Nestio Cofounder Talks Launching Startup, Supporting Women In STEM Fields

Caren Maio does not back down from a challenge.

After years of battling New York City’s rental market, which she describes as “the Wild West,” she entered the science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) fields to cofound her online real estate company, Nestio.

With a background in sales and publishing for brands like Nike and The Wall Street Journal, Maio wasn’t sure how to enter the mysterious world of tech startups, but she wasn’t fazed. Together with her cofounder Mike O’Toole, she was accepted into the inaugural New York City class for the accelerator program Techstars and graduated armed with a posse of advisers and investors.