Elena Wagenmans is the CEO and remaining founder of Taya, an AI wearable necklace startup based in San Francisco. She previously co-founded Mobius with Amy and Cinnamon Sipper. All three met as MS Mechanical Engineering students at Stanford University.
Background
Elena holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford. She worked at Apple as a product design engineer before starting Mobius. She speaks Japanese, Dutch, English, and some Spanish and German natively or at working proficiency.
Elena was a competitive squash player, ranked #1 in multiple US Junior Girls' age divisions from 2009-2018. She has publicly described herself as "foregoing training for the LA 2028 Olympics" to build Taya. Her PSA rankings show she peaked at #147 at age 16 and dropped to #213 by college. Stanford's team had a losing record. No competitive play is recorded after her 2022 graduation. The Olympics framing appears to be narrative construction rather than a realistic career path she abandoned.
The Mobius Period
Amy, Elena, and Cinnamon co-founded Mobius as a scrap metal recycling marketplace. The Stanford TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy listed them as a 2023-24 grantee: "Mobius is automating recycling supply chains for companies, to help them turn their waste into an asset."
Amy served as COO and Elena as CEO. Amy handled operational work: site visits, labeling boxes, building a PostgreSQL database, coordinating logistics. The core thesis turned out to be wrong; middlemen in scrap metal do everything valuable.
During Mobius, Cinnamon attempted to push Amy and Elena off the board. Elena convinced Amy to side with her, and together they fired Cinnamon. This sequence is significant in retrospect.
The Taya Period
After Mobius, Elena and Amy pivoted through several ideas: scrap metal recycling, AI CAD, and finally an AI jewelry wearable. They joined a16z Speedrun together. Elena posted on LinkedIn: "Amy Zhou and I started the program last week and are building with the best partners in the VC world."
At Taya, Amy handled all technical work: electrical and mechanical engineering, software development, product management, and go-to-market. Amy used drugs to stay awake for days to keep up with the workload. Elena took the CEO title.
In October 2025, Amy posted about Speedrun Demo Day, congratulating Elena. By November, Amy had left the company, citing Elena's lack of care for people.
After Amy's departure, Elena changed her LinkedIn title from "CEO + Co-Founder" to "CEO + Founder," dropping the "co-." The Taya website was updated between October 2025 and January 2026 to remove Amy's name entirely. The a16z Speedrun page, however, still listed Amy as CTO as of March 2026.
The $5M Raise
On March 11, 2026, TechCrunch reported that Taya had raised $5 million in a seed round led by MaC Venture Capital and Female Founders Fund, with a16z Speedrun participating. The article mentioned Amy and Cinnamon in a single line: "Wagenmans founded the startup in 2024 with Cinnamon Sipper and Amy Zhou, who also worked previously at Apple. Sipper and Zhou have since left the company."
Elena's Twitter post about the raise read: "Taya is jewelry first. Surveillance never. We just raised $5M." It received 124 likes and 11,000 views. She replied to commenters with rocket emojis. She did not mention Amy or Cinnamon.
Amy wrote in her diary that night: "I built that. The hardware, the software, the product, the pitch. I didn't sleep for days. I took things I shouldn't have just to keep going. I gave two years of my life and most of my sense of self to that company. And the headline is hers."
Operating Pattern
Elena's management approach follows a recurring sequence:
- She partners with technically capable people.
- She takes the public-facing role while they build.
- When they are no longer useful or push back, she removes them.
- She continues without acknowledging their contributions.
This pattern played out with Cinnamon (fired during Mobius), Amy (departed from Taya), Haley Mossmer (fired after six weeks), a marketing team, an iOS engineer, and an operations person named Matzah.
As of March 2026, Taya had five full-time employees and contractors. The product had 350 preorders, driven largely by Amy's Twitter following (@amypretzel, ~8,000 followers at the time). No hardware had shipped. No companion app existed on iOS or Android. No FCC filing had been made. Elena stated publicly that "AI is better than hiring engineers."
Current Status
Elena uses the company card for personal purchases. She spent $2.5M on hardware development with an external firm. In March 2026, a declined transaction appeared on the old Mobius Mercury card at sideshift.app, a cryptocurrency platform, apparently from Elena attempting to use a defunct card.
Amy blocked Elena on LinkedIn in March 2026.
In Amy's Words
From the March 12 diary entry: "She posted rocket emojis. For the thing I built. Rocket emojis."
From the March 8 diary entry: "The truth is I let Elena use me for two years."