We’re so excited to be back with new episodes of Found and to introduce you to our brilliant new co-host Becca Szkutak! In this episode, we talk with Valentina Milanova, the founder and CEO of Daye, a gynecological health company that’s working to close the gender pain gap and raise industry standards when it comes to women’s health products.
We’re so excited to be back with new episodes of Found and to introduce you to our brilliant new co-host Becca Szkutak! In this episode, we talk with Valentina Milanova, the founder and CEO of Daye, a gynecological health company that’s working to close the gender pain gap and raise industry standards when it comes to women’s health products.
While researching menstrual pain relief and tampon manufacturing, Valentina found there was a shocking lack of innovation, research, and health and safety standards in gynecological products. So she started Daye and created the most absorbent organic tampon on the market and the only one that uses CBD to relieve menstrual pain that was designed with women in mind. Within the company, Valentina is infusing her values into every aspect of the business from implementing a 4-day work week to improve mental health to hiring survivors of human trafficking to work in their manufacturing centers. In this episode, we also touch on the challenges of fundraising when your product requires you to say “vaginal canal” at least once in your pitch, why Valentina will not be a serial entrepreneur, and why they don’t keep any tampon trade secrets.
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Darrell Etherington 0:02
Hi, and welcome to found TechCrunch his podcast where we bring you the stories behind the startups. Welcome back. We took a much needed break, obviously. And we're excited to be back with some new energy. You can hear it, can you hear my energy, big changes, and also a new co host? So welcome.
Rebecca Szkutak 0:20
Hey, guys, it's Becca scatec. Coming to you from TC plus
Darrell Etherington 0:24
nice TechCrunch plus everyone's favorite destination for premium TechCrunch content. Right, Becca?
Rebecca Szkutak 0:30
Anything exclusive?
Darrell Etherington 0:36
What do you find interesting, generally, what are you like focused on most of the time,
Rebecca Szkutak 0:41
I'm always more focused not on what the big guys are doing. But kind of what everyone else is doing. I feel like we get a lot of focus in this industry on the injury sins and the Sequoia is but you forget that the rounds are in include generally five plus other investors, usually small funds. And I found like what those guys are up to the smaller players is generally where I try to spend most of my time,
Darrell Etherington 1:02
right. And that's perfect for found because that's where we spend the most of our time with companies who maybe listeners haven't heard of before. Occasionally, we have somebody you know, with a little more name recognition on the show, reluctantly, I would say but generally we focus on entrepreneurs who are just starting out and building something super new and exciting. And a lot of the investors they cite as being the most helpful end up being the small investors that you're talking about Becca, so I'm sure you'll hear a lot of familiar names as we get into this.
Rebecca Szkutak 1:31
Yeah, people forget those are like the real drivers of the industry. Without those players, the industry would not be what it is.
Darrell Etherington 1:38
That's right. And same for you the entrepreneurs who are our guests, including today we're talking to Valentina Mila Nova from de a genealogical health startup that make CBD coated organic tampons and other menstrual health products. It's the beginning of an empire Becca
Rebecca Szkutak 1:56
just taking the world of gynecological consumer products by storm, it seems
Darrell Etherington 2:01
that's right. Well, we think so anyway, but we'll let you judge so let's hear from Valentina.
I Valentina, how's it going?
Valentina Milanova 2:12
Hi, it's going well, thanks for having me.
Darrell Etherington 2:14
Yeah. Great to have you here. So to get us started, do you want to explain to us and our listeners just a bit about day and what the company is?
Valentina Milanova 2:22
Yeah, so we are building a comprehensive gynecological health platform that aims to re discover the tampon the menstrual tampon as an item that does a lot more than just soaking up menstrual fluid. So we started in March 2020, with the introduction of the world's first CBD tampon, and we're now expanding to using the menstrual tampon for diagnostic purposes as well. So we can detect gynecological health diseases at home. And in the future, we want to be the one go to place for all things gynecological health, from your first menstruation, through to menopause and beyond.
Darrell Etherington 3:01
Awesome. Cool. So do you want to maybe give us a little bit of background of how you got into that business? You mentioned? You know that you introduced the product in 2020? Is that right? But I think the company you've been at work at it for a bit longer than that probably doing some research and figuring out the product details prior to launch. But do you want to give us some of the background of the company?
Valentina Milanova 3:19
Yeah, so I started they in 2017 for the first year and a half I financed everything using credit cards. Yeah, I just treated it as a as a research project. They didn't think it was to be a business or anything. The process I had in my mind was okay, I'm spending the equivalent of what I will spend on an MBA on my credit cards, but I'm kind of getting a business education so it's fine even if I have to like wash dishes for the rest of my life to make up this that I'll be I'll be okay. And the reason why I'm also interested in the space I had this idea about the pain relieving tampon which would be made out of the fibers of industrial hemp and infused with the extract from industrial hemp that's pain relieving the reason why the idea kind of stuck with me is because when I was doing research on a space on top of manufacturing space, I realized that it's one of the areas that has greatly lacked innovation since tampons were first invented and actually an interesting fact for you that you might not be aware of is tampons were not originally designed for the female physiology so the the BBC some research and they found out that the temples were designed as a shape to plug bullet once in soldiers in World War One and World War Two. The nurses that were looking after the soldiers repurposed the tampons for their own needs by adding a string to them. Wow. So that's just one of the many realizations that I have about the tampon industry as hard as how monopolized that is how lucky innovation is. And then, from spending more time in the space. I also realized that the issue with lack of innovation is not just in tampons. space, it's in gynecological health more broadly. So I discovered that, for example, women weren't allowed to participate in clinical trials until 1993. Because it was believed that our menstrual cycles would pollute the quality of clinical data or that we could always be pregnant. And as a result of that the majority of medications on the market today, whether it's painkillers or sleep medications were never tested on the female physiology. That's not something that I knew before founding the company, but it really inspired me to try and do something that would, at least in some small way, alleviate the many justices that exists within gynecological health today. So I'm personally very driven by solving what I perceive to be an injustice. And I think the lack of adequate care that women get when seeking treatments for diseases that are female specific or when when going to the gynecologist is one of the greatest modern HFC system, I'd like to do something about it.
Darrell Etherington 5:57
Yeah, I had no idea. I mean, let's the detail you brought up about the like, the original use of design like that is mind boggling. Because it seems like as you're talking about it, I was thinking over, you know, my short snapshot of history, like thinking about advertisements, and whatever, it doesn't seem like things have changed that much, right. My mind is a small subsection, but it still spans like, you know, 2030 years of watching TV and seeing like, there's obviously been no change in this market in terms of the product they're presenting you. Right. But Becca, did you have any idea about any of the origins or design or anything like that?
Rebecca Szkutak 6:33
No. I mean, I know like innovation and Women's Health has never been great, but I mean, oh, my God, I did not. I'm like, still kind of smiling. I really, like the tampon wasn't even designed for women. Like, geez, I just feel like I agree with you about the advertising. It's just like, every ad is, well, you can wear this tampon in a white tennis skirt. And that's like, the only ad campaign there's been for, like, my whole life, I think.
Darrell Etherington 6:58
Right? Right. But uh, yeah, and then they show the product and you're like, that looks exactly the same as every one I've ever seen. And yeah, there's never anything about kind of like materials or whatever. They just like pour the liquid, but like, safely colored liquid on the blue. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. But yeah. So what are the benefits then of this, that you mentioned that you can use this, I believe it's like an analgesic, right. Like it's a natural analgesic, and
Valentina Milanova 7:25
serial, we can't advertise any pain relief claims, because we care a lot to stay on the right side of regulations, which is actually not something that happens neither in the cannabis space nor in the tampon space. But while we have research that points to a pain relieving effect, and you know, our product has been on the market in Europe for the past four years, we can actively advertise paying claims because only drugs and prescription drugs are allowed to make things claims. So what we do instead is you know, we invite customers to read our Trustpilot review page, or to just try the product for themselves and see what what the effect is. But the kind of material there isn't the only way in which we set about to make the menstrual tampon better. We have also optimized the absorbency. So one of the issues with tampons is that they leak they stay in your underwear, they stay in your trousers, we created the most absorbent organic tampon on the market. And then we also care a lot about safety, which again, is not really prioritized within menstrual health and gynecological health more broadly. So another interesting thing about tampons, there's no requirements to produce tampons in a clean environment. So you know how plasters for example, or hand sanitizer, you would produce in a clean room and the production workers would be wearing a suit and maybe wearing gloves. That's not the case in tempo manufacturing. And there's also no monetary requirements to sterilize the item after it's been through your production process, which is not great by itself. But it's also not great when you think about the fact that there's no requirement for clean a clean environment during manufacture. So that's another thing that we implemented where the first sample and brand to be certified under GMP, ISO 1345. And we also maintain see technical documents, which, you know, you probably don't know what any of these words mean, but they're the quality certifications that you need to obtain for your production in order to manufacture as if you were a medical device. So we think that if we as societies, you know, we wash our clothes to remove bacteria, we sterilize our food and to remove bacteria, it doesn't make sense that we would keep pathogens on the surface of tampons before they enter the vagina, especially given how absorbent the vaginal canal is. And another area of female health that gets very little attention is the vaginal microbiome, which is you know, you probably have heard about the gut microbiome or the skin microbiome. But there's also the vaginal microbiome, which is associated with your ability your body's ability to prevent infections to decrease your likelihood of contracting an STI. your microbiome is what ensures that You can carry a pregnancy to term. And your microbiome is influenced by the pathogens that you bring into the vagina. So you can bring pathogens through tampons to the vaginal canal and the vaginal microbiome. And that's something that we aim to prevent with the introduction of clean manufacturing, as well as sterilization.
Darrell Etherington 10:18
Yeah, that's fantastic. That's also shocking, though, another shocking thing to learn where like that was the case previously, because it seems
Valentina Milanova 10:26
it's the case with a majority.
Darrell Etherington 10:30
I mean, before you started doing it differently, yes. But yeah, like for everybody else out on the market, like, that's still a case. Yeah, that's, it's, I've like, on the one hand, I feel I empathize with what I imagined would be just intense anger, like learning, all these things are happening. And then on the other hand, it kind of from like a business person's perspective, there must be a feeling of like, oh, this is fantastic. Because what our opportunity is, is like, hey, we just do the bare minimum, like we were like, making it clean versus the unclean wood, like, which one do you want, right? Like, it's kind of, it seems great in that way. But also, it's just shocking. And
Valentina Milanova 11:10
there is a downside, right. So for I mentioned, the cleanliness standards. So we have the absorbency, which comes through material product innovation, you know, we also have a flushable tampon wrapper that we use is plastic waste, all of these things make the product more expensive. So that is the downside, we are between 50 and 100%, more expensive than off the shelf brands, because you know, we do all of these additional things. And that's something that we want to change in the future when we reach scale. Because right now, our scale is very small, we have about 10,000 monthly recurring subscribers, we have sold about 60,000 boxes so far. So our prediction is almost artisanal. And once we get to a bigger scale, we'll be able to reduce our costs and pass the savings on to consumers. But right now, we do have to make a big ask, which is to ask people to pay that little bit extra for their period care, which is actually particularly hard in the United Kingdom, which is the main markets that were operational in. Because there's a big conversation there with regards to free period care, people do speak a lot about making career care free for everyone. So yeah, that is the downside to and that's why other brands don't do it. There's a big focus on, you know, optimizing your margins and increasing your revenues. And you can't do that while also investing in r&d and also investing in higher standards, or at least not at first.
Darrell Etherington 12:33
Yeah, the question I would have there, then is, are you interested? Or do you attempt to change the kind of standard across the industry, because it seems like that would in some ways benefit you all, you changed it to the there's a universal standard to require, like cleanliness of facilities.
Valentina Milanova 12:48
So we really hope this happens. And that's why we're quite public about, we don't really keep many trade secrets, you know, you have our lab certificates on our website, or our quality certifications on our website, or the materials that we use in our packaging, which make the packaging more sustainable, like the fresh raw materials, we do want these to become the industry norm. Because you know, that's the only way that we'll reach a bigger scale, and more people will benefit from having access to better quality products, but also at the same time, that's the only way in which we will be able to reduce the cost associated with doing things the right way. I feel
Rebecca Szkutak 13:23
like from other sort of consumer areas, though, consumers have proven that they are willing to sort of pay more for especially something like you mentioned that sustainable and has clean ingredients, and definitely sort of has sort of like the mission alignment that they're going for. So I'm curious, are you able to kind of tap into that when you're marketing and kind of get some of that response as well,
Valentina Milanova 13:43
we are and that's what you know, commercial securities is based on currently. And I always say this, you know, getting a manicure, which you do maybe every two weeks or every four weeks. That's what like 4050 bucks going to a single Barry's Bootcamp class is you know, I don't know, I haven't gone in a while, but that's where we live 2030 bucks. And that's, you know, half the cost of our tampons. But I think I've recently been thinking about this, how because women and AFAB individuals, we didn't really get access to good quality medical services, we were kind of forced to instead turn to like the whole well being wellness. Look after yourself, you know, buy a new face cream type of industry. And I think we're used to being fine with paying like $80 for a mascara, but then we're not so used to investing in health care on the inside. I think advertising and just like modern societal standards have like, really trained us. Yeah, you know, like, I definitely need this new push her bra or like a sports bra. But then when we're not so knowledgeable about what we need to do in order to maintain our health on the inside, and that's something that we want to change. by changing the conversation altogether, about gynecological health, by sharing information about our research, sharing information about our standards and doing it in a really digestible way, one of our values is that you shouldn't need a medical degree in order to understand your body. And I think frequently, there's such a huge barrier, people understanding what they need to do in order to maintain their health, because there's this exclusionary highbrow language that's used in order to describe various health care services and products. And we want to change that with our blog vitals with our presence on social media, our presence on social media isn't like, Oh, look at this product, buy it, buy it, buy it, it's more like, here's the symptoms of endometriosis. And here's what to do, if you think you have because it's focused on providing utility to the customer before we ask them to make a purchasing decision.
Darrell Etherington 15:49
Yeah, I think like, that's a very astute observation about the difference between like aesthetics, and like what consumers have in terms of willingness around spend for aesthetics or whatever acceptance, and it's so deep seated, like, what do you bring it up that way? It's like, wow, this is really ingrained from birth and conditioned, right, like through popular culture. So no, it seems a huge challenge to get around. But it sounds like you're doing everything you can on the education front to try to do that. And we've seen other companies that have been on the podcast before using tools like Tic tock right to have like really deep, meaningful educational conversations with their potential customers or customers, right?
Valentina Milanova 16:27
Yeah, I find the talk fascinating. I don't have to spend much time on it. But how open people are with things as we would have otherwise classified as grotesque or traumatic, I find that the majority of content on tick tock is like your deepest rooted, like fears and traumas and, you know, psychological quirks. And I think that's such an interesting way of being. And it just shows how you know, Gen Z is completely changing what's acceptable in a social domain and what isn't, which I'm personally very excited about, because that means we'll also have more gynecological health conversations more openly, and then that will make my fundraising easier. Because I'll be able to mention the word tempo and without people looking to the ground, and feeling uncomfortable. So that will be great. You know, something, something I noticed, whenever an investor those that they know of day or they know of tampons, they always feel the need, as male investors, they always feel the need to caveat, but I haven't used your products, like no one thought. That wasn't in anyone's mind. Like, why do you have to explain? Or really just insurance? You know, I know they don't have a secret of vagina. But I know.
Rebecca Szkutak 17:49
Glad you made that clear?
Darrell Etherington 17:50
Yeah, I'd be that is the biggest question I have just about when you're bringing up kind of the challenges, like you seem very candid and aware. And like frank about them all? How does this like how are the investor conversations going. So you have that level of awkwardness of like a lot of them are male, and a lot of them are like don't even want to talk about this to begin with are not comfortable discussing. And then you have the other layer of you're fully aware of, you know, the challenges arrayed against you and seem very candid about discussing that. So like, how does it go with the investor rooms? Is it a difficult conversation to have, or how is your raise process, but it is challenging.
Valentina Milanova 18:24
So I'm a single founder, I'm Eastern European, I'm in my 20s. So I don't fit in all the checkboxes of who venture capitalists typically like to invest in. And then I come in with my accent, and I talk about the vaginal canal, and I talk about tampons. I can't describe what my company does without making people feel fundamentally uncomfortable, you know, without forcing people to look to the ground. And interestingly, it's both men and women. So both men and women still feel deeply uncomfortable discussing gynecological health in a professional environment. So you know, when when you have a zoom call with investors, or when you're in a board, meeting room, people feel like, oh, is this an appropriate topic for us to be discussing right now. And the only way in which they have been successful at fundraising is through just sheer perseverance. I don't have a huge investor network. I'm not an industry insider. So I can like WhatsApp, my friends and say like, Hey, would you like to invest in my company, but I do have access to LinkedIn, and people on LinkedIn, add the word investor or venture capitalist to their description, so then I can find them and I can message them and find their email address, and send them more emails and more messages. For our Series A we spoke to over 400 firms. So I know all of the firms I think, in every geography we spoke to people in Israel, Portugal, Germany, Austria, obviously the United States and the UK until we found the incredible investors that we have right now who really understand our vision really understand the impact that the company can have. There were lots of moments where I felt Like, okay, I'm competing on my own here because I can't tell the team, you have to share with your team, right from the hundreds of nodes that you get. And I also have my existing board and I need them to be excited about the company. So I can't, I mean, I have to give them information on what's happening, but I can't, you know, share the pain that I'm experiencing from, you know, every single No, or, you know, just investors muting themselves and then picking up a phone call while we're on a video chat, things like that, I can share that. So it's very lonely experience. But what I really wish people could take away from my fundraising journey, and this fundraising journey is that if, you know, like, a 20 year old Eastern Europeans who didn't go to like Oxbridge or the Ivy League colleges, and then work for JPMorgan, etc, can raise seed money and series A money then other people can do it too. And I think so much of VC and startups, it's quite an exclusionary industry. It's a very small circle. And I think people think, Oh, I have to be a certain type, I have to be a certain way in order to even allow myself to think or dream about starting a company and I, I hope that the story and the candidness with which I feel quite strongly about being very candid with regards to you know, we didn't have the perfect fundraise. I emailed two firms with my pitch deck, and only on the base of the pitch deck, they sent me 12 term sheets. And I don't know what but when I was fundraising, I was seeing one of these stories on LinkedIn of other founders being like, close the series, being two weeks, I was so fast only spoke to four firms. Like that's not everybody's fundraising journey. And we need to show other stories as well, because I think it's easy to glorify the ones that are super quick and, and fast. Although if you manage to do that more power to you, you know, great. Sure, yeah.
Rebecca Szkutak 21:49
Yeah, I just asked you about the fundraising process, specifically, because I feel this is in the women's health space, of course, and calls to invest more in women's health and sort of investors putting a higher focus on this area. I feel like I'm hearing about it almost every day. And yet you still don't see it really translate into actual fundraising success for companies in this space. And I'm curious, will this chatter sort of ever pan out? Like, literally like, will you this sort of increased focus ever translate into it becoming easier for companies like you to fundraise in the future? So I'm curious, like,
Unknown Speaker 22:24
how much does sort of that chatter kind of come up? When you are talking to potential investors,
Valentina Milanova 22:29
it comes up a lot. And it can be quite frustrating, because, you know, I get invited to panel discussions all the time to discuss the lack of capital for female founders. These are panel discussions quoted, but hosted by VCs, or you know, they always like to invite female founders to fan, the latest Kung Fu, you know, they always like to use the word taboo. So there's a lot of cliches, and there's a lot of like pandering and virtue signaling, when it comes to people wanting to be seen as supportive of female founders are gynecological health. But if you look at the statistics, it's actually getting worse. You know, since 2019, since 2020, there's been a decrease in the number of gynecological health companies funded in the number of female founders funded in the overall total percentage of both venture capital and public capital that went to a female founding teams and to gynecological health. I think that will change I think it has to change because, you know, people like the founder of Maven will, at one point become financially independent, and they will start investing them selves, they will have the knowledge of being able to recognize, okay, this is what good looks like in female health. This is a great female founder, I want to invest in them. So it will change but it will be a gradual, long change, and it's going to be peaks and troughs. I don't think it's going to be a straight, straight line.
Darrell Etherington 23:52
related question, just from your personal experience. You talked about eyes to the ground and things like that when you're in the rooms. But has it changed at all? Since you were first going out? And then to later rounds? Have you noticed an increase in comfort or a decrease in this concept of sort of it being taboo? Or has it remained relatively consistent?
Valentina Milanova 24:10
So I first raised seeds, which I think was easier because there's more female investors in seed than the series A Series B Series C. So I thought series A was harder. Maybe also because people think, oh, Series A, you know, it's like a serious thing. And you need numbers and stuff. Yeah. And we have no first we've had series tricks for a long time. I believe you do. But I think people still think Oh, is to do with vaginas. Therefore it's not theory.
Darrell Etherington 24:41
Right. Right. I think because this is what Becca and Dom on on our team on the TC plus side have done a great job kind of tracking all this and making sure that like the TechCrunch readers know that despite a lot of the noise that is out there, like like you said, the trend is still down, right. But it's interesting that that you bring up like there There's just kind of peaks and valleys, and that that will continue to happen. But what do you think influences that other than you mentioned sort of successful exits for like the current generation of female founders who might put money back into the ecosystem, what other things can kind of influence turning the trend around and having it be, you know, that upwards, regardless of individual fluctuation,
Valentina Milanova 25:22
there needs to be more successes within femtech and more successes within gynecological health. But also, if people could only start looking at gynecological health in the way that they look at, for example, cybersecurity, so most investors don't understand cybersecurity in any meaningful level of detail. You know, it's a complex, specific area of knowledge that you can gain knowledge about, if you just try, you know, if you start reading papers or sort of speaking to industry stakeholders, and I think the biggest change will happen when people stop thinking about, you know, gynecological health and adult content in the same category. And start seeing it as you know, it is a valid commercial industry that can produce commercial success. And it needs to be treated like any other industry. So without stigma that's currently attached to it. I think if if investors could start looking at the space and reading about the space and learning about the issues and the opportunities in the way that they would approach any other industry, that will make a huge difference.
Rebecca Szkutak 26:28
No, it's really good to hear what you just said about the cybersecurity piece of it, because I feel like that is something that VCs sort of it's like a crutch where they're like, oh, I don't understand that sector. I'm not investing in it. Yeah. Whereas then to another sector, they don't understand it an investment in anyway, I feel I definitely have felt that frustration just from talking to different venture investors about trends. So I don't know, it's hard to hear that it translates across to founders as well.
Darrell Etherington 26:52
That's like, they become armchair experts in everything else overnight, right? It's like, oh, I didn't understand crypto like yesterday, and now I'm just blathering nonstop about crypto and then FinTech or like, I can never understand that. How could I possibly it's like, what? What are you talking about? Now? You're an expert in aerospace all of a sudden,
Rebecca Szkutak 27:11
flying cars. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, vertical takeoff and landing.
Valentina Milanova 27:18
They do often say, we don't have any female partners on our team. And it's hard to get traction for our FEM tech company without the female partner on our team or there wasn't anyone that could try your product in our offices. So we can't understand what to what to make of it. Or my other favorite is like my assistant didn't like your tampons. So we're not going to take conversations further.
Rebecca Szkutak 27:41
How many potential investments to set asst try first,
Darrell Etherington 27:45
I'd like to know, did you put them on a SpaceX rocket? And then you're like, well, she loved the SpaceX rocket. Love the ride. So here, we'll back it now. Yeah. Totally. So just to step away, Valentina, just a bit from the specifics of day right now. I'm curious about like, your history with entrepreneurship. Like, how did you decide that you even wanted to found a company? Was it because of the nature of the challenge and the problem that you saved or saw? Or did you always kind of want to get into that?
Valentina Milanova 28:19
So I grew up, promising myself that I would never be an enterpreneur. Because my father, my father was a micro entrepreneur. So he had lots of little businesses here and there, you know, he had, he was driving taxi, he was like teaching people German. At one point, he was like doing clustering work, you would always have these like little businesses. And on the other side, I had my mother who was a bank clerk, you know, she had so much job security and predictable pay every month and I fixed working hours and on the other side, my dad was always on the phone always stressed. He had like five heart attacks. I was like, you're not getting like, why are you doing this yourself, I would never be an entrepreneur. So I grew up promising myself that I would have like a nice nine to five profession. And that's why I studied law and economics. You know, I didn't prepare myself to be an entrepreneur. I don't think that I'm going to be a serial entrepreneur. I'm particularly excited about gynecological health because it really does drive me this will to fix the injustice that exists within gynecological health. But then, also, they allows me to stimulate all of my different intellectual curiosities, whether it's about brand building or designing machines or setting up production. And it also allows me to have a platform to not just make change in gynecological health, but also change the, you know, small things in society that I don't think are right, like, for example, because it's my company, I can decide, okay, well, we're going to hire people that survived human trafficking in our production facilities, because I think that there's insufficient social programs for people that survive human trafficking and that's what we're going to do. Or you know, something else that We just decided to do during COVID was we started adding masks, face masks, with our branding to the boxes of tampons, and people could pay an extra five pounds for the mask. And we were such a small company at that point. But we were able through this initiative to generate the entire yearly budget for the UK is largest charity that supports victims of domestic abuse. It's called women's aid. So it, it drives me being an entrepreneur because I can satisfy all of my different intellectual curiosities, but also, because I have so much freedom over how I choose to invest my time or how I choose to invest the company's resources, we can do these small little societal changes that don't have a huge impact. But you know, they have an impact in my small universe. And if everyone can have a small impact in their small universe, I think things really change systematically and long term.
Darrell Etherington 30:52
Yeah, that's a huge advantage. And not one that I've heard kind of expressed that way before. Because yeah, it's like, if you're anywhere else, right, no matter how, what's your level of contribution, like, you see, like, oh, I can do this small thing, and it will cost us nothing, or relatively little, and it will have X impact is kind of like, oh, that's a great idea. There, I'll bring it up with a budget meeting or whatever. And then it never happens. But for the record, I have these great ideas all the time. And I always try to help and it never never goes anywhere. That's absolutely not true. But now I'm gonna try to bring it up. But yeah, that's really inspiring. But then so like, you don't think you want to be a serial entrepreneur? So that like, do you want to talk more about that? Is it because you know, the, the downsides of it or what?
Valentina Milanova 31:40
Yeah, it's because of the downsides of it. And that's another thing that I'm quite quite passionate about spreading information on, there's a real health cost to becoming an entrepreneur. So there's a psychological health cost and a physiological health cost. And there's no way around it, because you have to put in the super long hours in order to get your company off the ground, which means you won't be able to invest in nutrition, invest in exercise, have a good night's sleep, meditate, etc. Like, that's not possible, especially if you're a single founder to begin with. And if you're self funding your company to begin with, you're going to have to make lots of sacrifices, which, when done continuously for long periods of time, and having a tangible impact on your physiological and psychological health. So, you know, in my experience of entrepreneurship, I've, you know, acquired type two diabetes because of heightened cortisol levels. And I'm 28, you know, like, I shouldn't have type two diabetes. And I've also had to part ways with a lot of friends who simply can't understand why I'm, you know, I always forget their birthdays, or I'm never available on the weekend, or like, I'm never available on short notice, because it's just so Oh, consuming to verte an idea to life, and transform it into a company. And when you have a team, you know, you have people that have children and their children have tuition fees, and like all of this responsibility, you just get an expanded sense of responsibility. And it's a crushing load to carry. And it's not something that they want to do for the long term. It's like, I love that I'm able to do it now. But I don't think it's a sustainable way of being, I would like to have a different lifestyle in the future as well. So I wouldn't I don't see myself being like an Elon Musk acquiring companies here and there. And
Darrell Etherington 33:25
yeah, I think. I think that's a great example, because no one should aspire to his personal life.
Valentina Milanova 33:34
I think if he just slept more, you wouldn't be making bad decisions.
Darrell Etherington 33:39
Yes, absolutely. Good point. I mean, that is like, there's also something that's not discussed enough. And I do think there's a lot of discussion around the idea that those things are not required, right. Like the especially now I think the counter hustle culture narrative has been Oh, well, you can sort of do it all while, you know, enjoying a moderate lifestyle, balanced lifestyle, but that is possibly more damaging, because it's kind of like misleads people into believing that that is possible. And perhaps it isn't. I mean, I'm curious your thoughts on it. This is just me observing. I don't live this lifestyle.
Valentina Milanova 34:16
I think, especially for women, it's one of the greatest lies we have ever been sold, is it you can have it all, you can have it? Oh, but not all at the same time. And whenever I see because right now, it's like very, and this might be a very controversial opinion. And like I support, you know, working mothers, obviously, but whenever I'm on LinkedIn, and I see someone post a photo, you know, they're in bed, they have their laptop on top of them and their baby on top of them. And they're like, Hey, I'm balancing motherhood and work like, are you though? Because Are you being present with your child? Or are you answering emails and also, what if I don't want to multitask all the time, like the whole concept of like being in multiple places all at the same time, you can never dedicate your time Full cognitive ability to any one area fully. And there's plenty of studies that show how being forced to multitask and being forced to divert your attention to many different areas actually lead to early cognitive decline and increase your risk of Alzheimer's and dementia. So, yeah, I mean, so I'm somewhat sympathetic with the anti hustle movement, because I do think it's become a little bit of a cliche to say, you know, wake up at 4am Work 16 hour days. That's that's one extreme. But then on the other hand, is the other extreme, which says, we're women. We're warriors. We're supermodels. We're enterpreneurs. And mothers like, yes, maybe at one stage of your life, you can see all of those things, but being expected to be all of those things at the same time. I think that's crushing.
Darrell Etherington 35:45
Yeah, I think the expectations part is the part that like using that word is the key ingredient there, right? Because it is it's keeping upon expectations, even though it's meant to be sort of permissive or liberating, I think, in the way that some people deliver it. But I appreciate your perspective on that. But yeah, I'm like, constantly, well, we talk to a lot of hustle culture, people too, you know, and they're, they articulate it, and you're like, Yeah, but like, that doesn't sound good. That sounds terrible. And also, by and large, they're young men. And it's like, you don't understand how many advantages you're starting out with that, like mean that the hustle culture thing is possible for you in a way that it's totally impossible for people of different ages, or people of different income brackets, or people, you know, different cultural backgrounds, right?
Valentina Milanova 36:31
Or even just women because, you know, we are expected to take the burden of looking at our family members, even before we have children. In my family. I've always, even though I'm one of the younger children, I've always been expected to look after my older brothers, you know, because I'm the woman. I'm the nurturer. Right. And I've also always been expected to look after my parents. And I noticed that the work as well, people on the team, I think often expect me to be exceptionally nurturing and exceptionally understanding because I'm a woman in a way that they wouldn't expect, I think, a man to be as understanding as nurturing as empathetic. Yeah. And I think that's a big, that's just an additional burden to you have to carry with you. People don't realize I don't think as much as they should.
Rebecca Szkutak 37:19
Yeah, I was just gonna say when you were talking about sort of the hustle culture and trying to avoid some of those pitfalls, that I think a lot of entrepreneurs, especially as Darrell just mentioned, champion and really think are sort of assets to how they've performed, it seems like you have taken some steps to sort of put things in place at the company for everyone to not be able to feel like they have to sort of check into that hustle culture mindset. And maybe if you want to talk about that, and kind of what sort of positive impacts you've seen from what you've done,
Valentina Milanova 37:47
yeah, I'd love to. So we have the crazy hard 2020, or we were just unreasonably unlucky in the sense that we were hit with a wave of COVID infections really early on, so and the February early March 2020. And that was before people knew what COVID was. And there weren't expenses in hospitals, we didn't know how serious it was, what the treatments would be, we have no information. And then we have the second wave of misfortunes, which is that in succession, so we were a team of 17 people, seven people lost the parents to COVID, one after the other. So it was a lot of trauma to go through as a very small team. And I didn't know what to do. I just remember feeling so lost in terms of like, how do I show up for my team? How do I support people. And that's when we started trialing four day weeks, because, you know, we wanted to give people that extra time to be present with their families, or to pursue their hobbies and do things that are not only related to sitting in front of a screen in a zoom call. And we decided that we were going to run it as an experiment for six months and measure whether the initiative was effective on the basis of whether we were still hitting our OKRs. And on the basis of what the team NPS was. So we're people continuing to be happy with the organization and within the organization. Our performance on OKRs increased and our NPS increased in the two quarters in which we were measuring the impact of the of the four day weeks. And now as we're continuing to scale as an organization, we're continuing to offer full flexibility on Fridays. So people can we no longer mandate that people don't work on Fridays. So we don't like short your access to slack off or should your access to Gmail off. But we also don't book team wide meetings. There's no expectation that you have to work on Fridays and if you manage to like organize your time, Monday to Thursday, so that you don't have to work on Friday, then you just take Friday off and this flexibility I think has helped a lot of people understand the virtue of balance because you know You work in a sprint, usually from Monday to Thursday, but then you have this deep rest and deep recovery in Friday, Saturday, Sunday. That's one of the one of the things that we're doing. I think I have quite a sound relationship with buying mental health thanks to being in therapy for a really long time. So it's now my 10th year of being in therapy, I started therapy when I was 18. And that's something that they live we offer to the company as a whole. So we have professional and personal coaching available to everyone within day. So we encourage people to take that fixed moment of introspection, retrospection, where, you know, because we put everything in our calendars, right? Like our lives are basically run by our calendars. And if you have a fixed slot, which in which you're only required to think about how are you feeling, think about what what you want to change, it really forces people to have that time dedicated to your inner world and your psyche. And that's something that we try to encourage more of within the company in order to help facilitate the introspection, which is needed for people to reject extreme hustle culture on one side, and extreme. I can have it all. On the other side. I can have it all without sacrifices on your right.
Darrell Etherington 41:21
Yeah, that sounds great. Actually. Yeah, we should do that. Maybe we should do some some four day week stuff. And that would be wonderful as well. No, we I think we're pretty permissive on that front. But it's the bit like, we've always sort of been a remote first culture or almost remote only because like, kind of the expectation is, if the things working, I don't really care what anybody's doing any of the time, right? As long as the wheels are still on the bus. And it's driving around. But yeah, I think, you know, there's an approach that people are getting more comfortable with, but that has been difficult for some people, but it sounds like you were kind of born there anyway, or the company was born there. But it's great that you've made that explicit, right? And do you find it generates any kind of, I'm just curious about what you made it sort of optional with the Fridays because I can see how like, the one rule for all would be like, everybody would be like, good, good, good, good. Whereas if you say, like optional, or is there an emerging thing of like, some people are like, Well, I'm gonna work on Fridays, and then I'm the keener or are you paying that close attention to kind of what's going on.
Valentina Milanova 42:26
So we do call people out, especially if they do work that involves other people. So you're like trying to take from other people's time. And we also encourage the managers of the teams to have a really close relationship with their team members, so they can ensure everyone has the best working conditions of work for them specifically, and we you know, we were worried because we introduced like five days, or like, is there going to be a group of overachievers that emerges? Are they going to be like, resentful to the perceived underachievers?
Darrell Etherington 43:01
Yeah, I that's the group, I'm always trying to suppress a TechCrunch, I'm always doing my best to discourage them and get them to slack off more with it like it's ends up being the most difficult, in my experience as a manager, maybe more difficult than the opposite to handle, right? Which is that kind of like, it's almost a martyrdom or something not naming names. Obviously, Becca's not at that group. But you know,
Rebecca Szkutak 43:24
he told me I'm working too much.
Valentina Milanova 43:27
Something that we started doing recently, actually is hosting interventions for people. So if I see that someone is being like, over the top focused on work, not taking time off, working too long hours working, really outside of working hours, etc, I will just host an intervention for them. Well, like create a bunch of bullet points. And just like force that time for us to change the way in which this this person works and like force them to take time off so they can acquire a new perspective. But on the 40 weeks, what's interesting is we're seeing some of our best achievers, the best performing people in the company are those that are like, really firm with their boundaries, like I work from Monday to Thursday, and within Monday to Thursday, I do incredible work. But then you can't reach me on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I'll be back on Monday. And I'll be you know, my best self at work. And I'll have, you know, lots of patients for you and your problems. But Monday to Sunday can't reach me.
Darrell Etherington 44:27
That's great. I just asked that one day, you publish all these results in some kind of a white paper or something. I feel like it would be super interesting.
Valentina Milanova 44:34
The caveat here is that we are a small company, you know, it's a company of 40 people. So we're yet to see how this will scale and you know, it's a small sample size. This wouldn't be a good enough scientific experiment.
Darrell Etherington 44:45
Right, right. But just an interesting thing, maybe to share on LinkedIn are better than 90% of the content on there. But Valentina, we're just about out of time, but I think it's been fantastic talking to you and I really think this is live The company day is super interesting your approach to building and managing companies super interesting as well. And I, we didn't even get into it. But I think the future for day sounds fantastic. Because you can tell that your approach is very analytical and very holistic. And it sounds like that is the direction you want to go. And right. So it's like, these are the building blocks to something that will be really transformative for women's health. So yeah, thanks again for joining.
Valentina Milanova 45:24
Oh, thank you. And I'm ready to go with me just go through the standard questions of what was your evaluation? And oh, yeah, we
Darrell Etherington 45:30
know what's your we don't even we don't even care about that. Becca might care about. You guys can follow up about that later. But yeah. Thank you so much.
All right, Becca, that was our conversation with Valentina, which ranged far and wide. What did you think about her and about day?
Rebecca Szkutak 45:58
Yeah, no, I think she makes a lot of really good, interesting points, just about sort of what it's like to raise money for FEM tech, something that you just keep hearing more and more about, they're more investors interested in it more companies getting started such a huge focus on it. But interesting to sort of hear that she's still hitting the same roadblocks. People were hitting five years ago.
Darrell Etherington 46:20
Yeah. And she seemed to say, what was really surprising to me is like, I thought there would be a gradual ramp in difficulty, like down but it seems like not it was the opposite. It was as you get into more institutional money, more later stage money, there's more, there's maybe more resistance, which I wonder if it comes down to the money behind the money. You always wonder about, you know, LPs and big institutional funds, like maybe they're, they have strange clauses or things preventing money from going into these. I mean, it'd be really weird to be like, No femtech. But who knows, I mean, curmudgeonly old, white men are awful people. And maybe they have some of these things.
Rebecca Szkutak 46:57
I also feel like it could be like, the white man embarrassment, like domino effect where it's like, the VC doesn't want to invest, because then they're gonna have to tell their LP about it. And that's probably way more embarrassing to them than just hearing about it in this one pitch meeting. So they're like, might as well just avoid it.
Darrell Etherington 47:15
Wow, that's a horrible thing. That probably has happened more than once. But yeah, I thought like, she brought it up. Did she do the comparison of is considered in some of these rooms on the same playing field as porn, right, which is a famously a category that a lot of investors won't touch with a 10 foot pole, likely, I mean, often due to Vice causes from LPs. Right.
Rebecca Szkutak 47:37
But that's interesting to me. Because, like when she was explaining the startup to us, it's so health focused, like it's so listening to almost any type of Well, I don't want to say it was standard or anything like that. So it wasn't, but it didn't particularly come across differently than hearing about other kinds of like, say, medical devices, consumer health products, and the like. So it is interesting. It's like you saved vagina and the men run, right? Yes. Like, come on now. Yeah. 2022?
Darrell Etherington 48:04
Well, it's not even I bet. I mean, at that point, they would already be gone. Because they're earlier. Yeah, at some point, you said tampon, and that was enough to get them out of the room. If you use a vagina, they, they would hit the fire alarm, and just evacuate the building. Exactly. So that part was like she was very candid there. I mean, throughout she was candidate, but she was also, you know, super forthcoming about her ideas around work life balance, and what's possible, what isn't as a founder, and then also kind of like how she tries to instill those values in the company. So what did you think about that part of our discussion?
Rebecca Szkutak 48:37
Yeah, no, I definitely thought that was interesting. Of course, it's sad that they sort of came to those conclusions, because the company employees had just so much tragedy over such a short period of time, which obviously is not great by any means. But yeah, I thought it was particularly interesting, not only the flexible work policy, but the it's flexible, but if you aren't taking the Friday's off, like we're going to have to talk to you about Yeah, which I thought I feel like you hear about flexible workspaces. But some of those places still kind of seem to champion the employees who do work on that day that in theory, everyone's supposed to be off and there is that sort of backhanded kind of like power struggle there. But I really liked their approach and just being like, no, if you're working the day we tell you to take off, we're going to talk to you about it and find out why
Darrell Etherington 49:24
Yeah, literal intervention. She was telling me that for people who they notice have like a pattern of working excessively, right. So that's, that's pretty extreme. I mean, we should start doing that. But I don't think I don't think I'd have to intervene with anyone. Frankly, I think our workforce is pretty good at taking it easy. No, no. I love you all. TechCrunch employees if you're listening to this, there's no one
Rebecca Szkutak 49:51
no, anyone time someone sends an email when they're supposed to be out won't name names has been happening this week. respond and be like enjoy your vacation.
Darrell Etherington 50:01
I know we do need to enforce it more, I think because it is. Yeah, it's I like to hear that because I asked the question, because I was like, it seems like a lot of people do that with the intent that it kind of backfires. You know, like, there's this like, it's like the unlimited vacation trope of like, Oh, don't worry, you have unlimited vacation. But what that really means is, we would rather you not take any vacation at all, and you're all competing with each other to see who can be the biggest Keener, right. More of a trap. It's a trap. The end of the day is definitely a trap. Yeah. But so the other part of it that I thought was was interesting was not the way that she does the work for us, but rather the way that she thinks about it herself. Like she was the one she expressly said, she's not going to be a serial entrepreneur. And the reason was that that work life balance is not achievable in this lifestyle, right, which I think is brave of someone to say, and also counter to a lot of you know what the narrative is these days. But what did you think about that?
Rebecca Szkutak 50:54
Yeah, I thought that was just such an interesting point. Because I feel we never talk about that in this space, specifically. But in sort of the broad conversation about career paths that comes up all the time, people talking about, oh, well, I love this passion, or this hobby, I would do it as a career. But the hours like I know, for myself, I used to work as a line cook, I never dreamed of actually going into that field full time because of the hours, horrible holidays, weekends, horrible hours. And so I feel like we talked about that in so many other just broader conversations. And you never hear that from entrepreneurs. But it makes total sense. Maybe some are afraid. Like she was saying about hustle culture, some are afraid to admit that maybe it makes them think they're going to come across as less committed or less of one of those hustlers, which, you know, some VC firms, unfortunately, still look for. But I think that's ridiculous. I think it's really interesting to hear that perspective, because I'm sure a lot of people are thinking it and just few feel they can say it.
Darrell Etherington 51:50
Yeah, for sure. I think that is that blend of Oh, it is a lot of hard work. And it's a lot of long hours. But I also don't like that or want that in perpetuity versus, I think we tend to hear either the narrative of like, Oh, don't worry, you can, you can have reasonable working hours and also be a founder, it is possible, the hustle culture thing isn't real. Or we hear the hustle boys being because they are mostly boys who espouse This belief is like, go for it, go for it, go for it, work your ass off, it'll be fine. And just drink a ton of Red Bull. And it's an awesome blast. And everybody just hangs out and has a cool time building this product or whatever. But you don't hear I think what Valentina Express, which is like the reality of like, no, it is both very hard work and also, totally, totally unsustainable.
Rebecca Szkutak 52:35
Also, for me comes across as almost, she feels that way, because she's not as passionate about being an entrepreneur, because she's more passionate about just the problem you're just trying to solve. Because I know I've heard that from especially you get this in the manufacturing sector, a lot like founders who left big companies to fix a problem, or were like, Yeah, I never wanted to do this. But I just saw such a compelling problem to solve or such a compelling opportunity that I just was never going to be able to do it in any other way. Which I feel like is what she talked about like to sort of hit some of these goals. She's going for it she could never work at like, Tampax and no Sout sort of thing. It's like you kind of if you want to go for it that entrepreneurships kind of your only choice. That's
Darrell Etherington 53:14
right. Yeah. So you had no option which is what you want in your leaders as well as in your entrepreneurs. So I think that's a good quality to have. Becca I think we will be hearing from Valentina again. Probably on the show. We really only scratched the surface. I think with her we don't do that many repeat guests but she might be one of them. But yeah, I think it was a good show. Definitely. Boundaries those two by myself. TechCrunch news editor Darrell Etherington you shot Kulkarni is our executive producer. We are produced by Maggie Stamets and edited by Cal Keller TechCrunch. His audio products are managed by Henry pick of it. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and on twitter@twitter.com slash man. You can also email us at found@techcrunch.com and you can call us and leave a voicemail at 510-936-1618. Also, we'd love if you could spare a few minutes to fill out our listener survey at bit.li/found listener survey. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
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