Mandana Ahmadi is the CEO and co-founder of Alena, a company harnessing computational neuroscience to decode the mental patterns that drive social anxiety.
The London-headquartered company, which is aiming to tackle the world’s mental health crisis, has created an app that analyses the mental patterns that cause people social anxiety using games that simulate real-life situations.
It then provides a personalised app-based programme of cognitive behavioural therapy to improve wellbeing. Ahmadi co-founded Alena in 2019 with Walther Doernte. It has raised $3.6m in funding.
Ahmadi has previously worked with the International Brain Laboratory and achieved her PhD in Computational Neuroscience from UCL Gatsby.
In this week’s Founder in Five Q&A, Ahmadi explains why an experienced product leader is important for early-stage startups, how people’s “preconceived notions” cause them to assume she is a housewife and not a CEO, and why inclusivity is the key part of building a diverse team....