We’re continuing our She Shapes the Future series for International Women’s Day, highlighting female founders from our member companies and sharing their journeys in building startups.
Next in the series is Natalia Rincon-Eriksson, co-founder of CHAOS.
Natalia is an architect and computer scientist whose career spans architecture, academia, politics, and leading technology teams at IBM and EDS. One theme has always guided her: cities and the people who live in them.
Architecture taught her to start with people. Computer science added logic, precision, and scalability. At CHAOS, Natalia combines both to model how people move, gather, and choose spaces, using AI to predict demand before capital is deployed.
The idea came from frustration she observed across industries. “Cities were being designed around static metrics instead of human behavior. Location isn’t a coordinate. It’s people,” Natalia says.
Becoming a founder, she explains, was not about entrepreneurship as an identity. “Sometimes you don’t set out to start a company. You set out to solve something that shouldn’t be ignored anymore.”
Building a company has reinforced another lesson: purpose matters. “I’ve learned that conviction is magnetic. Not loudness. Not performance. Conviction,” Natalia says.
Her advice to women entering tech and other industries is direct: “Stop optimizing for acceptance. Start optimizing for impact.” She encourages founders to stay true to their perspective and invest energy in mastering the problem rather than adjusting how they appear.
“Femininity, cultural background, sensitivity, ambition — these are not liabilities. They are dimensions of leadership,” she adds.
Finally, she emphasizes understanding the market and customers deeply. “Know your customer better than they know themselves. Clarity sustains you when trendiness fades. And substance is what ultimately builds trust.”
More founder stories are coming soon.