How to Use AI to Understand the World and Get Ahead with GNOMI Founder Eva Cicinyte

Traditional News Formats Fail Modern Needs, Designed For Scarcity, Not Today's Infinite Information

Eva Cicinyte argues that the public’s loss of trust in the news stems not from disinterest, but from the outdated nature of traditional formats. "Traditional news was very much created for limited information," she notes, a model which falters in today’s reality of infinite content. Nicole Lapin adds that news sources now flood us through feeds and platforms like Apple News, making it nearly impossible to discern origin or credibility—“they all are on the same playing field,” creating confusion.

This endless news stream leads to information overload, making it difficult for people to contextualize and understand what’s genuinely relevant to them or how global events actually impact their lives. Cicinyte, referencing her Lithuanian background, points out how US coverage of European events, such as Russian aggression in Lithuania, is often disconnected from on-the-ground realities. Both cultural and language barriers compound the challenge of finding news content that is accurate and meaningful for individuals.

Nomi Solves the Information Crisis With Personalized News Through an Intelligence Layer, Focusing On Individual Context, Values, and Interests

To solve these challenges, Cicinyte introduces Nomi, an AI-powered news platform designed to deliver real-time, contextual information without clickbait or doomscrolling. Nomi’s core feature is an intelligence layer that analyzes the entire ecosystem of information, personalizing content delivery to each user’s context, values, and interests. Rather than eliminating information, Nomi aims to provide the right information at the right time in the right format for each individual.

Nomi employs sentiment analysis and large language models to move beyond fragmented social media narratives. The intelligence layer validates news, clarifies complex topics, and addresses the challenge of distinguishing signal from noise. Cicinyte highlights that this agent doesn't intend to replace journalism but to help people consume more relevant news, surfacing journalists and podcasts users might never discover otherwise.

A key innovation within Nomi is "finance mode," a dashboard synthesizing real-time data such as earnings calls, KPIs, and sentiment from official transcripts, providing a user-adaptive market intelligence tool. Users can pose personalized questions and receive nuanced, context-based responses, allowing them to interpret market signals beyond traditional static feeds.

Reliable Verified Info Boosts Decision Confidence

Cicinyte emphasizes that reliable, verified information increases user confidence. With Nomi, users can verify facts before sharing or forming opinions, avoiding misinformation—a function especially valued by the vocal and information-savvy Gen Z audience. Verification tools empower users to feel in control and informed, not misled or embarrassed by falsehoods.

The platform’s adaptive fear and greed index uses market data and global sentiment for a richer, dynamic view than traditional metrics like the VIX, which often miss the "vibe session"—the public’s emotional reactions. As sentiment fluctuates, so does the index, tracking both market data and prevailing moods, offering tailored financial analysis to users at every level, from novices to experienced investors.

Personalization is central: the platform aims not only to serve professionals but also to adapt complexity and presentation to match each user’s financial literacy, ensuring everyone receives essential information in an accessible way.

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AI Startups Need Adaptive Infrastructure and Capabilities

Eva Cicinyte emphasizes the necessity for AI startups to prioritize a flexible and robust technological foundation from the outset. She explains that her team built a computational cloud with machine learning capabilities before the major jump in generative AI, such as the release of ChatGPT. This foundational approach ensured their infrastructure could withstand changes, support pivoting, and easily integrate new tools without requiring a full system rebuild. This strategy allowed for rapid adoption of multiple language models and swift ability to leverage emerging technologies, such as generative AI tools, speeding up both development and scalability. By building atop a stable, adaptable base, their company seamlessly incorporated and powered new tools directly into their systems as the market evolved.

Vibe Tools Let Founders Test Market Fit and Gather Feedback In 24 Hours, Enabling Faster Iteration and Efficiency

Cicinyte notes that traditional prototyping could take two to three months, but with the advent of low-code and so-called "vibe coding" tools, founders can now build and test a prototype in just 24 hours. These rapid-prototyping tools make it possible to quickly assess customer resonance and test if a product or product category will "stick" with minimal investment. This dramatically reduces costs and resource expenditure on ideas that are not viable, allowing startups to discard failed concepts almost as soon as they are tested. According to Cicinyte, this speed and efficiency are essential in an industry moving "like a tsunami," ensuring that only market-fit ideas receive sustained investment.

Strategic Patenting Protects Core IP and Unique Formulas, Offering Startups a Competitive Edge Over Patenting Entire Products

Cicinyte highlights that it is neither practical nor useful to patent an entire product in the fast-evolving tech landscape—products can become obsolete before the multi-year patent process completes, making broad patents a wasteful use of resources. Instead, she advocates for strategically patenting the core 30% of a company’s proprietary technology—its intelligence layer or unique formula. This approach effectively and cost-efficiently safeguards the innovations that create real competitive advantage. However, she notes that proper patent filing is expensive and complex, typically requiring specialized legal expertise to ensure the intellectual property is properly articulated and protected. Legal costs can reach tens of thousands of dollars, and s ...

Women in Startups Pressured to Downplay Diverse Skills As Tech Favors Specialization Over Adaptability

Eva Cicinyte highlights how women founders with non-traditional backgrounds often experience pressure to minimize their diverse experiences because the tech industry prizes deep specialization over adaptability. Eva’s background spans entertainment, political data analytics, and immigration from a post-Soviet country to North America—none of which align with the conventional Silicon Valley pedigree. Working in political data, she saw firsthand both the power and potential harm of tailored messaging. Despite her achievements, Eva felt compelled to condense her multifaceted journey into a “box or a one-liner” for the sake of fitting industry expectations, going so far as to avoid discussing her confidential political work and to feel invisible at times.

Eva’s realization after becoming a mother was pivotal. She decided she no longer wanted to hide the parts of herself that made her unique or to set the example for her daughter that she should diminish her identity. Instead, Eva recognized that her range and capacity to pivot—skills honed through her varied background—are exactly what drive her success in startup environments. She emphasizes that ignoring women’s diverse backgrounds drastically limits their impact, as thriving in early-stage companies relies heavily on adaptability and the ability to bring a range of perspectives to fast-changing problems.

Assumptions and Biases Affect Female Founders' Capabilities in Male-Dominated Spaces

Female founders must also navigate assumptions and persistent biases about their capabilities, especially around personal circumstances like pregnancy. Eva prohibited her CTO from revealing her pregnancy to the team out of fear that skilled engineers would lose confidence in her ability to lead while becoming a mother—concerned they would see her as taking on an impossible task. She eventually disclosed her situation only after giving birth, having worked through labor and returning to work within 48 hours despite dealing with medical complications.

Both Eva and Nicole Lapin point out that startup culture often places immense pressure on women to continue working through even the most life-altering events, such as childbirth. Lapin recalls an article written during COVID, noting that more women received promotions simply because pregnancies were not visible via remote work—highlighting how the reality of pregnancy still negatively affects promotions and raises. The expectation that women founders will suppress personal needs and meet impossible standards persists, and women often feel driven to prove they can endure and excel at both motherhood and entrepreneurship, even at great personal cost. This double standard means women entrepreneurs are evaluated differently than their male counterparts and remains a significant barrier to fema ...

The advent of artificial intelligence and data-driven platforms is revolutionizing how individuals acquire, contextualize, and act upon financial information. Experts like Eva Cicinyte and Nicole Lapin emphasize the growing importance of not just accessing data, but also interpreting and applying it responsibly to make effective decisions.

Wealth Accumulation Favors Those Who Contextualize Information Over Those With Mere Access

Eva Cicinyte argues that possessing tools to contextualize information is becoming more valuable than simply having access to information. It's not necessarily the most intelligent people who accumulate wealth, but those who are well-informed and can process and filter relevant data before making decisions. Individuals who have both tools and resources are better equipped to make sound financial and business decisions than those who rely only on innate intelligence without the means to understand or apply the information available to them.

Financial Decisions Require Context, Not Emotions or Fragmented Social Media Narratives

Cicinyte stresses that making financial decisions should always be grounded in full context rather than influenced by emotion or fragmented narratives prevalent on social media. Nicole Lapin highlights the proliferation of finance creators, pointing out the challenge that much popular finance content is opinion-driven and disconnected from factual anchors such as earnings calls, company reports, or verified performance metrics. This creates a gap between online financial advice and reality-based decision-making.

To address this, Cicinyte discusses their work with partners to develop real-time dashboards that help users distinguish signal from noise. These tools link financial decisions to live data streams, aiding users at all levels of financial literacy in making more informed choices and bridging the gap between hype and fact.

Equipping the Next Generation With Tools for Responsible Ai Use

Cicinyte believes that a crucial responsibility of this generation is to equip the next with tools for navigating a world dominated by AI and data abundance. She argues that it is incumbent on current technology builders to prioritize products that are genuinely good ...