S1EP09 - Sniffing Out Predatory Terms with Cecilia Tse

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 Cecilia Tse. She is a great founder and one of my favorite people. She is the CEO and co-founder of Hey Freya, which is a brand rooted in science, systems, and empathy. Hey Freya is on a mission to help women tune into their biology, decode their stress responses, and take back the wheel with data, tools, and support that actually fits into real life. She's also the mom of two, an IVF warrior, recovering management consultant, which is familiar cuz I am as well, turned wellbeing strategy leader and BIPOC. Avid founder, adventurer, and in this space like a hero. Cecilia and I met a couple years ago by way of her startup and one of her co-founders, and I had a few conversations, understood what they were after, and jumped in as an angel investor, and we've been fast friends the whole time. So I'm so excited you joined me here today. Thank you so much for coming on the pod.

Well, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Absolutely. So for everyone listening, if you could introduce yourself a little bit more and tell us a little bit more about Hey Freya.

Yes, sure. So you said I'm a recovering management consultant. That's true. So that's my professional background, finance professional, M&A consulting, and was doing that for over 10 years before becoming the first ever wellbeing leader at PwC. And so I oversaw enterprise adoption and development, in-house development of digital health products. And so I saw what kept people coming back. What employees en masse would roll their eyes at. And I most importantly saw what remained missing. You mentioned I'm an IVF warrior. So as a 17-year-old, I was dismissed or made to feel dismissed by a medical professional. I have amenorrhea, what's called amenorrhea, which means I don't ovulate on my own. And at 17, I was dragged to the pediatric OB who said, oh my dear, you must be one in a million. You might even be menopausal. Both are inaccurate.

Oh my God.

And they said, don't worry, at the rate technology is going, I'm sure you'll have options. In the meantime, here's the pill. Come back to me when you wanna have kids.

Oh my goodness.

So it's, it's really good advice.

Well, at 17 years old, what are you supposed to do with information like that? Or 18, whatever age, what age you were.

Yes. And what are you supposed to do? You know, I'd already spent several years. Googling, Ask Jeevesing back in the day, Yahooing, what could be wrong with me? And so to get an answer, any answer from someone who I should be able to trust was what I took and went with and ran with and was very type A with, like I am with most other things in my life. So I took the pill for over 20-odd years and, and I was convinced that I didn't even want to try to have kids. As a result. So it took over 20-odd years. I was living and working, living the dream in New York, and a friend of mine who's a doctor, she was trying to recruit me to have kids. So she, she, she'd had her own kid. She said, we should all have them together, it'd be so much fun. I was really hard to be convinced, and she urged me to get a second opinion when I opened up to her about my my condition. I did. I went through therapy and I came out the other side and I thought, my gosh, the experience women have with regard to our health, whether it be fertility or otherwise, has so much room for improvement. And I remember when the technician completed her ultrasound, she came out and she said, yep, nothing going on in there, in that tone, with that delivery. What am I supposed to do with that? So I did have a successful experience with IVF. Fortunately, my, my team were fantastic, much more empathetic. And again, I came out on the other side a mother, and I just thought, I, I can no longer not contribute to this space. And this was around the time when I was the wellbeing leader. I was— I'd started advising digital health startups too, around going to enterprise or expanding to North America, entering North American markets, navigating a healthcare system and so on, and benefits. And I really thought I have to do something myself. And I thought I could advise, I could continue advising, I could volunteer. It was around the time that a lot of rights around women's health were being called into question. And ultimately I met my co-founder and I thought, okay, if I'm going to do this at all with anybody, it's going to be you. And let's, let's, let's go build the change that we want to see, as cliché as that sounds.

Yeah, that we all have that moment. That is what brings a lot of us to this space is something very personal happens and the issues we've been watching become much more tangible and we figure if it's not me, then who? And if it's not right now, then when? As cliché as that sounds. And that's when we jump in feet first and that's why we're all here. So I appreciate that and I appreciate what you do. So, you know, the mission of this podcast is to get into the not so fun parts of this experience, which is the fundraising experience. And in some cases it's a, it's in some cases it's a amazing and fun and we all raise the capital that we need. And in a lot of other cases, it's not quite that. And I've spent years hearing all the insane stories of what women in particular go through when they're fundraising. And you and I have talked about a lot of what, what you and your team have gone through as you've been fundraising, which seems like a pretty constant experience for everybody. And so that, that's where we're gonna spend some time. And really my intent is to surface those stories, talk about them, get out of the Whisper network, and really give the, the rest of the ecosystem some visibility. Visibility to what's going on and also leave, leave some toolkit ideas and some takeaways for other founders as they plan and as they plot their fundraising so that everyone can do it just a little bit better than we've been doing it before. So if you could, as we start, if you had to characterize your fundraising experience in like 3 words, uh, what, what would those be?

First one is ongoing. Second one is inefficient. And the third would be connection. Yeah.

So tell us a little bit more.

So ongoing, I think. Some founders feel afraid to admit that we're always fundraising. We just are. And if we're not actively collecting checks, we're nurturing relationships. It's kind of like that film where they say, always be selling or always be closing.

Always be closing, right?

Where, yeah, where that's what we're doing. That's being a founder is you're always fundraising. So that's why I say the ongoing. Inefficient is another one for me because I feel like, especially given my background, which I'm so grateful for, where VC funds were my clients, I know a lot about how the economics works or the business of VC works. I, I, I understand that. I, I, and, and, and by that I mean that, you know, we, before I even talk to a fund, I'll look at what's the size of the fund? Are they deploying checks? What's the life of their fund? And typically they're about 10 years for anyone listening who isn't aware.

Nowhere.

And so, for them to invest in you, you need to be able to convince them with evidence, ideally, that they will generate a return that is commensurate with the amount of capital they're deploying across the whole fund. And so, I feel what is so inefficient though, even knowing all that knowledge, is that the matching of funding, of funder and founder, is not a repeatable process. So despite the advice that other founders may give you, or despite the advice that funders may give you, it's, it's just not a process that really can be replicated to achieve the same result. So I say it's inefficient. And another example I have is, is one, one investor who said that one of her favorite founders just happened to land on her desk. The pitch deck just happened to land there. That's not efficient. It's wonderful and incredible and amazing. And surely there's got to be a better way. Otherwise, I feel like money is being left on the table, so many tables. And then the last one is connection. And I say that because I love and I enjoy meeting humans. And it's a particular personality type that will get into this space. Obviously, I'm into the space, so I've been attracted to it. For some reason or another. And so I've, I've made some wonderful friends. I've met some incredible heroines. You've included Naseem Sayani, so many brilliant minds that I hadn't come across had I not been fundraising. Right.

Well, it's interesting cuz those last two, right? Inefficient. It's absolutely inefficient, but it also, it is so relationship-driven, which is your third point, connection, is that it's not a perfect, it's not just the math. That drives the connection or the, the decision-making, right? It's not just a, this math problem fits into what my fund structure needs or what my fund construction requires. It is also, we have to be able to work together as humans, and it's that layer on top, the connection piece that drives the inefficiency, but is also so necessary to it working. And making those things systematic, it is where The beauty and the trouble lies, right? Because it, we can't mechanize both of those things at the same time.

Correct. We can't automate it either.

No, we can't. No, we can't. Exactly.

Yeah. AI's not gonna solve that.

No, exactly.

Yeah.

Oh my goodness. No, absolutely right. That makes a ton of sense. So if you were to think about where you've had some of the harder experiences in your, in your fundraising life, what would you describe would've been maybe one or two of the more interesting, complicated, things that have happened?

I think it's, you know, it's, it's well documented how much harder or how much longer it can take for women founders. That's, that's well documented. But I think two particular examples that I remained a little disappointed by, I will say, but I've moved on. One of them was what I'll, I'll sum up as a pretty predatory term sheet. And, and so for those, those listening who aren't familiar with that, the term sheet is piece of paper that says, I'm willing to give you this much money on these terms. And on these terms could mean different rights, like staking your equity or interest if it's debt, or control rights, like I get to veto certain decisions and so on. And one particular fund offered us a term sheet, and this fund painted itself as one that was really a progressive, for lack of a better word, or very modern, I will say, very innovative and doing things differently from the rest of the industry. And they tell a great story and they were extremely efficient to their credit. I appreciated that, meaning that a decision was made within 2 days. Term sheets.

That's fast, much faster than normal.

Yes, a lot faster than normal. So yeah, it might be worth saying how slow it can be, but when I looked at the terms, and again, I think I credit my background in finance and having VC funds as my clients. I've seen so many term sheets in my day that I was able to actually discern that these terms were really unfavorable to any founder. As a fund, brilliant, brilliant business model, but essentially there was a component of debt and equity. They were willing to give me, give us, give the company the money, but we also had to repay it within, you know, a certain time period at a certain interest rate. And by the way, they were also taking a piece of equity and basically eliminating all risk for them. So again, great business model, but not necessarily economically aligned for the founder.

So, so wait, hold on. So it was they would give you money. I'm gonna make up numbers. Let's say $200,000 and take equity. Let's say I'm making it 5%, but you had to pay back the $200,000 over the next 5 years with interest, but they would keep their 5%?

Yes. Yes. There, there were some mechanisms. And so again, for someone that doesn't have either a legal or a finance background or familiarity with term sheets, I would say that they may not have been able to navigate the, the clauses. It wasn't as complex or circular as some tax code can be, but there was, you know, an early repayment where you wouldn't have to pay the full $200,000. In your example, you might pay $175,000, and depending on how much you repaid, it would reduce the equity stake some, but they'd still be left with some equity. and you'd still be left with having repaid them with interest.

So it's a, it's a debt mechanism for early stage founders. It's not really a funding, a true equity mechanism, but, and yet that fund gets to pick up a bunch of equity without having actually given you money.

Yes. They're really not making any, they're not taking any bet. They're not taking any risk and enjoying a decent upside.

Wow. But then, and then marketing themselves as being forward-looking, innovative, all the things.

I mean, it is forward-looking, I guess, and it is innovative.

Yeah, for sure. For themselves. For themselves, but not for founders.

Yeah. So I would say that what is good about their term is that they were efficient. So if you need cash, whatever the strings are, and you need them quickly, I can tell you where to go. But. The, the, the bigger point that I feel is potentially jarring about these sorts of sources of capital is that they, they paint themselves as something potentially different.

Yeah. Well, that's too bad. That is, it's too bad. Do you think they are, and I don't wanna cast this the wrong way, but do you think they are, are all types of founders taking funding from them? Do you think they're targeting certain parts of the ecosystem, or are men and women of all kinds sourcing money from them? Men, women, non-binary, right? Everyone in between. Is that—

I would say their marketing materials appear to target a certain demographic.

I was hoping that wouldn't be the answer, but I kind of thought that might be.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's a shame because they, they actually had come recommended. And yeah, again, the marketing materials sound fantastic and sounds like they're really trying to move the needle. And, and yeah, I mean, if the goal is to get cash in the bank, yeah, it's there temporarily, very temporarily. And yeah, so, so I guess I won't fault them, again, the business model and the efficiency, but I do feel that they're, they're sources of capital out there that would benefit from you, whether, whether you're a founder or someone assisting with the fundraising, to really be able to read through term sheets. And I think especially at the early stage, there is this general reluctance to rely on lawyers. But if, if you don't have the expertise yourself, I would encourage founders, especially in the early stage, to consult expert advice, or at least a friend that knows their way around term sheets to avoid getting yourself into, yeah, predatory situations.

100%. No, absolutely. And this is one of the things I tell founders a lot is you have to have, you have to have friendlies around you all the time, whether it's other founders who know how to read these things or lawyers, friendly lawyers who are in your close circle who can read term sheets, or you have to have these people because you don't know what predatory looks like. Until it happens to you. And there could be any number of people who are just signing these things because they're desperate for capital. And you do it because we know how hard it is to fundraise. That's why we're here. Mm-hmm. And then you're ready to take the $200K and give away the 5%, and suddenly you realize it was a loan and not true equity, and you're now having to pay interest on it. And maybe you did realize that, but you said, oh, it's fine, I'll pay it back. But if you don't hit the revenue metrics that you were hoping to hit, Now you've got to, you have debt to pay back and who knows how friendly it's going to be to renegotiate that kind of debt going forward, especially early.

Absolutely. And also the, the, the level of risk that you take on, on top of all the other risks that you're taking on already as a founder. So yes, absolutely have friendlies. I'm a big fan of that and absolutely empower yourself and educate yourself. With, with financial terms. And, you know, it's easy for me to say that with my background. However, don't just rely on online tools to review your term sheets. That would probably be my other piece of advice, just because a lot of, a lot of language can sound friendly on the surface.

That wired but tired feeling, that brain fog, that 3 AM wide awake anxiety. It could be that your cortisol rhythm is out of sync. Hey Freya is the health tech company helping you reset your cortisol. From clinical grade at-home cortisol testing to personalized supplement protocols that support energy, sleep, and calm, Hey Freya provides complete cortisol care for women in their busy chapter. Learn more by visiting getheyfreya.co. That's G-E-T-H-E-Y-F-R-E-Y-A.co. And you mentioned that this relationship came. Recommended to you. How has relationship building been for you in the ecosystem and how's that, how's navigating that been as you work through meeting people or finding resources with capital? How has that felt?

I think those three words come back to mind. I've made such wonderful connections and truly they light up my whole soul, especially when they care about the Palamon I'm solving, which I didn't mention earlier, but you, you mentioned our mission, Naseem Sayani, and obviously I'm an advocate for women and for women's health. And so in terms of networking and finding relationships, it has just felt so energizing to meet people that care about what you care about. And not only the problem that you're solving, but the typically the people who care about the problem that you're solving tend to be people you get along with, that you enjoy hanging out with, that you'll enjoy grabbing ice cream with, shopping mall parking lot, which we did recently.

Right.

But yeah, so, you know, how has that been? I think when I've entered rooms where I haven't felt the warm and fuzzy, it's because they just haven't been my people. And when I say that, I mean, I could talk to a brick wall. I tell people that I could talk to a brick wall. So, I enjoy meeting strangers. In other words, and however, when I've walked away feeling like I haven't had that woman pussy feeling, it's, it's because I can see that we, we just, we're just not interested in the same things. We don't watch the same shows. We, we don't value the same things in life. So I think fundraising relationships have been very similar. You mentioned a little bit about that earlier, Naseem, where it's, they're people that you're going to be spending a lot of time with for the next 10 years. And before I even entered startup land officially, I was reading read some articles about how co-founder relationships are the closest relationships you have, second to your marriage. And it's absolutely true. My co-founder knows almost more than my own husband does about my day-to-day life. And some of our closest investors are the first people I call with life updates than close friends. And so, you know, how does it feel, Naseem Sayani? It feels so energizing overall. And I, I go back to inefficient also because it's, it's hard to find your people as a, as a grownup. It's, it's hard to find new friends because our lives are so full. And so it becomes a very important exercise in scrutinizing where you're going to spend your energy and what's going to fill you up and light you up for fun, just for being a human while also forging business relationships.

Do you think Cause I know I, I do this cause it happens on the investor side of things for sure. Do you think women go through more of a code switching exercise on in founder land versus our male counterparts?

Yes.

Say more.

My, my co-founder Tara said to me, you're Australian. The second you open your mouth, people know you're friendly. Yeah, I, I've, I've lived and worked in the States now for over 15 years, but when I first came over all doe-eyed and, you know, rose-colored lenses, I, I had to lead with my technical competence always. I felt like I had to do that. And even in my management consulting days, it was always, I'm technically competent and my expertise is excellent first and foremost. Beyond the, let's have a chat. And so I think women have to, I mean, we probably all do, women and men alike, but, but we do find ourselves surveying where we are, surveying who we're talking to, who we want to talk to, and almost picking the persona that we think will serve us best in the moment.

Oh, absolutely. I believe that for sure. Were there weird instances where if there were weird reactions or weird questions that came up when you didn't quite do that? Right. Or I just, cause I'm just imagining, I know, I know the weird questions that I've gotten in rooms when people don't quite believe that I might know how to write a check or that, you know, healthcare might not be as important as they think it is. But I'm just curious if that's happened.

Yes.

I'm sure.

Yes, it has happened. Yes. I love the, I love the leading question. It has absolutely happened. Oh yes. I, I, I've been told all sorts of things. From everything to, you're too calm, you're so calm. I mean, yeah, I am, I am. And I actually take that as a good strength to be able to make smart decisions under pressure without acting or appearing frazzled and having a ripple effect on my team and the stakeholders around me. I don't see any good in that. So yes, I am going to choose calm. I've been told that, but I've also entered a room where it was detected that I was Australian very quickly. And I, with the code switching, I opted to go friendly. It was literally within seconds. It was, I was introduced by, by someone else in the group. This is Cecilia, founder of Hey Freya. These are the amazing things they're doing. And I said, hi, nice to meet you. And this person said, oh, Aussie, I spent a year or so living there. And, you know, insert sexist comment after sexist comment after sexist comment. Yeah, something about the bikinis, something about the accents. I've been around long enough that, that I know that this is, this is just what happens, and we, we're, we just have to get on with it, right? If, if they are considered a high-value stakeholder, we, we have to steer the conversation and re-steer and re-steer as, as needed, but But yeah, I've, I've, I've had a lot and I think people aren't used to hearing from me that, especially with how I physically present. I think there is, is some confusion that they spend the first few minutes wondering where I'm from.

Right. Oh, I'm sure.

Right.

Right. Oh, I believe that. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

It's, it's interesting because those moments, right? And this is, it's a societal problem because who knows who was standing around in that moment, but you either have to navigate away from that question or steer it away yourself, or in the best case scenario, somebody else would've caught the comment and helped to navigate away from it with you. We're not getting good at that as a society. And, and some of us try, right? When those things come up, you're like, okay, let's go talk about this instead. But not everyone does that. And it's really, for me, it's one of those where the male allies show up is when they help to shut that down in friendly collegial ways, that's where they should show up, right? Is steering that turn, shutting that stuff down in the nicest way possible.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's our default to not ruffle feathers. I think that's the human default as social beings. We are, yeah, especially in interpersonal conversations, our default is, oh, let's not create conflict because conflict is danger. And our default is to resist danger or prevent danger as much as possible. But yes, we, we could, I think we benefit from practicing that more often. Right. Right.

But, and, and in that, in that scenario, right, it's, I have to bear the offense, not cause a new offense.

Oh yes.

Right. The contradiction in that is a big problem for me. It always has been. I want to figure out how to fix that cuz it's okay for me to feel offended, but it's not okay for me to offend. I, and that, that's a whole different podcast, but that, that for me is the problem in those scenarios is that, and again, it's, It's the, it's that constant burden that we walk around with as women is that we have to take the offense but not cause the counter-offense because then it's rude.

Yes.

And that is, it's so much more apparent in this ecosystem than it's been in other ones that I've been in. Yeah.

Yes. The way I've been thinking about it lately is that I could only speak as a woman, so is The constant daily negotiations that we, we, we are calculating in our minds with almost every new interaction and every new room we walk into or we get let into. It, it, it's a little bit of the code switching, but it's also, I, I kind of describe it as how far I'm willing to bend from who I am. And I think that that is energy exertion that perhaps others don't have to. Exactly.

Well, I think, I do think women in this ecosystem generally are constantly negotiating and constantly carrying around a pretty heavy mental burden when it comes to what we say and how we say it and where we say it and whether our tone is correct or not correct. And did we smile or did we not smile? And, you know, did we tell a joke at the table or not tell a joke at the table? Or did we talk to every— it just, it, we're constantly having to reconcile if we did it correctly or Yes.

And I even think about, about too, the, like the corporate leadership training back in the day where they would tell you to not leave, not leave a call without saying, having said something, just say something. And I remember receiving that advice and it wasn't directed to me personally. It was just directed to the audience. And I remember thinking, I don't agree with that because yes, make your presence known, but don't just say something to take up unnecessary space. I don't know, that may be controversial, Naseem, but I feel like if you are going to take up space, make it meaningful.

Well, because you also, we also hear the stories and about like the most powerful person in the room is the one who sat in the back and said nothing the whole time. And you hear that too. And so it's some balance between the two things. Right.

Hence the constant negotiation.

Right, right. Exactly. No, exactly.

All these data points we've collected, accumulated in our life, all the advice that's been given to us over the years. It's which one do I want to do today? Or which one do I want to do in this moment with this particular person in this particular room? Yes.

If you could wish out loud the one thing that you hoped you could change in this particular ecosystem, or make better or flip differently, what would it be?

I think we need to get more of us together. More of us meaning mixed gender together. I think there has been a push towards a lot of women-only gatherings, which have their place too. However, I, I caution that we tend to just reverberate the echo chamber a little bit, and I worry that it hinders the progress. Therapeutic, obviously, to, to vent in what feels like a trusted group, for sure. And there's camaraderie, there's sisterhood, there's all the benefits associated with that. And I— some of the most impactful conversations I've had have been with male allies that had no idea, with, with male investors who have had no idea until I've shared with them. So I think it's— I think what, what I would wish out loud for is more open conversation with men and women alike about how, you know, how, how we could all play a part in this. And I'm just going to pull up some of these stats, which again, so well researched and so well documented. But I think along, alongside the conversations, it's the, the fact that evidence alone doesn't seem to be enough. And so what else is it? I think it's that connection because the data is all there, right? Right. The data's all there. And I'll list a couple, how 2023 study of Fortune 100 CEOs found that only 11.8% attended an Ivy League school. And yet sometimes as high as 72% of VC seed capital deployed is funded to Ivy League graduates. The statistics around female founders outperforming male founders are out there. The funding divide by CARTA, women only getting a very small slice, but Investments, investors spending on average 45% more time on the business model for all female decks than all male decks. And so, you know, they're spending 67% more time on market size of female founder decks than, than male decks. And so again, these are all well documented, they're all out there. And so I think what would move the needle, because clearly the data isn't, is the connection. More of us meeting with each other, more of us being open and frank and having the open conversation, ideally not focusing on accents, right?

Right. Ideally. Well, and I, I absolutely agree, and I've, I've seen this work because in, in rooms where I've done the talk on women's health or, you know, on femtech or whatever it was, and it's been rooms of men and women, and I've just, you know, again, done the stats and the talk and what it is, and I've had men come up to me afterwards and say, I had no idea. I just didn't know women weren't in clinical trials till 1993. I did not know that. And sometimes what we perceive as exclusion is actually just lack of awareness. And they, they just didn't know. And then you talk, I've talked about the 2%, or if you do mixed gender teams, it's up to 18 or 20%. And again, they come up to me afterwards and they're like, Oh my God. I had no idea.

Yeah. It's really not.

It's really not even like, no, it's absolutely not even. And they're like, oh my God, how can I help? And they, they just don't know. And also with events, I was always calling them women's health events. And now I'm starting to call them just the future of health. And you get men and women in the room and we might still talk about vaginas the whole time. But there are men in the room and we did this at, in New York for Tech Week and ended up having this incredible generational health conversation with a room of 200 people. And there were maybe 25 men in the room, which was great, but it was the men who posted on LinkedIn afterwards about everything that they learned on the data that they captured and how much they understood healthcare better because they didn't even know some of these things. About generational health before. And I was like, this is— we become inadvertently exclusive when we're doing things that for us, we feel like, oh my God, we're talking about it, but we were leaving people out without understanding that we're doing that. And so I 100%, like, we have to just open it up and talk. It's semantics. And if we talk about differently and reach across more actively, we actually, I think, can solve this a different way. I 100% agree. Yeah.

And also, yeah, women's health, absolutely. And I think the same applies to female founders.

100%. We just have to reach across and have different conversations and not perceive exclusion all the time, like, and, and call out bad behavior 100%, but also be sometimes willing to assume lack of awareness more so than exclusion.

Yeah, absolutely. Yep. I would agree with that.

Yep.

Yeah. I, I'm, I'm very much team less play my tiny violin and let's just get the bassoon out. The trombone, right?

100%.

Let's get that out.

Two last questions. What would be, what is your big, if you could tell every female founder to do something as they jump into fundraising, what is your big to-do for every, what would, what is like the must-know for everyone before they launch in a fundraising?

Everything you've read is true. Again, given my background in finance, it's not, it's not that I entered this naively, but there's always a question. There's a thought that founders have to be delusionally optimistic, and I would agree with that too. That's optimism is just my default. People should just know that. But the delusional optimism is funny. But startup land, fundraising, everything you've read about is true. So you could call them horror stories. They are true. You can read about the number of reachouts that you probably have to try before you get a yes. I would say they're true. They're all true. They're, I think, I think a lot of, a lot of us enter thinking maybe it'll either, either be different or that I could replicate what someone I know did. But I think just, just coming in with the wisdom that what you've heard is true will better equip you to, I think, stomach what's ahead of you. Right, right. And not take it as a personal failing or not take it as any indication that you aren't where you should be, but that this is how it is and this is how it is for everyone. And knowing that allows you to, I think, just be almost bank some resilience in advance.

Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. I think that's right. And what can everyone do to help you and to help Hey Freya grow and expand? What, what can we all do tomorrow to help?

Yes. So, so we are Hey Freya. We are a women's health tech company. We're focused on stress hormones and we're on a mission to help women feel energized, centered, and well. So today we sell at-home lab tests. They measure your cortisol. It's a clinical-grade gold standard test. We send it straight to you rather than having you drag yourself to a doctor's office or a lab. And then we sell the products to help you feel better. We're also working on some innovative tech that I can't say much more than that on for now, but I'm excited to share with you, and, and you'll be the first to know when, when I can. So if you are a woman looking to feel energized, centered, or well, or know someone who is, or know an investor for whom mission would resonate with, please send them our way and otherwise find our solutions at heybrea.co.

Wonderful. I know what the secret is, but I can't say anything either. So thank you, Cecilia, for joining. It's been tremendous. I'm so glad you came on. You had so many great gems to share and I appreciate it so, so much.

Thank you. Anything to help. Thank you for doing all that you do, Naseem Sayani. We can't cover it in this podcast, all the things that you do to help amplify the voices that can help other female founders.

We have— we're gonna make some change, hopefully. Fingers crossed. Thank you so much.

We're making it.

We're making it. 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.