Investing in Wellness

Health is the ultimate wealth, is it not? In this episode we chat with Marina Hadjipateras, a co-founder of a venture capital firm dedicated to investing in the future of living well about why it’s so difficult to find a ‘unicorn’ company within the healthcare industry. Marina Hadjipateras is a General Partner and co-founder of venture capital firm, TMV.

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TRANSCRIPT FOR SEASON 1, EPISODE 6 | Investing in Wellness

Presenter: Welcome to The Matcha Guardians podcast, brought to you by matcha.com. Here we focus on the biggest trending health topics of our time, featuring the greatest and upcoming wellness advocates. Now, here are the Matcha Guardians, certified nutritionist, Diana Weil, and medical journalist, Elara Hadjipateras.

Diana Weil: Hello, hello. Welcome to this week's episode. I am very excited to dive into this one and learn about this topic that I don't know a lot about. 

Elara Hadjipateras: For this week, we're going to be talking about investing in wellness. We have none other than the lovely Marina Hadjipateras, a general partner and co-founder of a VC firm known as TMV, where she specializes in investing in early-stage founder-building companies within healthcare. She also happens to be my very lovely sister-in-law. Marina, welcome.

Marina Hadjipateras: Thank you. I am very excited to be here with both of you today.

Diana: Okay, Marina. I have heard the term venture capitalist, but I actually don't know what that means. Could you just give me a rundown? What is a venture capitalist firm?

Marina: Sure, no problem. A venture capitalist firm is a firm that invests in often early-stage companies. Pre-IPO, specifically TMV will invest. Sometimes when it's just two founders who have an idea, they may be pre-revenue, they may have a pathway to revenue or they may have a little bit of revenue, but it's a small team. We provide capital for them in order to hit certain milestones and to watch them grow and become partners with them, so they can scale and so forth.

For TMV, what we do is we think "People, Profit, and Planet". Yes, a venture capital firm really wants a unicorn. They want to find a billion-dollar company, and they want to be the early investors in that company. Early is great because it's a higher risk, but there's a higher reward because the valuation will be lower, and then you're on this journey with this company or with 30 companies per fund, which is how many we usually invest in per fund, watching them grow.

In our case, we actually help with hiring. We try to support the founders at what we call the earliest stages in the first few years of vulnerability. We raise capital and then we use that capital to invest in amazing founders that we think are changing the world in healthcare and also in supply chain and logistics and future of work and sustainability. There's an angle that runs through a lot of those industries often.

Our first fund was an $11.5 million fund. It was in 2017. Our second fund was $65 million, became a little bit more institutional. Our third fund, which we're actually raising right now, is targeted between $100 and $150 million. We, again, do 30 companies per fund. We usually invest in seed and Series A and sometimes pre-seed, and that's very early.

Diana: Wow. I immediately have so many questions [laughs] Elara, I want to give you an opportunity to jump in here too.

Elara: I guess for me, there's a lot of different companies that you guys could be working with and investing in, and specifically in healthcare. What do you look for in a company, specifically within the healthcare sphere to invest in? You mentioned the word unicorn. Do you feel that you're not necessarily looking for a unicorn per se, or are you guys unicorn-searching within healthcare?

Marina: We're definitely looking for a company that has the ability to scale. I think there are a lot of companies like that in healthcare. What we would look for is expertise within the field of healthcare that that founder or team is working on because healthcare is such an intricate industry. You've got patients and payers and there's so much that goes into it that I think that we're looking for a real good team at first. Then we look at the total addressable market or what we call the TAM. Is it a big enough market to scale? Is there a real pain point? Is it just an obvious pain point that nobody's solved before?

Has it been tried to be solved before and nobody's been able to crack the nut? We look at that, and we look at, to that point, the competitive landscape of that company. Those are some of the things that we look for when we're investing.

Dian: Do these people come to you or do you find them, and if you find them, how do you find them?

Marina: That's a great question because investors in our fund are like, "How do you get your deal flow? How do you stay relevant?" There are a lot of VC funds out there. We want to make sure that we send our message along, who we are as TMV, and make that known so that founders will want to work with us. The fact that we really like to be strategic and we care about working as partners, not just as investors, I think is something that hopefully comes across.

We have a deck that's a “How We Partner” deck. Usually, we have a deck where we go and fundraise, but we also have a deck for our founders that says, "This is what you're going to get if you work with us." It's a reverse pitch deck for them. That's all after we've met each other. What we do is, we're on the ground everywhere. We have contacts at Columbia Business School, at all the different types of universities where they have pitch competitions. We make sure that we can be thought leaders in one way or another within the industries we invest in. We have constant communication and lots of contact with other funds.

I was speaking to a fund called Left Lane today, and they're a little bit later stage and invest more in Series A. They were sending over three different companies that were too early for them. They're an awesome fund, so I was excited to see what they would send over. It's really just network, network, network, and being on the ground. We have an awesome intern program as well as venture partners. A lot of our founders will introduce us to their friends that are building companies too. Then it's up to us to win them over and them to decide to partner with us and us to decide to partner with them too.

Elara: So fascinating. One of the questions that's popped into my mind is, as far as different companies that you're investing in, specific to healthcare, how often are they companies that are based abroad?

Marina: We invested in one company that's based in Canada in the healthcare field, but other than that, all of our healthcare companies are in the US, headquartered in the US. Our supply chain companies are abroad more so. The shipping companies, of course, we have a few out of Singapore. We do see companies that are based abroad. We just haven't actually invested in one yet. We would, we could, we can invest 20% of the fund globally, but we've got some great companies that are out of the US, so I'd say 80% we see in the US.

Elara: 80%. I don't know about you guys, but in my personal experience from the medical system in the US, it's not the best. A lot of people describe it as being quite broken, insurance is a mess. It's really hard to navigate when you're a patient, especially if you don't have what's called a medical quarterback in the family, say a family doctor, someone like that. More and more, I feel like in the healthcare industry, we're trying to get more inspiration from cultures abroad.

There's this idea of even Eastern medicine coming over, taking more of a holistic approach to medicine where we're not just simply going to do the Western thing where we just slap on the band aid or we're taking more prescription medications, but we're looking to do more holistic and preventative care. Are there any companies that TMV has invested in that you would say take that approach?

Marina: Definitely. I think the trend is moving towards more proactive than reactive care, which I think will completely shift over hopefully soon. To your point, Parsley Health which was one of our first investments, really focused on holistic care. A 360-degree look at your lifestyle as well as-- not just, like you said, slapping a band aid on an issue. We just invested in a company called Millie Clinic, which is a full-service, OBGYN maternity clinic that combines midwife OBGYN with tech-enabled support. That's really fantastic to us. They have their first real space out of San Diego.

That company came to be because the founder went through the process of when she was having a child, where she had the best hospital and the best care that she could get, and still the structure of the process was, "Okay, leave the hospital, call me in three weeks," and that type of thing, rather than the actual care that each person needs as they're going through this incredibly important time in their lives, is generic, I guess is the best thing. Millie, we're really excited about that.

Elara: All right. It feels like one of the trends over the last year and also going into the next few years is preventative healthcare; a more holistic whole-based approach to someone's health. What are three big trends within healthcare that you see VC investing in to watch this year besides preventative medicine?

Marina: Three big trends that we're looking at, I would say one of them is alleviating physician burnout, which is really interesting because there's a lot of time that physicians spend on taking notes and lots of things that can be solved for through different forms of AI. One company that we just invested in which is based out of Canada, it's called Tali AI. It's an Ambient Scribe. They call it, I think, pajama time, physicians call it because they have spent all day with patients, and then they spend all night writing their notes. That takes away the time from being with patients and so forth. I think that's something we're looking at. Bringing down the cost of care to your point earlier, I think that's something really-- there are rising premiums. That's hurting employers, it's hurting different individuals. We're looking at different ways in which companies are doing that. Then ROI drivers for health systems, I'd say as well, revenue cycle management and what that means. I think those are certain things.

Women's health for sure, I'm really happy. I mean, one of our companies is Kindbody which focuses on women's fertility, which is great because it wasn't a big focus ten years ago at all, but now egg freezing is becoming less expensive and more part of the norm to talk about employee benefits also include that in many of their programs. Those are a few of the things we're looking at.

Diana: I've heard that post-COVID, the world has changed with its view of health. Some positive, I mean, like Elara said, I think that there's maybe more of a focus on preventative, but then I've also heard that because people are lonely and depressed, and it's just been a really hard couple of years that people are looking for more comfort rather than health necessarily. I'm just curious if you've noticed a shift in terms of pre-COVID businesses that were coming out, post-COVID, if there's anything in this VC world.

Marina: I mean, I definitely think in terms of comfort, I'm thinking care-wise that loneliness is a huge issue overall, and that leads to certain forms of mental health that we look at because that's all entangled. Then there's also metabolic health, which, I think, by 2030, it's stated that half of Americans are set to be obese. That's another sector that we're looking at. I haven't fully seen that shift away from preventative or in terms of health turning to comfort. In terms of loneliness, 100%. I mean it's a huge issue and I think it was made worse during COVID.

Elara: Marina, you just made me think a lot about in terms of loneliness and looking for comfort, the whole sector of elderly care, I think it's something that is definitely being talked about more than it has been in the past. There are certain cultural implications to it, in terms of do you take care of your parents when they're older? Do they move in with you? Do you send them to a facility to live in? Is that facility close by?

Maybe there's someone that's coming and helping them at the house, but that stage of life where you're going to be cut off from a lot of your normal social interactions, that inevitably is going to put you at risk of being a lot more lonely and suffering from different mental health issues. Have you guys come across any different companies that are specializing in elderly care?

Marina: Yes, definitely. From a future works perspective as well as healthcare perspective or everything altogether, we invested in a company that was like the Taskrabbits for elderly people. It was maybe people above 65 or so would be the key clientele there. You could sign up for it and be a buddy to someone else. If someone is like, "Oh, I really need some wine for my dinner tonight," or, "I need groceries," and they have bad legs or something like that, they can sign up and then another person will come.

It's a way for the community to get together and also a way for everybody to help each other. There's that. We've seen a co-working space. There are different co-working space for what they call “middlers.” That's not necessarily the full elderly but 50-plus. Maybe you want to go work there, but maybe you also want to build a community there. There are book clubs specifically for that age range.

Since TMV started in 2017, we've really wanted to focus on that and looked at different companies that have been focusing on that. We've seen different devices. We don't really invest in hardware, but we have seen a few different devices that would help elders from not falling, or from when they're alone, there are certain tasks that can help them. That would be more AI-enabled, but yes, I would love to invest in more things that are focusing on that.

Diana: What are some things that you're really excited about? You've mentioned some incredible businesses and obviously, you guys have a huge amount of companies that you're investing in, but I'm just curious, is there a focus that you're really excited about or that you have a lot of passion behind?

Marina: Definitely within the healthcare sector, I'm really excited about the proactive versus reactive. Our principal who works at TMV, she runs a lot of the healthcare sector for us. She coined that and that's something I completely agree with. I think it's the way to go and it's the way the future should be. I'm excited about how machine learning and AI can help. You can leverage that to help workflow be better.

Again, things like help physicians focus on their patients. I think being able to bring price down, that's huge. I think those are the things that I'm excited about within healthcare. Then I do run the supply chain logistics vertical at TMV, so I'm super excited about a lot of stuff that's happening there too.

Diana: Oh, wow. That is a whole world that we could also dive into because I know the supply chain stuff has been crazy. [laughter]

Marina: It's crazy.

Diana: What about in terms of just AI? Because there's so much information about AI right now in terms of that it's ruining everything, taking away jobs, or it's our saving grace, and it's the best thing in the world. It sounds like you are seeing a lot of positive benefits with AI in healthcare. Curious about your thoughts on AI in healthcare and where you see that going.

Marina: I think in a positive sense, I don't think it's going away. I think it does things like it helps fill staffing gaps, it helps with administrative roles in what we're looking at. We see AI in a positive sense like Tali AI, the Canadian company, that's really helping physicians spend more time with patients. We look for the positive parts of AI and machine learning that we can pump into the healthcare industry.

Elara: I think it's so interesting how AI can help out with early risk detection and intervention based on just different predictive analytics, right? Just having that raw data that just runs through this robust machine and then giving you the likelihood of something happening, I think that that's just incredible and is going to definitely be something that's transformative going forward.

Marina: Risk prevention is huge as well and we've looked at a few things there too.

Elara: Going back to women's health a little bit, I guess, because we are women, so it's at the top of my mind, and I am currently pregnant at the moment. A company that I'm quite interested in that I just recently heard about is Boram Care. I don't know if you two have heard about them, but basically, Boram is a postnatal retreat within New York City that opened. It's the first of its kind. It's a hybrid between-- think of quasi hospital, quasi cushy hotel. It's a post-birthing center, so postnatal care to provide for not only the mother but also the father as well.

They're extremely popular in Eastern culture. I actually have some friends who have recently given birth in Hong Kong, and they went to one of these centers in Hong Kong for a month. The mother isn't allowed to wash her own hair even. She's given a very specific postpartum diet and they teach you all sorts of things. They do couples counseling, they show you how to wash and change diapers, and it's really incredible. It goes back to that idea of preventative care, I think, a topic that a lot of people don't chat about too much is postpartum depression. I thought that that was something that was really interesting.

Marina: That's super interesting. I think I know someone that also-- it's all coming back to me, but in a TMV sense, we haven't seen that yet, but we've heard about it and I think that's really, really interesting. It is taking care-- because you hear all the time, "Okay, I had a baby, they let me go, and then where's the manual for myself and for the baby?" Focusing on that really sounds like actual care rather than--

Elara: Yes, the actual care. I guess that's the juxtaposition to AI where, of course, it's great to have that technology and the support and the companies such as Millie that you talked about, but then having the hands-on care also within elderly care, maternity care, I think, is really important and something that I'm excited to see more of.

Marina: It reduces loneliness or feelings of isolation, which I think exist always throughout parts of our life, and knowing that there's that care there really, really is helpful.

Diana: Marina, I'm hoping that we can take it back a little bit because you invest in so many incredible companies, but you yourself have also co-founded this wildly successful company. I just would be really interested to hear about your path, and if you have any advice for someone who either has an idea that wants to get funded or is looking into starting a business themself.

Marina: Definitely. I started out working in the shipping industry at our family company. Well, it's public, so I basically can't say that anymore, [chuckles] but it wasn't at the time. It was great and I loved it, and I had an amazing role model who was my grandmother who was part of the business.

I knew I always wanted to do that and got some really great experience there from being at a shipyard and living between Greece and London and then coming back here when we took the business public and having that experience and joining the environmental committee, which I did in order to understand how the industry was moving forward that way, and also try to speak to people about how good the shipping industry is because it gets a bad rap from anybody outside of it, I think.

I also saw how antiquated the industry is when I was there. I mean, everything so much is done on pen and paper still, word of mouth. I started to realize that there was so much room for improvement, for efficiency, for sustainability. I started to meet founders who were like, "Hey, you're part of this industry. I have a great idea. My background is in engineering and I think I could do a really good job, but I don't know how to break into this really tight-knit, closed-off industry, legacy industry."

That's where I started to think about, "Maybe I should wear a different hat. Maybe if I work with founders, I can connect them to this old world and do things that way." At the same time, I met my business partner who I had known from college. We were at Georgetown together. She is a serial entrepreneur and has an amazing network and has been part of the VC and entrepreneurial world since she left college. She had an idea to start a VC fund.

At the same time, when we met up in 2017, I had my own idea and we just thought, "Wait a second, we're talking the same language here. We have totally different but complementary backgrounds." Our vision is that wellness and the future of living well is actually going to become mainstream ultimately. It used to be a niche where companies, huge corporations would say that they had some type of a wellness program or there's a triple bottom line. Now you see it on the front page of every website of a company because it's important because consumers care about purpose now.

We started TMV that way and then went off to the races. I say you're always a first-time fund manager though, so even though we had all this experience from the past, it was like learning a little bit on the spot in terms of how to fundraise and things like that. I wouldn't have it any other way though because I loved it, and now I can, like you said, tell people or give people advice when they're starting their business. I would just say a few things that helped are you have to be resilient if you're going to be a founder or if you're going to start your own business. A no is never a no, it's a "not right now", [laughter] I tell myself every day.

Build a good team. Have good people around you that share your vision. Sometimes that takes time. They call it “co-founder dating,” is what a lot of founders do. I think just not being discouraged is a huge thing because that's why people will stop. In terms of a company, maybe find some mentors that you can work with and be like, "Is this a good idea? Do you think the market's big enough?" You have to believe in yourself and your idea, and then other people will start to believe in you too.

Elara: Your experience within shipping I think, draws some really nice parallels to healthcare. These are both really behemoth industries.

Marina: Exactly. Yes.

Elara: They're extremely hard to break into because they're just set in their ways. They have these patterns. You have all these amazing interesting companies pop up. They sound amazing, they sound really appealing. I hear the elevator pitch and I think, "Oh my gosh, wow. This is going to absolutely change the industry." Then two years later, pew, it disappears and it doesn't work out.

The big one that comes to mind for me when it comes to healthcare is Theranos. What do you think went wrong with Theranos? We got to go there. I got to hit on this one. To me that represents, in my mind, one of the failed unicorns within the healthcare industry.

Marina: Personally, I think a few things went wrong. They didn't vet the technology themselves. Anything that touches patients, healthcare especially, you have to vet the technology. It just passed through so many different hands and investors and customers and nothing was actually fully vetted. I think that was a huge miss. They should have triple-checked that everything was above board and worked.

The other thing is the board was made up of mainly different government officials. It was more like a party board. They call it a party round when everybody's like, "Oh, you're in this? I want to be in this." Somebody's introducing this actor to this. I think they should have had more healthcare experts on the board.

Again, I don't know the intricate details, but I do know that it was a bit like that. It was a bit like, "I've got this person who sounds like he's really great to have on your board, but may not be strategic and helpful," in terms of actually saying, "Because of my experience being the CEO of this company, I can tell you that this is what you need to do. Did you vet this technology? Is this okay?" Because you're risking people being sick, dying. Healthcare is a whole different industry.

Elara: It's serious business which I think Diana has the really good question we were talking about the other day when we were preparing for this podcast, was industry-funded research.

Diana: I want to get into the money aspect of this a little bit too because, one, I think that it's like a no-no to talk about money, but obviously, this is all about money. I have quite a few questions for you about funding, but I am curious about your thoughts on industry-funded research. I'm a nutritionist and a couple of months ago there was some big article about how I think Coke funded all of the American Association of Nutrition, all of their conferences. It's a huge problem that these industries are funding. What research do you want produced, which isn't totally ethical? What do you think about that? I'm hoping that I can ask you a few more money questions too. [chuckles]

Marina: Definitely. I guess as VCs, we touch that a little bit less because we're really going in with other VCs, and it's great to have strategics in the round. There are specific funds like us, and there’s Sia Ventures out of Boston where you may have different-- United Health is part of a fund. You have different strategics investing through the fund, but in terms of industry-funded research, we're not as close to that, I just have to say because we go a different route if we're with different founders. Personally, I think there's an issue with that because, to your point, the money can go where they want that money to go.

Elara: There's an issue, but in my mind too, I also know that grants are really hard to come by, and federal government funding. As someone who does a lot of medical research for different clients, it's one of those things where it's a fine line that you walk. In my experience, when you're working with a company who's done industry-funded research and they're very transparent in how they went about putting together a different study and things like that, that's really great. I think that's really to their benefit and to the patients and to the public's benefit as well.

Diana: Yes. I think important to point out, to be the devil's advocate here, that a lot of research probably wouldn't be done also if we didn't have some of those industry-funded research. This is a very basic question, but where does the money come from? Are you finding private people who have an interest in healthcare? Where are you going to fund these companies?

Marina: We go out to individuals. We go out to groups like family groups, family offices, and then we also have institutional capital. Anywhere from Bank of America to JP Morgan to Visa Foundation, different foundations, we have a hospital network that specifically is looking for care. We have different corporations that come in. It's usually a company, a family, or an individual that has venture capital as part of their portfolio. Then we go and pitch them and say like, "Why don't we partner together?"

Sometimes it's strategic. Sometimes we're just a slice of their pie. Then sometimes it's actually like, "I'm investing in you because I want to see these early founders and I want to see these early companies and I want to know what's out there." We have different relationships with different investors. We have over 150 investors in our funds altogether. They're a lot. We love bringing in more partners. Corporates are great, but now it's institutional because usually, the check sizes are between $1 million and $20 million.

Elara: Do you go to them saying, "Hey, we have this great company Kindbody or Millie," and give them the 30-second elevator pitches? Do they have the ability, I guess I'm wondering, to specifically invest in certain companies within your portfolio, or is it more broad?

Marina: It's broad. If they're coming into TMV, then they're investing in one of our funds. Fund 1 and Fund 2 are now closed. We have the investors that have invested in those and we give them a quarterly report, and it'll say how each one of the companies are doing. We have phone calls that we also have with each of our investors that can give them more detail and shed more color on those companies.

For Fund 3, we have investors coming in now, but we do offer co-investment opportunities. For the companies that are growing, we'll call up our investors who we know are interested and we'll say, "Hey, there's a Series B or there's a Series C and we have an allocation." It's great because we've built this relationship with the founders whereby they will let us know that there's this allocation. They'll come to TMV and then we go out to our investors. A lot of investors invest in us to get those co-investment opportunities.

Elara: You had it where you've had an investor who maybe has followed up with you and said, "Hey, I'm specifically really excited about company X. Based on the latest report I got from you, they're doing really well. How do we get our foot in the door a little bit more than it already is? We want them to do well. We see them being a potential unicorn. I want to get more involved, let us." You've already developed that relationship to give them the ability to do that.

Marina: Exactly. We can help them do that. They can individually invest. That's exactly how we would work together.

Diana: You and your co-founder are both women. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that the VC world is probably a little bit more male-dominant. Have there been any challenges from having two women co-founders, or do you feel like you both have been very accepted into this world?

Marina: I definitely think there have been some challenges. I think the stat is 2% of funding goes to women VC managers. I think fundraising, we don't have any mandates. We want to be judged not as great women fund managers. We want to be judged as great fund managers. There is inevitably a challenge because we're going to different institutions who are used to maybe seeing men raising capital.

There are some great things that come out of it because we get to partner with some founders who are like, "It's so refreshing to be with two women and look at these awesome companies that are--" Our two unicorns are run by women in Fund 1 and those are healthcare companies. It's Kindbody and Cityblock. It's very refreshing for founders and for us in lots of ways. There's a lot of positives, but we 100% feel the effects of being women and going out to different private equity funds in different places, raising money.

Diana: Do you have any advice for women business owners in general, even if they're maybe not venture capitalists, but just women who are starting out and want to run a company or starting out in their own business?

Marina: Have a great group of people around you, even if it's friends as well as people in the business world. And find people you trust. Again, you just remember to be resilient. Remember not to be too hard on yourself because you're going to hear no from other people, so just take care of yourself as you're continuing to build and grow the business and be creative in terms of how you think.

I think outside the box and so does my business partner, and you have to do that when you're building a business. I think you have to know that if you keep going, everything else will keep going, the engine will still run, but you have to also be creative because if something doesn't work out, there may be another avenue to go down, I'd say. Also, we created a group called Transact Global about five years ago.

Soraya really spearheaded it and it's for women fund managers. It wasn't meant to specifically be for women fund managers, but right now it's a group of over 450 women fund managers all part of Transact Global. It started because we were all isolated and wondering how to come up with legal documents, who to hire as your legal counsel. All these questions that we all had, and instead of sharp shoulders and being competitive, we're like, "Let's just band together. It's much better to band together and do this, and that's a great group." You could also do that with any other industry. We did it for VCs, but that could be something that someone does for a different industry.

Elara: Success doesn't necessarily come overnight and it's good to have friends along the way through the rough road ahead. I've heard that in healthcare, it usually takes about 8 to 10 years for a company to go from startup to exit. Would you say that that's a true timeline?

Marina: Yes, I think so. Usually, if it's a VC backable company, the way we work is our fund has a 10-year lifecycle, and from the experience that I've had and what we've seen in the market, it's usually between 8 to 10 to maybe 12 years for a company to go public. One Medical was sold to Amazon for about $3.9 billion and then One Oak was bought by CVS for about $10 billion, and I think the trajectory was about that long.

Elara: Have you had any companies that have gone public at this point or going to be going public you can see in the next one to two years?

Marina: We haven't yet, but we do have a few on the horizon that are talking about different forms of an exit.

Elara: Now is this something that you could share with us potentially, or is this something that's kept under wraps?

Marina: I feel like maybe I should keep it under wraps or in the public sphere because you don't know. I mean, the market's so volatile all the time.

Elara: Of course.

Marina: Yes, we got some great companies, and again, I know I mentioned the two unicorns that we have in Fund 1. There's talk of some forms of IPOs or acquisitions for a bunch of our companies. We've had about five companies get acquired so far, which has been great.

Diana: You've had a lot of success and I think that's incredible, and I also think that there's a lot to learn from failures. I'm wondering are there any companies that have failed, and are there any lessons from that that you could share with us, so we can learn from those failures as well? [chuckles]

Marina: There's one company in Fund 1 which we invested in, and then a few months later the founder just said, "You know what? I decided that this problem isn't as big of a problem as I thought, and I don't want to keep going." We were like, "It's a little early maybe to-- Are you sure?" Because we spent a lot of time diligence in this company, so we believed in the issue, but that was one company that just decided to shut down. We had one other company that their competitor just went to market sooner and grew faster. Instead of going forward, they're like, "All right, we're going to return some of the investor capital and call it a day here."

We're happy to have those discussions with founders. We've definitely had many discussions in terms of ups and downs that founders are facing. We have over 65 portfolio companies now. I've seen different founder breakups or burnout or depression or things that go on because, again, you are really trying to build something, but you can be really lonely at the same time and incredibly stressed out.

With TMV, we do want to make sure our founders feel cared for as much as possible, and they can tell us that they need a day or whatever-- A break because ultimately that's fueling them to help them build the business too.

Diana: When that does happen, you mentioned that-- so they have to return the capital?

Marina: If there is capital, and they haven't-- there's a different-- there's a runway, which means the amount of time that you have. If we invested in a founder today, their runway might be two years and they're burnt. How much they're burning a month? Maybe they're burning 100K a month and their runway is two years. In month six, they're like, "I just decided that this really isn't going to work."

Instead of spend the next year and a half going at it when I know and maybe my heart's not in it or something like that, I'm going to return the million and a half, or I guess if it would be six months, a million-four back to my investors. That's possible, and sometimes that doesn't happen and sometimes they're like, "I'm just going to keep going with this and I really think it's going to work out."

After the two years of burn, usually, they'll pre-market and we help founders go out and raise more capital, but we talk about what they're using the capital for. Usually, it's to build a team, work on product, and things like that.

Elara: Have you ever ran into the situation where a company has just burned, burned, burned, and then they reach that end of their two-year runway as you call it, and they're just like-

Marina: Yes.

Elara: "That's it, I don't know where this is going to go."? How do you handle that I guess from a business perspective or a personal perspective, that relationship then? Is it, there's no hard feelings, that's the risk that you take with the VC or--

Marina: [chuckles] What we do is we sit on the boards of a lot of our companies, so we know how much burn there is and we should be responsible and talk to the founder and make sure that they're not going to hit that end of the road type of thing. If they've got six months of burn and we're already planning with them what their next move is and who they're talking to and we're already making introductions for them.

If we're not on the board and that happens, what we do is we always ask for information rights. Part of our legal docs will say that we can always have information rights and we always have pro rata, so we can always reinvest so that we can maintain our percentage ownership or get a larger ownership.

Elara: Have you ever run into the problem that maybe there were some white lies told, maybe they weren't being so truth-telling with their burn rate, and you had to maybe pursue legal action for whatever reason? Have you run into that? Is that common?

Marina: I have heard of it definitely. That's why you're really investing in team and founders and who they are as people, but I definitely have heard of that and it hasn't happened to us. We've not invested because we've found stuff out about the founder beforehand from doing background checks and things like that, but I haven't come across that in the portfolio.

There's been different things-- We were invested in The Wing, which ultimately had a lot of different things go wrong from maybe mismanagement during the pandemic, and that wasn't really pleasant in the end. There's different experiences that I could speak to for sure.

Diana: It sounds like you really got to do your due diligence, and if you don't do your due diligence, then maybe that's on you. You mentioned that you sit on quite a few of these boards. I guess kind of a tangent here, but I watched the movie Air a couple of months ago, I don't know if either of you watched it about the Nike movie, did you guys see that? So good.

Marina: I haven't seen it yet.

Diana: Highly recommend. Very good movie. The one thing that I thought was really interesting is that the board for Nike almost killed the company because they were playing it so safe because they wanted this return on investment, so they stifled creativity. In the end, the CEO of Nike had to tell the board that they were going to do this scary move, which was to sign Michael Jordan, which ended up saving the company and made them $150 million in the first couple of months or-- Just huge success because of this. What are your thoughts on boards? Do you feel like there are any risks associated with boards, and do you think that they can stifle creativity because they're very focused on the ROI?

Marina: For us, we're on the board at the early stage, so we're on the board during the seed or maybe the Series A. Then we jump off the board and we let growth investors take a board seat. I think it all depends on who is on your board. Like we mentioned with Theranos, I think you could have an active board, you could have an inactive board. I think a board could really help a company grow, but for Nike, it sounds like the founder and the vision of the company wasn't aligned with how the board was thinking.

Look at OpenAI, what's happened now with Sam Altman. He's come back into OpenAI and totally switched around the board because I think there was a difference there too. For us, I like being on the board because it feels like you're working with the founder. I think you just really need to have-- everybody needs to understand what that vision is for the company.

Diana: Super interesting. 

Elara: Well, Marina, before we let you go, we have two questions that we like to marinate our guests with and get some really sage advice answers at the end of our podcast. 

Diana: What is one lesson that you have learned the hard way?

Marina: Oh, that's a good question. I think I've learned a few things the hard way. I thrive on being an underdog. It just drives me. Certain things like I transferred to Georgetown and I was determined to get there, I always wanted to go. Then I think that one thing that I learned also is my mindset is always like, go do something. Get it done soon. Being patient sometimes pays off as well and you don't really-- I'm like, "The clock is ticking all the time in my head." Sometimes when you're patient and you wait for things to happen and you don't try to change them, even if you know that there's going to be a change, they just work out.

I'm learning that. Even if you make plans with someone, and then sometimes things just work out and you have to trust the world sometimes in that way, which is hard for someone who's like, "I want to control everything, I am going to-- I want to take this step to get here because this is my goal."

Also, just trusting yourself and trusting the way things work, I think, is something I'm learning right now. Having said that, you are the master of your own destiny. The other side of that is just like, make sure you have all your ducks in a row. I'd be happy to talk to anyone about the experience that I've had and continue to have. I feel like we're teenagers. TMV was a baby and now it's maybe like the late teen years or mid-teens. We've still got a long way to go, I hope, I really hope. I love what I do and I know Soraya feels the same way. Yes, we're just building a good track record hopefully. I'd love to talk to anybody that wanted advice or needed advice about the experience.

Elara: Speaking of you giving great advice, which you do, I know this as a sister-in-law, and I've never gotten the impression that you rage inside like a fire, I find Marina to be calm as a cucumber and a guiding light in our family by all senses of it. I'm super appreciative to have you in my life as a mentor. Speaking of mentors, I know that you mentioned your grandmother, so part of me feels like it may end up being her, but maybe it's someone else. Second question for you is, what is a life lesson that a family member or friend or mentor has taught you that really stuck with you, that you maybe didn't have to go the hard way?

Marina: I'd say dad actually  when I was working at Dorian and I think what Dorian has and what any business I see or build or with TMV is the right morals and values. I don't think you should ever try to cut corners and try to do something because it's a little less expensive, but it's not the right decision, and you're just doing it in the moment. You're not looking at the vision.

The reason why the company has lasted as long as it has is because you're thinking about your reputation in the future and you believe in it. You believe in the morals and the values that you're working for. When we built TMV, that was really important to me to build a company that I could see lasting for a long time. It's a fund-- and I talked to our founders about that too. I think Dad really taught me, and maybe that was with Yaya, my grandmother, as well, that you shouldn't try to cut corners just for short-term gain because long-term it's just going to bite you in the butt in a big way.

Diana: I think that's such good advice. 

Elara: Don't cut corners.

Marina: Yes.

Elara: Solid advice.

Diana: Well, thank you, Marina. We just really appreciate teaching-- I've always known what a venture capitalist-- I've heard it, but I never knew what it was, and this has just been so wonderful, and makes me feel really excited about the future of healthcare. I just really appreciate you coming on and taking the time to talk to us.

Marina: Yes, I really appreciate it too. Thank you both so much.

Elara: Marina, is there anywhere specifically if our listeners want to hear more about TMV and from yourself that they could find you or find information about the fund that you could point us to? Of course, we're going to drop it in the show notes below us for you listeners, but just off the top of your head.

Marina: Yes, our site is tmv.vc. I'm available Marina at tmv.vc and I'd be happy to share more about us and the fund via email, Twitter, LinkedIn, or anything. I check everything.

Elara: She's plugged in, ladies and gentlemen. Once again, Marina, thank you so much. This has been such an interesting podcast and such a pleasure having you on it. We look forward to talking to you about some other topics soon. If you as a listener have any ideas that maybe you think would be interesting to cover with Marina, drop it in the notes below, and perhaps we'll be seeing her lovely face again.

Presenter: Savor and live well with new episodes of The Matcha Guardians every Wednesday. Follow our show for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're listening right now. Leave your questions and comments below. Find us on Instagram at TheMatchaGuardians or click on matcha.com.