Portrait No. 001
Christy Shannon
Co-Founder & CMO
Ollie AI
Raised — $7.6M Seed
Ollie is the AI assistant built to tackle the mental load — designed for the woman who carries it all. I know this so well because I am that woman. After my fourth baby was born, I took a career pause, and when I started to re-enter the workforce, the weight of managing it all became overwhelming. It became undeniably real one morning when I dropped my girls off at preschool and realized I'd forgotten to bring snack for the class. I rushed to the grocery store with my youngest in tow — and ran a red light, crashing into another car. I walked away with a broken wrist. My baby was fine. But that moment lit a fire in me: this mental load is unsustainable, invisible, and nobody was building a real solution for it. So I decided to.
In her words
“You don't have to do it all, all alone.”
Chapter I
The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.
Building in a brand-new category is brutally hard. We're not just launching a product — we're educating consumers on an intangible problem (the mental load) while simultaneously proving venture-scale economics. Every dollar spent is a bet on whether people will get it before the runway runs out. And we nearly didn't make it. The fear of running out of money while knowing you have something real — that's a specific kind of torture. You're watching a product deliver genuine value to families while scrambling to make the business math work. That tension doesn't go away; you just get better at carrying it. As a woman and a mother building this, I'm also literally living the problem I'm solving — which is a superpower and an irony. I'm managing the mental load of a family while building the company designed to fix it. But we kept going. 200,000+ users found gifts through our platform. 100,000+ installed our meals app. And in January 2026, we launched Ollie — our agentic AI assistant for families. We're still in beta, still finding PMF, still grinding. But we're here, we're funded, and we're not done.
Chapter II
Your vision.
We are obsessed with solving the mental load — the unseen, never-ending ticker tape running through your head. Did I go to the grocery store? Who's picking up the kids? What do I have tomorrow? Did I send that email? Statistically, this falls on one person: the mom. She also directs 98% of household consumption. She is powerful, underserved, and exhausted. AI can change that. Not by making her more productive — but by giving her back her bandwidth. To be more present. To pursue her ambitions. To just breathe. When we win, the mental load is no longer a woman's burden to carry alone. Ollie carries it with her.
Chapter III
The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.
I want technology to be used for good. That sounds simple, but I think about it every day. We're building at a moment when AI could go either way: pull us further from each other, or quietly take on the background noise so we can be more present for the people we love. I'm betting on the second. Ollie is built on the belief that the best technology frees you from your phone, not chains you to it. Thirty years from now, I want to have played a small part in making that the norm.