Participated in public demo 2606 4W with Virada

The problem [00:00:13] Access to executive coaching reaches less than 1% of working professionals. Dana illustrates this through Jordan, a project manager who hits every deadline but is frustrated by an underperforming colleague and can't see a way forward, he's tried ChatGPT (generic tips that don't fit his exact situation), leadership books (good ideas that don't stick once the week gets busy), and considered hiring an executive coach, but at $300-500/hour it's priced out of reach. What they built [00:01:36] Virada is a guided conversational AI executive coach that walks users through a six-phase coaching journey (acknowledge the mess, identify hidden assumptions, reframe the problem, reverse the goal, test a thought, reflect & close), drawing from a bank of over 800 coaching questions. Rather than giving direct advice, the model mirrors the user's own language back to surface their hidden assumptions and build toward a breakthrough themselves, the interface shows users which of the six phases they're in and tracks an "Insight Index" score as their thinking evolves through the session. What happened [00:04:53] During the cohort, Dana built the full coaching interface and spent two weeks testing it, running 15 test cases daily against the system prompt (covering routing scenarios and 9 pressure tests where the user tries to get the AI to give direct advice, opinions, or validation), with 14 of 15 passing and the one gap closed before she considered it done. She also built in a dedicated pathway to route users toward professional help if the conversation surfaces mental health concerns, and hardened the system prompt against giving direct advice or opinions given how high-stakes and emotionally sensitive coaching conversations are. The ask [00:06:34] Dana is joining the next cohort to build out a user dashboard for Virada and begin formal user testing on the coaching process itself; she's inviting people to try the app or connect with her on LinkedIn.