My Year Building Theanna

A year in review and what’s to come...

If you told me a year ago that I’d be running a growing founder platform, building real partnerships, shipping product updates weekly, and helping hundreds of founders move forward… I would have said “prove it.”

This past 365 days has been the most challenging of my career. Entrepreneurship is humbling AF and it takes a certain personality to come out alive from it. IYKYK.

And today, I’m finally pausing long enough to look back and say: Holy sh*t. We’re doing it.

Where It Started: PDS Lab

Theanna wasn’t born because I wanted to start “another tech platform.” It was born because I kept watching the same thing happen over and over.

Founders — especially first-time founders and women — were being told “just build something.” But nobody was showing them how. They were stuck in endless Googling, conflicting advice, YouTube rabbit holes, expensive programs, and the kind of uncertainty that makes you freeze.

Before Theanna, there was PDS Lab — a tech accelerator program for non-technical women. I’d built a 6-step framework from 15 years of building technology for startups, and I was running it as a 6-month program at $6,500 per person. Forty-three women went through the accelerator.

It was working. Lauren launched her MVP in three months using no-code tools, won $10,000 at a pitch competition, pivoted from B2C to B2B, and hired her first employee. Becca won $10,000 at a pitch competition and secured a partnership with a company that has 400 stores in the US. Julie built a cybersecurity platform while working full-time.

But I kept hitting the same wall: this model didn’t scale. I could only support so many women one-on-one. I wanted to serve every woman with an idea — not just the ones who could get into a 12-week cohort that accepts 2% of applicants.

So I made the decision to transition PDS Lab into something bigger.

The Pivot: Building Theanna

The vision was clear: an all-in-one tech platform that takes women founders from idea to $1M ARR. Not a community with some resources attached. Not a glorified Slack group. Actual software — AI-powered milestone tracking, expert guidance, and the infrastructure that women founders aren’t getting anywhere else.

This meant sunsetting the PDS Lab membership, transitioning those members, and building a real product from scratch. During this time I was working 4 jobs to keep income up and reduce the burden on my family financially. I was EXHAUSTED. But I knew if I could hold on and push, I’d come out of it. I believed in myself.

What I Built This Year

I designed a platform I could bring to life fast that served the broader vision. The goal is to become the business hub for women — the ultimate one-stop shop for everything you need to get from idea to $1M ARR.

Right now it includes:

The BUILD Interface — A structured four-phase startup journey with 41 milestones, each with tasks, resources, and benchmarks. Revenue pace settings based on real ChartMogul data showing the top 25% of startups reach $1M ARR in 18 months. Stripe MRR integration so founders can see exactly where they stand.

AI-Powered Support — Expert guidance for product, marketing, fundraising, business basics, and everything in between. Not generic startup advice — guidance based on what successful female founders actually did at each stage.

Build Mode — A distraction-free workspace with a three-panel layout: task list, AI chat interface, and files & notes sidebar. Auto-selects the next incomplete task. Built for the founder who has two hours on a Tuesday night to make progress.

Analytics — We integrate with Stripe so you can watch your growth while monitoring your custom goals in the platform. Keep everyone on track.

And we’re shipping like crazy. Clearer milestone navigation, better onboarding, faster loading, improved chat experiences, better task organization, notes and progress tracking — all designed around one thing: reducing friction.

I wanted founders to log in and feel like: “Okay. This is doable.” Because when a founder is overwhelmed, they don’t need more content. They need clarity.

Women Build Cool Sh*t

One of the biggest moves this year was launching the Women Build Cool Sh*t cohort program. It became Theanna’s flagship experience — weekly cohorts where women at the idea stage come in, build together, and show up every single week.

So far we’ve served 80 women in this program and are seeing incredible results.

But I caught heat for doing this. People questioned the model because it doesn’t look like a traditional accelerator. We don’t take equity. We’re fee-based software. We do cohorts because community matters.

Being bold and thinking differently are not always welcome. BE OK WITH NOT BEING LIKED AND KEEP GOING.

We Grew Revenue to $182K ARR

This year, Theanna proved what I wanted to prove. Women want this space. They need the support, and they want to do it with others. It makes building fun.

We currently have 212 paying customers and our goal is to get to 1,000 by end of year.

Growing revenue has been a really interesting journey. SaaS is much harder than consulting. The level of attention and detail to every touchpoint and experience has to be on point or you lose customers.

And frankly, I’ve made mistakes in this process. I’ve learned a lot. But my customers are happy and I have conviction that we’re on the right path.

What I Learned

Listen — I’m not going to lie about this journey and tell you it’s easy. That helps no one.

I experienced my first panic attack in September wondering if I was cut out for this. I’ve cried over lost customers and mistakes I made. I’ve put more self-induced pressure on myself than most people would ever sign up for. There were moments where it felt crippling.

But I need you to hear this part too: there is nothing more fulfilling than watching your work come to life and actually serve people. Watching a founder log in, hit a milestone, launch something real — that feeling is unmatched. The rewards far outweigh the stress.

I’ve laughed harder, jumped higher, and screamed for joy more this year than I ever have in my career. Entrepreneurship is humbling. It will push you to your edge. But when you see it working? When you see the thing you built actually changing someone’s trajectory? There’s nothing like it.

It’s SO hard, but I love it and will never stop.

Where We’re Going Next

This next year is about scaling what’s working: smoother onboarding, more personalized milestones, new capabilities to streamline Build Mode for no-code builders (MCP!!!), improved progress tracking and dashboards, growing partnerships, expanding the community, and continuing to build the best execution system for first-time founders.

The vision isn’t just “women tech founders.” It’s every woman building a business, across all verticals, forever. Customers don’t churn when they graduate — they deepen their integration as their business grows.

Like Stripe is for payments and Shopify is for commerce, Theanna becomes the foundational layer for women building businesses. Day one to forever.

What I’m Writing About From Here

Here’s where this gets real.

Starting now, I’m documenting the entire journey to $1M ARR. Every week. In public.

Every week, here’s what you’re going to get from me:

The data. MRR, churn, LTV, CAC, conversion rates — transparent and unfiltered. If the numbers are ugly, you’re going to see the ugly numbers. This is the part that keeps me honest.

The tests. What I’m running, what the hypothesis was, what actually happened. Landing page tests, onboarding changes, pricing experiments, outbound strategies, ad spend breakdowns. Not “we tried something and it worked” — the actual test, the actual results, and what I’m doing next.

The wins. When something works, I’ll break down exactly why I think it worked and how you can take it and run with it.

The losses. The failed launches, the features nobody wanted, the campaigns that burned money. I’ll share the losses with the same level of detail as the wins — because that’s where the real learning lives and most founders will never talk about it.

The playbooks. Onboarding flows, outbound sequences, pricing teardowns, content strategies, demo scripts. Not theory — the actual documents and templates I’m using while I’m using them. Take them. Use them.

The uncomfortable middle. The messy, unglamorous stretch where nothing is certain and you’re just grinding. I’ve always believed this is where the most valuable lessons live. Nobody talks about it. I will.

This is the content I wish existed when I was working four jobs trying to get Theanna off the ground. It’s the kind of transparency that women founders deserve — because we’ve been left out of these conversations for too long.

$182K ARR to $1M ARR. Every week. In public.

You’re going to see all of it.

Final Thoughts

This year building Theanna changed me. It made me sharper. More resilient. More confident. More honest. It showed me I can build something real.

What I’m doing isn’t just “a startup.” It’s a mission. It’s a movement. It’s a promise.

That women and first-time founders deserve better than vague advice and gatekeeping. They deserve tools, structure, and support. They deserve to win.

And I’m building that. Every single day.

If we haven’t met yet — hi, I’m Nomiki Petrolla. Founder & CEO of Theanna. Mom of Four.

I’ve spent 15+ years helping teams go from idea to MVP to traction. Now I’m closing the access gap for women in tech — and building the whole thing in public so you can watch it happen.

KEEP FUCKING GOING. 💜