It’s not new that gender inequality is prevalent in venture capital. In 2018, the CFA Institute reported that only 2.2 percent of venture capital spending went to female founders.

It’s even harder for female founders to successfully pitch to venture capital firms when their product is for women, especially when only 10 percent of all investors in the venture capital realm are women. Without women in the decision making room who empathize with the problems that female-oriented products solve, it can be challenging to get the “yes” for funding — thus pushing back female founders even more in the overall statistics. 

Mimi Millard is the CEO and Founder of period symptom relief natural medicine De Lune. It was created from Millard’s personal frustration with the lack of natural options for period relief, which had resulted in a trip to the hospital when she had an adverse reaction to a popular painkiller. In addition to helping to alleviate period pain, Millard said part of their mission is to “de-stigmatize period talk.” She and her co-founder, Courtney Mayszak, RDN, learned how taboo period talk really is through their own experiences pitching to angel investors and venture capitalists, considering that “the vast majority of these investors are men who do not experience periods.”

From her experience pitching with Mayszak, Millard offers the following tips not only for other female founders in the overwhelming male venture capital sector, but for anyone pitching a product that solves a problem that might not be universally understood.

1. Explain The Problem In Far More Detail Than You Think You Need To

Usually, pitches mention the problem that the product is solving loosely, which can be easily understood amongst the room if it’s a common or universal problem (i.e., for Uber, the problem situation presented could be ‘trying to find a taxi with no luck on New Year’s Eve in the rain.”). Millard warns against this assumption, saying, “No matter how obvious your problem may seem to you, it may be the investor’s first time encountering it. With De Lune, I learned the hard way that many well educated adults simply do not know how bad and how common period symptoms can be. Don’t discount their ability to empathize. Dive into the dark details of your story and the pain points that pushed you to start your company.”

This includes getting vulnerable quickly. “Once I started sharing that my cramps were so bad they made me miss school and that my adverse reaction to taking too many painkillers landed me in the hospital, people started listening more carefully. They understood my struggle and my motivations more clearly. They cross-referenced my experience with the women in their lives and they saw the potential. If, after you share your story, they still can’t empathize, you probably didn’t want them as a partner anyway.”

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2. Don’t Let Someone Tell You That Your Product Is ‘Too Niche’ If It Isn’t

If investors don’t understand the problem, they may assume that it’s a niche product because it doesn’t match their own experiences. Millard urges not to stand for this. “Unconventional is not the same as niche. If your solution is a departure from the status quo, it could still have a huge addressable market,” she shared. 

Millard learned this firsthand from being told that De Lune was a niche solution. “Let’s unpack that. Roughly half of the population experiences menstruation, and 90% of us experience monthly symptoms. Over 60 million Americans are currently on a menstrual cycle and many of us will be for decades, since menstruation typically spans ages 12-52. That’s four straight decades of dealing with monthly pain, mood swings, fatigue, bloating, and other symptoms. 42% of people with periods report that their symptoms are so bad they affect their ability to do their job. That’s not a niche, that’s a public health crisis,” said Millard. “Show those numbers and make sure your investors see the scope of the problem at hand.”

3. Don’t Accept Existing Product Categories As Your Boundaries

When the investors in the room don’t experience your problem firsthand, they may try to lump your product into existing categories, in order to make it more readily understandable. But this can be unnecessarily limiting. “When I founded De Lune, there was no established ‘natural period health’ category. Doctors generally only knew to prescribe painkiller drugs to mask the pain and hormonal birth control to artificially stop your period, so if you didn’t like those options you were on your own. I knew from my own experience being in that position and from my market research that natural, effective period health solutions were desperately needed,” said Millard. 

As for how she convinced investors, Millard said she learned to stop comparing her products directly to painkillers and start showing the buying behaviors of De Lune’s target audience in other categories. “When I started explaining De Lune as a pioneer in this emerging category, investors began to see the potential more clearly. They wanted to be a part of this new age of period health,” she reflected.

It comes down to positioning. Even if venture capitalists don’t understand your product at first, numbers don’t lie. Prove that there is a heavy demand for what you are building, and encourage them to ask their mothers, daughters, wives, and sisters for input on your product if they themselves can’t see how it could be helpful. Empathy is key in investing, so the right investors will suspend their own need for firsthand understanding and put the effort into recognizing a product’s value for others.

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