Ideation Lead · Home Base

Welcome, Fiona.

This is your home base for leading Daya's Ideation stage — where we start with people, not products, and turn unmet needs in women's health into validated, fundable ventures. Everything you need to run the work lives here.

Role: Ideation Lead (50%) Started 13 Jul 2026 Reports to Malin / Studio Leadership External · based in France

Right now

Your work is event-gated, not on a calendar.
Phase A · live — Drive the AMY venture through the ideation / venture-creation hybrid.
↓ pivots when the gate clears
Gate — Pathem & Neblina clear Venture Creation → Acceleration.
↓ then
Phase B · queued — Occupational Health ideation sprint.
"Are we solving a real problem for real people, in a way that is fundable, ethical, and scalable?"

Start here — your onboarding

Everything for your first days lives in Drive. Open your onboarding folder first.

💜

Your home base for leading Daya's Ideation stage. A few tools are being updated over the summer — those are flagged. The BUILD Playbook is the source of truth for how we work.

I'm always here whenever you need me

Never be afraid to book a call or ping me on Slack — a Go/No-Go gut-check, a thesis question, an intro, or just to think out loud. That's exactly what I'm here for. 💜 — Malin

Daya builds ventures through one gated system: BUILD.
Ideation → Venture Creation → Acceleration
01

Ideation

~2 months · your stage

Experience-based design to uncover and validate real problems, then decide — with evidence — whether an idea is worth building. Ends in a binary Go / No-Go.

You own this
02

Venture Creation

~6 months · co-building

A committed venture lead co-builds with Daya toward an investable company. This stage is currently the studio's bottleneck.

Backed up right now
03

Acceleration

cohort program

Ventures that clear Venture Creation join the accelerator cohort with category partners, funding, and go-to-market support.

Your focus right now

Phase A → gate → Phase B

Your assignment doesn't follow the BUILD Playbook's clean two-month ideation stage — and that's deliberate. You're carrying one live venture (AMY) as a hybrid until the Venture Creation logjam clears. Method and mindset still come from the BUILD Playbook — the single source of truth; scope comes from below.

Phase A · live

Build AMY's Venture Case ideation / VC hybrid

  • AMY is selected — the job now is to make it real.
  • Narrow the scope to one indication and find the buyer.
  • Draft the Venture Case that carries it into Venture Creation.
The gate · your pivot signal

Pathem & Neblina clear VC → Acceleration

  • Not your work — the event you're watching for.
  • Both are still in Venture Creation, holding the stage open.
  • When both clear, the bottleneck eases and you pivot.
Phase B · queued

Occupational Health next ideation sprint

  • Hand off / wind down the AMY hybrid work.
  • Run a full, clean ideation sprint the way the Playbook intends.
  • Queued next — not scheduled to a date.

AMY — the venture on your plate

Phase A

What AMY is

Out of the Autoimmune Innovation Challenge · founder Amy FitzPatrick · top pick of 6

A precision endocrine–immune diagnostic platform — combining immune/inflammatory markers, endocrine & estrogen-metabolite profiling, genetics and ML to identify which autoimmune patients have hormonally-driven disease. A candidate first indication (Thyroid Eye Disease) is on the table — but the indication is exactly what still needs locking.

Your job now: build the Venture Case

Two things at once — the document, and the thinking behind it
  • Narrow the scope. Lock a single indication — diagnostics-only — so AMY is buildable and fundable, not a science project. (The panel flagged lupus as a credible starting point.)
  • Find the buyer. Secure the external commitment that actually counts — who pays for the test, and an LOI to prove it. Validation from outside, not internal conviction.
  • Draft & compile the Venture Case. The document that carries AMY into full Venture Creation: locked scope, named buyer signal, venture lead attached, thesis & ethics fit, why now.
In parallel: IP/legal structuring (TED licence, Erasmus MC chain-of-title, biobank data) and the co-founder/COO search (led by Jennifer Grönqvist). ⏰ Nearest dated task: IP due-diligence sync with Sophia — due 16 Jul.

Your pivot signal

watch · not your work

You are not working on Pathem or Neblina. They matter to you for one reason only: they're occupying the Venture Creation stage, which is why AMY landed with you as a hybrid. When both clear into Acceleration, the stage frees up and you shift to Phase B. As of mid-July, neither has cleared — so treat Phase A as your reality.

Your toolkit

how you run both AMY and the next sprint

Your standing instruments — these travel with you across every sprint. A few are mid-refresh this summer.

How the role runs

mindset + kill discipline

What makes this role work

1

A kill is a win

The job is to de-risk a ~€200K investment decision in ~60 days. Finding out early that something won't fly protects the programme and keeps the backlog honest.

2

Validation comes from outside

Internal enthusiasm, a great workshop, a compelling deck — none of it counts. The only signal that matters is someone external committing time, money, or reputation (an LOI/MOU).

3

Lead people toward an outcome

You run a team — Fellows, the BUILD group, external contributors. The work flows through them, not through you: clear tasks, clear owners, clear deadlines.

4

Move before you're ready

A 60-day sprint, not a research project. Testing a rough hypothesis beats perfecting it. The faster you find out you're wrong, the faster you find something real.

5

Bring your network into the room

Validation needs access to the right clinicians, buyers, payers, experts. You start warm — a call booked in days, not weeks.

Kill criteria — end-of-ideation Go / No-Go

A venture is killed if any of these is true:

  • No supporting evidence for the proposed solution.
  • Market too small, irrelevant, or saturated.
  • Fails Daya's FemTech Impact Scorecard (ethics).
  • No LOI/MOU secured from at least one external partner.
  • Outside of Daya's thesis.
  • No clear FTO or IP path.

Go → Venture Creation. No-Go → the Idea Backlog, archived with learnings.

Your guiding question
"Are we solving a real problem for real people, in a way that is fundable, ethical, and scalable?"

Meetings & rhythm

Europe/Stockholm
How we work — channels

Internal comms → Slack

Day-to-day coordination, quick updates, decisions in the open. Your default channel inside Daya.

External comms → Email & LinkedIn

Clinicians, partners, buyers, candidates — anyone outside Daya. Bring your network in here.

Docs & storage → Google Drive

All documentation and files live here — dossiers, memos, and the AMY Venture Case.

Your standing meetings

Two studio rituals you join, and one you own. Times below are the standing slots — confirm the exact invite lands on your calendar in week one.

MeetingWhenWhat it is & your partFor you
Start of the Week Mondays · 12:00 Whole-studio kickoff for the week ahead.

Show up, align, flag where you need help on AMY.

Join
BUILD — Weekly Studio Sync Tuesdays · 15:00 The studio sync, mainly focused on the Venture Creation stage. Accelerator and Ideation leads drop in to give quick updates.

Give a short AMY / ideation update; listen for pipeline movement (your pivot signal).

Join · quick update
Weekly Ideation Meeting You set the slot Yours to run. Invite everyone the BUILD Playbook attaches to Ideation: Fellows Claudia Leitch & Julia Karnysh, plus support leads Jenny Lundkvist (People), Victorine Lancon (Comms), Ute Arndt (Product) and Sophia Pagil (IP).

Set sprint goals, tasks, and owners; review evidence; make the calls.

You run this

People

who you work with

Fiona ThwaitesYou

Ideation Lead (50%) · external

Your own coordinates — for your email signature and booking link.

fiona@fionathwaites.com
calendly.com/fionathwaites
LinkedIn · WhatsApp

Malin Frithiofsson

Co-founder & CEO · your report line

Go/No-Go sounding board, thesis check, introductions. Also the lead on AMY today. Reach her on Slack, or book a call.

malin@daya.se
Slack · Book a call ↗
Your ideation-stage team — per the BUILD Playbook

Your standing invite list for the weekly ideation meeting: the Fellows, plus the support leads the Playbook attaches to Ideation.

Innovation Fellows

Pro-bono · your core team

Claudia Leitch & Julia Karnysh. Run research, synthesis and outreach; act as early workstream leads; candidates for future venture roles. (They authored the autoimmune finalist analysis.)

claudia@daya.se · julia@daya.se

Jenny Lundkvist

People Lead · supports Ideation

Identifies, assesses and pressure-tests potential venture leads; evaluates founder-potential among workshop participants.

jenny@daya.se

Victorine Lancon

Communications Lead · supports Ideation

Shapes public and targeted communication around the chosen problem area; runs public calls and campaigns for ideation workshops.

victorine@daya.se · Slack

Ute Arndt

Product Lead · supports Ideation

Brings product and feasibility perspective during Ideation; assists partner and customer outreach.

ute@daya.se · Slack

Sophia Pagil

IP Lead · supports Ideation

Performs FTO checks for the Ideation Lead and co-creates the IP & Feasibility note. Your 16 Jul AMY IP sync partner.

sophia@daya.se · Slack

The wider Daya team — for reference

Not all in your stage, but good to have the names. Roles below are from the BUILD Playbook and team profiles.

Malin Frithiofsson

Co-founder & CEO · Fundraising & Capital
malin@daya.se

Jenny Lundkvist

Co-founder & CPO · Head of People
jenny@daya.se

Jennifer Grönqvist

Head of Hub Expansion
jennifer@daya.se

Victorine Lancon

CCO · Communications Lead
victorine@daya.se

Ute Arndt

Product Lead
ute@daya.se

Josefine Hovmark

Tech Lead
josefine@daya.se

Sophia Pagil

IP & Defensibility Lead
sophia@daya.se

Jonas Erlandsson

Legal & Governance Lead
jonas@daya.se

Claudia Leitch

Innovation Fellow
claudia@daya.se

Julia Karnysh

Innovation Fellow
julia@daya.se

Emma

Daya team
emma@daya.se

Next sprint — queued

Phase B

When you get here, start with

  • Pull candidate framings from the Idea Backlog (unexplored ideas).
  • Check them against the Verticals Heatmap and thesis.
  • Stand up Fellows + a stakeholder map in week one (your SLAM approach).
  • Time-box to ~60 days; aim for 1–2 validated concepts with an external LOI.
We don't fall in love with ideas. We fall in love with evidence.