The 55-year-old first-time AI founder

^{A week in AI is like a year in other industries. I hope these issues become your weekly source of AI information, inspiration, and ideas. If we haven’t met before, I’m Amanda Smith. I write about AI and the fascinating folks who are building in this brave new world.}

Good morning. This week’s issue is not your standard founder story. At 55, she took out money from her retirement to fund the first prototype of her idea. 

She told me this is her “third act” – and many women her age are in their third, fourth or fifth act, after building their careers in male-dominated environments. 

Although she might not be attractive to traditional investors, she said she doesn’t need to be. This story will show you that ambition is ageless. 

She’s hustling 15-18-hour days in her “golden years.” And she loves it.

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Founded: February 2025 

Team size: 2-4 

Funding to date: Bootstrapped 

ARR: Still in beta 

Growth metric: Showing their prototype at MIT and getting accepted into the Google Cloud Startup Program.

Eugina Jordan had a 25-year career in telecom, where she spearheaded new categories, scaled companies, and earned 24 patents. While at the height of her career she was a CMO for a global wireless company that was acquired by Cisco, she had the start-up itch. 

Jordan moved from start-up to start-up in the telecom and non-profit spaces, but never really sat in the CEO seat. Until now, at 55 years old. 

The idea came to her during her time in telecom. She noticed the disconnection between telecom support, customer support, and network operations. “Sometimes networks would go down and the support organization within the same mobile operator wouldn’t know what’s going on. 

Jordan started talking to her professional network and realized that the problem wasn’t just isolated to telecom. “If you look at healthcare or finance, for example, there’s a lot of disconnected third party tools.” While within the industry, she created a new market category called Open RAN. She explained it’s all very technical, but she’s trying to solve this disconnection in other industries with YOUnifiedAI. 

YOUnifiedAI is an AI-native ERP that connects the disconnected tools and data SMBs rely on. Instead of business owners juggling dozens of disconnected tools, her solution provides real-time insights, automation, and clarity, all in one place. No integrations needed. 

She’s calling it the AI-native business engine. 

Jordan is self-funding the whole endeavor through her retirement. Her son (who is a computer science student) and his friends helped her build the prototype and her husband was the first beta user. “He was very hard but I’m grateful, because we’ve improved the interface and simplified the technology. We iterated and presented a second option and he loved it.” 

She learned during her telecom days how valuable interns are to test out ideas. Her founding engineer is a former colleague who she worked with for 10 years. They just hired their first software developer and are in the process of bringing in a growth marketer. 

She has assembled a number of advisors who she trusts from her years in telecom. YOUnifiedAI was accepted into the Google Cloud Startup Program, which provides cloud credits and service discounts to early-stage companies. 

Hyperscalers like Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services all run similar programs. Startups apply, are reviewed, and if approved, receive credits in tiers based on company stage, traction, and use case. “For us, participation means we use Google Cloud infrastructure as part of our stack, with credits that help offset compute and tooling costs during the build phase. 

Her company also had the chance to showcase their MVP at an MIT event, Imagination in Action. They were selected to pitch and demo the prototype, gather feedback and engage with an audience focused on emerging tech. 

Jordan is launching the commercial product in April 2026 at Startup Grind in Silicon Valley. 

Jordan said they have two types of target customers: 

“We’re also targeting functional departments in larger corporations who have disconnected tools. They have their own digital asset management, campaign tools and more, and it’s all disconnected,” she said. 

In terms of marketing, Jordan plans to lead with her founder brand, as well as use traditional marketing channels such as demos, a freemium-to- -premium model, PR/media when the time is right, and future events. 

If they move into regulated industries like healthcare and finance, Jordan will attend those industry events. 

The monetization plan is a subscription model based on how many apps a user connects to the platform. For SMBs and enterprises, there will be a starter package and a professional package. 

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