2 months of invisible work.
For 1 day of visible magic.
@tedxlosaltos was never meant to be a perfectly polished show. For me it was a love ❤️ letter.
A tiny team lived and breathed this event.
Late-night calls. Rehearsals. Stage aesthetics. Sensory details. Gifts for every guest. Tiny touches you may never notice consciously, but you feel.
None of us were doing this for profit. There was no “business case” strong enough to justify the hours.
The only equation that made sense was this:
If it’s not built on love, it’s not worth building at all.
Love for the team – the people who carried this with me when it was just a notion doc and a wild idea. The ones who fixed things quietly, who held the stress so others could feel only magic. The visible roles and the invisible ones.
Love for our speakers – nine women, each with her own history, her own scars, her own way of taking the mic.
Love for our partners & supporters who chose to invest in something you can’t always measure in ROI, but something that has so much impact. Thank you 🙏🏼@flowwow@_bogdansl@tanya_eves@feed_my_unicorn@lubapa@lena_leskina@ksemetric@mikeshina
And love for everyone who came, posted, DMed, sent long messages, or just sat in the audience with tears or laughter .
The theme of the day was The Power of the Woman’s Voice.
But here is what I believe after living this journey:
Voice without love becomes noise.
Love without voice becomes silence.
We need both.
Thank you for proving that:
Events like this are built on love.
And without love, there is no point in even starting.
Photo by @wow.nelen@nastin.kai@kholina
Makeup @katya.rich.makeup
I am Marina, co-founder of DVC, investor in AI dreams, proud mom of Sonya and Lev, visionary arranger by Cliffton and part-time wrangler of 2 cats 🐱🐱 and one very opinionated dog 🐶.
Started DVC with my husband @ndavidov , now grown to include three more brilliant partners, and together we’re on a mission to back bold AI applications (and occasionally troubleshoot the human drama that comes with them).
If you know me, you know I can’t help turning everything I touch into a community. Besides our fund, I somehow run two book clubs: @club_overbooked with @nigmatulina and @sci_no_fi_club with @_yamayka_ . And there might be more coming.
Life in the Silicon Valley = chaotic family vibes, startups and job openings, gatherings and books.
What else I forgot to mention?
Набор на 5️⃣ (юбилейный 🥳 сезон клуба OVERBOOKED 📚)!
Каждый сезон в мае мы даем шанс 4 новым участницам вступить в наш книжный клуб Overbooked на один сезон 😍📚
Наш клуб закрыт. Но нам нравится общаться и знакомиться с новыми людьми, поэтому мы придумали места для новых участниц на один сезон.
Если вы хотите читать с нами в 2026 - 2027 году! Мы вас ждём ❤️
Тема нашего 5️⃣ сезона «АНТИБИБЛИОТЕКА» 📚, где мы будем читать книги, которые давно хотим прочитать, но всё никак не доходят руки.
📚 Важно! Чтение книг, посещение встреч и участие в подготовке обязательно для всех. Оценивайте свои силы и время. Каждая участница в паре с другой готовит одну встречу сезона (все подробности обязательно расскажем).
📚 Участие в клубе бесплатное. Встречи проходят в первую субботу месяца 18:00 - 20:00 (по Москве) с сентября по май.
📚 Места предоставляются на один сезон.
📚 Что нужно сделать? Написать под этим постом про себя и почему вы хотите принять участие в нашем клубе.
❗️Важно: заявки в личных сообщениях не принимаются.
📚 Заявки принимаются до 1 июля 2026 года. Выбирают новых участниц основательницы клуба Марина Давыдова и Нигматулина Екатерина максимально субъективно 🌿 но с большой любовью. Нам важно сохранить уникальную атмосферу в клубе.
С нетерпением ждем ваши заявки ❤️
This special week at @ted is coming to an end, and I’m still processing everything: so many ideas, conversations, and moments both on and off the stage. Feeling deeply inspired (and honestly, a little overwhelmed in the best way).
TED really is like Disneyland for curious minds, adult nerds, where you want to be fully present every second. And that’s such a rare feeling these days.
Grateful to have shared this experience with friends, discussing what truly matters and enjoying every part of it together.
As a @tedxlosaltos organizer, I was especially moved by the incredible attention to detail: beautifully crafted spaces, thoughtful installations and exhibits, and exceptional food and drinks.
A special moment for me: being approached by the global TEDx community team, curious about who organized a TEDx event with a 100% audience satisfaction score. So proud of our team @tedxlosaltos ❤️
As @georgeciveris said it perfectly during his talk: TED brings together people solving the world’s biggest problems and those creating them.
Already looking forward to TED 2027 in San Diego.
What’s next in AI? DVC is bringing together the people shaping its future at AI Rabbit Hole 🐇
A one-day, invite-only gathering for the people building, investing in, and researching AI — to zoom out, compare notes, challenge narratives, and go deep on what actually matters in AI right now.
The lineup is already shaping up to be insane, with founders of top AI startups, researchers from leading labs, executives from key infrastructure players, and some of the most successful investors joining the room. More soon. ⚡
📅 June 5
📍 San Francisco
Save the date and apply to join — link in bio
#AI #startups #venturecapital #VC #AIRabbitHole SanFrancisco
Чтобы представить вам нашу гостью сегодня не хватит целого подкаста 🥹❤️ Поэтому скажем просто - сегодня у нас в гостях волшебная 🪄 Марина Давыдова, которую мы очень сильно любим 💞 и которой так восхищаемся.
Если вам не хватает света, мудрости и любви, слушайте нас немедленно! Ну, и смеяться, весь выпуск смеяться, а говорить о главном!
Любовь и Марина Давыдова @msdavidova ❤️
Two years ago we started Sci_NO_Fi Book Club with a simple idea:
💡bring curious people together to read, think, and talk about ideas that matter.
This weekend, on International Women’s Day, we celebrated our 2-year anniversary with around 30 thoughtful, brilliant women discussing “Come As You Are” by Emily Nagoski.
What we experienced was more than a book discussion — it was authenticity, kindness, openness, and the kind of connection that only happens when people feel safe to share.
Thank you to everyone who made this gathering so special 🩷
And thank you to @lele.cafe.ca for the delicious food, the beautiful cake, and the warm hospitality.
Here’s to many more years of reading, thinking, and discussing together 📚✨
February was a beautiful blur. From quiet moments to big feelings, here are some of the little snapshots that made it special. Grateful for the people, places, and magic in between.
These past months felt like a long conversation with life itself, full of gentle reminders, a few hard truths, and unexpected gratitude. I kept catching myself smiling after encounters, realizing that whatever “strength” I’ve had lately often wears the face of the people around me.
my TEDx talk from London is out @tedxwoodlane_women .
It’s about loneliness in the startup world… but it’s also about that quieter kind of loneliness many of us carry even when life looks full: when you’re surrounded by people, but still feel like you have to perform. When you’re “fine,” but not really.
These months reminded me it’s not just luck. It’s a choice.
We become the echoes of our tribe - mirrors of those we let close. And when we choose each other (again and again), something shifts: the world gets a little lighter. The mask comes off. Connection comes back.
If you’ve been feeling lonely lately, even quietly, even “successfully”, I hope this TEDx talk feels like a hand on your shoulder. A reminder that you’re not broken. You’re human. And you’re not the only one.
The video is in my bio. And if it resonates, please share it with someone who might need it, or just leave your comment.
Because the most valuable thing we build isn’t a unicorn company. It’s a tribe where no one has to walk alone in the dark.
And thank you for being my tribe. ❤️
I love every corner of our home, not for how it looks, but for the way it feels.
The living room, still humming with laughter and late-night conversations.
The kitchen, always in motion, where everyone tries to be the chef at once.
The library, quietly holding both read and unread stories… and the occasional board-game showdown full of dramatic feuds and hard-won truces.
And my office - my sacred space. The blue sofa that remembers deep talks, the Highlands of Scotland stretched across the walls, Athena watching patiently from the shelf.
The other day, @juliasedova_julia and I were talking about how important it is to have a place that holds you with care.
Maybe the truest one is the space we build within ourselves.
And the second-best kind — is the one we gently build around us, the one we’re lucky enough to call home.
Moments captured last summer by @nina.fetch
I love biographies and memoirs, and this season in @club_overbooked with my dear @nigmatulina we called “Life as a Book.” Through other people’s stories you can live through experiences and contexts you would never encounter on your own, and this is what develops empathy, such a scarce skill in a world of constant conflicts and polarised positions.
Memoirs, however, have a built‑in limitation: no matter how hard an author tries to be objective, it is still their version of reality, truthful only to the extent that they are ready for honesty at the moment of writing. In Azar Nafisi’s “Reading Lolita in Tehran” the book creates a powerful emotional image of an underground women’s book club and life in the Islamic Republic, yet it inevitably simplifies a complex political context and leaves some questions off the page.
And this is where the reader comes to the forefront. I’m more and more convinced that the main subject of any story is not the author but the one who reads it, we bring our own experience, doubts, and pain into the text, filling in what is left unsaid. That’s why books discussions are so valuable, same stories provokes opposite reactions and in these clashes of perspectives a volume appears that the book alone cannot provide.
By a random twist of circumstances, this book ended up on our list right now, and it turned out to be incredibly timely: it gave us a lot of food for thought and made us look differently at freedom, responsibility, and the power of stories. The main character is a professor of English literature, the plot constantly runs in parallel with the discussion of classic novels (caution!: you suddenly want to read or reread half of the English canon).
Over the years of our club we have noticed a pattern: the lowest‑rated books often become the reason for the most honest and profound conversations, the ones you remember the longest. That is why I love our club so much and keep inviting everyone to read and discuss literature, beloved and controversial, strong and “failed.” Let’s read and discuss!
