#FoundHerWorld – Lucy Yu

Lucy Yu Spent 45 Minutes Finding One Plumber. So She Built the One App That Does It All.

Five apps open. Three browser tabs. A handful of reviews you’re not sure you trust. And still no certainty about who’s actually showing up at your door.


It started with a plumber. Lucy Yu spent 45 minutes hunting across platform after platform just to book a single service, never quite confident in who she was letting into her home. But the deeper she looked, the clearer it became that the problem wasn’t plumbers. It was everything. Finding a tutor, a cleaner, a nail tech, a dog walker, a designer, a personal trainer every one of them meant a different app, a different search, the same friction. People had simply learned to tolerate it.


Lucy stopped tolerating it. A three-time founder, she’d experienced the frustration firsthand — and she realized the answer wasn’t another single-category app stacked on top of the pile. It was one place for all of it.
What she found on the provider side was just as broken. Service providers such as plumbers, cleaners, tutors, stylists, people building real livelihoods were trapped in a pay-to-play lead-generation model that charged them fees whether or not they ever got the job. The platforms profiting from both sides had optimized for transactions, not trust.


“Services were broken on both sides,” she says. “Customers are stuck juggling a dozen apps, providers paying lead fees with no guarantee of work. So we built the ultimate all-in-one AI marketplace — one app for every service, where customers feel safe, and providers join free, learn skills, post social feeds, and only pay when they actually earn.”


FairyAiO is the unified answer: a single platform serving customers, business providers, and individual providers across every category imaginable home, beauty, wellness, education, professional, and beyond delivered however you need it, whether someone comes to you, you go to them, or it happens online. It’s powered by AI that matches, predicts, and acts before users even know they need something.
Pre-launch and building two-sided liquidity across her Seattle and New York City markets, Lucy is raising her pre-seed round while finishing the MVP and building in public, sharing every lesson along the way.
The services market has long rewarded whoever could hold the most friction. Lucy Yu is betting the future belongs to whoever can remove it.


Fairy AiO is the unified answer, a single platform serving customers, business providers, and individual providers, powered by AI that matches, predicts, and acts before users even know they need something. Pre-launch and building two-sided liquidity across her Seattle and New York City markets, Yu is raising her pre-seed round while finishing the MVP and building in public, sharing every lesson along the way.
The home services market has long rewarded whoever could hold the most friction. Lucy Yu is betting the future belongs to whoever can remove it.

Learn More & Get Involved
🎬 Watch the ICONS Movie — Meet the women behind the movement. Icons by Women in Cloud
📣 Read the Campaign Launch — See how #FoundHerWorld is converting conversations into capital. Women in Cloud Launches #FoundHerWorld
✍️ Nominate a Founder — Know someone who belongs in this spotlight? Submit a Nomination

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#FoundHerWorld – Sinmi Adeoye-Esene

The Deals That Never Close: How Sinmi Adeoye-Esene Is Building the Trust Layer Global Trade Has Always Needed

Somewhere between a copper mine in Zambia and an institutional investor in London, a deal dies. Not for lack of supply. Not for lack of demand. For lack of proof.

Who is the counterparty, really? Is the origin verified? Does this transaction meet compliance standards? Can it actually close? In the world of critical minerals, energy, and commodity trade, these questions have historically been answered with phone calls, relationships, and hope. For the capital providers who need certainty before they move, that has never been enough.

Sinmi Adeoye-Esene saw this breakdown up close. As an Energy Futures Lab Fellow working across complex global trade corridors, she watched deals collapse not because the fundamentals were wrong, but because no one could verify the people, the provenance, or the readiness on either side of the table. Buyers couldn’t trust suppliers. Suppliers couldn’t prove compliance. Capital couldn’t confirm what could actually close.

“The broken system was the global trade without trust,” she says. “Critical minerals and energy deals were moving through opaque networks where capital could not verify who was real, what was compliant, or what could close. I built Daniola to make trade verifiable, bankable, and ready for institutional capital.”

Daniola is the infrastructure layer she wished had existed. Using AI-powered verification and deal intelligence, it gives every party in a complex transaction, suppliers, buyers, investors, and development finance institutions, a shared, auditable picture of readiness. The company’s proprietary CloseReady™ framework translates that verification into something institutional capital can act on.

Based in Alberta and operating across active corridors in Zambia, Nigeria, and the DRC, Adeoye-Esene is now converting that framework into repeatable, scalable products, including Africa Trace™ and the Daniola Alignment Score™, built for the volume of deals the energy transition demands.

Global trade has always run on relationships. Sinmi Adeoye-Esene is making sure it can finally run on proof.

Learn More & Get Involved
🎬 Watch the ICONS Movie — Meet the women behind the movement. Icons by Women in Cloud
📣 Read the Campaign Launch — See how #FoundHerWorld is converting conversations into capital. Women in Cloud Launches #FoundHerWorld
✍️ Nominate a Founder — Know someone who belongs in this spotlight? Submit a Nomination

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