Steven Manos

Workplace Consultant @ OfficeSpace Software | CEO of Petting my Cats 🐈‍⬛ | Fitness Nerd

Hi there! I'm Steven Manos, and I'm passionate about connecting with people and making a positive impact in their lives. As a people person, I love building relationships and helping others achieve their goals. 

With over a decade of experience in customer service and sales, I've honed my communication and problem-solving skills to be able to handle even the toughest situations with a smile. Whether it's resolving a customer complaint or working with a team to meet project deadlines, I'm always ready to lend a hand and find a solution.

Outside of work, I have a huge passion for health and fitness. The body is the most incredible machine ever built and I love nerding out about how movement is medicine. I believe that giving back is just as important as achieving success, and I strive to make a difference wherever I can. So don't be afraid to ever reach out about it because people are my passion. 

If you're looking for someone who is dedicated to helping others and passionate about building strong relationships, let's connect! I'm always open to chatting, learning, and helping wherever I’m needed. 

If there was a trivia night on fun facts about myself, here's your cheat sheet:
-I have three cats named Tuna, Turkey, & Turtle. (Tuna is named after Jim Halpert from The Office & Turkey came with the name). 
-I had major knee surgery at 20 that sparked my obsession with health, fitness, and human movement.
-My wedding was the hottest, no literally it was 108 during our outdoor ceremony. 
-I stink at golf but love the game. 
-I grew up playing baseball and when I went to college played volleyball. 
-I have trained everyone from pro athletes to moms postpartum. (The moms complained less)
-Born and raised in Central Florida. 
-I call my wife while she's at work just to tell her dad jokes and hang up right away. 
-I don't like social media, but LinkedIn is different. 
-I used to be a butcher in college and that's how I learned to cook.

Sales Development Representative

Nomiki Petrolla

Mom of 4 • Founder of PDS Lab • 0 to MVP • Early-Stage Startups • Product, Design and Strategy

Nomiki Petrolla is a product leader and tech founder revolutionizing access for women in tech entrepreneurship. With 15 years of experience leading product, design, and strategy across healthcare, fintech, artificial intelligence, and enterprise SaaS companies, she has consistently broken barriers in male-dominated tech spaces.

Through Nomiki's experience as a tech consultant, product leader, mentor, and educator, Nomiki identified systemic gaps in how women founders access product development knowledge. This led her to launch PDS Lab in 2022, an accelerator enabling women to build and launch tech companies from scratch. The accelerator's growth further highlighted gaps in the tech ecosystem for women and has led to her latest venture, Theanna.

Nomiki launched Theanna, a data-networking platform connecting women tech founders from ideation to scale, creating unprecedented transparency in the female founder journey. The platform's mission is to transform how women build successful tech companies by providing actionable insights, targeted resources, and meaningful connections traditionally gatekept in male-dominated networks.

Based in Hilliard, Ohio, Nomiki is a mother of four who continues to advocate for women's technological advancement through speaking engagements at Harvard, mentoring at Techstars, and supporting female entrepreneurial communities nationwide.

Fractional Head of Product 🚀

Nomiki is a fractional Product Manager and Designer for software startups focused on complete user experiences that combine design, product, and strategy. 

She's worked with startups in B2B/B2C to facilitate software concepts in the 0 > 1 phase to spearheading growth for Series C-backed organizations. 

Customers work with her to create product designs, form development collaboration through product management and build product strategies and visions for short and long-term roadmaps.

In honor of #IWD26 I'm hosting Startup Weekend Women kicking off TONIGHT to help more women build startups. 

Thank you to all our sponsors, supporters, and speakers who are giving this weekend and women SO MUCH ENERGY. I'm forever grateful. 

Let's build, ladies!

Rev1 Ventures Accelerating Angels Big Kitty Labs Jakib.AI Stansbury Weaver, Ltd. Kickstart Labs Chartuties Catering Techstars Techstars Columbus Powered by The Ohio State University 

Amy Sterner Nelson Tim Grace Gabrielle Rudd Will Matz Tushar Kulkarni LFGGGG

Didn'tget a ticket? See you tonight: https://lnkd.in/g_rJCc63

I help women build tech companies • 15 years in building zero to 1 tech startups • Seen in Forbes & Techstars • Helped over 3k women tech founders • Building Theanna in public

It's International Women's Day. I'm in Columbus running Startup Weekend Women with Techstars.

Here's what 54 hours looks like when women are given the space to build:                  

✔️ One team built an MVP with real city data, reached out to 2,000 agents, and has a waitlist. In a weekend.

✔️ A student said she'd never been in a space where she felt she could build freely. This was her first time.

✔️ Another woman didn't realize how fast you could move. Three days later, she's not stopping.

✔️ This is what happens when you stop talking about supporting women in tech and actually build the spaces.

✔️ Harvard published the data this year — women adopt AI 25% slower than men. Not because they can't. 

✔️ Senior women in technical roles outperform men by 12-16%. The gap is about access. Environment. Permission.

✔️ I built Theanna to $204K ARR as a non-technical solo founder. I run Women Build Cool Sh*t — 27 women across 27 states, 4 countries, building real tech products. When I put tools in their hands and say "build," they build.

The gap disappears when the space exists.

Today, two things:

1️⃣  Theanna is offering 3 months at 50% off with code IWD2026 — today only. If you've been thinking about building something, this is your sign.

2️⃣  Our partner Lovable is completely free to use all day. No excuse left. Go build.

The question isn't "why aren't women using AI?" The question is "who's building the spaces where they can?"

We are. Come build with us. 

 #InternationalWomensDay #WomenInTech #StartupWeekendWomen

Ok I'm just over a year in, and here are the things I've dreaded in the past year...

Shocker - not everything is sunshine and rainbows. 

1. I hated waiting for the MVP to be built. It took 3 months and that actually is fast, but AI wasn't like it is today where I could have whipped it up in a month and controlled everything. The waiting part just bleh. In that time I didn't sit around, I went HAM on marketing and content. I talked about it every single day, got abut 1,000 on the waitlist before launch, and made sure people knew what I was up to. 

2. I had to hold 3 other jobs until I could pay myself. Yep, just like everyone else at the idea stage, I had no money coming in but have a family of 6 to feed. I was consulting on one startup, teaching at university, and doing 1:1 coaching. I only enjoyed building and coaching. So there were times I'd wake up and dread that I had to work on someone else's company while I worked 14-16 hour days to get mine up to speed. 

3. I hate not knowing how to do backend development. I have gone back and forth on this for a long time - is it worth me really learning all of it right now? I keep coming back to, it's not worth me learning to be a solid backend engineer but it is important for me to continually be curious, work on architecture, and make decisions based on the knowledge I have with the experts around me.

In general, the experience has been a 9.9/10

Even the mistakes I've made (don't make me recall them lol) have been fun. It's like I enjoy the struggle... idk how to describe it. 

I think because when you believe in yourself enough, you know that no matter what happens, you'll come out of it ok. 

So if we learned anything from this post, it's that I have control issues. 

Thanks, and have a great night. 

Nomiki

You know when you go on a work bender and you forget to like shower, do your hair, put on contacts, eat, go to the bathroom, hear things outside of your household, answer texts, and post on social?

Yeah, I've been in one of those. But it's all good, I'm in my happy place. 

Will come up for air soon 😈

Coming out of that work bender 
Here’s proof of life and shower lol

But also check out my new gear 💜

-
When I get into these deep build mode zones, I come out with a clearer mind. 

It’s giving myself the space to go allllll the way in on something to really figure out if it’s worth the long haul if whatever it is. 

Does anyone else get on those zones?

—
On a side note I’m testing an ad sequence with my landing page automation vs a Luma link. 

My hunch is that I have been over-engineering to get better attendance rates. 

So I’m running an AB test. 

Stay tuned for the results which I’ll have by Thursday. 📊

No alternative text description for this image

10 million projects have been created on Lovable alone.

73% of tech startups now use AI coding tools.

41% of all code written globally is AI-generated.

And 90% of startups still fail.

The math is simple. The graveyard is going to be enormous.

Here's what nobody is saying out loud:
AI tools solved the build problem. 
Nobody solved the business problem.

Every day I see the same posts in founders post on Threads, TikTok, Instagram, the WhatsApp communities, everywhere —

"I launched but nobody is signing up."
"I built my MVP, how do I get traction?"
"What even IS traction?"

Same story every time. Someone built something in a weekend. It works. It looks great. 

They're proud of it. And then they hit a wall — because the wall isn't technical. The wall is business.

A product is not a company.

A company requires customers who will actually pay.

A repeatable way to reach them.

Pricing that makes the math work.

Operations that don't collapse when you sleep.

The ability to adapt when you realize you built the wrong thing.

None of those are product skills. Every single one is a business skill.

The build trap is real. Building feels productive. You can see the progress. A new feature, a new page, a new integration. It feels like momentum — because something visible changed.

But you can ship 50 features and still have zero paying customers.

The founders who survive are the ones who stop building and start talking to customers. Who charge money early. Who find one acquisition channel and go deep. Who stay in the room long enough.

The AI product graveyard isn't coming.

It's already here.

If you built something and don't know what to do next — that's exactly what we built Theanna for. 💜

While I love AI tools and how it helps everyone build so much more.

Most idea-stage founders aren't ready for the 10+ jobs it creates for us to work on. 

If you're not someone who is obsessed with learning, loving to see everything work in sync, or think of things that aren't in front of you...

Godspeed. 

Just a few jobs that are now in your list:
- Designing features
- Building front and backend
- Building a marketing site
- QA testing
- Creating marketing materials - social media
- Writing content... a lot
- Collecting, analyzing, and testing data
- Community organizing and buzzer

I could name 100 more. 

The ones who are going to win are likely overwhelmed by all of this but are totally okay with executing on all of it. 

What else would you add?

taplio

The Battle

Steven Manos

Nomiki Petrolla

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreNomiki Petrolla's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Steven Manos

Nomiki Petrolla

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Nomiki Petrolla's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreNomiki Petrolla's LinkedIn Performance