Female Founders: Chandini Jain of Auquan On the Five Things You Need to Thrive and Succeed As a Woman Founder

An Interview With Vanessa Morcom

When you become a founder, you shift from being an individual contributor to being an organizational leader. It’s about recruiting a great team and supporting them so they can achieve their best. This means delegating tasks that align with each person’s strengths, providing clear direction and goals, and then trusting them to excel in their roles.

As a part of our series about women founders, we had the pleasure of interviewing Chandini Jain.

Chandini Jain is the founder and CEO of Auquan, an AI innovator transforming the world’s unstructured data into actionable intelligence for financial services customers. Prior to founding Auquan, Jain spent 10 years in global finance, working as a trader at Optiver and Deutsche Bank. She is a recognized expert and speaker in the field of using AI for investment and ESG risk management. Jain holds a master’s degree in mechanical engineering/computational science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.Tech from IIT Kanpur.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

After spending 10 years in the finance world structuring interest rates at Deutsche Bank and trading derivatives at Optiver, I recognized a huge problem. Everyone was drowning in data, buried under spreadsheets, and basically doing everything manually. That’s why I started Auquan — I knew there could be a better way.

In finance, data is everything. We went the kitchen sink route when subscribing to data providers, trying to analyze everything under the sun — real-time data, historical info, you name it — on countless different companies. But all that unstructured data turns into a fire hose really fast. We were constantly bombarded with information, and it was harder and harder to see the forest for the trees. Important insights were getting lost in the noise, and we were always running the risk of making a mistake or missing something critical.

But picture this: finance industry professionals laser-focused on making winning decisions, faster and more informed than ever before — not drowning in data all day. That’s the future I saw, and it’s what got me so fired up to leave and start Auquan. I needed to make that future a reality.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

When we first started Auquan, we built this amazing machine learning technology. But we weren’t really sure how to apply it to solving real problems in the business world. Successful businesses aren’t necessarily built on cutting-edge technology. They identify a big pain point in the market and figure out a brand new way to solve it — a way that’s far better than available methods or solutions. The tech should just enable and deliver that solution.

That realization made us take a giant step back and refocus Auquan. We started thinking about the big, important challenge financial services firms were facing. Once we validated that we were actually solving a real need and found customers that believed in our vision, success began to follow.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I still go back to our pivot as a company. We had built some really impressive technology, and we were so proud of it! I thought others would see value in our tech and want to deploy it to start solving some of their challenges. It was naive for sure, but we learned a valuable lesson that serves us well to this day: Solve a big problem in the market, and build the technology to deliver on that promise. Don’t expect the market to see value in your technology and understand how they can deploy it to solve their problems.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful toward who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

My family, specifically my mother. She is a surgeon and the head of the surgery department at our state in India — an incredible, talented, go-getter. My parents raised us in a very gender-neutral household — there was never a stereotype of men should do this and women should do that. I believe that gave me the confidence that anything you put your mind to is possible. Watching her achieve and getting that constant push from her to always aim for more than what you think you are capable of has been the biggest driving force in getting me where I am today.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20% of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience, what is currently holding back women from founding companies?

Yes, it’s important that we first acknowledge that the number of women founders is growing, and that’s great. But there’s still a long way to go because there’s so much untapped potential there.

There’s a long and storied history of women in technology, and women have made critical and significant contributions. But let’s face it: Engineering environments have traditionally been more of a male culture. There’s been less encouragement for women to take entrepreneurial risks, and venture capital has been dominated by men. Perhaps for that reason there has been investor bias toward male founders.

Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government to help overcome those obstacles?

We need to keep investing more in what’s working to increase the number of women founders. That starts with encouraging more young women to pursue engineering and entrepreneurship paths. We need to strengthen women-led networks and mentoring to provide aspiring founders with the same kinds of support that their male colleagues more readily enjoy.

As more women found companies, more will be successful, and more still will eventually become investors themselves. There are some fantastic women VCs funding great women-led companies, including Rebecca Mitchem, a partner at Neotribe Ventures and lead investor of Auquan. I believe the rise of the women VC is a big trend in our industry. But there’s still more progress to be made.

This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder, but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?

First and foremost, being a founder is both extremely challenging and rewarding. It’s something every woman who’s passionate about pursuing it should explore — and there are more support resources and networks today to help them on their journey.

Resourcefulness, resilience, empathy, and emotional intelligence are all essential parts of being a successful founder and qualities women tend to possess in droves. Women are great listeners, and founders need to be really great at listening to customers, the market and their team.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?

First off, ditch the lone wolf mentality. No startup founder succeeds in a vacuum — you’re going to need to surround yourself with a great team. Know what your superpowers are, and then go find incredible people to fill the gaps. Becoming a great recruiter is a nonnegotiable founder skill because building a world-class team isn’t something you can outsource.

Second, don’t get stuck thinking your idea needs to be unicorn potential. The most successful startups are simply solving a real, everyday problem — and doing it far better than what the market is already doing. Focus on that sweet spot: urgent need, 10x solution. Many unicorn startups set out humbly solving a hard problem better than everyone else, and they relentlessly executed their way to unicorn status.

That brings us to my last point: Recognize that a decent idea executed brilliantly beats a brilliant idea with mediocre execution. Think of execution like a marathon sprint. You have to pace yourself, stay focused, and be in it for the long haul.

Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder, and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?

A startup flounder needs to have a high tolerance for risk, because starting a business is inherently risky! You need to be comfortable with uncertainty and the potential for failure.

The startup journey isn’t a straight line up and to the right. Even if you’re wildly successful, you’ll face countless setbacks and tough moments along the way. You need to have resilience and grit to keep moving forward when the odds seem to be against you.

You may not be cut out to be a founder if you dislike uncertainty and thrive the most in a stable and predictable environment. And if you need constant feedback and positive reinforcement, being a founder may not be for you. That said, sometimes if you dig deep within yourself, you may find traits you didn’t know were there that you can tap into, and sometimes challenging yourself to get out of your comfort zone can really work!

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

1. Building a startup isn’t a sprint, it’s a full-on marathon, one with a lot of furious sprints along the way. It can be exhausting at times, but if you pace yourself right, you can make it to the finish line.
2. Hustle culture can be misleading. While building a startup requires dedication and hard work — you’ll definitely be putting in the hustle — it’s crucial to prioritize rest as well. Taking breaks to recharge allows you to come back feeling refreshed and more focused, which ultimately leads to better outcomes. You can’t pour from an empty cup. It also helps to find a hobby that focuses your mind on something else for a while. I enjoy badminton and learning to play the guitar.
3. It’s easy to get excited about technology and features. But before you dive too deep into development, it’s crucial to validate a real market need. Focus on understanding the core problem businesses face that you’re setting out to solve, and then develop a solution that truly addresses it. You need to build something people actually need.
4. It’s easy to get excited early on and think you’ve achieved product market fit, especially when potential customers tell you that they love your vision and will buy your product when it’s ready. But validate that enthusiasm with real customer data. Real product market fit means consistently growing your sales to customers willing to pay, increasing usage and engagement, achieving a low churn rate, and delighting customers who are happy to tell others about it.
5. When you become a founder, you shift from being an individual contributor to being an organizational leader. It’s about recruiting a great team and supporting them so they can achieve their best. This means delegating tasks that align with each person’s strengths, providing clear direction and goals, and then trusting them to excel in their roles.

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

I still have a long way to go to reach a point where I feel I have achieved the kind of success that I can use to make the world a better place. I would love to see more of a priority placed on social and environmental factors in investing. Business can improve the world and our society. That’s something we’re helping to do at Auquan, where we’re bringing more transparency to company activities so investors can better align their investments with their personal priorities.

Also, I aim to get more involved in helping other women founders get their start and raise capital.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I want to be a part of a movement that helps drive more capital into companies that are socially responsible and good stewards of the environment — and away from companies that are damaging the environment, exploiting labor, and practicing poor governance. I reject the notion that good, responsible companies don’t deliver returns on par with irresponsible companies. In fact, they can deliver a greater ROI.

When investors have the company intelligence they need — not only financial data but also information on their global operations and the impact they have on the environment and society — they can make better decisions that align with their priorities and values. That’s a big reason why Auquan exists.

We are blessed that some very prominent names in business, VC funding, sports and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the U.S. with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

It would be amazing to have breakfast with two heroes of mine: Susan Wagner and Barbara Novick, both original founders of BlackRock. They helped launch what has become an iconic investment firm — one of the largest — in just a few decades. And they did this while maintaining a commitment to the environment and social priorities when few others did, redefining investing along the way.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.

About The Interviewer: Vanessa Morcom is a millennial mom of three and founder of Morcom Media, a performance PR shop for thought leaders. She earned her degree in journalism and worked for Canada’s largest social enterprise. She can be reached at vanessa@morcom.media