Carli Sapir_E11: From Vice to Virtue in Venture [8/3/2020]
Carli Sapir, GP at Reformation Ventures, and Founder/CEO at Female Founded Club in Los Angeles [8/3/2020]
Note: References with links are listed at the end of the show notes.
INTRO:
1:00 Talks about mission focus and moving into Private Equity infrastructure. Shares transition as an Environmental Engineer, to focus on underserved female founders and venture capital.
SECTION1: Building Thesis
3:00 Shares “gender funding gap” data — where less than 3% of venture funding goes to female Founders and 97% go to mixed and male Founder teams [See Pitchbook link in Sources]. Talks about mission leading to impact in her organization — regarding getting more female Founders in the VC space. Also shares some insights about using Scouts for Female Founded Club to support community engagement.
4:00 Talks about pre-vetting. Has location, stage, sector, and revenue database with female Founders.
5:00 Discusses evolution of what venture backable process looks like for the organization. Has 60 scouts globally, and building a community with 5 chapters, with a chapter lead — and two events per year per chapter.
SECTION2: Women’s Health
*According to GrandView Research US portion of the Women’s Health Market is roughly $15B in the US. It’s broken down into roughly:
· Postmenopausal Osteoporosis 20% [2.5B TAM]
· Hormonal Infertility 10%
· Endometriosis 10% || menstrual issues
· Contraceptives 40% [5B TAM]
· Menopause 10%
· Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) 10% || menstrual issues and skin/hair
8:00 Talks about the thesis at Reformation Ventures: Health, Wellness, and Sexuality — on Seed and Series A. Aiming to both lead and follow on at early stage.
9:30 We discuss the TAMs and overlapping industry within Women’s Health. She sees an overlap between the overlap growing by $45B in next 10 years — which are pre-COVID. She thinks market will be amplified by telehealth post-COVID.
12:00 Speaks about Elanza Wellness, an AI digital nurse for fertility clinics.
14:00 Shares work surrounding Women’s Health Innovation Coalition, and how she’s supporting. Also mentions HitLabs.
15:00 Sees lack of capital as prohibitive factor in growth of Women’s Health industry. We talk about Men’s Health, and potential opportunities in this adjacent segment. We briefly discuss the history of gender in health care bias. Stigmas surrounding menopause, bladder infections, and other sensitive issues were compounded by more male doctors.
SECTION3: Sexual Wellness
*In another GrandView Research report on this Sexual Wellness — it’s very clear that sex toys account for 80%+ of a US $8.5B market. Mass Merchandisers / Retail Pharmacy / Ecommerce account for roughly 33% each within the market.
18:45 Talks about the SexTech Market versus the Sexual Wellness, with the latter being on healthy pleasure experiences — as a subset of SexTech.
19:30 Talks about the Vice Clause, and risks of breaching the clause, if it puts a new fundraise at risk. Also talks about Family Offices being somewhat risk averse. Hopes to loosen the vice definition. Reformation Ventures does not have a Vice Clause, and isn’t sure how many funds have the clause. She thinks that ‘Vice Unicorns’ will push FOs and other VC funds to get rid of it, in her mind.
22:00 We talk about the advertising component restricting some growth — even with sexual wellness. We discuss the perceptions of pornography, words that trigger emotions, such as ‘breast pump’ or ‘sex toys’ precluding some advertisers from being associated.
SOURCES:
-Carli Sapir: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carli-sapir-6814a4a6/
-Female Founded Club: https://www.femalefoundedclub.com/
-Reformation Ventures: https://www.reformationventures.com/
-Female Founder Statistics [Feb 2019 Pitchbook]: https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/the-vc-female-founders-dashboard
-Female vs Male VC Question Bias [HBR 2017]: https://hbr.org/2017/06/male-and-female-entrepreneurs-get-asked-different-questions-by-vcs-and-it-affects-how-much-funding-they-get
-Women’s Health Expected Growth [GrandView Research]: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-womens-health-market
-Early-Stage Sexual Wellness Startup Growth [CB Insights]:
https://www.cbinsights.com/research/sexual-wellness-vc-investment-holistic-care/
-Women’s Health Stats [GrandView]: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/womens-health-market
-Elanza Wellness — fertility clinics: https://www.elanzawellness.com/
-Sexual Wellness Research and Stats [GrandView]: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-sexual-wellness-market
-Nurx raises Series B [Techcrunch 2019]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/15/birth-control-delivery-startup-nurx-approaches-300m-valuation/
-Women’s Health Innovation Coalition: https://www.womens.health/
-HitLab for Women’s HealthTech: https://www.hitlab.org/wht
-Dipsea: An Audio Erotica Startup rasies $5.5M in 2019: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/26/dipsea-raises-5-5m-for-short-form-sexy-audio-stories/
-12 Investors on why Sextech: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreabarrica/2019/03/25/12-leading-investors-explain-why-theyre-funding-sextech/#2632f67e4869
-Vice Clause background [Supermaker]: https://supermaker.com/articles/the-companies-venture-capital-isnt-allowed-to-invest-in
-Catharine Dockery at Vice Ventures on TWiST [2019]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9a0np-u8ZM
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Song Credit: The Croft — By Joakim Karud
[ No Copyright on Music and Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0 ]
