International Women’s Day | Voices of Women Founders

Kira Heizer: Great. That's wonderful. Patrice, do you mind introducing yourself and your company?

Patrice Meagher: Absolutely. Thank you Kira for having us on here and excited to be here with these awesome women celebrating International Day. So I'm Patrice Meagher, I'm the founder and CEO of Milk Mate. By way of very quick background, I worked in commercial real estate for about 20 years. My point in explaining that to people is that I worked as a broker in commercial real estate. I mostly represented landlords, so I very much understand commercial real estate, the way landlords think, the way tenants think, design of space, cost of construction, cost of real estate. Most of my leasing was done in Manhattan, so a lot that goes into commercial real estate in Manhattan. While I was working in commercial real estate, I had four children. I breastfed all of my children. So when I returned to work, I needed to pump in order to maintain my milk supply.

And when I had my first son in 2010, there was no laws in place for providing private pumping space. So when I returned to work, I was pumping in the bathroom just like many of my peers were. This was totally industry agnostic. This was happening whether you were teacher or doctor or nurse or working in any industry, and I only made it a couple days pumping at work. What happens if you don't pump your milk supply goes away. So was forced to stop breastfeeding, but only 15 years ago it didn't dawn on me to advocate for something better. I kind of went on with my life. Fast forward to my other three kids, laws had changed, but I still needed to walk up three flights of stairs through a whole bullpen of men just to get to the room to realize I forgot a part.

If you forget a part, you can't actually pump. And it's a whole domino effective issues. And in all of those years I was always the loudest person in the room helping my peers, colleagues, architects, real estate stakeholders, design best in class wellness rooms and I couldn't believe there wasn't a better service for providing best in class lactation solutions within the workplace specifically. So what we are at Milkmaid is an all encompassing turnkey solution for pumping within the workplace. That means we include the medical device which Gabby understands, which is a hospital grade multi-user pump. What does that mean? It's high performance, it stays in place, it's safe for multi users and we provide all the parts that are associated with it that come preassembled, pre sterilized ready for immediate use. So the woman brings absolutely nothing with her at all in order to pump within the workplace, saving her 15 minutes per session. She's pumping two to four times daily. So we are saving time for these women in efficiency, but we also design the room. So we come in and we elevate the real estate experience as well and then we service our products. So we like to say we're BPAs breast pumping as a service and we make the lives of working parents easier everywhere and we're starting with the pumping problem, but we've got a lot more to tackle.

Kira Heizer: Wonderful. Thank you so much Patrice. So Katie, last but not least, tell us about you and what you're doing.

Katie Diasti: Yes, thank you everyone. So wonderful to be here. Happy International Women's Day. We were just joking before that every day feels like that for us in our careers, which is such a gift and it's so great to be innovating in this space. I'm the founder and CEO of Viv for your V, period Care. Viv is on a mission to create truly safe, truly sustainable period products for anyone and having a line that is accessible and feels that something that you're used to using but better. I started building the concept of Viv actually my senior year of college at Boston College and felt in love with making a brand that truly felt like you were talking to a cool big sister. It's something we all always needed in our life and we have a really great Gen Z community on our social media that turns to us for a lot of health education, which has been so rewarding to see a lot of young people lean on us as a brand and for product and for education as well. We are so direct to consumer on Amazon, our website, but we're also in over 1500 retail doors across the US now and a lot of major grocery chains and many more to come soon, but very excited to be here you all.

Kira Heizer: Wonderful. Thank you Katie. So I guess you all can tell that these women are developing products that are not normal dinner table conversation products. We don't often talk about pelvic floor bladder incontinence, breastfeeding in our periods on a regular daily basis, although they're all important and all women or most women at some point in their life will need these products. In case Gaby, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think 80% of women have some sort of pelvic floor issue at some point in their life. And so I'd like to ask, and Katie, I'll ask you first if you don't mind, how did you in particular in college or senior year in college have the confidence and the inspiration and the wherewithal to tackle period problems? How did you do that?

Katie Diasti: Yeah, I know it's so crazy looking back and I'm very thankful for my 22-year-old delusional self for taking the leap and being willing to make the change. I actually think it was a perfect time to be innovating in this space. It's really been an underlooked, really sleepy category for a really long time and I couldn't find anything on shelf that resonated with me as a consumer and someone who was eco conscious, socially conscious, wanted to vote with their dollars and looking in the aisle, I saw sterile, same thing. And it made me very anxious being in that aisle. But in the beauty section and even other hygiene sections, we were seeing so much fun innovation and we were seeing that first in the food space and what we were putting in our pantry made us happier and feel better, but it wasn't trickling down to something that so many of us use every single month.

And when I learned about one pad traditionally takes 800 years to break down and has really harsh toxins and it's something I didn't even know. And despite having had a period for almost 10 years at even that point, I was like, okay, there needs to be a better solution. And I was given great advice early on that you want to become the expert and the reason you're solving that problem, why you to be the founder, the innovator in this category. And I wanted to serve Gen Z, millennial women and that's me. I am my target audience and I thought who better than myself to be creating a product and a brand and a mission for my exact demographic? And another great piece of advice I got was make sure you're really passionate about the problem you're solving and the people you're serving because I think we can all attest that startups are really hard and it's a roller coaster and some days feel like you're on a high and then you get really, really low.

And we want to make sure that getting up every day, the only thing that's going to motivate you is that problem that you're really passionate about. And if I could get up every day and make the lives of people with periods so much better, I would do that for the rest of my life. That's something that really excited me. And so I think a lot of it was driven more out of curiosity and seeing if it was going to get the traction that it needed and I would give myself milestones to say like, Hey, will I reneg my job offer and do this full time if we get X amount of pre-orders? And we started to hit those milestones, I'm like, okay, I guess this is working. I better keep going. It's clearly something that has been needed for a long time. So that was more of the response I got. I wasn't necessarily a hundred percent all jumped in at once, but seeing that the market really, really needed us as a solution,

Kira Heizer: You're definitely solving a problem that obviously people resonated with. So Gabby and Patrice, anything to add?

Gabriele Niederauer: I think it's easy thing. The only thing Katie hits it on the head about being CEO and it's the loneliest job in the world because you have to always be a cheerleader for your employees and you are held accountable to the board. And so it is just very hard. I found just having a network of peers that I could just bounce stuff off of was really super helpful. So I think just agree with everything that Katie said.

Patrice Meagher: Yeah, I think that was one of the questions I had for Katie too. I'm like, how did you do this? Right? Look, a big thing about when you start a company is ignorance is bliss a little bit too. What you don't know doesn't stop you. Because I always say if I had known that I was going to have a hardware device that needed to be cleared by the FDA installed and serviced and inventory tracked and everything else, I wouldn't be sitting here today. But I do think, and also there's a lot of energy to be had at your stage of your career too, but 100% you have to be passionate about it because there are a lot of low lows and so you have to be at the end of the day, you have to still want to do it even when you get knocked down.

Kira Heizer: And Gabby referred to networks and communities, Patrice, is there any one particular group or network that's particularly supported for you and helped you in your lower moments?

Patrice Meagher: Yeah, I mean look, networking is absolutely 100% everything in my opinion in the startup world. And I worked for a long time on the same team in commercial real estate, we were rocking and rolling. We didn't really need to reach out to other people to tell us what to do. When I started this process, it was starting from scratch, reaching out to people that were smarter than me in what I didn't know from the FDA perspective, from a fundraising perspective, from a hiring perspective, that advice I will pay it forward for the rest of my life because it was so crucial in starting what I did. So there was networking in that aspect, finding experts that were smarter than you. There was networking in your own career development. I think your career development goes on forever. And so there's networking to find mentors or mentees that you can learn from.

There's networking to hire people. There's networking for business development, right? Then I have my parent network on the outside world that helps me run my personal life too. So truly, I was with a woman this week who wrote a really awesome book and a quote in the beginning of her book is You can have it all and not at the same time, but not alone. And that is for me, it's the truth. And I think one thing that I was pleasantly surprised by, because again I worked in an industry where you don't share secrets or tips, was that people really are willing and generous with their time and to give you advice and feedback and it's the number one, I think it's the most important thing that you can do because there's so many aspects of building a company that of course you're not going to know a lot about it. And having people to help you is really crucial. And then networking on a sales perspective, you got to do that. I think, I'm sorry that your question was like what was the most important? Literally every single network I'm a part of is crucial in helping me run my life.

Kira Heizer: Anyone else want to add anything to that or community and they founders?

Katie Diasti: Yeah. And I always get asked, how did you initially meet investors or find these different resources? And it was always other female founders in my network that would make the introduction for me and those warmest intros that helped so much early on. And I think there's an obsession with always networking up or someone who's 2, 3, 10 stages ahead of your business or career. But the people who were at the exact same spot as me were the most helpful to people to just reminisce on when things were tough.

Patrice Meagher: A hundred percent. Even people that are at the same level, they might be fundraising at the same time as you, so, but that's okay. You're not competitive with each other. If you're mission-aligned with someone and you're going through some of the same struggles, to me that's been crucial.

Kira Heizer: Yeah, great. So I think most people are aware, but perhaps not that about 2% of the funding, VC funding goes to female founders. And you three are in an even more difficult group because you are female founders trying to raise money for female health products. And primarily you're trying to raise money with a very male dominated investor group. And maybe fundraising isn't one of the issues. But I did read this morning that there were 11 startups that were raising money for erectile dysfunction and they raised 1.2 billion and then there were eight startups trying to help women with endometriosis. I never can say that. How do you say it? Endometriosis. Endometriosis, very common female problem. And so eight startups raised $44 million while the men with erectile dysfunction raised 1.2 billion. And I think it's very indicative of how difficult it is to raise money for women's health and women's issues. So I don't know if any of you want to talk about fundraising or highs and lows, fundraising.

Gabriele Niederauer: Maybe I'll start out because in my last company we raised 25 million at Freya, we're just kicking off our 1 million. But I think there's just a number of challenges that unfortunately is the way things are right now. And as you mentioned, it's like 2% of the global health technology funding goes to fem techs. It's kind of a vicious cycle because more funding needs to go to women's health, women's research and that in effect then limits the research and data collection that's necessary for further product development and validation. And if my 30 years the medical device industry and meeting with investors, it is largely a room of males. It's predominantly male. And so when you talk about any of the products that the three of us are developing, they can't really fully understand or appreciate the importance of those women's health products. And so then if they're not comfortable with a product you're developing, they're going to hesitate in funding these types of ventures.

I think that is changing. I see a lot more venture capital and initiatives even on the angel level where we're trying to get more women to become investors, more women to write those checks and help develop the products that are needed in our society because 85% of the household decisions are made by women. So it's, we are trying to make progress, but there's still kind of implicit and explicit biases that continue to affect us as female leaders at our companies and in the efforts that we are trying to raise money. A couple other statistics, Kira, if I may add data shows that only 8% of the medical device CEOs are women. And even if you look at on a s and p 500 level, only 5% of the CEO roles are women. And so we just need to keep moving the needle. That's kind of disappointing statistics, but I am optimistic and I feel like the needle is starting to move and we just need to keep at it and not give up and keep pushing all of that forward.

Patrice Meagher: Yeah, I mean I think that's all really, it's true. And look, there's no fun in fundraising, but there's a lot of knowledge to be learned in fundraising. And for me, we did an initial round that was all friends and family and we're actually in the midst of a fundraise right now that is all friends and family too. And I would say that the VC firms have been, again generous with their time. And originally we weren't a software company, we were hardware that needed to be cleared by the FDA and we're like, it's going to happen. And so there was a lot of selling there. But I think it goes back, Katie, to what you said, which is like why are you the unique person to solve this problem? And so if you are the unique person to solve the problem and you can find the solution that really is going to work, and there's a market for it, I mean there's a humongous market for period products.

There's 80% of women are suffering from this copy. I mean to the market from the workplace scenario, we're selling to the workplace where the work grade pump, it's humongous so we can prove that the market's there. And then I think if you prove on the revenue side of it too, people can really, that's what people get excited about. But I do think a lot of it is education. So I always say when I left my old company, I said, I'm going to start a breast pumping company. My team said, I didn't know you pumped at work. It's like, well, of course you didn't because it was something that I kept private. You're not telling people at work your period, you're not telling people that you've got these other issues. And so a lot of it for us is just making sure your story is very punchy and extremely clear why you are the right person to solve this problem, why this is a real problem.

And a lot of it for us has to do with recruiting, retention, advancement of women. And then Gabi, that goes back to what you said. I mean, my whole goal is to retain female talent so that they can get to that senior role so that they are building, we're trying to build the world that we want to live in. But I do think it's a lot of it is about education. And one thing I will say is that there are men in the room that they're open to the education side of it. Not every, I have a lot, my caps stack is very female strong, which I'm proud of, but my caps stack has some really strong men that are advocating for daughters or wives or other people. And I do think that a lot of it is maybe they're afraid to ask the question, so you have to give them that answer.

So give them the information that they might be afraid of asking. I'm talking about breasts all day long. I do need to make it really easy that this is science for us to talk about. And I think that that goes back to us. But again, a lot of it's just about education and proving out the revenue too. I mean, people want to, and look from a VC perspective, there's a lot of questions always about valuation. Of course every CEO is a big believer and I think my company's valued it a lot more actually than right now. And I believe it, but I think you should stand your ground on that too in terms of you believe in your product if you're the right person to do it. If you've grown the right team to execute and you've put a good revenue forecast in place, then you just have to believe it.

Gabriele Niederauer: And maybe just to add a little bit, and I see one of the questions from Christine about where do you find motivation? I find that women leaders, women CEOs, whatever your title is at your company, are inspired by and are passionate because we want to make a difference in the world. We want to help alleviate some of the things that women are dealing with. And I totally agree with you, Patrice. I'm very proud that my two co-founders are men. One of them is actually my son. I never thought I would be working with my son and he spent 10 years doing research on pelvic floor disorders and is just as passionate about helping these women as I am. And so I feel like we're changing viewpoints. New generations are thinking about how this can affect their partner, their sister, their mother, et cetera. So when I look back at my career in the medical device and the things that I've worked on that were in orthopedic sports medicine, ENT, not as impactful as what I'm doing now in my opinion. But what inspired me and motivated me was actually having patients tell me, Hey, what you developed and what I was treated with has changed my life or has improved my life. And I think that's where I get motivation and inspiration from.

Kira Heizer: Jamie. Anything to add,

Katie Diasti: Gabby? The reviews and the comments, those are just such a thing to fill up your cup. So I so agree. And whenever I feel like I need a reset, I look through our YouTube and TikTok comments and we get things like, I'm a single dad of two daughters and I wanted to be able to teach my kid how to use a pad or a tampon and be ready for that. Or I am 12 and I have my first swim meet tomorrow and I didn't know how to use a tampon. And this video taught me how to do that. I think right now more than ever, we need a lot of women leaders to be taking place for a lot of health education that we've been lacking for so long and for so many generations. And we needed this innovation more than ever. And so I'm hoping that does spark so many more startups, so many more things that need to be studied and innovated in within women's health.

And I think a lot of people will see one, two brands solving in our space and be like, box checked. It's like, no, we need so many more options because we're half the world's population. We deserve options. We deserve better solutions. And Patrice, like you're saying with creating education in the market size, proving this is a good investment for their money, at the end of the day investors, they want to see your return on their investment. This is an underserved space with a really big market. It's a great opportunity to invest in business. I think people see like, oh, we invest in women as a charity. It's like, no, that's a really smart, yeah,

Exactly your money not Thank you for giving us this. It's like, let me give you this opportunity to invest in something that's about to grow and scale in such an amazing way. And we often will sometimes hear an investor that's passing like, oh, I just don't feel like I'm an expert in that space. It's like, okay, well we are and we're the ones doing it. Are you an expert in every biotech or B2B SaaS or AI company you're investing in? Probably not. But we've oftentimes been able to just draw parallels for them and help them understand whether it's comparing VIV to a Gen Z period version of Harry's or Dollar Shave Club, something they love and get excitement around and it's like, okay, you loved that brand. Now this is what it's doing for this different demographic. Totally. That's been what we leaning to.

Kira Heizer: Great. And we're getting some questions in the chat, so I wanted to address a few of them. I think you've answered the first two, but essentially questions around how in doing what you're doing feel as the government seems to be having these executive orders that are going against some of the women's rights that we've had in the past, how do you stay motivated? I think you've kind of answered that. Does anybody else want to answer that more specifically?

Patrice Meagher: Yeah, I mean I would say that the theme of this year's International Women's Day is activate action. So I think that's really important. And what we always say is that we are rallying the troops. I mean obviously I'm focused on working moms in particular. That's my initiative. That's the people that I'm, my mission is to empower working women and the employers that support them. And I do think a lot of it you do need to rally the troops because as you bring women together, I don't care what issue you're talking about, you need to bring women together because again, there's a lot of education and as you bring women together, there's the ability to again, network and sort of trade ideas and what actual tools work, what tools can we implement that are going to help us to get to whatever it is we're trying to achieve.

And so the system is broken in terms of this broken rung of retaining top talent and keeping women in the workforce. And again, there's a lot of women's health issues right now and seeing a lot of these questions come in around the current administration. But I would say that we aren't stopping what we're doing, we're not stopping in terms of trying to advocate for women. And it kind of goes, got me to what you said. I always said the odds were in my favor. I had a great job. I have healthy children, I have a strong partner, I have really good childcare, but I was drowning all the time and trying to keep up with what I wanted to do and what I needed to do. I don't work just because I want to. I work, I need to. And so what about the people where the odds are not in their favor and what can we do to help them?

Because there are a lot of women out there where the odds are not in their favor. And so that is where we're completely mission driven. And that also was sort of surprising to me because in my generation you only advocated for, you didn't advocate for yourself or others. Now people are advocating for others, so we should embrace that mentality. And that's outside of government too. And so I do think there's a lot we can do to advocate for each other, but we have to do events like this. We have to build awareness. We have to hear what the questions are that people are asking so that we can provide solutions to these problems. And it's a lot about rallying the troops in my opinion.

Gabriele Niederauer: I think we can rally certainly, but I think we have to be able to demonstrate the value proposition of what our products impact

And for our product, if we can help a young mother train her pelvic floor to be back to pre-pregnancy and not become symptomatic, that's going to decrease the potential downstream costs of maybe having a organ prolapse surgery or not being able to go to work or what are all of those expenses related to if there's continued problem with that pelvic floor disorder, and that's the economic value proposition that we have to be able to demonstrate. And I think that's how we can change getting a center for Medicare Medicaid services that governs how much is paid for some of these procedures or our insurance companies if they can see that these products actually decrease the spending on this kind of condition. That's how we implement change in my opinion. That's where we have to have the proof and demonstrate that value proposition.

Patrice Meagher: We spend so much of our time just talking about the return on investment. It's immediate a lot in retention and advancement, return to work initiatives. And so that's what gets women to these senior roles in order to accelerate this action and actually implement on these things. So yeah, that's whole. When we're selling to a customer, that's our whole sell. The return on investment is insane and we do it in a lot of different ways, but it's really important because the outcome, the drip effect, pun intended for us, not just about the women that are using the pumping solution at the workplace, the drip effect is for the team that she's mentoring, the team that she's reporting to, the bottom line of the company, the cost to replace her there is the minute saved, the drip effect is insane. And so it's like how do you give tangible tools to prove this return on investment? And then it sort of affects everything. The downstream effect is real.

Gabriele Niederauer: Kira, I know there's a question about how you can become an investor. Kira and I actually met because we're both investors with an angel group in San Antonio called Alamo Angels. Maybe we should talk to that a little bit. Kira, do you want to start out?

Kira Heizer: Yeah, I mean you can join an angel investor group, which would be great. Gabby and I are big proponents of having more women involved in investing, so absolutely try to join a local and angel investor group, try to advocate for female founders and women that are producing products for women's health. I don't know what you all have other comments about that, but it's great that we're inspiring people to want to activate here too.

Gabriele Niederauer: Yeah, I think I have invested in my own companies and some other companies that I was involved with, but what I didn't realize is that when some of these angel groups do investments, they basically pull money from a number of investors so that you don't have to have a hundred thousand dollars. You could start out and say, okay, this year I'm going to invest $10,000 and I'm going to pick two companies in. What an angel group or other investment group will do is they'll help due diligence and VE companies and give you the pros and cons and have more seasoned investor give you advice. And so what we're trying to tell you is that if you're younger in your investment history or experience, you can invest smaller amounts and then see how those grow and develop your investment philosophy and what you're passionate about. You do need to be an accredited investor, so that may be a little bit of a challenge, but if you group together with some other investors, there may be ways that you can contribute to some of these technologies and make sure they have enough funding to make it to the market.

Kira Heizer: Then Gabby, we had one question just for you. What geographic markets are you working in?

Gabriele Niederauer: Oh, great question. So because we're really early on, we're just focusing on the us but we're also looking at other opportunities. What's interesting for pelvic floor rehabilitation in European countries such as Germany and France, they actually require moms to do pelvic floor physical therapy. They recognize that that can make a big difference with our device, we can actually track and give real time feedback and make it more motivating for you to do your therapies when you've ever been told go home and do kegel exercises and you're sitting there trying to squeeze the 12 layers of muscles you have and you go, am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? And our device can also be used while you're doing some, you're physically active, which is really making a difference when you get most of your symptoms. But yes, we're pursuing other geographies, but us for now. Got to start somewhere.

Kira Heizer: Yeah, exactly. Then we have a great question. Since you're talking to a lot, there are a lot of people on this call that are accountants and tax providers, what advice are you looking for? What services are you looking for from your service providers? What would help you? Anybody want to answer that?

Gabriele Niederauer: Maybe Let me start. I mean, any other company, we need regulatory advice. We need, if you're a medical device, you have to have a quality management system, you need accounting, you need CFO services. But what is hard when you're such a small startup is you can't afford to hire full-time people. In all of those roles that would get, you'd have to raise probably 10 times as much money. And so what I've benefited from in my past company and I'm also doing here is to get fractional help on that. Somebody that has the experience they need, but they can just provide it on an hourly basis as you need it until you get to a larger stage and you can maybe employ somebody full time. So for me, it's subject matter experts in the areas I described, but they can provide on an hourly basis the services that I need.

Patrice Meagher: Yeah, a hundred percent. That's how we did it too. Our FDA consultants and our quality management system consultants, I don't anticipate them going anywhere for a long time ever. But yes, we hired people again that were smarter than us in terms of what the processes that you have to go through when it comes to manufacturing and legal and patent and FDA and quality management system. And even today we use consultants right now, so we always say we're a full-time team of about 10, but we really are like 30 when it comes when you add our consultants in. And it is great because you can use them when you can lean in to them when you really need them and then you can lean out when you don't need them. And I also would say that having an advisory board of experts is really helpful too. And so that's how I found all my consultants. So I had someone that really understood medical devices. I wish Gabi that I knew you when I started the company, but I had someone that was understood investor relations, had someone that understood logistics and manufacturing on my advisory board. Now I have someone who's really has a lot of strong background in marketing and hr, someone who has a strong background in sales. And so those advisory roles I think have really helped too.

Patrice Meagher: See there's a mission I think for you as we think about the future, how do we help young women out of earlier stages and turn into startup organization?

Katie Diasti: Yeah, I think it can seem very intimidating to enter into this ecosystem. I think a lot of people think they need required to have X amount of years of expertise or degrees, certain degrees and whatnot, but in reality, I do think it comes back to like, is there a problem needs to be solved? Are you the person to solve it? And if you fear that you need extra support or you need expertise, that's a beautiful time to call in those advisors to call in mentors. Some of my current angel investors, advisors, mentors I've called reached out to on LinkedIn to join a virtual panel we were doing around women's health or around sustainability or around wellness and have just stayed close, asked them questions. And when it came time to say like, Hey, I think I need a fundraise for this business, I turned to them for advice and they were like, Hey, I am actually starting to angel invest.

And so it's not being afraid to ask those questions and how can you get involved at an early stage startup that you're truly passionate about? And I think just reaching out and saying, Hey, how can I help? Is actually how I built most of my team today. They all started off as doing part-time projects with us and the brand, and that evolved to full-time roles and it was just so clear that they were necessary to grow a team. But it was often me knowing them from the networking events I would go to. And whenever I was first starting to build my company in the Boston area, I would pull up a events page for local Boston events and I would go to every single event that would come up that had the word women in the title or brand or marketing, anything that could somewhat relate to what I was building.

And it was such a great opportunity to just go and practice pitching because I knew someone there was going to maybe be a future customer of mine, maybe be one of my first customers, maybe someone to follow our new social media account, whatever it may be, whatever you're trying to grow and scale, there's a community there that's ready for you. And so for me, it was more of just putting out there and asking questions. And so whenever someone is curious about entering the startup ecosystem, it's surprisingly a very welcoming space and people really want to help each other. I think even the three of us getting to meet through this opportunity, it's been so exciting to think of other ways we can connect each other to different things. So pull up that events page, go to a website and just start showing up to things and meeting people and it'll have a really strong trickle effect.

Patrice Meagher: Well, also, Katie, you and I both went to Boston College, which we didn't know until we met each other, but what I've been blown away by is that, again, my cap stack is very, it's a lot of Boston College alumni. It's a lot of my first business deals were Boston College contacts, and when I reach out to folks cold on LinkedIn, they respond. It's interesting how so you would be surprised when you ask the question that people will spend time with you to help you or at least help point you in the right direction. And then you do have to be diligent, right? Because you're definitely bottom of the priority list when it comes to people, if you're asking them for advice, for help, for money. And so you have to be okay with being respectful of their day job or whatever it is that they're doing so that you can follow up and say, I'm just going to bump this up. And you do have to be okay with being diligent. You have to be okay with rejection too, because there are going to be some people that say no to you on the fundraiser, of course say no to you on the sales side, but it doesn't mean that there's plenty of other people on the other side that are going to say yes. And so you have to be okay with that side of it for sure.

Katie Diasti: Yeah, I think the kiss of death is saying like, Hey, I want to pick your brain, but not having any actual questions going into a conversation or leading with something that you're trying to do. And we get, I'm sure all of us get tons of those LinkedIn messages or emails of,

Katie Diasti: I want to start this thing. Can I pick your brain? But I would love if someone followed up with your two to three things that are really top of mind for me that are my biggest problems and this is the reason why I think you can help me solve them or help me lead in the right direction. And

Patrice Meagher: Here's the actual gates and times that we can do it so that they don't even have to work on their calendar. And then I'm going to send you an invite and make sure there's a lot of managing up you can do if you're looking for health and advice, I think.

Katie Diasti: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Kira Heizer: Now we also have a question that what advice would you give to the working mom who feels constant guilt of whether to work or stay home? How would you balance a career but also be present for your kids? So Gabby has two children and Patrice is four. I mean,

Gabriele Niederauer: Look, I had my kids, if I can just back when I got with my daughter, I had six weeks of leave and I had to go back full time. I was breastfeeding, it was trying to do it in a bathroom that I didn't know who was going to knock on the door and I felt guilty, but we always tried, my husband and I, who also is a CEO in the medical device industry, we tried to maximize the time we had with our kids and made it really quality time. And so I questioned myself too, and as my kids got to be teenagers, I remember asking 'em say, Hey, do you wish I'd been a stay at home mom? And they were both like, no, we learned a lot from you and you were always there when we needed you. And my daughter's a traveling NICU nurse, my son PhD, biomedical engineer, co-founder of my company, but they're both empathetic humans that care about our world and that's most important to me as a mom and raising my kids.

And so I think you just have to do the best you can, but I feel like now with covid and the ability to work at home, I don't care if you're working one of my employees, if you're working eight to five, if you work six to two and then another hour as long as you're getting your work done, I don't really care where you do it and when you do it, as long as the deadlines are met and it's a quality work that we need to keep the company moving forward important to me. So I think having that time with your family balances you and getting time and disconnecting from work is very, very important. So I think there's a lot of opportunities for people that lead companies that have had to manage raising kids and full-time careers that are going to be empathetic in support other employees that are in those situations.

Kira Heizer: Patrice,

Patrice Meagher: This is our whole business initiative, but what I would say is that I still feel really guilty a lot of the time. And then I think what I try to do is, and I am empathetic to people that don't really have flexibility based on what their career is like if they're a teacher or they're a nurse or a doctor or when I had babies, I didn't have the ability to, because I was at the level I was at my career, I didn't have the ability to prove that I could be more flexible and get back on the computer late at night. But what I would say is the best advice I've gotten around it is that there is going to be times when you're going to have to lean in to work because of something that you have to be at. And then I think that there is going to be times when it's really important to lean in at home and it sort of goes back.

You can do it all not at the same time and not alone. So it's like you need to give yourself a little bit of grace too, because it's never going to be a perfect balance. And there's going to be times where you feel guilty at work because you're not really as present as you could be. You're going to feel guilty at home because something's coming in with work. And so I think decision making is really important, but not, you don't have to decide something that's six months away. It's like, okay, I know this week I'm going to have to, this week has been a really busy work week for me, whereas next week, some of my kids are on spring break, so it's like I might try to catch the earlier train and lean into or do some things with them. So I want to say that it's like you get rid of that guilt. I don't think you do. I think that when you become a mom, you just are worried all the time. But I do think that there's things you can do to give yourself grace and lean in to different things as you need to.

Kira Heizer: Yeah, and I will say too, I have two sons that are 28 and 30 years old and kind of to Gabby's point, when you're in it, when your kids are little and you're in it, it is so hard every day to have that balance and figured out. But I do think there's a lot to be said for children to see their mothers have a career and work and bring value to the world and be fulfilled in part, not just by their family, but by their work. And I think hindsight is 2020, but I think my sons were proud that I had a career. I think they were proud of me and I think it was good for them to see that. Okay. I have another point here. How ESG, interesting for you ladies. Maybe Katie wants to take this one impacted your business.

Gabriele Niederauer: Can we define ESG? I'm sorry, I don't know what that term is. Sustainability.

Katie Diasti: Yeah, I mean, it's been such a pillar of our business in such a core of what we built from day one. And I know I mentioned that stat before around one traditional pad taking 800 years to break down. And I was like, okay, there has to be a better solution. And for context, this pads break down in 150 days rather than 800 years. And it's simply by looking at different fibers, different innovation, and how can we just make something we're used to better and meeting people where they are, what is something that someone is used to using and comfortable using, but a better solution that doesn't have as much post use impact? So that's been a core pillar of our business. I'd say that there's not a lot of regulation around the products and plastic waste in the space. And now more than ever, I think a lot of consumers are going to need to be individuals playing a part in this by voting with their dollars.

We're seeing a lot of the diversity groups, supplier diversity groups for a large retailers go away. And those were key parts in ensuring these smaller women owned POC owned emerging brands were present. And so many of us were building these sustainable businesses. And if we're not getting that accessibility, that retail shelf space that is so crucial to be that better alternative for so many people day to day, then it's going to be difficult. So when you are shopping, take an extra second to see who is building this brand, what is the cause behind it? And by you choosing something, it does have such a massive effect on how a retailer decides to create their set. If people are seeing, and the retailers are seeing the data that everyone is reaching for this more sustainable alternative, they have to lean into the numbers and show, okay, we need to create more of a section here. We need to create more of an aisle because this is what consumers want. I think we forget that we are in charge of so much of the demand that happens in our market. And so how can you as an individual try to show up and vote with your dollars, whether it be literally buying something or continuing to share, promote, engage virtually with the brand too.

Kira Heizer: Great. And just so that I don't get in trouble, ESG Gabby really stands for environmental, social and governances, but I think of it in terms of sustainability, but okay, we have about 10 minutes left. I wanted to go around and give each of you the opportunity, since we're celebrating Women's International Day, I want you to have an opportunity to share something, an achievement you've made in your entrepreneurship journey or something you're particularly proud of. But tell us something wonderful that you feel really great about that you want to share. Who wants to go first? It's hard to say happy things about yourself, but what are you particularly proud of?

Patrice Meagher: I can go first. I would say, look, there's a lot of steps in the journey to a startup, right? There's fundraising for me, there was and Gabi too, and FDA clearance, and there's your first sale and there's closing a fundraise, and there's a lot of things that happen. And I would say probably two things that I'm proud of. One I'm proud that I just did it. That was the hardest thing for me was to rip the bandaid and have the confidence to go do it. And so I thought about milkmaid for many, many moons and it wasn't until covid that I made the decision to actually do it. I was nervous to even tell my family what I was doing. And so I am proud of that. But I think the thing that I'm most proud of with Milkmaid is my founding team, the people that I hired.

And I think you can't do this alone. And it takes a lot of execution. And we always say we're one team, one dream, and we're sales and we're operations, but we're operations and we're sales. And if you hire the right people that are mission aligned with you and have the same core values, you can move mountains. We always say we're really lean. We're lean and mean. We're strong. And if I hadn't hired the people that I hired in the last two years, I wouldn't be sitting here. And so a big goal for me is to continue to hire people that are mission aligned. And that's definitely what I'm most proud of is my team.

Katie Diasti: I actually have very similar answer too. It's building a team is really, really hard. And finding people who are going to show up every day and be so passionate, what you're solving is so key and number one, and we've had a lot of great moments of launching into a big retailer or Forbes 30 under 30, all these things that on paper look really exciting. But having a founding team that is so strong, so passionate about what you're building, and we have gotten one of my founding team members through our first maternity leave as a company and navigating these different things. That's something I'm so proud of because I'm not a mom yet, but I grew up with a working single mom and saw how important that was for her. And for me that influenced so much of my desire to be an entrepreneur was to see her run her own practice and be her own boss, but also be such a present mother. And to then watch my team and employees be able to give that to their families and Viv be the fueling point for it, has been the most rewarding thing.

Kira Heizer: And

Gabriele Niederauer: Gabby, I think for me, my last company I was CEO for nine years taking something that was kind of idea from first in human, it was a lifesaving surgical tool and it was a very challenging regulatory process. We ended up having to do a de novo, which means there's nothing else like it. And it was like a 2000 page application to FDA. We got that cleared and record time, and then we had to get a brand new reimbursement code because there's no codes that paid for it. And unfortunately that company got acquired before we could see really significant traction in the us. But I always turn negatives into positives, which allowed me to be available now for Reya and really work on a product that can help so many women. And the fact that we get so much inbound requests and affirmation of this significant problem and our solution can help so many. I'm really proud to be part of that team. And I have to say, just because we covered it, the balance of what I'm proud of too is that I have two happy kids that are doing things that they love and are young adults that are doing amazing things in this world. And that makes me as a mom very happy. So I have to say that's one of my accomplishments too. We tend to forget that as business women, that those are things that make this world a better place. And good for me to hear as

Patrice Meagher: A mom of two teenagers.

Kira Heizer: You'll get there. You'll get there eventually, Patrice. Absolutely. So we're about out of time. I think we've answered most of the questions in the chat, so I really wanted to thank you three ladies. You have been very inspirational. You're so impressive, and I really want to thank you so much for spending your time. I know being an entrepreneur, you're so busy, you're juggling a million things and for you to take time to share with this group, I really appreciate it. So thank you, thank you,

Patrice Meagher: Thank you, thank you so much.

Gabriele Niederauer: I am happy to share my LinkedIn or any contact information because for women wanting to get into space, younger women, I am always open to mentoring and supporting and helping. So if there's a way to share that after the webinar, I'm happy to connect on LinkedIn or any other way.

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