooked when the real decisions are made?
Olivia shares her non-linear journey from the music industry into music tech and then deep into the startup ecosystem, building programs that help founders grow from pre-seed to Series A. Along the way, we unpack the difference between visibility and influence, including the kind of influence that shows up in hiring plans, investment decisions, product direction, and even policy conversations. If you’re a founder trying to decide where to spend your limited time, this conversation helps you spot the difference between “being on a stage” and “having a seat at the table.”
We also get into the hard numbers behind women in tech and venture capital: women-founded or co-founded companies receiving only 12% of global VC funding, and what it will actually take to move that needle. We talk about what event organizers and ecosystem leaders reward with attention, why “finding great women speakers” is work not luck, and how networks and champions quietly shape outcomes in a so-called meritocracy. Finally, we make the case for normalizing failure, telling the messy middle, and refusing to treat setbacks as a red flag, especially for women founders facing harsher judgment.
