Three things I learned from Alyssa Atkins: CEO of Lillia
AUTHOR: This piece was authored by Ibby Syed, Tech x Social Impact Fellow (Summer 2020 Cohort).
This past Thursday, my fellowship had a long chat with Alyssa Atkins, the founder and CEO of fertility startup Lilia. Lilia (www.hellolilia.com) provides women with a concierge service aiming to make the information around egg freezing easier to access and the process less confusing.
When asked about why she decided to start Lilia, “There’s no equality without reproductive equity”, says Atkins. “For the most part, the fertility window for people with sperm lasts up until 40, and even beyond. Often, women or people with ovaries need to think about this timeline much sooner. This affects which careers we pursue, how we think about partners, and so much more.” Lilia aims to help women that face issues like this have more control over their own lives, and have children on their own terms.
Atkins also gave the group advice on how to be better entrepreneurs by leaning into what makes them unique, rather than trying to be the person you’re expected to be. “As a founder, don’t be the person that people want you to be”, says Atkins. “Be yourself, and you’ll end up being more successful.” She went on to tell the group that as a founder, you’ll feel more in your element if you’re yourself. If you try to fake it, it’ll break trust and put up walls — people listen more if they can connect with you better.
Atkins’ second piece of advice about startups was around funding — and not to stress too much about it. She suggested that the best way to raise money was to not focus too early, but to rather make sure that an entrepreneur spends more of their time focusing on product quality — “first focus on solving a large and painful problem — if you can do that, equity capital will be easier to raise”. When raising an investment round though, “focus on what matters to the stakeholders themselves — the part of your product that will generate the returns necessary to make the investment worth it”.
Lastly, entrepreneurs should make sure that they’re taking care of themselves — “founder burnout is real, you’re not going to get anyone to believe that you have a great product if you’re so burnt out that you’ve stopped believing in it”. In a world where movies project founders working all night with no care for their own health, this was a refreshing take. Atkins tries to go to bed by 8:30 every night, in order to get in a few hours of work done before the rest of the world has booted up.
