11.19.24 | The Insider's View: VC, Start-Ups & Female Founders in Life Sciences Powered by Perkins Coie

I'm going to have a look inside. All right. Good evening and welcome, everyone. I am super excited to convene tonight's program. My name is Holly Smithson I'm with Athena, and for 25 years, we have been producing some really timely, content and very, very thought provoking topics. And tonight is no different. I, I met a couple of you, during the networking portion.

A couple of, a couple of founders, I think, I mean, I met you because I'm really excited for this to be a deep dive on high. The insider's view on what? It's like to be a female venture capitalist, to be a female founder. And you can only imagine what it must be like as we look to 2025 coming off of the presidential elections and, and some in some corners of the world, it might look like we're going back in time and some places it might be that we're just going to try something different.

And I'm trying to be as politically correct as you guys, and I hope that is, observed and appreciated. Appreciate it. But nonetheless, there is a saying that I often, espouse, which is the wisest position that you can take, whether you are a female founder, whether you are male founder, whether you are supporting an early company, it is best to ride the wave.

You are on to. And when we resist and we bitch and complain and judge, all we do is invite suffering and we have to adjust and we have to be super, super agile. And I suspect after tonight's program, we are going to see agility and adaptation on steroids with the segment that we have on tap for you tonight.

I have to also, suggest to everyone that part of what we do here at Athena, our annual programs that we are now taking globally through our virtual, capabilities. And I want to, welcome everybody that's joining us. I think we have about 50 folks that are joining us online. So thank you and welcome. But part of as we take Athena Global, what's really, really important is that we are taking this content and we're reaching out to women, and male allies wherever they are.

But making sure that the content is actually relative to women, regardless of their zip code or their country code. And one of the things that's guiding a lot of what we're doing here in Athena, when we develop this portfolio of 50 leadership programs, it has to be predicated on what we know is the global workforce and the world Economic Forum's just produced some pretty compelling data, last, this summer.

And they projected by 2030 that we are going to have an 18,000,008 zero and 80 million shortfall in Stem talent. That is in five years. And it's and it actually leads to multi, multi trillion dollar, economic impact. So as we think about how we're going to close that gap on Stem expertise on Stem leadership, this is why Athena is really honored to go global and to take our content and offer it on demand on our leadership labs.

So women and their allies around the world can actually stream our content. And this is part of that content that we want to make sure that we're making available and leave no woman behind. So I want you to just appreciate what's happening kind of on the, on the, on the back end of Athina as we go into our 26th year of providing the leadership development needs for women in Stem.

And part of that success is largely hinged upon our corporate partners. So we partner today with about 50 corporate partners. Perkins Cooley is one of them. And we partner with them so that we can come together and sponsor these programs, develop the rich content that is actually curated by Stem women for Stem women. So I want to thank, get special thanks and acknowledgment to our partners at PwC, Perkins Cowie.

And then the the introductory remarks that I want to introduce next up for our sponsor is with Alena, and she's actually, with Perkins cookie. We've been working and doing this dance forever, and she's right in front of me, right under your nose. And we've partnered for the last couple of years, and it's just been exciting to have them be a partner of ours and support programs like, like this.

Because it really does speak volumes to the shared values that we have. So for those of you that are looking for, of counsel, looking for, legal services, I just I hope you'll keep in mind those, service providers that actually support us and care about us. I just hope you'll keep that top of mind. So let's get the program underway.

I want to introduce Elena. To tell you a little bit about Perkins Cooley, and then to tee up this very, very dynamic, conversation with, women founders and women business. So, Elena. Thank you. I. Know how to use a handheld mic.

Hi, everyone, and thank you for being here tonight. As Holly mentioned, my name is Ali Miller. I am one of the co-chairs of the Life Sciences Interest Group Committee that organized this event tonight. And how I also mentioned I am a contracts attorney here at Perkins Cooley, who is sponsoring this event. And tonight's topic, in addition, for all the reasons that Holly mentioned, is particularly important for the firm, the topic of VC startups and female founders because it furthers the firm's goal and just being a part of this journey along with female founders.

A few years ago, Perkins Cooley started an initiative called The Lead Better. Imagine, which is a program whose mission is to help female founders on their entrepreneurial journey. The program has a number of benefits for these founders, but I think the most some of them are tangible. Benefits include providing legal discounts for founders who are, especially in the early stages of development, which, as I'm sure these panelists will probably touch on, is assembling is definitely a challenge.

And securing that early stage funds. And another way that the firm tries to further this mission is by doing exactly what we're doing here tonight, which is to further this discussion and to use this as an additional resource for the founders. So on behalf of Perkins, Q and Athena, I thank you for being here and for being part of this discussion to me.

And I will pass the mic over to my colleague and tonight's moderator, Jessica North, to introduce herself and the panelists.

Hi, everyone. Yeah, I'd like to thank you. I'm Jessica North. I am also with Perkins. I'm actually a business attorney here at the emerging or in the emerging companies in venture capital practice. So we work with founders, we work with investors who work with founders as early as, you know, the idea. Right. People in the garage, people at corporate, large companies wanting to do found wanting to be founders, starting companies.

We also work with, on the investor side, people as early as angel investors, mostly family offices, traditional venture private equity, and then as large as hedge funds or mutual funds, kind of doing more of the crossover around, as long as they're investing in startups, we help them in our group. So one other program, before I kick off the panel, one of the program I wanted to mention to this group or anyone who's a founder in the group is is Perkins.

Can we also has a team of non-lawyers that work with our startup clients to help them get funding? It's called our Startup and Investor services team. Their sole job is to help our startups refine their pitch. That's right. And also figure out who to reach out to and make those warmly welcome. I think anyone who who is a new founder knows there's this massive universe of venture, right?

When you're ready for a venture or other investors, and it's hard to figure out who would actually be interested in a company like yours. So they take the universe, they figure out, okay, these are the investors who would be interested in yours. And out of those, which ones have already invested in companies like yours? Right. Because they don't want to bet against their own portfolio.

Right. So it's helpful to to narrow it down and also to do the warm leads if you don't already have that network. So if you're interested in learning more about that program after this panel, I'll be here. And my colleague Patrick, you don't mind raising your hand? He's also a partner in the emerging company's venture capital group.

We're happy to to talk to you about that. And so with that, I'd like the panelists to please introduce yourselves. And then maybe talk about whether you're a founder or a founder now or an investor and kind of how you how you came to be in your current positions. So I'm Joe Pollock, and yes, I've been in your stage before where I was a female founder, solo founder, which is got way worse percentages on it.

They've doubled it to 4%. Sad but true. And so I was the founder, I think almost 15 years ago. I then so my background is I'm an engineer and I like to say this was an expert in space satellites. And the next obvious thing to do is to quit your director of engineering job and go become a chiropractor.

So. So I did that. I then invented a technology and ended up getting ten patents, founded a company. Sometimes I wish I didn't the same and then I launched their products. Product reduces swelling and pain. If you ever like sprain your ankle or something like that or get surgery. And so the first version of this was sold to plastic surgeons and dermatologists.

It was licensed by Allergan who makes Botox. And that was done in 2019in the product we have today is a consumer version, which is a lesser potency, but it's used for sprains and strains. So that's what I did. And so I've gone through all of that. I now am very much and I've been an angel investor God for at least 12 years.

And first out of Chicago, which I originally was from, and then here in San Diego, and I also, at New Fund and then I also, I also advise a ton of startups. So that is me.

I'm a Christian. I happened to be the CFO, one of the founding partners of Cali Ventures. And what we do a little different.

Is we use predictive analytics to help us pick which venture investors will make. So basically you have to have a lead identifying before you can come to us. Because in value the least, the management.

Team, the board.

And all these other factors, and then run it through predictive analytics and score and scores over 80 or better. It's it's very easy process.

You know, from our perspective, you know, and it's very entrepreneurial.

Certainly. And then prior to that it was, you know, much more traditional tech fund in.

The Bay area. And so basically.

And this one really shoots and one that captures. And so I know exactly what you guys are going through.

We started in 2007.

You know, and it was a really tough market. And we didn't start this, you know, this three years. And so and while oftentimes boring so are you guys first time you know team together I'm like well we've been together for three years you know reasons like sweating it out.

So that's right. Wonderful. We also have Tina John online.

Hi everyone. Can you hear me okay.

Yeah. That's you can.

All right. I'm so sorry that I can't be there in person. I did have a conflict, but thank you for, reminding me and getting me online. So my name is Tina John. I'm a biomedical engineer, mother of two girls, and I'm the founder and CEO of Viera Health. We are launching, the first medical device next year that is going to be able to allow you to pump and feed infants at the same time and track how much the baby is drinking live.

My story is, as a biomedical engineer, started out in pharmaceuticals and went to biomedical engineering and devices and, honestly started and, started this company solely because there were so many women that I identified with who are struggling through breastfeeding and putting all the blame back on themselves. And so that was, you know, the spark for me that said, hey, I know how to build this.

And I think we can be the support, for the women around us and not, let them rely on themselves. That was both the start and the end of the story of where we are today. And, and the reason that I have gone through all the trials and tribulations of what a startup is, it's really in the name of the other women around us.

So I'm really thankful to be here.

That all right. So her first question just goes for anyone who wants to answer, what unique challenges do female founders face in securing venture capital and how can these be turned into opportunities?

So one, most of the VCs are men. And so when you are trying to pitch, you have to remember your audience. And it's really hard for female founders because they, you know, they like to smile more, they like to engage. And oftentimes men are much more short. Attention span, I guess, is a good way of putting it.

I mean, I had partners that used to fall asleep in the middle pitches. And so, you know, it's kind of like, our keywords, please be polite. But no, they can't. And so they're like, well, you know, I really made my decision. So I fell asleep and like, okay. And so you just have to remember that it's really difficult because you're pitching and I know it's a world I live in all the time.

It's, you know, 90% men. And so that's until we can change that. That's going to be a really difficult.

You know, I heard some advice recently from a founder who who had, successful exit and is now a VC, but this may be controversial advice, but the advice that she actually gave on one of the panels was, practice in front of a man who is an investor because they will, because when I speak a lot, I talk a lot, right?

I just do I speak way more than my husband does. And they will help you. Fine. To shorten your your message. Right? Or tell you when you're being too wordy or when you're trying to fill the space. That was the suggestion. So take it or leave it. Tina. Any thoughts?

Yeah, I have something to add. So, you know, for instance, it's a the product that I'm working on is a breast feeding breast pump and it looks like a breast. Right. So one of the things that over the time with the pitches that I've learned to do is dive right in really quickly. So I come on the stage with a bra over my shirt with the baby in my hand, and then I start with the baby's nursing and we're having difficulty latching and then go into this is the product.

And so it spells it out so clearly in the first minute. And I have a ton of fathers in this method that come up to me afterwards, like, oh my God, we suffered through that and it just breaks the ice to talk about it and not assume that we need to start with breastfeeding. Is this or just tiptoe around it?

Oh wow.

Okay. So the next question is for grades. So Harvard Business Review did some research on a bunch of pitches. And they noticed that investors often asked men what we call promotion questions, which is, you know, highlighting the upside and potential gains, but then asked women a lot of preventative questions, which were what are the risks of what you're trying to do.

And they found that the entrepreneurs who focused on the promotion questions raised six times more than than the founders who were asked preventative questions. So how can a female founder who's stuck in a pitch getting asked all these preventative questions, change the narrative, right.

And I believe you can just short circuit that and just say, oh, I'll get to that later and then go on to more promoting your product and what you're trying to accomplish, because basically, you just need to get off of that topic as quickly as possible, because otherwise you're going to get this deep rabbit hole of, this is the problem here.

This is the problem here. And they're just going to think of all the negatives. And you need to because basically the point of the pitch is to get a second reading. It's not necessarily to get them to invest right now is you want them to be fired up and excited about what you do. And so you have to.

And I find often that newer entrepreneurs will overexplain what they're talking about. So it doesn't seem male or female, but, you know, newer entrepreneurs will just sit there and like, answer every single question they've ever been asked, even if you're not asking it. And so you just have to make sure that your pitch is concise and clear. And this is the best message they can possibly say without necessarily dealing with all the negatives.

And, you know, because basically you're trying to get them excited about what you're doing.

And I echo that there's another study similar from Harvard Business Review which had men and women actors giving the same pitch. You know this one right. Same pitch. Same with their actors. So they know how to like intuitions are the same. And the men got funded twice as much. Okay guys, we can. And this is echoing your comment about give your pitch in front of a male.

Okay. So I'm a complete nerd. Three engineering degrees defines that. And there's a lot of books about the fact that we have a lot of things are decided based on instincts. Anybody here read the book thinking fast and slow? Okay. How many times in that book does it say we do the wrong thing because it's instinctual? It's done all the time and it's not.

I don't. And by the way, that data isn't on men. It's on women. And men invested twice as much into males. Presenting it also is better if you are a good looking male, good looking female. So we're done. We can't help that. But it mattered. All of these things are real and you can try and say, oh, it's wrong, but it doesn't change what is instinct?

And it's not actually so. It's not like these people are jerks. It's that they have this instinct. It is what it is. And so pitching in front of a male is a really good idea, because you have to just acknowledge what it is and work with it right away. If you're honest, it's perfect. Yes. Right. So Tina, this one's for you.

So running a life science startup is in some ways harder than than a typical tech startup because of the enormous amount of capital that you that you often need. And also, you know, when you're a founder, you spend your life is your company. But but people forget that you also have a family, right? Often you have a spouse, you have a or significant other.

You have sometimes kids, God forbid you want to exercise. So what suggestions and advice do you have for the founders in the room who are looking to start a life science company and looking to be founders?

Yeah, so especially being a female founder, lean into the things that feel uncertain into your life and the characteristic make you female, right? This business that I'm running right now is all about recognizing the unique challenges of women, and the more we lean into it, the more I fight my engineers on and know she's not going to buy that it looks crazy, etc. and the more successful we are.

But in my life, just to give examples, I do have both sets of parents who have like moved within 30 minutes in order to be supportive and be there for my kids. I bring energy back into my life by being there to pick them up from school and spend time with them two days a week. That means that sometimes I do things at night, but it gives me this nice, really good break and makes me feel whole.

And so these things that are part of our lives and that are important, and it's really big to just lean into it and be proud of it. And honestly, you know, over the years I've heard a lot about, well, that product, I don't see tech products that look like that. So I think we are being underserved. Our schedules, the way of our life is, is we're on to something and we need to maybe make that mainstream or or teach the world how there's a different way to to work, work, and work really hard.

Okay. I heard some advice really way many years ago. Outsource whatever you can. And so basically, you know, outsource the cleaning of my house, outsource my laundry, outsource whatever I can so that I can spend the quality time I need to with my kid. And my family and and still. And you know what? If I can't cook? Well, too bad.

You know what? It's fine. We can. You know, we can do fine with just eating out and it's it's really it was very comforting for me to realize that I do not have to try to do it all.

So and upon that, get rid of the guilt. Get rid of the guilt when you. That's part of it. I mean, we all like we're overachievers by definition. It's who we are. And you can be super feel guilty because you have somebody else do your laundry, but get rid of the guilt. But going back to the life sciences, what really makes it hard for females?

We struggle fundraising, and in life sciences it's a much longer fundraising cycle, so that presents an extra special difficulty. By the way, I run a lot. I my company is a life science company too, and I fortunately on the other hand deal so I don't have to raise any more.

Hallelujah!

But it's harder because we have a much longer cycle, and that just makes it so much harder with as a as a female founder. And, well, speaking of early, early female founders, if for anyone who's thinking about becoming a founder currently, maybe I too will establish company getting a cushy salary who can afford someone to do their laundry but is thinking of jumping into the founder life, I guess.

What would you recommend for people preparing to do that? And then for people who are already founders, I mean, are there any skills you seen obviously on the the angel side and on the founder side, right? You've seen a lot of, companies who want to get funded, I guess. What what obstacles do you see more frequently and how can people prepare for that?

So the thing I swear to God, I should have like an animation thing that says, talk to your customer, talk to your customer, talk to your customer because it's half real. It's 90% of the conversations I have every day because I advise founders and it's super important. So, if you're working for a company. So I lecture to a couple of universities, the one most frequently, it's a university Chicago MBA program.

And I like to tell people is that you there's special people like maybe 1 to 5% of the population is meant to be a founder. Okay. Straight up, it's not high. So think about it. Do you like change? Do you know they write books about they moved my cheese because most of the world's population is absolutely afraid of that.

Do you like uncertainty? Yes, exactly. So that's C. Do you like chaos? If you don't like these things? It is. It's not like you need. Like you should feel ashamed about it. Like that is a thing you want to do. It's it's very small. Percentage of the population really should be founders. The other thing is it's perfect is so.

Oh sorry. Someone is taking the survey response. Oh yes. Okay. We had a survey. Nobody it wasn't stated what you just said. So the other thing is back to the customer. Thing is like you will okay. So let's say you're like, yes, I love chaos change. And I you know I love to uncertainty. Right.

Is what you're going to do something people want again we're all like so there's there's a whole thing if you've not read it. There's a book called Crossing the Chasm, and it talks about how entrepreneurs brains don't work the way that anyone else does. How many how many entrepreneurs here can agree with that? Yeah, they seriously do not agree.

So we can't. If you want to know what normal people will do like the early majority, late majority, never ever ever ask me. Never. I will predict it wrong 98% of the time because I'm not of that mindset. And so go talk. It's there's no shame in like you might think that a lamp for that is the most important thing in the world, but you've got to figure out if most of the people and not the most people in the room, but most of the people out there are doing that.

And so typically, you want to literally talk to 100 people and say, and you want it. There's actually if if you guys don't know of it, there's a really great book called The Mom Test. You know, this book, okay, you like the title and it's really about, you know, if your mother asked you, oh, is my is my is my thing I made for you really, really amazing.

Like we are in art class. What does the mom say? Oh my God, darling, it's amazing. You don't want that answer. You want the answer, which is real. And so use a mom test. Talk to 100 people. I love that idea. I really like that idea I had. I had a lot of conversations with the early stage founders in the last two weeks, and it's it's hard to be brutally honest with with founders.

But some of them, some I mean, it's how are you going to scale the business, right? How can you convince someone that their money should go into this business and not this other business? So that's super important. So I think all of our panelists probably have a view on this, but I'm going to start with Tina on this one.

If you're looking for the first money in the door, people often ask Angel or VC and what are the pros and cons of both of the approaches?

So I can only give, what our experience is and what I've seen in a lot of other Femtech founders. So in these last years, especially in the last two, we have been doing largely angel investors and high net worth individual angel investors, even outside of angel groups. So I will say that my first 250,000 came from individuals who believed they were passionate about the story, and they were like, I'm going to get behind you and see where this goes.

And that took us to a whole nother level. And actually, so we are 3.25 million raised between two rounds right now.

And,

Thank.

You. Yeah, all of it.

Largely all of it has been checks 25,000 to $250,000. And we have had several high net worth individuals who have put in $250,000 on their own. And those both those meetings and the traction we've been able to build and how much we've been able to build our product and how far we've been able to get has been tremendous.

Without going and waiting for like a round to complete, we do rolling rounds, etc.. So that's the perspective I have. On the other hand, if you were able to get all your VC money in, in much less time, and you had 5 million or $10 million to play with, I'm sure that that has its benefits too.

Yeah. So I'm very involved in angel investing at this point, and I work very closely. Well, I'm a member, a new fund, but there's a small group that we just make. These assessments and a lot of discussion right now is a real thing. There's a lot of angel groups that are going out of business. They're shutting down.

And this is something you really need to understand because of that ecosystem breaks. You don't have that as an opportunity. And the reason they're stopping is they're not making their money back. And we've got to figure out that's one of the points we discuss at New Fund all the time how to fix that. So one of the things and I advise a ton of startups and when you so there's does everybody know what a pre-seed versus a seed versus a series A is.

Okay good. Because when I was like when I started, I did not exist and I did not know what those were. So can you summarize that for the digital, the virtual audience? Perfect. So, a pre-seed, is somewhere where you really don't have a proof of concept. You've got an idea and you think you want to do it.

That's when you're going to go. It's also called the Friends and Family Round. Okay. You can get if you have people that are really, let's say that someone you know, it may be a friends and family, but all of us don't always have rich friends and family. Okay, that's the thing. And I think that's more of an issue in females because where you don't I'm going to make a comment I don't think is money driven on average.

And so that's not a thing for us always. But you can if you've got a technology like breastfeeding, where you've got people that are passionate, that dealt with the problem that you had before, those are the people you go after. So that can be your seed round. You don't always have to, but you're really. And then there's different levels of sophistication of angel groups.

So the more sophisticated angel groups are going to want to see that you've actually got a prototype and it's actually something you've got. Whereas, you can have do a family office again, someone that is passionate about what you're doing. That's what you're going to look at the seed and the pre-seed, the seed. You can go to angel groups.

You typically have a prototype like she has and you can show the data behind it. You've got an idea of what the manufacturing costs are when you get to series eight. Typically you're pretty in in in not in life sciences. Not well, I should say not in drug development. Yes. Which is different than life sciences because anything touching the body is like, I know my drug mind is regulated as a drug, but it's got, it's an OTC one.

So it doesn't require the regulation, path that a lot of do. So when you get to series A, if it's not a biotech drug that requires, it's phase one, phase two, you're typically got something that is that you've got some revenue and you can show that you've got traction. Now, since we're doing life sciences, that is completely on its head for for new fund.

What I can say for life sciences, unless you've got an animal studies, for the most part, we're not going to look at you across the board. Then when you go to series A, I'll let her talk about in life sciences where they go with series A, but that's the different phases.

Right. And so we would consider seed stage as well as a series A. But typically what happens is in life sciences you have to basically have a path that you're going to be pretty soon launching it to be series, a series seed. Then we're like, okay, it's still cavers proof of concept from our perspective, but then it's really hard because basically you have to have, you know, at least alliances set up, at least, you know, like have some vision of these are the people I'm going to be targeting or, you know, just what I'm trying to think.

I do tech as well. So I'm trying to think, oh, yes, for life sciences, it's much more difficult. But then often I find that life science founders, especially in drug development or raise torch rounds, they'll say, okay, I have $10 million I've committed, but I will call 2.5 million. Every time I get to the certain milestone, I'll get another 2.5 million.

So then you don't have to fundraise all the time. So then you can get this nice $10 million term sheet. It could last you like two and a half years, but then you know that you don't have to fundraise all the time. And so basically, as long as you can prove that you have a good path. And that's the hard part right now because, you know, so many women do not have that proof of that, of their experience that they've done this before.

And that's really with the I think the hardest part about raising venture is right now is because you have to have, like, done it already in order to get it right.

Let me add one more thing on the Pre-seed. For the most part, in life sciences, when you've got a phase one, phase two drug development, and even in many devices, that's got unexpected advice that has a expensive pathway. You're looking at grants in the pre-seed you are looking for SBIR grants. There's no grants. And if anybody like this is something I've fortunately never had to go for a grant, but I had to go look it up.

And I had my lovely I developed something, but if you want to know what that is, I have something that I can send you. Okay. And then not for the angel piece. If if they're ready, they're past the grants they want to raise angel. How do they figure out where to find those people? Great question. So the in San Diego, the best entry at least into new fund is something called the bring everybody write this down.

Shockingly you can have advisors of which of the bank advisors I think there's something like 15 five of us come from new fund. And the reason is we love the reason we're a new fund. We love founding companies, we love founders. We love working with them. The bring this if I would have had this when I started, I would have made so many things where I would have made way less mistakes.

I'm envious, complete the brink. Guess how much it costs for you to have an advisor? I meet with most of my clients once a week for an hour. Guess how much it cost? Anybody got a guess? 500 free? Well, okay, so everyone write down the break and what you'll see is they'll have. I recommend that you talk to them.

And our job is the whole entire reason the brink exists is the government says if we can get founders to be successful, it will build jobs at the revenue, etc., etc. that's my entire job in. So in San Diego you reach out to the brain. It will help you have introductions to angel funds. But we're going to make you do things.

And you know, we're not going to recommend you until we think through at that point. And that's my biggest recommendation. Yeah. Thank you. This one's for great. So when founders are in the financing process, what sort of negotiation skills have you seen that have been super successful?

So the founders I've seen that are realistic about what they expect. You know, I often will advise founders, you know, if you have 100% of your company, but it's only valued at zero, it's still zero. So, you know, be realistic, you know, so giving up, you know, ten, 20% of your company at an early stage may be worth it if it's if you can get the valuation that you think feels appropriate and you can get some money, and then basically you can have some money to, like, run your business and see how it does.

But if you are so, you know, like, oh, I'm going to give up 5% of my company because that's valuation, it's not worth it. And like 5 to 10%, it's not that big of a deal. You know I've seen founders give up 25%, you know, and they have to give up, you know, another 20% the next round, another 10%.

So it's, you know, it's part of a numbers game. And so you just have to be realistic. But I think where it's most important for your negotiation is when you're trying to exit. Because then that is really what drives it. You know. And so if you can say, oh, I can get acquired for 150 million now, or maybe I can wait three years and get acquired for 300 million, is that worth it to you?

You know, and you have to weigh that, you know, and that's. Yeah, know.

Great. Thank you. And, Doctor Joe, what are the best tips you have for pitching a company and finding valuable business connections other than the brink of, like, everything's about the practice for that. So pitching something you said focus. Okay, I don't see this is. I have far more engineers. Since I'm an engineer. I like engineers, and I have conversations.

I swear to God, if they just. I laugh. If they describe a fork, they won't say it's a fork. They'll say it's a device that has four prongs on it, and it's got an attachment, and you hold it in your hand right? Because they can't just say or pour. So simplify it. Simplify what you're saying and say it as succinctly as possible.

The other thing is, is that and again I will I will bias myself because I'm an engineer and I do all of these things. So it's easy to like it's not like I'm unusual in this point, but.

What you want to do is you want to talk about your technology, but that's not the focus. The focus is what it will bring. Because to the investors and they need to we talked about the path, right. They need to see a path that if I do this, I need to move forward. And then the other thing that that is really important for you to think about, and this is very much true of females, is that so?

There's been a lot of discussion amongst age groups right now. And what what is sad but true? There is a friend of mine who was saying, yeah, I like and I'm like, oh yeah, these are going to only have A2X multiplier, but they're really safe. And then he had a bunch of fliers, right. Which had, you know, 20 x multipliers, which is what we're typically looking for.

Right. They both have the same success rate. And most angel investors are not making their money back. And so we're typically looking for a minimum of a 20 x. If you can't see that and show that to someone. Again a sophisticated Android app that's different. If you've got a family office, someone who's interested, I'm talking about like it's the more professional angel groups.

So show that they're going to get that return on investment and show them that you can do what they're what they're suggesting. Should I answer both questions? Yeah yeah, yeah. No. That's good. I I one thing I will echo what Doctor Jo said. I mean, today I saw one of our clients sent their first deck to us, and it was 40 pages, and the first 25 pages talked about the problem and what they were trying to solve.

And it's an amazing company. What they're doing is fantastic. But it didn't get to the point. The go to market was in the appendix like, no, the go to market is in the front. You must talk about how you're going to make money in this venture. So, so I definitely echo that.

And I would also comment, you should know your audience.

So if you are.

Pitching to a bunch of business people, they may not understand in the technology that you are, you know, I'm sure it's great, but I'm a business person. I'm like, oh, I don't get anything. They just said, I'm like, there was like a whole bunch of words. And so I'm like, and this is so I don't know if you guys know her, but she pitches and she says she's doing the GPS for cell therapy.

I'm like, oh, I get it, I get it. And so then I can that was that. That was her first slide. And then then she went on to explain what she was doing. I'm like, wow. But then because of that, I kept thinking, I understand what she's talking about. So you have to not necessarily dump it down, but just make it understandable for a layman.

And I'm going to echo what you said earlier, practice pitching to the type of person you're pitching to so that they so that they make sure that they understand. Right. Or work with Perkins key because we have a team that out here that can Yep. And the lead is a man. So he will give you feedback.

Okay. So Tina the next question is for you. So the media often portrays founders is wearing a hoodie sitting behind a computer and, you know, microdosing psychedelic. But in reality, founders are often anxious. There's uncertainty. You need a really strong network, like you've mentioned, both your family members within 30, 30 minutes, to you, which which would not all of us would have.

So how how have you survived being a founder and what tips do you have? Like what what what experience have you had?

Yeah. And I think it, it is different than maybe the, the typical Silicon Valley founder. So one this goes back to some of the comments before about risk taking and founders doing risk taking, if that scares you. Well, I took an entrepreneurship, class in college and they were like, only risk takers are founders. And I told myself that I will never be an entrepreneur.

And so what I will say is I have reformatted life so that what is risky does not feel risky. And so some of those things are, for instance, we have made in our family, we've structured it so that we can live our lives off of one salary at all times, so that when we have the highs and lows of like, we need to pay our staff and we don't have enough to take as founders that we can do that.

You know, that even comes down to the way we structured our mortgage and how we how big it is and things like that. So, I would say, and as a general tip, talk shop, talk money, ask people how they're actually doing the day to day, how they're making it work, whether it comes to the deals, like ask what their valuations are, what do they raise on, or when it comes to your life and how you're formatting that.

But yeah, oftentimes, you know, I'm on the computer, and I've got like the SAT and top on and there's pajamas on the bottom. And then there is like Passover meal on the one side. And then there's like notes from my previous meeting on the other side. And so, you know, you are getting to work in the environment that works for you.

And it's definitely, it's not at all like, me with a group of guys sitting around, you know, in our, in our garage. And so, I'm trying to think about, like, what else might be an interesting I, I will say what I do. So my mechanical engineering team, who they're largely fractional based on the need based in Delmar.

And so I'm, they're like two, one third of a day, three times a week, sitting with them and getting, like, down to the product and the design and going through and then, right back home because I get the most work done when I'm by myself and when I'm home and doing meetings. So all of that is completely flexible.

But it took me a while to not follow what was traditional and know that something else works better for me.

So, one of the things I've heard from some of our some of the founders that I work with is that they, they need to project this super positive, never doubting sort of persona to their employees and their staff. Right. Because we're all in it to win it. But they have had a really strong network of other founders, male, female, whatever on the side that can be their, you know, therapists that don't charge them.

Right? Like they can actually take off the mask for a little bit and talk real and talk about the struggles. So I don't know if anyone on this panel has any suggestions for, female founder groups or just founder groups in San Diego other than Athena. Yeah, no, just saying. So that people could get that network. I think it's one of the hardest things, and I suspect.

But I don't know that we might need a little more than the average male that was. But again, I out with the engineers.

So maybe this isn't a fair assessment.

And I have to tell you, it's a thing I struggle with all the time because like you have guys like you're I cannot tell you how many times I've gone home and just cried. And it's hard. And so I don't know because it's it they, you know, they've got different levels of female founders and, and I, you know, I have really awesome friends, like seriously awesome friends dating back for like 20 or 30 years, but I don't know that I have that group that is truly somebody.

There's a couple people, but they don't always know where you're in it. They don't care as much. And maybe I'm more needy than most spots are. Your thoughts?

So I have my nephew group, which I think is great. And you know, the your personal board of directors. That's how I think. How Holly calls it. And so they are hugely impactful for me. And then I have, you know, I have these little pockets, I have my workout buddies. And then I have gotten my Girl Scout moms, and I've got, you know, my friends from college and basically any time I need them, I spend like hours on the phone because I have to call them all separately, you know, because they don't know each other.

And it's like, oh my gosh. But then I feel so much better. And I was like, what are you even doing for the last eight hours? I'm like, you don't even want to know. I've been hashing this out with, like, you know, all these different groups at the same time. But I'm feeling better now. And so because I do have to portray that persona at the office, that everything's going great and we're going to make it through this.

But then sometimes you just need, you know, some support.

So great. Thanks. And then I think we have we have time for Q&A or next I wanted to oh, Tina, any any other thoughts on how to find a good network?

I was thrown just one last thing. I was thrown into an accelerator boot camp. I said boot camp, and it was all femtech, founders and that was my first experience with people who had, like, they were goal oriented. They were talking about all the ups and downs without their staff there. And so definitely it was a huge difference.

So fellow founders, I would second that all the way.

Great. Thank you. Okay, so I think it's time for Q&A. Yes. So if anyone has any questions for their panel, just raise your hand. I'll come over to you.

So this has been great and such great advice and and so relatable. But say you're a person who is say you're at a big company or a small company and you see that there's an asset that you could potentially take and move forward. How would you guys describe that journey? You know, just, you know, say, okay, now I've got the idea, like, Johanna, what's your journey?

You know, what do you do first? What do you do? Kind of, you know, like how do you really just nucleate that as opposed to it being aspirational? You know? So I would start always with. Customer discovery. We again like we. So something that we have to understand if you're entrepreneurial you're going to see things before everyone else does.

So I work with physicians. I'll use an example. The first product we out we had out, if anybody had a dermal filler, you bruise like crazy with them. We prevented that 100%. I thought that was obvious that patients would want that. The early adopters did, but the rest of them didn't get that this was going to help their business.

So one of the things you've got to figure out is you will see things that others weren't. So you need to double check that you need to make sure that this is something that the early majority and late majority wants. Then, there's a like there's a lot of I would take either do a, a some sort of incubator or something.

Because what you really want to do is you have to understand there's all these things, customer discovery. Then you've got to build your, your pitch deck and all these things. And it's really a lot easier to do if you do an accelerator or some other company or some other group like that. Because the thing that. So I never did one of those, I should have done one of those because it gives you network to the point she made.

And it gives you network, but it also gives you connections into things. So that might be the first thing I might do. I'd also say so Patrick may have better, better advice down in San Diego. I'm actually up in the Bay area, but in the Bay area we have Women's Founders Group that are they're really tight knit.

I mean, we there's one group called Women's Founders Bay, and they, they have advisors that plug in and help really early stage founders or want to be founders, right. Talk about what they're doing and what would that look like in the market. And so I think finding a group like that too, or you could have those discussions, I would be surprised if you didn't have a group like that in in San Diego.

And then I have a question for your question. So were you saying that there was an asset within your current company that you would try to spin out.

Or could be anything, right? Right. You know, the current company is set direction and there is in the earlier stage you might want to make a plan.

Right. And so in that case I would say you have to talk to some attorneys to make sure that.

You know yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah of course. Yeah. There are ways to do that. Right.

But I'd like to add real quick to that and and I apologize. I do have to jump. We were accepted into the final round of Seattle Angels. And so.

I wasn't, but.

But get your hands dirty. Tell people about your concept, test it out with customers, quick. Sometimes I was so scared of the idea and how big it could be that it was tough for me to bring it to people, even that I cared about. So, yeah, now, 200 people later in that, you know, in building this beautiful dessert device along with customers, it's a whole different scenario.

So talk, get out in front of there, get uncomfortable, and then your idea will start vetting itself and change it. Well thank you everyone so much.

All right. We may have time for one more question.

Hi. Everyone should be enrolled. That would be so for those of us who might stay in our cushy corporate jobs, and not, you know, delve into the chaos. What can we do to help or support as we think about, just being an ally to the female founders in our community or in this industry, thinking, you know, so micro funding, are there other areas where we can be supportive, you know, boards for pitches or something like that where we can help to drive this community?

Great question. I, I'm sure the panelists have have thoughts on that, too. You know, you can get involved, you can invest in funds at a very low check size. Right? So if you want to be an investor, I mean, it is. And if you want to invest in mostly female female companies, and you don't know of what those funds are, feel free to talk to me after.

There's some that will take as low as $20,000, $25,000, which may still be a lot for some people. But if you're if you're in a cushy corporate job and you want to invest that, that's as think go to they do low check sizes. You could also become an a an angel founder or get involved in, I guess, the probably the the brand.

Yeah. So maybe funds would be probably. Yeah. Yeah. So assuming it so if you're an accredited investor then I would I, I love news like I joined a year and a half ago. Great people. Very female founded. The prior president was a female. And there's a really strong thing about making it equal. So that would be one of the things because they also teach you, you learn from these people that have done it for years, and it's a lovely way.

And I will say advocating, you know, so within, you know, if there is an opportunity, you know, to work with a new female founder, you know, and you think it might be a good fit, you know, advocate within your organization because that is really hard right now. So.

Yeah, the other thing I'll say too, is, is something that early stage founders struggle with is just access with their network and so if you have if you know of someone who could help them make the connection, I'm making connections all the time because people don't have like even just today, one of one of the, founders that I work with said I really, you know, we're really good on the technical side, but we need someone on the business side.

Do you know someone? And I was like, yeah, actually, I just met someone a week ago who was looking for just this position. So I'll connect the two of you. If he's a fit, great. He's not, you know, great. But trying to make connections with people, I think is super helpful. And eventually, if you're, you know, that'll come back, they'll make connections for you.

It's usually, you know, karma. What? Connect. Yeah. Okay. We have time for one last question.

Now Jacob's.

Up.

So after you guys have, you know, founded your company, you've gone through the entrepreneur mindset. How did you find the transition between starting your company and then becoming an employer? So you started as an employee. Gone. Started your own. How was that transition and what kind of challenges did you face when you, you know, brought on employees or you started hiring service providers?

What was that like?

I spent more time dealing with HR issues than I ever, ever thought I'd have to do. And it's like, really? Can't we just get along? And so, so that was, I think, the biggest surprise to me because I job that we hired really good people and they would just figure it out and they don't. And so,

And that's because of the chaos, right? Especially if you hire somebody like, I was the director of engineering had tons of people reporting me. It's different when you're a founder because things are there's no structure. And so I would say that it's hard. But you you know, the bottom line is be authentic, be, you know, vulnerable, know that you're not always right.

And just try really hard and you'll figure it out. It's that simple, said doctor. All right. Let's give it up for our panel. Thank you so much, Kayla. You Joe Graves, and Jessica. And, you know, I have to tell you, Liz, just listening to these women, they make it sound so easy, right? Because what I. What I sense is that there's this kind of this laser focus, from these founders.

I'm looking at one right now. It's like you just have this crystal clear vision of how things should be to serve and address an unmet need. So what I heard and what I'd like to do just to kind of put a bow on tonight's discussion, is I'd like to kind of, share some takeaways that I thought weren't particularly salient for me.

Because the idea here tonight isn't just for us to, you know, collect these great. You know, visionaries, but for you to actually take the knowledge transfer and put it into motion. And that's really the goal of the of Athena. So I just took a couple of takeaway notes that love to, to share that I kind of digested, and the hopes that they're meaningful for you.

So I want to just start with just kind of a high level data points, which are kind of depressing. I didn't want to start the evening this way because I wanted to be on a uplifting note. But I know this audience and I know it well, and we all live and breathe on data, so let's just start there.

The total population of founders in the United States, only 13% are females. You're looking at 1% of them on the stage. I think, Tina had to leave, but and then of those female founders, they get 3% of the total, VC dollars in the United States to the tune of about $35 billion. So back to my original, comment.

We have to ride the wave we're on. We don't get to be upset about it. We can. And that's a choice. Or we get to be actually determined and really be driven by that notion and working within a confines that is not really working with us. It's working against us. So that's just being clear headed, being completely data driven, not being emotional, just working with the data.

The other thing that I, that I heard that I love and I want to just beat that drum over and over, which is know your audience. And it's so important as you're thinking about an unmet need, like Tina, who said, these women are losing all of this natural breast milk and it's not actually going to the baby, and that hurts her.

That hurts her as a mother. She's not think she's not think about profit margins. She's not thinking about go to market strategy. She's not thinking about market fit. But guess what? Our investors are so know your values and lead and build your company based on those values. These women are losing the milk. The milk leads to greater brain activity.

Great offer to all sorts of, wonderful, wonderful benefits. But when you're pitching a bunch of dudes and I mean that with absolute respect, a dude ranch, she came in there with a dress and put the breast apparatus on her sweater and said, I'm going to I'm going to know my audience. You need to be you need to illustrate the market fit.

Here's the breast apparatus, here's the product, and here's how much is being lost in the absence of her product. So right out the gate, all those guys who none of them have breastfed to the best of her ability knowing this, but she's illustrating and she's actually knowing her audience. She's selling to her audience. They want to be captivated.

They want to understand the market fit, and they want to have it illustrated in ways that shows them. This person, this founder, has played the path forward. And so she doesn't go into the story. Well, you know, I was sitting there in my rocking chair and I was breastfeeding and someone that was losing out. You're telling the story.

You got to start with the end, which is what Joe was saying. Start with the n women. As a rule, we love the story. Tell. That's what we did in the caveman days when pap was going out there to kill the tiger, to come back, come back and bring dinner. We are the narrators. We are the storytellers. We are the story keepers.

And we're doing that to keep our legacy alive. But we're not in that era. We have to deal with the men that are funding these companies, and we have to tell them what the market fit is, what the value proposition is, and why this is a compelling business model. And a lot of times women are leading with their values and not leading with the values of their investors.

So that was one takeaway for me that I hope that you'll, consider. The other thing is, which I thought was really, really cool. 90% of the VCs are men. So again, you can resist the way, the, the way that you're on. Or you can recognize that only 10% of investors, there's only 10% of grace is out there.

So resist as we are. I don't like this wave. I want to be on a Hawaii Honolulu wave. No. Well, I'm sitting here on OB and this is a small little wave. Okay, well, we got to ride the wave we're on. And so I would encourage everybody to recognize that the audience wants to start with the end. They want to understand the most compelling market fit and then recognize that the way that you pitch your product or your service has to be with the facts first and then color and the story about why this is exciting, what is the path and why this is going to be such a disruptive opportunity.

And I will also say, just to kind of wrap this up, leading with your values. So women really are motivated by the impact we genuinely care about sustained impact. So, Genevieve, those of you haven't met Genevieve, oversees our program, portfolio. We are generating a portfolio of programs that are going to impact women and their allies.

When she's going to pitch Athena, we're going to go public and remove our nonprofit status and go to Nasdaq or Sofia's working. All they care about is the profit margin. So if Genevieve has a roomful of 5 or 6 guys that are going to give her five minutes before they go to sleep, and she leads with the mission and the impact and how we're going to fill this 85 million shortfall in the talent, workforce by 2030, according to the World Economic Forum.

They're not interested in what their interest is. Where is the profit margin? Genevieve. So you have to lead with the values of your audience. It's all about the money. But the women, they care about the impact. So you have to reconcile that dichotomy. And I'm not saying that you can't be that can't be a part of your business proposition, your value proposition.

Here's the impact, here's a legacy, here's how we're going to shift society. Here's how we're going to, you know, fill this gap, this 85 million talent shortfall in Stem expertise by 2030, which has a multi multitrillion dollar impact deficit on our global economy. But the investor, you know, Bob and Tom and Steve were like okay what's the profit margin.

Like where am I going to get. Because guess what. It's my money. I'm giving you money. Genevieve. So how are you going to reinstate that money and then give me a profit? So I know that if I'm taking out a Wall Street, I can put it into Athena, and I'm going to be wise. So I just want you to kind of.

I want to challenge the way you think. Because women, their values are impact. And investors, they have a fiduciary responsibility to return on dollars. So that's my summary. That's my sort of takeaway from today. And I hope that, is meaningful for you. And I hope that, helps you better support your ambitions to be a founder or, more importantly, to be a more effective founder.

And I want to thank you again. For our sponsors and our, panelists. And thank you all for being consummate students.

Thank you. Okay.