Vee Founder May Piamenta on Selling Her First Company at 16, Smuggling a Computer Onto an Army Base, Laying Off Her Entire Company and Knowing When to Pivot | Invested

On this episode of Invested, Michael hosts May Piamenta, the co-founder and CEO of Vee. May started her first business, Pineapple, at 14 years old and sold it right before she turned 17. She was a community services manager at RoboActive, followed by a role as an international project lead at First, a global robotics community. May then joined the IDF, where she was an electronics warfare commander and started working on her current company, Vee. After her military service, May mentored at Google Activate and took Vee full time. Following a sharp pivot in 2021, Vee now enables nonprofit teams and founders to grow their teams efficiently without hiring people, by giving them AI agents that can do everything from hiring to grant writing, social media management, bookkeeping and admin work, etc. 

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KEY TOPICS 

• [00:00:00]  Intro
• [00:03:25]  Impact of Losing a Best Friend to Cancer
• [00:06:20]  May’s Role Models 
• [00:09:05]  The High School Robotics Team 
• [00:11:54]  May’s First Business
• [00:15:14]  Israeli Military Experience 
• [00:16:28]  May’s Core Value 
• [00:17:45]  The Story Behind May’s Company, Vee
• [00:25:00]  Finding Co-Founders and Investors
• [00:27:00]  Pivoting Vee and Layoffs
• [00:37:25]  Is Non-Profit a Lucrative Sector?
• [00:40:55]  How the Tech Industry Has Evolved for Female CEOs
• [00:44:10]  Does Age in Leadership Matter?
• [00:45:40]  What Changed in May after Oct. 7
• [00:48:28]  What Changed in Michael After Oct. 7
• [00:50:17]  On Speaking Out About Anxiety
• [00:53:45]  Her Belief That Changed in the Last Year
• [00:54:20]  Closing

RESOURCES

Follow May on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maypiamenta/

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For the transcript of this episode, go to: content.aleph.vc/podcast-episodes/may-piamenta---episode-36

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CREDITS

Executive Producer: Erica Marom 

Producer: Yoni Mayer

Video and Editing: Ron Baranov

Music and Art: Uri Ar 

Content and Editorial: Kira Goldring

Design: Rony Karadi