Our vision is to ensure that no female athlete is ever under-fueled again - Samia Suys, Nana

Samia Suys is the Co-founder of Nana, the first AI-powered performance nutrition platform built exclusively for the female endurance athlete. Her co-founder, Amely Mondy - now both endurance athletes - and she met 20 years ago, and they started running together. Over time, their training and the challenges they started to see gave them the idea for Nana.

“I met Amely when we were still inexplicably young (now we are just young) and before we even remotely considered going out for a 2-hour run as “fun”. We started doing (Olympic distance) triathlon 10 years ago to shake off our couch potato vibes and “accidentally” became addicted to endurance sports. An Olympic triathlon became a half marathon, became a 70.3 triathlon, became a marathon, etc. etc. 

As the years went by, we started noticing how our bodies changed. What worked in our twenties didn’t work in our thirties anymore. Injuries started piling up, recovery got harder, and we wondered, “Is this it then?”

We were doing a fun run a few years ago, and we ran behind an elderly couple in their eighties. We are by no means fast, but we could barely keep up with them. We looked at each other and said: “That’s what we want!!” We want to still be doing this when we’re all wrinkly. But we knew something would have to change. We would have to get to know our bodies better and give them a bit more love. 

That’s how the idea for Nana was born.”

The app, Samia emphasizes, is very female-specific. It’s built around the female athlete and it is developed based on the insights gathered from a broad range of women in different hormonal realities. Nana provides them with a series of features, from which the main one is nutrition planning - and which gave them their “Fuel like a girl” strong messaging.

“By using Nana, female athletes can understand how much food (and which food) they need to fuel properly for the hours of training they are clocking. Lots (if not most) female athletes vastly underestimate just how much food they need to keep doing sports in a sustainable way. 

Apart from that, Nana: 

• Tracks athletes’ cycle 

• Gathers daily check-ins: athletes let Nana know how they feel daily (how did you sleep, what’s your mood like, your energy, etc.). This input helps us build an individual profile for each athlete and understand how their hormones and lifestyle affect them. This, in turn helps us hyper-personalise the nutrition plan 

• Gives personalised performance insights. Based on training data, biometrics, and daily check-ins, we help female athletes make sense of their bodies and give it what they need.”

Their big vision is, as Samia puts it, to “ensure that no female athlete is ever under-fueled again. 

Our first focus point is on athletes who train at least 5 hours per week. 

This is a niche, but an important starting point, since these athletes are already highly engaged in training, performance, and nutrition. This, in turn, will help us learn and improve the algorithm in ways we don’t even consider yet. But in the long run, we want to be there for every woman who does sports. Whether she’s training for her first 5K or planning her 10th full-distance triathlon. “

Samia’s background in Product positively influenced the development of Nana, in the sense that they tried “not to over-scope the first release of the app, and in making sure it stands out in at least 1 way, even if it’s in how we write the in-app copy.” 

It’s hard, when it comes to your own product, she adds, “but knowing what happens when you don’t compromise on either scope or time has really helped make sure we didn’t get stuck in details that won’t make a difference in the long run. 

There’s a lot of (pardon my French) AI crap out there. Products that claim to make a certain thing 10 times more efficient or 20 times faster…I believe that SaaS platforms can win by: 

• First and foremost: solving actual problems. If not, don’t even start

• Being authentic and even quirky. I’m a big fan of quirk. Yes, we are trying to help people fuel and perform better. But if we can make people smile while doing so, I believe that makes a huge difference 

• Overpromising and underdelivering makes you lose clients very quickly. It is something I struggle with and is a hard balance to strike. On the one hand, you have to sell on your vision, especially when you're at an early stage, but at the same time, you have to make sure to at least deliver parts of that vision. 

I have extremely mixed feelings about AI. It can (and it does) make boring things more efficient and faster. On the other hand, I see a lot of AI slop. I love things that are “real”. Copy written by a real person. Code that was reviewed by a real person. I believe in leveraging AI, but only where it truly makes sense. The best ideas still come from the human brain.”

Nana has recently raised investment from an impact-focused VC, Impact Shakers. The funding journey was very different - and more difficult - from what she had experienced in the B2B SaaS companies she has worked with.

“Being a B2C, female-founded, female-specific product, pre-revenue…Is not something that has investors lining up to throw money at. It definitely felt like we had to “prove” ourselves more than if we had been a male-founded B2B SaaS, but Impact Shakers has been an early believer from day 1, which has helped open some doors for sure. 

We are using the investment to showcase initial traction and to set us up for continued growth.”

Early believers are one of the things that helped them the most on their journey until now, she comments. Having people “who understand and support what we are trying to do and know in their core why we are doing it” is critical, and it’s important to keep them close and listen to their feedback. “We need to help impact startups find these early believers. Networks, groups, newsletters…Knowing that they’re not alone in fighting the odds.”

Besides having the right people on your side, Samia adds, what also helped her on this new journey - where imposter syndrome and uncertainty are never unfamiliar, especially in the type of business and sector they’re building in - was: 

“Talking to your co-founder, a lot - they are the only one(s) who know what you are going through, and embracing that what you are doing is really scary but at least you’re trying.” Last but not least, “haters are always gonna be there, but focus on your hype people instead.”

What keeps her motivated? Samia says that while she is an introvert, she gets psyched when she meets new people who get excited when she tells them what we’re building. “So much is going on in women’s sports right now; it’s ELECTRIC. Being part of that and meeting all these powerful women who want to defy the odds really lights my fire.” 

Thank you, Samia Suys!