S1EP04 - Who You Take Advice From is Critical with Dr. Maria Uloko

This is The Capital Flex. I'm Naseem Sayani. This show codifies the capital playbook because no founder should have to learn the hard way. We talk about what really happens behind closed doors, the bias, the breakthroughs, and the things no one says out loud. If you've ever walked into a room and felt the system wasn't built for you, you're in the right place. Hello and welcome to The Capital Flex. My guest today is Dr. Maria Alokou. She's one of my dear friends. She's a board-certified urologist, award-winning researcher, and the founder and CEO of Vulva AI, a digital health platform revolutionizing care for vulvo, vaginal, and pelvic pain. As one of only 7 urologists worldwide— pause there for a minute— one of 7 urologists worldwide trained in comprehensive sexual medicine for all genders, Dr. Yoloku previously served as a clinical professor and directed the first vulvar sexual health urology clinic in the US. Her seminal research redefining clitoral anatomy has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Oprah Daily, and more. Her new startup, Vulva AI, uses AI to deliver personalized diagnostics, education, and treatment pathways from conditions like hormonally medicated vestibulodynia, recurrent UTIs, and interstitial cystitis, bridging the gap left by medical systems that overlook vulvar health, which affects 85 million people in America alone. Through Vulva AI and her broader advocacy, Dr. Yoloku is driving medical education reform, tackling sexual health and misinformation, and building a future where vulvar health is central to medicine and not sidelined. Badass to the max. It's the only way I can describe this human because we met a few years ago and I was enamored out of the gate and invited her to speak at a conference. She joined a dinner I was also hosting. And that was it. I was like, she's one of my favorite people on the planet. And then we ran around, I think it was at JPM 2 years ago and popped around a bunch of happy hours together and, and that was it. Uh, and we both live in LA and it's great cuz we can hang out all the time.

So thank you for being here and joining me on the podcast.

I so appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me.

So give the group a little bit more who's listening a little bit extra background on who you are and what you're doing.

Yeah. So thank you so much for that intro. My name's Dr. Maria Loko. I. I am a board-certified urologist and sexual health expert. I, for all genders. So I tell people my job is to help people have really good sex. But in actuality, a lot of my job is dealing with disease, um, dealing with medical neglect, medical sexism, and my ability to treat all genders helps me to directly see how your genitalia impacts your healthcare. Your genitalia impacts your access to healthcare, your access to research, your access to funding. And your access to credible, good diagnosis and treatment. And, you know, because I treat all genders, I have this really unique superpower and this really unique lens to be able to do that. And so in my pursuit of career that I love, I built a vulvar vaginal clinic where I was able to treat all genders in, in that. I had my penile clinic, I had my vulva vaginal clinic, and it was just very differently just based off of the systems. And I learned so much and I saw so many patients and really the biggest through line through seeing patients in such a high volume. I saw about 2,000 patients in a year and a half and had a year and a half waiting list. Um, and that was all built organically. It was like, this is such a big problem for people accessing care of a specialist that actually understands their bodies, listens, know how to diagnose. That, that is why I left academic medicine to change several things. I wanted to change how we are taught and trained around vulvovaginal care. I wanted to change the access to it, make it more affordable, make it more accessible because all doctors in theory need to know how to do this. I'm one of 7 and as one of 7, we are very busy going around the world trying to train and teach, but I wanted to make it more efficient using tech, digital technology and AI. So yeah, that's, that's my background.

It's, I love it. It's that I should also add that one of the reasons why we also became friends is that Dr. Maria is so candid in how she talks about things and the words that she uses. And I was like, she just goes there and says all the words out loud, which is how I live. We're just gonna say all the words out loud. And I, I was, I loved it. I thought it was fantastic.

So yeah, you gotta, you gotta say the quiet part out loud if you don't, if you don't actually know what you're like, we know there's issues. We all see the stats. We know there's issues, but people are oftentimes afraid to say the thing. And I'm like, oh, I'll say it. I've got notes. I'm a Virgo.

This is why we're friends also. Virgos are just going to say the words. It's fine. We're not going to get zapped. It's all good. And that's also part of the motivation for this podcast is that I just get all these insane stories about fundraising from all the founders I talk to all the time. And it's all kind of whisper network stuff. It's just, we talk about it in corners at conferences and I get emails and things and I hit a moment a couple years ago where I said, we just, we just need to talk about it out loud. Let's just, there is crazy nonsense that happens in parts of the fundraising ecosystem. And I want everyone to know, one, I want everyone to know what's happening. Two, I want the founder in California and the founder in New York to have heard the stories from each other and not go through these things, you know, and build their own wheels on how they're going to respond and not know that it's happening to other people. 3, it's not personal. This is just the system is wired a certain way and these things are happening to us because the system works as designed. And we are not, it is not imposter syndrome for us. It is, we are walking into a room that's not designed for us and that is on purpose. And we just need to know how to operate in that room. And if we listen to each other's stories and build a toolkit, we can actually operate in that room in a way that works. We just don't know. What we don't know right now. So let's just say it out loud and figure out what we don't know. So that's why we're here. We're talking about the hard stuff that happens in fundraising, in particular to, to women and people of color and all the things that go on. And so you've been through a couple, you, you're new to the fundraising space, but you're not new to being a person in a room that doesn't work for you or wasn't designed for you. And so I'm so curious as you're building Valvai and in the first rounds of of fundraising for it. If you could use 3 words to describe your fundraising experience to date, what 3 words would you use?

Ooh, baby. I would use the words humbling, tenacity, and creativity. Those are the 3 words that I would definitely use. I think, you know, I got very lucky in my career. Luck is talent plus opportunity, right? And so where within the first year and a half of my career, I, you know, had won 2 international awards. I created the first vulvar sexual health center. I, I, you know, that was run by one of the urologists that took insurance. I had seen so many patients and I had an intensive, extensive waiting list. I was traveling all over the world. Like I, graduated from fellowship, a, and a leading expert. Like, you know, that's not— most people don't get that. They have to work quite some time to get to that, to get to the place where I was. And I just happened to have found a niche that I loved and really fell into it and, and loved it. And so when I really started to understand the systematic impacts of how that one patient that I was seeing in clinic was impacted by all these systems and how can we actually build a better world and create. And I had, you know, dated a lot of guys in tech and I got to see them like solve problems and like, I was kind of like, oh wow, okay, so tech has this ability to solve problems. Like medicine is very slow and I don't like to go slow. I like, I see a problem and I wanna fix it and that's not how medicine is set up. And so I was like, oh, let me go to tech. I'm kind of, you know, I know my shit, like, I can do this. And then I was immediately humbled. I was like, oh, right. I'm a Black woman and I've been a Black woman. And I, for me, I think it's one of the most powerful things, but statistically in every field, in every industry I've ever been in, I'm oftentimes been the first in every room. And so I know that unique, I know the unique pressures. I know the unique, I know I have to be 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 times better than most people. And that's just the reality of the situation. And that is, that has just translated into fundraising. And, you know, that's okay because I love a challenge.

I, we don't, we don't back down from the challenge. You go, okay, here, let's go. Accepted. Let's roll.

Yeah, exactly. Like once I, I just had to name it, I had to see it, I had to name it, and then it was like, okay, then let's work through it. So yeah. That's, that was in my first, my first foray into fundraising.

So as you were prepping for fundraising, did you gather advice, insight? Like how did, how did you initially ramp up for it?

You know, I think this is such an important question. I think who you're taking advice from really matters, right? And taking advice from people that look like you, that have your shared experience and background actually matters a lot because I was getting a lot of, you feedback from tech bros, like, yeah, you just like send a deck, you put some emojis on a slide, and you do the thing, and then you just walk in, you say, I need money, and you're like, okay, okay. And so me being like this diligent scientist was like, spent so much time, and I was like, I guess it's just that easy. I just say, here's an idea, hand me money. And no, absolutely not. Um, so then I started talking to women and particularly women of color and really understanding, oh, we are playing two very different games. And so, I think that was such a big, a really big wake-up call for me or just being like, oh, okay, like their lived experience is absolutely their lived experience. You know, that person that is able to walk in, have the Stanford connections, have like, you know, a pitch deck made out of fully of just emojis and get $500,000. Like, that's amazing. I love that for you. That's not how my experience is. And so just really being aware of the stats, aware of the ecosystem, and then working through that and, and making decisions accordingly based off of that.

So you, you told me this emoji story.

Can you, can you tell the people, our, our listeners, this emoji story?

Because I nearly fell outta my chair when you told me this.

I'll try not to use any names or anything, but so one of said people that I had, I knew, had no, no expertise in a particular area or arena, had run a startup, had startup experience, and you know, that had failed, which again is like an interesting thing around like, we love failure. Well, again, I'm Nigerian, we don't like failure, but I digress. And he had sent me, he just out of the blue sent me it. I didn't, hadn't, didn't even know what a pitch deck was at that time. I was still deep in the trenches of academia. I think I was like going into a surgery and I was like, what is this email? And he's like, hey, what are your thoughts on this? And I'm reading it and I was like, what the fuck is this? This is, this is on Google Slides. It's so poorly constructed. It is mostly emojis. Like there's no, there's nothing. And I was like, oh no, oh no, I can't date this man. Like, honey, oh no. Um, and you know, and I'm like, I, I was at conferences every couple of week, like every couple of weeks, every weekend almost. So I was like, I was really good at decks. Didn't realize that Hitch decks were different at the time, so. It was just so surprising. And so I asked him like, what is this? What is the— like, what are you— I tried to give like gentle feedback and he told me he had this idea and was gonna go and raise— like, wanted to build a startup and like a— in a field that he had no, no scientific background, no background at all in, no connections even. He just was a man with a vision and a dream. And I was like, okay, good luck, buddy. And a couple weeks later he's like, I just got $500,000 and I was like, what? With your emoji deck? Really? With your emoji deck, with this emoji deck. And so that was actually what started my— this humor. It wasn't hubris, but I think, I don't think I would have left academia with such confidence if that story didn't happen. But I needed that. I needed that kind of fallacy of like, oh, it's that easy. To make this jump, because once I made the jump, there was no turning back. But I think if I had, if I knew like, oh, there's, there's all, it's so much harder than you think, I may not have still stayed in academia a little bit longer, but I'm glad I got out. I'm glad I did it. And also, who you take advice from matters, you know, because he had the pedigree to get to those things. He even introduced me to the, the founder or the The investors invested in him, which is really nice. And, and I'm pitching and I'm like, look, listen, like no one, no one wants to do this. This is a trillion dollar opportunity because no one is taking control of the fact that everyone with a vulva will experience some sort of dysfunction. And there's just not enough doctors, there's not enough training, there's not enough access. I'm like laying down all the numbers and they were like, yeah. You would make a really good Gwyneth Paltrow. And I'm like, I'm a scientist, dude. Like, what are you talking about? I'm presenting you an opportunity. And that was like that first moment of like, oh, I'm just— I got to see who I was in his eyes. And I was like, okay, all right, that's okay. Last night I took a no, but tonight I bounced back. And that actually got me to like, okay, I can do this. I— although it wasn't exactly how I wanted it to be, I can do this and I, I want to do this and I want to change things for the better. Even if you don't see me, I see me. I see this vision. I see this dream.

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Yeah.

And doesn't walk out with half a million dollars.

Yeah. And honestly, building a clinic is a business. I don't think people like investors also realize that, like, I built a clinic very organically without any, I built two clinics now without any marketing, all the things. It was just word of mouth and good care and. Yeah. So things like that where it's like, oh, I, I started learning that investors have a different language and it's still a language that I'm learning and I'm coding. But yeah, it's, it's been an, it's been a journey.

A journey. So how have you evolved your fundraising strategy since? And I, I have to assume you've now leveraged your clinic experience into your fundraising story now.

Yeah.

Or tell us a little bit more.

Yeah. You know, I think one of the things. That I have found in this journey is that I am someone that I grew up without access to healthcare. I grew up with, I, my, my heart will always be with patients over profit. Like the thing is, if you just do math, the profit will be there. Like there's no, that's always going to be central to me. And things that I really value is that we're centering the patients and I'm centering my autonomy. And so when I'm thinking about what I was thinking about, where do, how do we fund this? How do we make this dream happen? Who do we wanna take money from? You know, it was going down the route of like, okay, do we want VC? And that was where everyone was, you know, kind of pushing me towards and realizing that, you know, one of the things about VC that won't work for women's health, women's health is in shambles. We cannot build upon a system that's already broken. And I think oftentimes oftentimes a lot of the companies in this space, because they don't have deep clinical experience and research experience and kind of the lived experience, this lens that I have, they're oftentimes creating systems upon a really poor foundation of like, okay, yeah, let's just build another company that fills in this small gap without— and I'm like, no, I want to break down the system and build again. And that's going to take, that's, that's not that, that's not that BC return immediately, right? That's gonna take a little bit of time. And also it's the menopause model. If we think about the, the funding or like the structure of menopause, Midy, Alloy, these are huge companies now, but they also had to start somewhere. They, they started somewhere and they were, they're essentially taking down and building again on a system that wasn't working well.

And so, and there almost, there almost wasn't a foundation to begin with.

Exactly. For Maya Paz.

So they were building from zero in most cases.

Yes, exactly. And they had different funding situations. And so someone that doesn't have the same funding situation, it's really hard to go to investors that are thinking about, you know, pattern recognition. Well, I've seen this pattern before. And I'm like, well, I have a whole new pattern for you. Trust me, a new founder. Let's go, you know, let's, let's work together. And I can understand the hesitation. I totally get that. And also I have built in every single space. I have crushed in every single space. They don't see that. And I get that. And one of the things that I have found is that I make more, more progress in the impact space because when people are thinking about change and, and systemic change. That's what impact investors tend to think about is they're thinking a little bit more broad than just like the bottom, the bottom line. Yes, the bottom line matters. Absolutely. But I want to do so many other things than just create the bottom line. I want systemic and systematic change in medical education. I want legislation around access to care. I want all of these things. This company is a shell company for the greater things I want to do.

I want to make sure— yeah, the world domination that comes with it, right?

Exactly. Like, there's so much research, there's so much data, there's so much— there's so much systemic change that we can make through corporations if done well. And so that's also— that's my hypothesis. That's my hypothesis, um, and I'm going to prove it, you know. I— that's That's something I really wanna definitely do. And so our strategy has changed from going to the like VC only to looking more into the investor, the social impact investors, and then non-dilutive funds because we're also a science-backed company. And so currently in the National Institute of Aging Accelerator and SBIR readiness program. And so it's things like that where it's like, oh, there are other ways to fund a company, especially if you have different metrics other than just to make money, which again, it's not a bad thing, but there are, there are other metrics that I want to hit alongside the immense opportunity that is in this space because no one has addressed it. And it's a, it's an, it's such a hidden gem in a very public space.

Right. Right. Yeah. And so the storytelling changes well beyond the financials. It's, there is a lot of money to be made and also we can do all of these other things in parallel, right? And not every, and not every investor is thinking that way, but the impact investors are. And it sounds like that you've been able to get past what often happens is impact investing gets perceived as concessionary returns. And that we are after the impact at the trade-off of financials. And we're hopefully getting better at not doing that anymore because I also absolutely want both of those things.

But we often have to deal with the, oh, but okay, fine.

So then you're not willing to get a return. And I'm like, well, that's not true. I am 100% here to make money, but I am also here to change the world and make it better at the same time. And that we're getting better at putting that logic. Next to each other now, right? Rather than leaving one behind.

Yeah. No, my first foray into the impact space is through Echoing Green. I'm an Echoing Green fellow this year. And it's, this has been an organization just that is blowing my mind. It is just full of like good troublemakers around the world who want to build, build new systems, change the world, and also understand that in order to do that, you need money. And they are people that are putting their mouth like they have a mission and they're actually also then giving you money to do that mission and work alongside you. So it's, it's such a beautiful community and it's the first space where I can say like, this is, I'm not only on top of it that I wanna make money, I also want to, I get to lead with, with the systematic change and then the money is like, yeah. And then this is again a trillion dollar, several trillion dollar issue, right? So like, right. That's also there. Have you, what?

Having come into the space from academia and from deep science, uh, what, what other observations have you had on, on VC and fundraising and how this world works versus, or observations on differences and/or similarities from the world that you, you come from?

Yeah, I am 0.02% of Black female urologists, so I know what it feels like to walk into a see a room full of dudes and just either be like completely dismissed, completely looked over. I, it's just the reality of the situation. I've been, I've been in healthcare. I started medical school at 17. Like, I know healthcare and VC are not that different, and also they're, they're vastly different. I think something that I, I'm really curious about is, you know, I always care about who's making decisions, who has the power to make decisions. And I was very fortunate, my my first big girl job, I got to make decisions and I got to be in the room with people that were making decisions. And you know, it's something that I had worked all throughout my training to do. And then like, that was my first, first job was to, I got to run my own clinic. I was also in charge of programs on the medical resident training, all of them. And that was really cool. And what I realized is Who has power is ultimately what, who makes the decisions. And when we think about systemic issues, systemic issues, we created them. Like we, like the people in power created systemic issues. So if we can, if we can acknowledge and address systemic issues, we can then change them. And when systems refuse to change, it's because we refuse to change them. You know, I, that's, that's just what it is. And I, I. I became disillusioned in healthcare because, you know, so many people will be like, well, that's just how the system is. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. Like we built this, this system doesn't even exist. Like, and telehealth is a great example of this. So prior to COVID, telehealth has, is able to give access to people that don't have cars, that don't have transportation, that don't have childcare, that, you know, there's so many things that trip, getting to the hospital was actually a barrier to care. But insurance companies were like, no, we won't, blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden COVID happened and we had to. And then all of a sudden, all of the decades of like, let's do telehealth, and insurance companies were like, no, we can't, there's so many reasons, we had to overnight do it. And so that was, to me, was like, oh, so the systems don't even matter. Like, Clearly we can, we just weren't doing it.

Right.

We can do everything. And so I think understanding who has power, understanding that money oftentimes comes with power, is how we make change. And that, that has been such an interesting thing of, you know, even the people with money and even the people with power also oftentimes don't know what they're doing. And that's. That's, and, and as someone that comes from, again, I've been in healthcare, I'm only 34, but I've been seeing patients for 17 years. And so I know a hospital system. I know, I know when the patient walks in, I ran a free healthcare clinic. I, I know healthcare inside and out. I know operating rooms. I know all of these things. I don't know 'em all, but I definitely know more than the consultant that's getting paid a lot of money to, to come in and do these things. I definitely know more. Than the investor investing in healthcare. You know, it's like, so it's an interesting thing around, even though you may have power, you may not know that you don't know. Um, and I think oftentimes I see the investment trends like are just building upon systems that are already fucked. And it's like, okay, this, right, this AI system isn't going to make the clinics run more efficiently. You need to hire more doctors. Like, that's what it is. Like, the actual people aren't doing root cause analysis of issues. And they're not, and if they are, they're not getting diverse voices, you know? And that's, that's why I think we're where we're at. We're our, our healthcare system is crumbling. It's, there's just such a disconnect, you know, as a physician, when I talk to my physician friends, there's a, a different conversation. And as a business person, when I'm talking to business people, there's just different conversations. And like, why are we not all sitting down at a table and coming together to actually create systems that work. Because if we did that, so many companies would be very successful. So many doctors would be so much happier, you know, like, but we work in such different silos and we never come together and are making decisions based off of conjecture.

So much innovation happens because the old systems are unwilling to change. And so like network TV is one of those examples. It was like streaming was starting to happen and network TV didn't want to listen because they're anchored on their advertising models. And I just, from my consulting life, these are the things we were watching happen. And we kept saying like, you're going to have to change your advertising model because streaming is going to happen. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. Streaming happened and that old legacy ad model broke down. Now you, and you have to fund a studio lot. You have a huge balance sheet. That is your studio lot. And suddenly Amazon and Netflix and all the, the big streamers are able to move their studio lot. Their studio lots are fluid. They are out in the wild without the balance sheet of a studio lot. And you are hunkered down by one because that's your balance sheet and you can't pay for it anymore because you don't have the ad dollars flowing in through the pipe that is linear TV. The whole thing broke because they weren't willing to listen, right? And these things, it just happens. And then the same thing happened with music. And it's a, and this is the way I like to think about things. It's like really simple changes, really simple assumption changes have dramatically changed industries. So yes, music moved from being on, you know, in our homes to then being mobile. Suddenly we could put it on devices because we were ripping it with Napster and doing these things when I was in college, which that's how, that's how old I am. But then it actually changed when Apple. Dismantled the album and said, you don't have to buy the album. You can buy the song. That is the moment when music changed. Because now I could buy a song for 99 cents. The Apple Store blew up.

The iPods blew up.

The entire industry changed because I could buy a song. That was the moment. And then you went from ownership of songs, then Spotify shows up and now it's access. I don't even need to own the song anymore. Now I just need access to the song. And the, the whole industry has changed twice over because of it. And like, how do we do that with healthcare? Where, where is that gonna be for health? Those, like, is, are we dismantling the PCP? That is that the thing that, because that's already happening again, it's already happening. People are already doing home blood tests once a month and getting their results and they're already doing all these things at home and not going to a PCP anymore. But again, we're not sitting around a table and problem solving the business model together because the payers are anchored in a certain way, providers are held to accountability a certain way, hospitals work a certain way. Oh, we won't just sit around a table and solve it. No. Yeah. Anyway, that's like a separate podcast, but like that's, that's the thing we need to solve, right?

Yeah. Well, I was at, we were both at Health this weekend and I, most of my physician colleagues have never even heard of Health before. And I'm, which is, it, it was never something on my radar until up until I went and started a company, you know? And so this is my first time at Health and I was like, wow, all of this amazing innovation is happening. All of like big power players are here. People that are able to make decisions that impact patients on such a ginormous level. And there are not a lot of physicians here. They're like, I'm like, this is wild. This is, this is wild. It was something that was very fascinating to me. The only physicians that I saw there were influencers, med influencers who are great and they educate and they knowledge, but I don't think they, they weren't there for their leading a think tank. They were there to, for social, like social constructs, like social constructs instead of like, okay, let's all get together and how do we increase health outcomes, you know, like, like actual conversations that would change the system. It was like, no, that was not happening.

This is, this is where the breakpoint is, right? And we can't fix it. So how, how do you think fundraising can get better? How do we, how do we, how do we, given this, like, how do we flex it, make it better? Like, where's the, what are the tuning points for it to make it easier for women, for people of color, for people like you and other female founders? Like, what are the things we need to do?

Trust the experts. Let's listen. That is actually— yeah, trust the experts. If it's so interesting, as I've learned about the process of building a product, of, of customer discovery, of all these things, I'm like— it was just so funny because I was like, you mean the thing I've been doing? Talk talk to customers, the thing I've been doing every day for thousands of— like, I'm like, there's no— like, what are you talking about? Like, there's—

I don't know.

It's, it's, whew. It's a fascinating thing.

Have you gotten the question, have you, have you done any testing of Lova AI with customers? You must have gotten this question.

All the time. And I'm like, what are you, what are you talking about? Have you talked to customers? All day. Like, they won't stop talking to me about this. I literally can't walk anywhere. Without— I say what I do, I immediately get bombarded with, oh, I've been having pain, or I've been having recurrent UTIs. I like— sometimes I'm like, I want investors just to follow me around, just to be like, oh wow, this is a huge issue, this is so big, I can't believe I didn't trust the expert, you know. And so I think, yeah, trust the experts, fund Black women, fund women. Like, the stats show that when you when you invest in women, no matter what industry, like no matter even if it's just investing, if it's healthcare, when you invest in women, the, and this is, I can say this as a doctor that treats all genders, but when I, this isn't, this is the analogy. When I treat a man with erectile dysfunction, he's just gonna be like, cool, got it. High fives. Like discreet. Everything's discreet. When I treat someone with vulvovaginal pain or recurring UTIs, As soon as they feel better, they go and share it with their community. Like, that's how I built my referral network. Like, the way that women are socially conditioned to share the wealth of knowledge— wealth, they're just conditioned to share wealth, whether it's knowledge or it's resources. We are sharers. And so when you invest in women, that's actually investing in a whole ecosystem. And that, to me, that analogy is how I, I think about everything in the world, is that You know, I get to help my individual male patients. Like, he's not gonna go to the locker room and be like, yo, listen, fix my erectile dysfunction.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, there's Dr. Uloko. That's my girl. Like, right. Yeah. On the streets, we'll high five and like do this, but he's not telling his boys about me. But my female patients, they're the ones that are like, they are, they're, they are my ride or dies. Like, they are the ones that are changing their whole ecosystem. I told my daughter about you. I told my sister, like, I told my grandma she doesn't need to suffer, you know? And that's what, that's what I want. That's, that analogy is how I think about investing, is that when you invest in women, it's a trickle-down effect. And also patience, because one of the things that we are so far behind that the, the metrics don't count for us. They shouldn't count for us. We need a little bit more time to catch up, but we will catch up. Like, that's the coolest thing about when you invest in women— they will always catch up or even exceed. But when you're giving them metrics, like such tight metrics, when they're already far behind in the relay race, like, that's not— it's not a fair place to start.

Yeah, it's not— it is not apples to apples anymore.

No, exactly, at all.

Yeah.

Yeah, but we, we love a challenge, right? Like we will always rise to the occasion. We will always rise to that challenge. So fund women, fund women of color, fund Black women, like all day, every day. We got, we got stuff to do.

We got stuff to do. We have work to do. I have a long list. How, how can our listeners help you? How can they help Vulva AI? What, what do you want everyone to go do?

Yeah, so we are raising a $1 million pre-seed round looking for social impact investors or investors that just get it, that get the problem, see the mission, see the vision, understand that the money is there, but there's also so much more impact that you can create. Again, look at Alloy, look at Mitty. 5 years ago when I stopped my training around menopause, around sexual health for all genders, menopause was barely talked about, but Mitty and Alloy were around. They were, they were building. And now look at them, like They are creating legislation. They are, I mean, they are helping to create all of these things, legislations, conversation, education reform. That's what I want to do around the vulva vaginal space too. And they're going to be one of the, some menopause company is going to be one of the first IPO, right? That, that's, oh yeah, absolutely. You're like, you're like, look, the money was there always. And also look at how much social impact. That they have also done. So that's what we're doing in the vulvovaginal space. Cuz everyone was going through menopause will have vulvovaginal issues.

And so you'll be right behind. I got a seed check into Alloy and I'm very excited. So I'm just watching that one.

I love, I love those companies because yeah, when I had a year and a half waiting list, it was really hard to handle all of those patients. And so I was able to like, hey, in the meantime, until you can come see me, Here's some really great resources that are, they can help stop you from suffering now. And then if you want a little bit more personalized care, that's where I'm at. But I will always love those, those direct-to-consumer women's health companies that were filling in these huge gaps because what they were also doing was the doctors that are already doing this work are overburdened and they were helping to take off that burden.

So, oh.

Yeah, they're fantastic. Those, those are my people.

Oh yeah, they did fantastic work very early when we needed those solutions and they hit a spot that was, that grew so quickly and they did it really well. So it's been fantastic.

Yeah, that's what we're, we're trying to recreate that model.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for coming on the pod. I so appreciate the thinking and the perspective and just how candid you are. So thank you so much for being on. I love it.

Thank you for having me.

Makes me smile every time. Thanks for listening to The Capital Flex. If today's episode hit home, share it with the founder you love and follow me on LinkedIn for more.