Halle Tecco, Natalist, on initiative-taking & leading through COVID-19

In this episode, we interview Halle Tecco, Co-Founder and CEO of Natalist. Natalist is a women’s health company offering affordable and easy-to-use fertility products. Halle is a health tech veteran: prior to founding Natalist, she was the founder of early-stage digital health venture fund Rock Health, and an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School.

Halle has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. She was named as one of Goldman Sach’s Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs and listed on the Forbes 30 under 30. She received her MBA from Harvard Business School and is currently pursuing her MPH from Johns Hopkins.

We are thrilled to have her on this episode, where we talk about the differences between building and investing in companies and ways in which we can all make a difference during COVID-19.

Start — 5:10 Early career path & key turning points

• “What did you want to be when you grew up?” Halle wanted to be a journalist in high school. As a first generation college student, Halle explains that her father encouraged her to pursue finance, given its stability (and her good grades in math).
• Prioritizing stability over startups: Right out of college, startups were way too risky. She applied primarily to roles in large corporations, ending up in a finance role at Intel in Santa Clara. Moving to the Bay Area represented a big transition from life in Ohio, where Halle grew up and went to college. While she appreciated the stability of Intel and learned a lot through her management training program, she was hungry for more.
• Business school as a turning point: Halle describes business school as a life changing experience that taught her how the world works, which was both “simultaneously eye opening and shocking.” She describes learning about the connections her classmates had to the world and appreciating how different some of their backgrounds were from her own.

5:15–7:00 Merging healthcare & technology as a practice

• Launching Rock Health: While at HBS, Halle explored ways to combine her interests in technology and healthcare. That was essentially the genesis of rock health, which she started with classmate Nate Gross. It began as a class project and eventually morphed into a dream job. Rock Health was up and running by the time Halle graduated in 2011.
• …and teaching in the classroom: In 2015, Halle helped create the first-of-its-kind MBA-level course on digital health investing. The curriculum was based on case studies and startups that would present live cases and pitches. Halle taught at Columbia for three years until starting Natalist.

7:00–13:00 The inspiration for & launch of Natalist

• Women’s health as an interest area: After investing in healthcare and technology at least a decade, Halle found herself gravitating towards women’s health throughout the past five years. It’s an area that is ripe for change and patient-centered care, products, and services. She spent a lot of time in the space and made a number of investments in awesome companies.
• Doubling down on fertility: After her own experience starting a family, Halle says she “became pretty obsessed” with the fertility space. It made her realize how lousy the products, the information, and the experience overall is for families that want to have children. One specific product actually inspired the idea for Natalist — an FDA-cleared, sperm friendly product. It’s a very popular product — but the box shows a homey-looking blonde lady with a baby. Halle says this product imagery felt entirely disconnected from the experience she was having, so much so that she even felt embarrassed by the product — a medical, FDA-approved product. Her experience with pregnancy tests was similar: they were not user friendly, they were not reasonably priced, and the instructions were barely written in a manner one could understand. This was when she decided there needed to be a company that designs these products specifically for women.
• Taking the plunge: Halle says the idea for Natalist came to her years ago; she even bought the domain name “Baby Someday” hoping that someone would start the company; when they eventually did, she would back them and be very involved. But when nothing came along, and after unsuccessfully trying to convince a few founders to go in this direction, she decided she needed to launch the business on her own.
• On being a founder: Halle assembled her team in early 2019 and the company launched in August 2019. She says she’s learned a ton and claims it’s a lot harder to be a founder than to be an investor, in her experience. It’s much easier to be in a supporting role at a company than to be the star of the show who has to fight fires on a daily basis.

13:00–22:30 Responsible leadership during COVID

• Leveraging her public health expertise: Around the time she started Natalist, Halle also began pursuing a Masters in Public Health with a concentration in women’s health at Johns Hopkins. This academic experience helped her approach healthcare problems with a new lens. Before, through her business hat, she could be sympathetic to patients. Now, the public health framework has helped her see and understand problems in a much more nuanced way.
• “Look for the helpers”: Halle’s husband Jeff, with Alexis Madrigal, began the website covidtracking.com, which is a group of over 100 volunteers who track state-level data to see trends in testing for COVID-19 over time. Given her husband’s involvement in this project, Halle was extremely aware of what has been going on — yet she wasn’t quite sure where she fit in, which was upsetting. So she thought about the Fred Rogers quote, when you see bad things on the news: “Look for the helpers.”
• Finding & funding the helpers: Halle began finding some of the amazing individuals and organizations who were contributing to COVID efforts, which she says felt good. What began as Halle retweeting these initiatives soon motivated her to take this one step further; she didn’t just want to find the helpers, she wanted to fund them, too. She came up with the idea that they should donate a lot of money, more than they had ever donated previously. As of our taping, Halle, with support from other donors, has contributed over $450k to 34 non-profits. The magical part about these donations is the speed: once recipients were selected, checks were written in under one week, which is a much shorter time frame than what grants can typically provide in the world of philanthropy. Many of these organizations need resources much faster right now.
• Using powers for good: Halle says that there are non-financial ways that people can help, too. You can give blood. Call someone who is isolated and alone, if someone is elderly or even just a friend who isn’t living with anyone else right now. Cheer people up. If you’re healthy, run errands for neighbors who may not be able. Buy gift cards to local restaurants and shops. Write thank you note cards to providers or to people in the military who are overseas. “Don’t overthink it. Just do whatever you can. Every little act can make such a big difference.”

22:30–28:00 Celebrating wins at work during COVID

Editor’s note: On April 9, Natalist announced that their pregnancy test is available at Target stores nationwide.

• “It’s a mindf@#%*” Halle says of launching during COVID. The team has worked so hard on the Target launch, and internally, there’s a lot of excitement. She needs to make sure that the team feels good about this major accomplishment, but the timing could not be worse. They considered not announcing and letting people quietly figure it out. The more they thought about it, though, the more they grounded in their firm commitment to women’s health and increasing access to affordable, easy to use essential products. Now it’s more important than ever that women have access to these products.
• Changing the tone to match the moment: Two months ago, Halle says the Natalist message would have been “Hell yeah! We’re at Target!” Now, there’s even footage that they can’t use because it feels very much in contrast with the current tone. Instead, they took the approach of getting to the core of why they’re here and what drives them. Ultimately, she says this messaging feels both authentic and timely given the context of what’s happening.
• Advice for other businesses? If you’re asking yourself “Do I launch?” the answer is yes. “Do I make a big announcement?” The answer is also yes. You’re doing something really important, which is keeping people employed and serving customers. You just need to get at the core of what you do, what is the meaning of your work — and let that shine. That’s what’s really going to resonate with people right now. You don’t need to mention COVID all the time, but you need to take into account the context of what is happening in your customers’ lives.

28:00–31:15 Supporting portfolio companies — now and in general

• On angel investing: Halle loves angel investing because she loves cheering on her founders, which she admits is much easier to do from the sidelines than in the game. She is always happy to support her founders by opening up her contacts, being a sounding board to acting as a therapist. She just loves this work, and that’s never changed.
• Connectedness to other founders: Halle says that COVID-19 has also generated a feeling of connectedness among founders, given they are all going through this experience together. There’s an interconnectedness that she has found really helpful in thinking about the unknowns: How do I do scenario planning? How do I think about hiring plans? And growth? And all of the new hires I was going to bring on, what happens now?
• Supporting her portfolio: There’s a range between her portfolio companies. For some, she’s not super close with the founders, which is common with angel investing. But right now, most founders are looking to talk to other people because it’s part of the experience. Founders are looking to talk through their ideas, to get input. “When the economy is booming, there just isn’t as much to talk about. But right now, we’re operating under a lot of uncertainty, so there is no shortage of questions.”

31:15–35:00 How do you have time for…all of this?

• Obsession with productivity: Halle says her productivity focus started in high school, when she didn’t want to bring her heavy books home on the bus. She found breaks in her day — lunch, free periods — and would plan all of her homework so she could get everything done and not bring her books on the bus. She operates like this still, preferring to get things done early and when they are assigned.
• Saying no: Bob Kocher gave her the advice that she didn’t have to say yes to everything — every conference, every conversation. And she realized that this was true. It’s not always easy for her to say no, but she protects her time. Even if she says no, she’s always happy to connect five other great people for the opportunity. She wishes she had more capacity to mentor young women earlier in their careers, but she just doesn’t feel like she has the time.

35:00 — END Any final words of wisdom?

• MBA + risk-taking: “If you have your MBA, you’re probably in a better position to take risks. So you know, do it. If you have the ability to start a company or work at an early startup, it’s such a transformative experience. Don’t be afraid of taking the risk.”
• And cold emailing: Don’t be afraid to cold email. A lot of people have responded to her emails in the last 15 years that she is so grateful to — many of these people became bigger parts of her career. Worst case, they don’t answer. People are really busy — reach out, be thoughtful, and keep going.

We are so appreciative to Halle for joining us on this episode of The Pulse Podcast! Subscribe for our new releases on Twitter, Spotify or Apple podcasts.