Ep. 7 – What Investors Really Want

Gabrielle (00:00)
Everyone says that women’s health is the next big opportunity. But if that’s true, where is the funding? Why isn’t it keeping up?

Karen (00:08)
Investors are out there and they do want to invest in the right projects. They just need your help.

Gabrielle (00:33)
Welcome back to Two Uteruses Walk Into a Bar. I’m Gabrielle Svenning.

Karen (00:37)
and I’m Karen Flynn. Today we’re talking about something every woman’s health founder, marketer, and leader has wrestled with, getting investors to see the opportunity and believe in it. Because despite all the headlines about explosive growth and massive unmet need, FemTech funding still lags behind. Sometimes it’s because the investors don’t know what they don’t know, but often it’s simply because they’re not getting what they need to confidently invest.

Gabrielle (01:04)
So today we’re digging into what moves investors, what captures attention, builds credibility, and earns confidence, and how a marketing mindset can help shape the story that you’re telling. Our guest, Amy Millman, is going to help us understand things from an investor’s point of view. She brings decades of perspective from the intersection of policy, investment, and innovation. And she has a rare talent for cutting through the noise to what truly matters in a pitch.

Karen (01:30)
We had a fantastic conversation, a lot of great takeaways, but before we get going, it is time to introduce the mocktail of the day, which is the mimosa mocktail. Ginger ale and orange juice, that’s it. Surprisingly delicious, and the perfect reminder that simple things can make a very strong impression.

Gabrielle (01:50)
So please join us, raise your glass, let’s get into it. Cheers.

Karen (01:54)
Let’s get into it. Cheers.

Karen (01:56)
Our guest today is a powerhouse when it comes to being a champion for women entrepreneurs, Amy Millman. She’s managing partner of the Stage Next Fund and the founder of Springboard Enterprises, the global network that’s helped launch over 800 women led companies creating more than $35 billion in value.

Gabrielle (02:14)
Amy spent 21 years at Springboard as president, building a community of investors, experts, and innovators all dedicated to scaling high growth companies in tech and life sciences. But before that, she was the executive director of the National Women’s Business Council, a lobbyist for major industries. She’s a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and holds a master’s in public administration from the George Washington University. She’s here to talk to us about what investors really want to see from women’s health companies raising capital.

So Amy, welcome to Two Uteruses Walk Into a Bar. Before we begin, let’s just raise a glass and toast female funders, founders, entrepreneurs everywhere. Thank

Karen (02:53)
Yay,

Amy, you’ve been in the investment and entrepreneur support world long before FEMTECH was even a recognized term. But your career focus is and has always been supporting women owned companies. So I’d like to start with your lens. What’s the very first thing that you’re looking for when a woman’s health company comes across your desk?

Amy Millman (03:14)
Such a big question. And it’s funny, the questions that they used to ask me is, how did I know when an entrepreneur would come walk in and do their interview pitch that this was the one that you could help that you wanted to work with? Because at Springboard, we were an accelerator program that didn’t invest.

Karen (03:16)
I know. On purpose.

Amy Millman (03:39)
but prepared people for not only investment, but for the business development, access to marketing talent and the go-to-market strategies and connection to advisors that understood that business as well as the progress that had to be made to take it from idea to… ⁓

you know, whatever the goal and success was. So it, you know, and what was that? And you just knew it when they came in and how they presented their opportunities. And that was the first hurdle was, you know, are they coming in with conviction, with, you know, starting off with their expertise, really,

focusing on what they bring to the table and information that they know that maybe the people in the room did not know.

Karen (04:38)
Okay, right, yeah, actually we’ve talked to some other people about that and that role, that job that they have when they go in to make a pitch and kind of educate or bring people, bring the investors kind of into more of the inner circle of knowledge about their product and things like that. So that’s really interesting to hear from your point of view. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amy Millman (04:56)
It’s an aha moment, you know, and you can see

everybody in the room that’s listening to this pitch thinking, I didn’t know that. That’s interesting. I’d like to hear more. And not belaboring that point, but making that comment. know, did you know that two thirds of the people who have Alzheimer’s are women? here’s how we are approaching

Karen (05:08)
Okay.

Amy Millman (05:21)
this issue there was that once pitched and came in and spent 15 minutes talking about cancer generically, you know, educating the group about cancer. And we said, you know, you have a whole bunch of pharma people sitting around this table and people have invested in this. We know all about cancer.

Gabrielle (05:30)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Millman (05:44)
What is it that you’re doing that is so groundbreaking or that fills a hole in the science or in the product development?

Karen (05:55)
It’s interesting, Gabrielle, because this is touching on a lot of our upcoming questions and things like that. But it’s really great that we’re getting right into That’s why I love when we talk about a marketing mindset going in.

Gabrielle (05:57)
Yeah. Yeah, I it.

Karen (06:06)
so it sounds like you really want that aha moment. You really want to understand what company seeking investment already understands, right? So you want that from them. What else instills confidence from you as an investor in what they’re doing? know, clinical validation and regulatory readiness and all that. I I imagine that that’s also a very important part of what they need to be showing you.

Or is that less important than the aha?

Amy Millman (06:33)
No, no, all depends. mean, what is the strength that you’re walking in with? And it could be the team. You’ve done this before. You just built something for some other company that had a great success and now you’re starting something new with this team that you worked with before. Or you’ve done a study. It doesn’t have to be a clinical trial, but it could be a study that showed some

Karen (06:39)
Okay.

Amy Millman (07:02)
major change that nobody anticipated and will improve either patient lives or a drug or a device that’s already on the market, it’ll improve ⁓ upon that as far as results are concerned. And so I’m looking for, actually I’m looking to start off saying like, why should I look at this? What’s so different?

Karen (07:20)
Okay.

Okay.

Amy Millman (07:29)
and what’s so special and what do you know that I don’t know and then I want them to back it up.

Karen (07:37)
Okay. Yeah.

Gabrielle (07:39)
So Amy, you’ve been on both the side of counseling, advising, coaching, mentoring women, founders and women entrepreneurs, and then also on the investment side, giving, know, listening to these women come through. And you know better than anyone that statistically female

founded companies, women owned companies, and I’m not even talking about FemTech specifically, but they’re still getting a sliver of the total investment pie as their male-owned companies and counterparts. how do you advise, so when you’re coaching and mentoring all these years, and you’ve certainly been doing it long enough to see also, it’s interesting, I’d love to hear your comment on how, maybe what it was like when you first started and what you were telling women going into the boardrooms to pitch, or the rooms.

versus how it is now because generationally, I think there’s a lot of different attitudes, comfort levels, et cetera, as a female walking into a room full of predominantly men. taking that into account, there’s kind of a couple of things going against our female founders in fem tech. So how do you support them and coach them so that they can get that sliver of the pie?

Amy Millman (08:32)
the train.

Sometimes you’re so involved in what you’re doing that you’re not really thinking about how it’s going to be presented to certain people and populations. Sometimes you’re really surprised in what they take away and what they don’t.

you know, we used to say back in the day, you know, don’t go and pitch to an investor who doesn’t invest in your space. But that’s also changed a bunch, but it’s also how you make it relevant

that investor. So there was an article I read yesterday about a guy who was looking for a job. He was a space, his expertise was in space and rocketry and things like that. And he was looking for a job in a tech company. And so he tailored what he knew to what the interests were of that job offering.

You know, what did he know about rocket science that was applicable to whatever it is that that job was looking for? And I thought that’s the same thing that most entrepreneurs don’t do. They have it.

Karen (09:57)
Right.

Oh, I’m sorry,

interesting, because I would think that’s very interesting to hear. Ouch. OK.

Amy Millman (10:07)
no, they have a canned, they don’t

do that. They have a canned deck and they practiced and memorized this speech and they’re talking to guys who have no experience with women’s health or devices or issues with women’s health and they’re trying to explain a topic that is foreign to them. But if you look at what they’ve invested in,

Karen (10:12)
Yeah, okay.

Amy Millman (10:35)
that’s kind of an adjacency and make that connection, you did well with that investment because their plan is exactly what our plan is. Changes everything. And I would say nine times out of 10, and again, I’ve seen thousands of pitches, nobody does that. They start out with that formulaic presentation.

Karen (10:48)
Okay.

Amy Millman (11:02)
you know, and don’t really lead with their expertise and a focus on who the audience is. I mean, in marketing, you know, you teach about, you know, what is your target market, you know, your best user, your, you know, the persona, who are those people? You do that with investors as well.

Karen (11:25)
Right. So in education, we call that scaffolding, right? So you take somebody from where they are to where you want them to go or to help lead them there. And so you have to find that connection. And you have to do a little homework each time in order to do that. It reminds, I have some experience with the nonprofit world funding, being the one seeking the funding. And yeah, it was always an exercise in learning how to really focus your messaging to the people that you were approaching.

for funding and making sure you were a good fit and that they understood why you were such a good fit, et cetera, et cetera, and that their investment was good. So I imagine it’s a similar mindset. Yeah.

Amy Millman (12:00)
would say the exact same thing

is, you know, people come to us and they want to talk all about their product. I mean, I really want to talk about their business model and their plan to execute on that. so, you you spend five seconds, you know, giving me that one nugget that gives me an idea of where you, you know, what in what sector you’re in and what you’re doing. And then, okay, now.

Karen (12:06)
Right.

Yeah. Okay.

Right.

Amy Millman (12:29)
you know, let’s walk you through what the business is, you know, and most people don’t even get to the business until the end of the pitch and by that time you’ve lost everyone.

Karen (12:33)
Okay, yeah.

do you an example or a story that can remember or think of of somebody who just like blew you away with how great they were?

Amy Millman (12:50)
So there’s a great example, Susan Evans, she’s an OB-GYN in Australia. And I met her several years ago and continue to have conversations with her. And she had a medical device that was focusing on the root causes.

of many issues, endometriosis, pain, all kinds of issues that women have, not treating the symptoms, which you see a lot of companies coming to treat symptoms. She was going for root causes. All of a sudden, I am awake and I’m saying, okay, that’s the first time that I heard somebody talk about, you know, not drugs.

Gabrielle (13:22)
Right.

Amy Millman (13:32)
but a device that was focusing and diagnosing and delivering for root causes of the pain that women feel, which is totally ignored. So you didn’t have to talk about the pain that women are, everybody knows this specifically if you know the audience you’re talking to.

Karen (13:43)
Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Gabrielle (13:45)
Absolutely.

Right.

Amy Millman (13:56)
And so then she went into, you know, here are the, what we know as OBGYN. So she established her credentials that she was one to talk about it. They’ve developed a product that will do XYZ. And then, you know, what goes into the market is not a consumer product. It’s, you know, two practitioners, et cetera.

Karen (14:05)
Okay.

Amy Millman (14:20)
who could use this to further diagnose their patients who come in with this unbearable pain and no solution except giving them drugs that solve symptoms. And so that, and I will never forget that. And there were another 10 companies in that same cohort. I remember that first of all, because that’s something I didn’t know and something I hadn’t seen.

Karen (14:44)
Yep.

Right.

Amy Millman (14:47)
And then she compared it to other devices that have been successful, not for women’s health, but for others and how the process of bringing it to market was what her plan was and who the potential partners were and how this would all work and her team. And we helped her find, I mean, just top notch people globally that were interested in her approach that was different.

Karen (15:05)
Okay.

Amy Millman (15:16)
And you know, another example is a company out of Israel. I’ve known this company since Gabby’s friend Deb and I started Springboard. We met this company in New York in 2001 in a very, very successful fintech company. And then years and years later, they started a software company focused on

medical applications. And I went around to all the pharma saying, hey, you can add software applications into your drug labels and be part of the prescription. So that will increase the efficacy of this drug. And they all said, no, we wouldn’t do that. Why would we do that? There’s apps out there. That’s fine.

Karen (15:44)
Okay.

Amy Millman (16:06)
But what they had was some studies done at universities that showed that it amplified the effect of those drugs on certain conditions. And that was the major, major thing. It’s data and risk. Those are the two things that investors plus want to make their money. But, but

Karen (16:21)
Yeah. Right.

Excitement. Yeah, right, right, right, right.

Amy Millman (16:31)
data show me something even if you don’t do clinical trials you can show studies of some kind that will cost a lot less and will show some movement some success some indication that you’re on the right track.

Gabrielle (16:39)
Mm-hmm.

Karen (16:48)
So super tight on end of things, you have great data, do you need to care about getting the investor excited about it? know, with that first story, the first example she got you very excited about the concept. Do you always need to be excited if you know that the business model is buttoned up?

Amy Millman (17:06)
business models usually are never buttoned up. That stage is, especially at early stage medical device or, that usually doesn’t get buttoned up for quite a long time. the business model, you have to have some indication of who’s gonna buy this and why and what the potential is, whether you go through channel partners or you go through

Karen (17:08)
⁓ Okay, that’s true. They’re work in progress. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, all right.

Yeah.

Amy Millman (17:30)
I mean, that’s part of your execution plan.

Gabrielle (17:32)
Yeah,

you need a commercialization strategy. And which actually, I want to jump in because I think that will get us to our next question, we were talking about this phrase, emotionally intelligent marketing. it was funny because Karen and I were having a little bit different approach. And the question specifically, how like how can a strong, emotionally intelligent marketing approach make

Amy Millman (17:35)
That’s right.

Gabrielle (17:55)
a femtech company, a women’s health company, more appealing to investors. So interesting that we bring up the commercialization strategy because I interpreted that question as an emotionally intelligent commercialization, a marketing approach that informs every step and including your commercialization strategy, which may mean that there’s a lot of community building, particularly when you’re trying to change things.

before sales happen. And so the way I was reading that was how do we get investors in early stage companies to understand, particularly when it comes to female health and women owned companies, that there’s going to be a lot of time where you have to build trust in your community of patients and doctors. You have to, you know, kind of have the credibility in coming to the conversation. So you have to have content papers, white papers, et cetera,

And you’re also trying to sell. so that was how I interpreted it. It’s like, how do you get investors to kind of recognize that this is a journey We plan to sell it, make money, but in order to do this correctly, there’s a certain amount of, brand building that needs to happen. My bias. Karen had a different approach to that question.

Karen (19:07)
It’s

just really funny when you see words on paper how your own experience really informs how you interpret that. So you went straight there and I was thinking, know, emotionally intelligent marketing to the investors that I’m trying to get funding from because that was more my experience I need to market myself, my company to the people that I want to help fund our work. And so, and we were like, well, they’re not mutually exclusive, obviously. So it’s kind of two different, you know,

Gabrielle (19:11)
Yeah.

which is,

Karen (19:32)
two different ways of looking at this. Yeah.

Gabrielle (19:32)
I think we were kind of… yeah and I think

the reason I brought it up and I apologize for interrupting you was because Amy kind of was talking about that. It’s like you have to understand your audience. You have to understand their framework. You have to understand what matters to them it’s like a cover letter. You have to customize what you’re talking about to your audience so they care and lean in. So I…

Karen (19:38)
no, that’s alright.

Yeah, right. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Amy Millman (19:54)
Let

me give you an alternative look at that exact same situation. So an entrepreneur that I’ve worked with for many, many years in the pharma world, and she had worked at corporations before that and et cetera, was going out for funding on a company that she took the CEO position of.

Gabrielle (19:59)
Okay.

Amy Millman (20:13)
And the investors will also come over and they’ll ask you the basic formulaic questions. there are like 10 questions that investors who are not interested in your business will ask you. like, what’s your exit strategy? And Holly basically said, there are going to be many opportunities.

for us to exit this company successfully. If you support the plan that I’m laying out for you on how we build at each phase of growth. So let’s talk about this phase of growth, what the plan is and whether or not you can support that plan. And because they’re only investing

their money for a certain period of time. There’s no guarantees they’ll invest for the next phase of growth. They’re investing for this phase of growth. And so it was this moment of clarity for me that I think most people don’t understand because they, you know, then fumfer around to try to answer the question about, well, you know, we’re going to get bought out or we’re going to, you know, go IPO. No.

Karen (21:07)
Right, right.

Gabrielle (21:23)
Yeah.

Amy Millman (21:25)
Focus on your plan and your expertise. And if that investor is not interested in that, because they’re only interested in what kind of money they make out of this eventually, what the potential exit for them is, if they’re not interested in your plan, they’re never going to invest. And so you always have to be focusing back on here’s the plan. We’re going to execute on the next phase of growth.

Gabrielle (21:46)
Right.

Karen (21:51)
Okay.

Amy Millman (21:54)
like this and you know and very clear about our milestones and our goals and achievements and you’re investing this amount of money for this amount of time and when we reach that point you know you’ll know that we’ve been successful and then we can talk about exit opportunities you know when it’s relevant but right now this is what you’re investing in.

And it was, I thought, I wish this for everybody. Because it’s about, let’s talk about my plan.

Gabrielle (22:26)
Right.

I’m hearing you say too, it’s it’s taking control of that conversation and not ceding it to the investor who feels like they’re, then you just have to chase and you’re constantly feeling like I’m not, I shouldn’t say, cause I’ve never been in this position, but I would imagine the more questions you get like that, they start to undermine your own confidence because you do have a plan and if you can stick to it and know and have confidence in what you’re selling and I love that.

quantifiable, short quantifiable phases or at least, know, identifiable phases. So you’re not going out there with the whole enchilada or necessarily expecting people to buy in. And that’s a framework probably for funders who are feeling both a mixture of, excuse me, founders, the entrepreneur side, feeling a mixture of both excitement, anxiety and urgency.

And so in a way you want someone to just kind of buy in the whole kit and caboodle.

specifically in women’s health companies, or fem tech companies specifically, founders are feeling so passionate and marketing directors and the people who work about finally like leveling the playing field, taking pain out of the equation, making sure that women’s anatomies are taken into consideration, making sure that they’re not being ignored or condescended to and

you have to dial that back because that’s not necessarily, that may be really important to some people and that’s when you bring that into the conversation. Right,

Amy Millman (23:58)
I ask a question, sure.

Gabrielle (24:00)
It’s frameworks. Framing is another whole aspect of this that I think

at least for me, a bias because I believe that everyone should care about issues that affect women. But the fact of the matter is, is that’s not gonna sell. Yeah. Yeah.

Amy Millman (24:13)
You know, everybody has a self-interest and

beyond self-interest, it’s the issue of risk. And so if they’re not interested in the topic, they’re interested in, you know, how you’ve de-risked an opportunity.

Gabrielle (24:26)
Right.

Karen (24:31)
OK.

OK. So as an investor then, what you want is ideally to be inspired by the project. Ideally. But the most important thing is that the product or the project has identified a problem that they’re solving and have a very

Gabrielle (24:33)
That’s a great angle.

Karen (24:50)
clear plan in front of them that minimizes the risk to you as an investor, provides you with a roadmap that you can follow as an investor to make sure that things are going according to plan. Is that right? And is that my overly simplifying it or am I?

Amy Millman (25:06)
Yeah, mean, the roadmap

is, mean, as quick as you can get into the

What’s the strength? What’s the aha moment in the front? know, are you an OBGYN? Establish your credentials. You know, are you building on CRISPR? have you done a company already that actually, was the precursor to what you’re doing now? and then the next slide is

Karen (25:27)
No.

Amy Millman (25:34)
how this business grows and who are the likely purchasers and everything.

Karen (25:36)
Okay.

you feel like what you’ve seen thousands, I would imagine, of pitches at this point, right? Are the majority of people coming in that really need to redo and come back? is it very, everybody does, okay.

Amy Millman (25:51)
everybody everybody does and

Everybody should be redoing their deck after every meeting, you know, it’s You know, I can always tell if I saw that same deck, you know a year ago you know, no, that means you haven’t really gone out there and talked to people not investors, but yeah, that means you didn’t get any feedback. You know, you didn’t

Karen (25:59)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Millman (26:18)
You didn’t incorporate what you were told, what you learned.

Gabrielle (26:22)
You’re bringing up a couple of good questions or good points. One is deck assembly and putting together building a deck, which is in and of itself a talent as you’re seeing like people can put together, you know slides. ⁓ But I think telling the story, creating that arc, bringing them along the journey is the real, the nut, the beauty, the magic. You work with, you know, lots of businesses

what’s the role of coaching and mentoring and this kind of deck building? And I say deck building specifically because my deck building has always struggled. And I think I could have really benefited from storytelling, help and deck building and, you know, all the things that you’re talking about and having a mentor. And I didn’t. So kind of when

you’re in this and you’re like trying to raise capital and how do you connect with people who can help you? mean what’s the role?

Amy Millman (27:16)
you can actually use AI right now. mean, and I’ll be honest with you, the deck building technology that’s there is incredible. ⁓ I mean, really incredible and it improves every single day on that process. Here’s my thing is that when I look at a deck, I’m kind of like the Simon Cowell

Karen (27:26)
Really? That’s great. I mean, it’s good to hear. Good.

Gabrielle (27:27)
Good to hear.

Amy Millman (27:40)
of pitches. I just say I hate it. within like 15 seconds I’m lost. I won’t listen anymore. I’m a very, very small attention span on decks. And I need to know that it is exciting, authentic, full of possibility.

that people have focus on the fact that for a deck for investors as opposed for product or any, those are different decks, different purposes. Most people don’t know And so for me, need the first two

Karen (28:10)
Right. Right.

Gabrielle (28:10)
Yeah, no.

Amy Millman (28:20)
you know, what I’m looking at and what’s relevant to me at that juncture. So, you know, I need to know that they’ve, the stage that they’re at, because some people don’t even mention that at all. And that is absolutely critical for me to understand whether or not, you know, this is a relevant conversation at all. And sometimes they make it sound as if they’re so far along and you realize they don’t have anything. I had a company that,

Karen (28:26)
Okay.

Gabrielle (28:26)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Karen (28:38)
Sure. Right.

Gabrielle (28:42)
Right, right.

Karen (28:42)
Yeah,

right.

Right.

Amy Millman (28:50)
had an idea, and that’s all it was, for an early smell test for Parkinson’s. So 10 years prior, if you have a family member who’s had Parkinson’s, you can take this smell test and they wanna do it over the counter, know, CVS, whatever. It turned out is that that’s all it was, was an idea that they had read somewhere. Turns out Michael J. Fox, you know, does that.

Gabrielle (29:17)
Mm.

Amy Millman (29:17)
you know,

offers that free to anybody who wants it. and, but he never mentioned or she never mentioned that, you know, it was just an idea, you know, you know, they had read something. And so I said, well, what are you bringing us? You know, you have no expertise in this area. You read an article, you, you know, you don’t have a plan.

Gabrielle (29:28)
Right, yeah.

Karen (29:35)
Right, right.

Right.

Gabrielle (29:41)
Right.

Amy Millman (29:43)
for developing it and you’ve never taken, you know, done a commercial product into the market, especially a health product, and you’ve never worked for CVS or any of those. So, I mean, what is it, where’s that traction that I need to see that you have the potential for doing this?

Karen (29:43)
Yeah, right.

Gabrielle (29:53)
Yeah.

Karen (30:01)
Sure,

So basically, within the first two slides, and the credentials and the hook. And then by slide three starts the plan. Is that pretty much right? Yeah, like get right into it.

Amy Millman (30:12)
Right away, know, the best get right into

it. And, you know, like in the pharma companies, I work a lot with Yale faculty on their products. for them, it’s the team, you know? That’s what they start with. And they didn’t when we first started working with them, you know, it was somewhere in the back. said, you know, you’re at Yale, you have a team, you have a lab.

Karen (30:25)
Okay, okay, yeah.

Right.

Amy Millman (30:37)
you know,

who’s in the lab, who’s working on this, you know, what’s your credentials? And now, okay, now we have established that you have credentials. I found that women did not lead with their team ever. And yeah, and I think, know, Gabby, as you mentioned early on, you know, in 20 years ago, I mean, yeah, the team.

Karen (30:52)
Really? Interesting.

Amy Millman (31:03)
they didn’t have a team. They were really new at this and really starting out, they didn’t have a network, maybe a couple of people, or they didn’t realize that they had a network. And so they’d come in there all by themselves and you never know that they had anything. And most people assumed that the woman was, as I said, the marketing person or part of the sales team or…

something, but not this person who actually had the credentials to be able to do this. you know, I think back to that first forum that we did at the Oracle Conference Center in California. And again, I think it’s still relevant to these days. I still see this is not leading with your absolute strength and then nailing the impact of what this will be.

Gabrielle (31:43)
Mm-hmm.

Karen (31:57)
Okay. Right.

Gabrielle (31:58)
So you’re saying you often see people not utilizing that nail your credibility, your area of strength?

Amy Millman (32:05)
Yeah. And I think for women, it’s just that people don’t assume you’re the CEO. We almost wrote a book once of all of the comments, the very rude comments that women entrepreneurs had gotten when they went in to meet with investors. know, the woman with the coffee is here, or is this take your daughter to work day? I mean, they were just, or if this company is so good, why isn’t your husband running it?

I mean, it was just, I mean, there were hundreds of these comments. It’s sort of like basketball trash talking, ⁓ but women recoiled and not taken seriously because you’re not taking the process seriously. And you’re not basic, you think you are, what…

Karen (32:37)
Yeah.

Amy Millman (32:51)
What do they need to know to feel comfortable that you’re the leader?

Karen (32:55)
Right. Well, a lot of other things, that can boil down to familiarity with the process, which, like networking, lot of other things that women, in general, to make blanket statements, took a while longer to get there, to being able to do that. And we weren’t raised with that, in the same way. there may a little less familiarity within.

Gabrielle (32:55)
Yes.

Karen (33:18)
circles for that. is that still the case?

Gabrielle (33:21)
the assumptions about

Amy Millman (33:23)
Yeah, know, Joanne Wilson, who’s an investor in New York and is a leader in the cannabis world, wrote a blog post recently basically saying that, you know, it’s like, when is she going to be taken seriously? Her husband is a very big investor and they’ve been investing together for, you know, 30 years. And they still, she still finds that people befriend her to meet her husband.

and he doesn’t invest anymore, she does. it’s, and she wrote this blog about it and I laughed and I thought, you know, it’s just human nature. You know, it’s understand that, you know, if you go in and you’re, and you have an accent, you know, acknowledge that, you know, if you’re, I remember an entrepreneur who was very, very successful presenting at one of our programs and

Gabrielle (34:07)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Millman (34:16)
She was a very, very large woman and ⁓ not fashion conscious at all. And she got up to speak and the first thing she did was say, listen, I’m not gonna win any beauty contests here, but I’m going to share with you some really important developments in my field. So you’re gonna wanna listen to this.

Gabrielle (34:40)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm.

Karen (34:43)
That’s a very smart approach. Yeah, that’s very smart. Yep, yep, yep. And not in a way that does anything more than acknowledge it and move on, own it and take it, yeah.

Amy Millman (34:43)
She raised about $100 million in your company. Just acknowledge the elephant in the room. ⁓

Just acknowledge it.

Yeah, you just assume that that’s what they’re thinking and, and, you know, proceed accordingly. And I think a lot of women, maybe it’s changed now. there are a lot more women in the room now in investor groups than there ever were before. I mean, there were never any in those early days. And so now there are, but remember that a lot of the women that are investors are kind of

Karen (35:01)
Yeah.

Gabrielle (35:11)
Yeah.

Karen (35:12)
Good. Okay.

Amy Millman (35:23)
part of the club now, know, and so the investor club. so they’re basically, you know, there’s a culture in each one of those funds that they, you know, they have a ideal, you know, person that they’ll invest in. And, you know, try as you might, you may never change their mind.

Karen (35:38)
Okay, yeah.

Gabrielle (35:45)
That’s really interesting. So can you as ⁓ an entrepreneur find out about your investor groups? You know, look in and figuring out. It’s all online. I’m sure their websites they say this is what we care about specifically. So it goes back to tailoring your decks. Yeah.

Amy Millman (35:56)
there.

You can see who they invested in

and speak with them and know those companies and know who runs them and what has happened. Have they replaced the CEO and are most of those women? When we were first starting out, we went to a bunch of the very large firms and said, how many women CEOs have you invested in?

you know, most of them hadn’t invested in anybody or, you know, the women were not CEOs. And there was some data back in the day, basically saying that 40 % of teams that got invested had a woman on the team, on the founding team. Well, to me, that was a feeder school to, you know, who is going to run companies next.

Karen (36:51)
right?

Amy Millman (36:51)
And you find that that it just takes a very, very long time, as it did to get women in the workplace, mean, you know, in senior positions. So why would it take any less time for people to admit that, you know, a woman could run a company and be successful?

Gabrielle (36:58)
Yeah.

Karen (37:10)
Right, right.

So were you the only woman in the room as an investor for a long time? Because you’ve been doing this a long time. Were you?

Amy Millman (37:16)
Yeah, but I wasn’t in

that I was an investor in those days. I mean, the first 20 something years, I was a facilitator, a connector, accelerator developer. We didn’t make investments. But we built relationships with, a thousand of them to basically pave the way for, know, you’re really going to we’re going to be sourcing you some deals that you’re going to love.

Karen (37:20)
Okay.

Yeah, okay. Yeah.

It’s really an exciting world, actually. It really is.

Amy Millman (37:42)
and involving them

as advisors to companies that we knew. So the key to Springboard during the early days was matching each entrepreneur with five to 10 relevant advisors. And many of those advisors were men and many of them invested in women.

Karen (37:48)
Yeah.

very cool world you live in, I

Gabrielle (38:08)
even Amy, before

you were, when you said, you know, not as an investor, but you were probably in the minority in your lobbying days, am I right? Yeah. And, and you were in the position of asking or persuading being taken seriously, walking into the room and commanding attention and credibility and belief in you. So

Amy Millman (38:16)
⁓ yeah, it was the only one, right.

Gabrielle (38:31)
I can only imagine that was a real tough or at least an interesting, probably really learned a lot and now have passed that on to other women, legions of women.

Amy Millman (38:35)
You know, it-

You know, harder to get the company to respect you than it was to get external folks because as you know, lobbyists have money and money talks it opens doors. It may not give you the answer that you need, but it opened the doors. it didn’t, the gender didn’t really matter. Honestly,

Gabrielle (38:58)
course.

Got it.

Amy Millman (39:04)
what opens doors for investors is being introduced by somebody that they know and respect.

And so with Springboard it was we made introductions. That’s right.

Gabrielle (39:14)
Yeah, that connection’s

so hard for women ⁓ entrepreneurs who are doing so much and trying to build their brands, bring something much needed, hopefully, to the market while also building their own connections and furthering their, you know, doing the legwork. So I can understand the need for springboard, that’s for sure. ⁓

Amy Millman (39:36)
Well,

I mean the need for a network and using your network and I found that a lot of women didn’t use the network some of them said, you know, that women didn’t open up doors for other women. that’s not the case anymore.

Karen (39:50)
Yeah.

Gabrielle (39:52)
Yeah.

Karen (39:53)
Yeah.

Amy Millman (39:53)
You know, not

everybody is a connector or willing to do that, but for the most part, you know, I mean, my feeling was with all of the springboard folks and now continuing on with all the women that we work with and invest with, the proposition was, it’s human capital as well as financial capital that you’re putting into this because that was the whole springboard focus.

Karen (39:57)
Right.

Amy Millman (40:19)
was, you know, you’re in here and we’re going to call on you for support for somebody else who is relevant to you and your business or that your interests. And so over the years, every, all the alumna were all involved in engaging and taking advantage of that, you know, and I mean, and that’s the whole ⁓

Karen (40:30)
Right?

Amy Millman (40:45)
important thing about entrepreneurship is, you know, building over time the network of people that you trust and that you that will help and that you will help. And that’s what investors do. They share their deals. We have these relationships and if you come in and you do a bad pitch or aren’t cognizant of their interests, they’ll tell

Karen (41:04)
Okay.

Amy Millman (41:11)
everybody else, you know, we’re not investing in them for X, Y, Z reason.

Karen (41:13)
⁓ yeah, that’s true too.

Gabrielle (41:15)
So the

power of the team, you’ve talked about that a lot too, and putting the time in to build those teams and even go out of your comfort level if you’re not, I would imagine, again, I’m not an entrepreneur, but I have a lot of people in my network who are, and there’s a certain amount of sort of not a certain amount, driven individuality, we’re gonna do this, I have an idea.

And I think in what I am reading and seeing among specifically the FemTech world, there seems to be a lot more emphasis on collaboration, on shared value, collective kind of rising boat, you know, what’s the phrase? Yeah, and I would like to think that some of those stereotypes or tropes about women not helping women, and that is changing. And hopefully there are more groups and mentors such as yourself, but

Karen (41:53)
Rising title of saw boats. Yeah.

Amy Millman (41:55)
you

Gabrielle (42:08)
Also women who are willing to take that ask for help and take the help because by association we can build that team. You have so much equity in that group and then that helps you. So anyway, that’s I think.

Amy Millman (42:20)
Yeah. mean, the first,

the first woman boss that I ever met during my lobby days told me that I, you know, after I was so excited that there was one woman in the company, and I asked to meet with her and she told me I was on my own. And, and that drove me to build my network of all the women in all the subsidiaries and all the areas because the men weren’t going to mentor me.

Gabrielle (42:32)
Yes.

Karen (42:44)
Yeah, I love what you did. think I was learning about it was really an exciting, ⁓ task for me. It was really, yeah.

Amy Millman (42:51)
And that’s basically where it started is that women,

I mean, we didn’t have networks of professional women back in the day that we could call and they basically got there by themselves if they did. And so the idea was, you know, it’s better we do this together and benefit from each other’s expertise and

Karen (42:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Amy Millman (43:15)
for whatever purposes we have in there, doesn’t matter, We’re not going to get anywhere if we’re doing it alone.

I would love to sort of explain this one very specific thing I have about this. At Springboard, we used to do something that nobody else does or didn’t do forever, that I ever saw. We’d spend pretty much hours and hours on who you are as a person. Like, you know, give your bio.

Karen (43:24)
Yes. Okay.

Amy Millman (43:44)
and talk to the company, relevant to what projects you’re doing, but basically give us an idea of who you are and what drives you and where this all comes from, what your skill set is, without describing the company at all. And I would say nine times out of ten they couldn’t do it. Can’t ever talk about themselves.

If you cannot talk about yourself and you don’t know who you are and you don’t have a narrative that really identifies your accomplishments and the important things that you have to share, nobody is going to think that you’re somebody to bet on.

Karen (44:27)
That’s a really good point. It’s like a personal, I remember again in the nonprofit world, working on a really good elevator pitch takes a really long time because, especially if you’re working with other people, which almost everybody is, but because it really requires you to absolutely understand, really be able to distill everything down to a core three sentences, which is.

Gabrielle (44:27)
Greedy face. Yeah.

Karen (44:51)
can be really hard when you’re so close to it. And I would bet that for a lot of the women at Springboard, it’s just like, well, I am who I am. just kinda, I just am, right? Like how, yeah, yeah, right.

Amy Millman (45:00)
Yeah, you’d never know that they were PhDs or postdocs

with running a lab at a major university or had built companies before. I mean, you just never know. mean, people start thinking, I’m going to invest in something I know and somebody that I can relate to.

Karen (45:22)
Do you think that this is more of like a gender role thing? Women were sort of raised to downplay accomplishments and men were raised to trumpet their accomplishments type of thing.

Amy Millman (45:30)
Yeah, in Australia,

there’s the tall poppy syndrome. basically, you begin to talk too much about yourself, you know, they basically lop off the top of the poppy. mean, nobody likes anybody to talk about themselves there. And we started doing programs in Australia and it was a nightmare. mean, they

Karen (45:35)
What’s that?

Yeah.

Amy Millman (45:52)
you know, it would take, we’d make them go over five or six times. It was painful for them because all they could think of was, you know, in polite company, that would be a no-no. And we would say, no, you know, you have to, you know, who are you? And, and what is it that you bring? What is it that gets us to feel that you are actually the leader? You’re the one that’s going to carry this out and deliver.

Gabrielle (46:20)
In another episode, we talk about ⁓ feminine communication styles and also sort of the idea that some of the attributes of being female historically have lent themselves to things like connection and nurturing and sort of bonding and sharing, right? Historically, and that’s not for all women, but.

Conversely, the same can be true about the inability to promote, to talk too much, to in any way bolster ourselves up, right? So you’ve got these, you know, I think that that imposter syndrome is so ingrained in women. So that’s just another thing that female founders and, you know, going in front of large groups.

and pitching or small groups, but having that confidence and knowing that they have a right to be at that table and being very confident in delivering that. And I love what you’re saying because I definitely think that’s something that’s probably a lot of women don’t pay enough attention to in the interest of getting to their commercial elicitation plan or whatever else it is. They’re not thinking enough about.

why I have something of value that you are going to want.

Karen (47:38)
Yeah.

So do you see that still, like let’s say today, do you see that as a need that needs to be addressed by more people coming to you with their pitches that they need to present themselves to you? Like they don’t do a good job presenting themselves as well as their teams

Amy Millman (47:57)
both men and women don’t do it, but men get kind of get a pass a little on it and women internalize it. And so, you know, and it’s not being, you know, boisterous and, you know, bragging, you know, being a braggart. I mean, you’re just to matter of fact, you know, just, just so that, you know, it’s almost conversational. It’s just so that, you know,

Karen (48:02)
Okay, all right.

Okay.

Gabrielle (48:14)
Right.

Amy Millman (48:22)
It is a company I’m working with and she’s had several companies in different sectors and then decided to do her MBA at Georgetown. I run a program at Georgetown now and she’s talking about doing an online site for thrift shopping.

and because it’s personal love of hers. And I left and I said, oh, I met Julie Rainwright back in, you know, 1999 when she started Pets.com and then recently was the CEO and founder of the RealReal fashion. And we watched her through that whole process. And I said, you know, so what do you, you know, what Julie could say was she was a pioneer in the whole consumer.

Aspect of ⁓ development and has been investor etc. All then that’s what she starts with now She didn’t have that back then but You know you what do you have?

Gabrielle (49:19)
Great.

Amy Millman (49:20)
You know, because there’s plenty of sites out there. can go to Poshmark. You know, I go to RealReal. I can go to all of these places and find, you know, the specific thing. What is it that you bring? And she said, I used to work in the fine dining world where we would attach a, what we called the soignee, a card that had our very famous customers or our regular customers’ information, their kids’ names, what they ate, what they liked. And I said,

Karen (49:23)
Right. Right.

Amy Millman (49:48)
That’s it. That’s your thing you start talking about that that you that was a product from that restaurant group that set you guys apart from others and

It may not be relevant to your fashion site, but it’s relevant to understand that you understand you’re focusing on the customer.

Karen (50:17)
Yeah, right.

Gabrielle (50:17)
to give you credibility

for why you’re doing something. I’ve learned this from my experience and I know this works. I’m applying it to now this need.

Amy Millman (50:24)
That’s right. That’s it.

Karen (50:26)
Right.

Amy Millman (50:27)
That’s right. And if you can’t do that, then you look at, and I’ve surrounded myself, you know, I have this idea, I had a personal experience and I’ve surrounded myself with these 10 people as advisors. There’s a company out of Australia called Turn2.ai that we’ve just invested

her daughter had cerebral palsy and so she couldn’t get new information. She wanted to know what the new therapies were, new studies and things and she couldn’t find that in one place. So she built it herself. And then we thought, well, she’s just a mom with no tech background. So she went out and she developed this whole advisory group.

I guess it was like 20 people originally, doctors, lawyers, tech people who were interested in building something with her. And they got a little bit of equity, but it’s her team.

Gabrielle (51:28)
Yeah, and her ability to assemble that team shows that she’s able to garner trust and that smart people want to be associated with her, which is, again, proving that you have something of value.

Karen (51:29)
Right? Right.

Amy Millman (51:40)
That’s right.

And she only had cerebral palsy, not the 50 different conditions that she ultimately wants. So we just invested in one little thing. No, we invested in the fact that she could pull a team together and she had a plan.

Gabrielle (51:50)
Right.

Karen (51:58)
Yeah.

Gabrielle (51:59)
Thank you, Amy. It was such a great conversation. I know. Is there ⁓ any last thoughts? mean, we’ve addressed so much.

Karen (52:02)
This is really interesting.

Amy Millman (52:09)
just think that have to be creative and they have to be clear about the fact that sometimes they’re just not into you.

Karen (52:17)
I think that’s a really

Gabrielle (52:17)
Yeah, yeah.

Karen (52:21)
good thing to keep in mind always, like for everything.

Gabrielle (52:22)
Yeah, yeah.

Amy Millman (52:23)
and not worry

about it because there’s plenty of other investors out there. And you know, this one just wasn’t into you wasn’t what they’re looking at these days, even if that that’s an area that they’re they’re investing in it just you know, move on.

Karen (52:30)
Yeah.

Gabrielle (52:32)
Yeah.

Karen (52:38)
Just use it as a practice opportunity and just move on. Yeah.

Gabrielle (52:39)
Move on.

Amy Millman (52:41)
Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s like dating. you

know, you don’t marry, you know, the first 20 that you meet unless you’re really lucky. if at all.

Karen (52:50)
Well, thank you

so much for your time. We really, really enjoyed having you here today. It was fantastic.

Gabrielle (52:54)
Yeah.

Amy Millman (52:54)
Great. Thanks for including me. hope this

was worth it for you, you know.

Karen (53:00)
⁓

Gabrielle (53:00)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Karen (53:01)
please, this is fantastic. And I think there’s been a lot of really good discussion, a lot of really good information that people are going to be able to use, which was our goal, that they can listen to a really engaging conversation and get inspired by the topic, but also walk away with things that they can mull over, keep in mind, make notes, and hopefully will help inform them on their next stage in their journey. ⁓

Amy Millman (53:25)
Yeah.

Gabrielle (53:26)
What I like too is I want our listeners to walk away feeling encouraged and I think that we’ve given them some real salient points that are actionable that you could change in your next presentation. And I think it applies to anyone whether you’re a ⁓ startup or whether you’re an established brand that’s looking to pitch to…

Karen (53:32)
Yeah.

Gabrielle (53:50)
name your audience. It’s not just investors. What we’ve talked about here is just that the blocks for success for any sort of you know, marketing, pitching your ideas to whomever. Anyway.

Karen (53:59)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amy Millman (54:01)
Yeah.

Karen (54:02)
So that’s great.

Amy Millman (54:02)
And for me, know, all of these folks is what’s your next phase of growth do you need to accomplish during those next phase of growth? Focus on that. Be very clear about that. That’s what you’re going to investors for. You’re not going to them for the IPO. You’re going to them for the funds you need for the next phase of your

if your next phase of growth is six months, what are you gonna do in six months? And what’s gonna happen as a result and quantify it?

so that you have something everybody can see and know what they’re investing in.

Karen (54:39)
thank you again for being here with us.

Gabrielle (54:41)
I already said it, but you know, for our listeners, you know, the takeaway being that understanding the investor mindset is just as critical as understanding your customer, because I think a lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about their customer, but let’s take a dial back. Bring the proof, bring your own story, and never underestimate the power of trust and of connections.

of your own voice in the pitch. So thank you.

Karen (55:06)
Very well

said, very well said. Bye Amy, bye.

Amy Millman (55:07)
Great. Thank you all. This was fun.

Gabrielle (55:11)
Cheers, bye.