Our parents had a village, so why should we have to do it all alone?

“Our parents didn’t do it by themselves, they had a village, that village, of neighbours, of friends, family. They never were alone. So why should this generation be alone? I don’t get it,” asks Kanessa Muluneh.

It’s the question we’re all asking, and one that unexpectedly came up in a conversation I had with Kanessa, an investor and entrepreneur. At the end of 2025, I recorded this conversation with Kanessa who started her first business when she was just 19. She’s built businesses in healthcare, in sport, in gaming. She’s been the first and the only one. And now she’s building entire ecosystems and shaping how and what gets built in emerging markets as an investor.

I reached out to Kanessa initially because I read about Rise of Fearless, an epic battale-royale game she created that’s based on the Battle of Adwa, where Ethiopia defeated Italy, keeping the country independent from Italian colonisation. She saw an underserved market for gaming and then decided to make a game that appeals to the market, and used it as a way to shape how people see and understand the world.

“When I look at the population of most African countries, it’s really youngsters that dominate. And when you look at the age group versus the job opportunity, it’s just sad. So we need to create opportunities,” Kanessa explains, “[The continent] is the future and the economies are growing like crazy. So we need to build industries instead of just products. Rise of Fearless is just a starting point.”

Listen to the full episode here, where we talked about Kanessa’s strategy on entering emerging markets both as an entrepreneur and investor, the importance of the people around you, and advice for others building something new.

What stayed with me from this conversation was how Kanessa kept emphasising the fact that your success is really inseparable from your community, your village, your friends, your support system.

We recorded this conversation in Kanessa’s home while her kids played nearby and ended up talking at length not about Leaning In, but… leaning on.

For her, the point wasn’t to try to do everything on her own, to take on every burden and every responsibility. Women can do it all, of course, men can too, she told me, but what if we did things together?

“Doors were open as a kid, you could just literally run around.” Kanessa says, “And if you did something wrong, the whole, everybody would be there to watch you. It’s not like that anymore. And I get it. And that’s why, or I think it’s a bigger reason, to delegate stuff that you’re not good at because you need your full attention for all the other [things].”

The loss of the village is something I’ve been thinking a lot about in recent years — I’m writing a whole book about this — and it’s struck me that Kanessa talked so candidly about the people who enabled her success. She told me without hesitation that yes she could do it all — but why? She has no interest in burning out. The point isn’t to do everything, the point is to do more of what she’s good at and what can enable her success and a fulfilling life.

A few months ago, I read a Substack post by Amy Mowafi, a writer and media exec whose work I love, who named the whole village that helps her build her dazzling career: the nanny, the housekeeper, the driver, the parents nearby, her husband.

“The reality is, grit will not save you from the basic laws of gravity, so most women who are celebrated for leaning in usually have the luxury of landing safely, and those who run with wolves probably have someone looking after the cubs,” Amy writes.

I remember sending Amy’s post to several friends when I first read it, because she had named what so many of us had been trying to articulate for so long. In recent years, I’ve been having the same conversation with a lot of my friends who are a similar age to me. We’re in our mid to late thirties. We all started our careers in the Lean In era. We all girlbossed hard — built the dazzling careers and CVs that anyone could envy. We were feminism’s victory.

In my twenties, I remember successful, older women often telling me I could have it all, just not at once. That it would likely not look as I had imagined — they had to skip soccer practices for board meetings, they had to miss the work opportunity for the piano recital. They talked, often, of tradeoffs, but not of the support system that picked up the slack that they dropped.

But I think a lot of us have started asking a different question in recent years: we’re glad we can have it all (in theory at least), but we don’t want to have to do it all, on our own, all the time. The point wasn’t that we do everything, it was that we get a chance to do anything we want. Somehow the bargain has been inverted.

What if the village is the infrastructure so that none of us has to do it all, and so that we can all have enough?