Camilla Dolan: Capital with a Conscience

Camilla Dolan, co-founder of Eka Ventures, is rethinking venture capital as a force for systems change.

In this conversation, we explore her idea of shared value: the belief that businesses can create lasting commercial success by solving real societal problems. From reducing food waste and transforming healthcare to backing the next generation of women's health innovators, Camilla shares why the most valuable companies of the future may be the ones tackling the challenges others have overlooked.

At the heart of the conversation is a simple but powerful idea: when entrepreneurs focus on changing systems for the better, commercial success doesn't have to come at the expense of positive impact. Increasingly, the two go hand in hand.

Transcript

today I'm joined by Camilla Dolan
co founder of Eka Ventures
Camilla has become a leading voice
for a new kind of venture capital
one built on shared value
where businesses create returns
by solving real societal problems
at Eka that means backing founders
tackling systemic change in sustainable consumption
and consumer health with a particular focus on areas
that have been overlooked
or underserved like women's health
her work is about proving that the companies
shaping a better future
can also become the category leaders of tomorrow
welcome Camilla
thank you Richard
it's great to be here
great to have you on the whole leader
so Camilla for our listeners
do you want to give us
a bit of an introduction about yourself
and maybe tell us more about what I mentioned in the uh
in the intro there about shared value
which really seems to be at the heart of everything
you're doing uh
yeah definitely
and so maybe for uh people that haven't come across
the concept of shared value
I can sort of explain what that is
so shared value was a concept initially uh
coined by Michael Porter in an article in 2011
which described how he viewed the future um
state of the economy
and how you could reinvent capitalism
for businesses to do both societal impact
in parallel with creating economic value
John my business partner and I had been sort of what
trying to figure out where was the
what was the sort of shape of commercial impact
investing and how to articulate it
and when we first read that
we felt he articulated it better um
than we ever could have done from scratch
describing how you can build um
leading companies with um
sustainability and societal benefit
in parallel with commercial benefit
and through doing so
you could change whole sort of economic structures
we'd started to come across this idea um
in an early investment we made into a business called
uh gusto uh
which was focused on personalized grocery
the founder of Timo so described described his vision
um for what the future of grocery looked like
at the time supermarkets had 1 to 2% um
sort of operating margin
and the food system has 30% food waste
when he looked at that 30% food waste
he saw an amazing margin opportunity
and I felt that if you could use technology
to reduce that food waste
then you would be able to reinvest that
into higher quality food at lower prices
at better margin
and we think that's a really fantastic
example of shared value
when we first made that investment
it sounded incredibly speculative at the time
they were sending out a few thousand boxes
doing a few hundred thousand of revenue
that business is now doing over 300 million
annually in the UK really profitable
and helping people to eat in an affordable
nutritious and way on a daily basis
what a remarkable story and such a positive one
you know when you think about how
we need to change so many of the systems that we
that we live in and that's just a really practical
great example of it happening and um
as you say
the notion of shared value starts to make a really
I guess
clear statement as to how those things can be achieved
and I guess they're most commonly achieve
those things start through entrepreneurs with a vision
and um
that's something that's close to your heart
if we kind of wind back to the start
you've been an entrepreneur from what I've read um
for quite a long time I mean
even before you started your university studies
you were an entrepreneur is that right
yeah that is right
wow that is a pulling up the archives haha
um but that's definitely right
I guess I come from a family of entrepreneurs
um so my father left school at 15
um started work initially as a tailor
and then has been through many different industries
um and my mother was an artist
so for me
the sort of expectation wasn't to go to university um
and originally started building a sort of small
a business buying and selling horses
and then at some points I've recognized
that I really wanted to build a bigger business
and be part of a larger structural change
and that LED me to go to university
which I am eternally grateful for
you were actually a horse trader
I was actually a horse trader uh
for my sins and Learned a huge amount uh
through that experience
which I look on very far favourite
how do you make a good margin on a horse
what do you look for well
ha ha that's a good a question
so actually very much like entrepreneurship
I think one of the things I definitely learnt
is that you can't be right every time so um
I probably sold around a
40 horses during my teenage years
and I would say um
for every four we bought
three we would sell at a really great profit margin um
and one we would sell at a loss um
and that's definitely something
I've taken into my sort of uh
thinking around um investing in companies as well
I was chatting to my sales director where
where where I work um
this week about entrepreneurship
and he was giving me his kind of view on
on on what entrepreneurship was and
and he he said something which I quite like
which he said
it's the magic of creating order from chaos um
which uh you can take in lots of ways
I'd be really interested in
in what you think is in the DNA of a great entrepreneur
yeah it's a really fantastic question
it's something we're constantly
sort of asking ourselves
I think probably the biggest thing is um
the the entrepreneurs
I guess that inspire us the most and we believe to go
go on to build really big businesses
are ones where they believe what most other people
at that point in time think about as impossible
and taking it back to that example of sort of
gusto and personalized grocery
I remember doing the market sizing at the time
and at the time
they're in a category I called food boxes
and that market was extremely small
um and when we sized up that market
I came up with a very small market
uh Timo came up
the founder came up with a very big market
uh today
the market is infinitely bigger than my market size
and he reminds me of that regularly
but I think it's that power to believe
and see things other people can't see
and then the resilience
and the consistency to drive delivery behind that
and even during periods that are tough
which they always are at some point in the journey
so the vision to see things that others can't
and then the the
the focus to to deliver it
and you're right with the food boxes
I mean
you see them advertised on the TV all the time now
don't you
and it's become a thing and it wasn't a thing eight
10 years ago hundred percent
and so many families I know are now
now eating
eating those when they were non believers at the start
absolutely um
and so after the after the the
the the horse business
you did decide to go to university
went to Oxford and you studied law um
what was in your thinking then
often when people choose law it's because they're
they're thinking about how they can
make a positive impact was that on your mind
what was what was going on for you
yeah great question
so um
I was really fortunate um
to get into Oxford to study law um
and really I sort of
sort wanted to study law as
I saw that as the foundation of both business
and then how society operates
um Laura
Oxford is called jurisprudence
so it's very philosophically based
all around sort of systems um
and how the sort of economy operates
and from Oxford your your first job was working at Bain
I think is that right yes
yeah and you were working in sort of financial services
related technology and um
and from what I've read
you got to work in a few different places
so you were in Japan and you were in the US and the
as I was doing my research
the question that I wanted to ask you was um
how working in those different cultures
in the early stage of your career
sort of exposed you to
the way different people work in different places and
and and different cultures
what do you remember from from those days
yeah yep
great question so I started my career at Bain um
so I spent five years there
um my first day was um
the start of the financial crisis
and so actually the day Lehman Brothers crashed
um always ingrained in my mind um
and so saw a real spectrum on the one side
spent about a year in Ireland
working on the Irish banking crisis
and that was juxtaposed with six months
in San Francisco um
just as a sort of mobile era came out
and having businesses like Uber and Dropbox and
come into the office and describe
their vision for the future
so all about growth whereas the other side
it was all about sort of managing a crisis situation
and so really Learned a lot about different mindsets
different attitudes
and the ability of technology to change industries
and entrepreneurs I can imagine that felt very strange
being in those very different places
in those different worlds
and I remember what was happening to Ireland
during the banking crisis
and had some exposure to Silicon Valley at the time
and they had their minds on very different things
and I think I think I've heard um
you speak publicly before about
that exposure to the banking crisis
and that's how um
I think you started to form some of your views
on things that needed to change
is that is that right
yeah that's definitely right
the Irish banking crisis was
a very revolutionary moment for me
so we set up um
the call centers to um
to help people manage paying
their mortgages through that time
so they didn't lose their homes
and I really experienced first hand
the impact it has on individuals
daily lives when a system goes wrong
and wanted to focus my career on investing
in companies and to
to move a system forward so that in the future
those companies help people live healthy
happy lives rather than lives labelled with debt yeah
it I mean I remember the banking crisis clearly
long time ago now um
but it's quite sobering
isn't it when the system doesn't support
you know
the consumers in the end that it's supposed to
and it's all gone horribly wrong horrific
and I think it is like
it really is the individuals that get impacted um
when that system goes wrong
and I think the Irish banking crisis was
the best example of or a very good example of that
yeah yeah
totally
and so something after that changed for you because you
you left Bain didn't you
and you went into venture capital
which is gonna bring us up to what you're
what you're doing now um
and that's where we first met when you were at
when you were at MMC um
maybe we can talk just for a minute about
about that change for you because you
you were working on setting up call centers and uh
working on the technology and then you know
within a couple of years
you were trying to spot the winners in
that technology space yeah
yeah it was definitely a quite a transition
I think I was really fortunate um
at the time I sent spent in San Francisco to
which
really opened up my mind to what entrepreneurship was
um to meet all of these people that believe
they could change the system
in a positive way they could
like build the companies that define the future
um so when I came back to the UK
I really wanted to be part of building that system
for the UK Met John and
who I know was a fortunate enough to invest
and be on the board of Cloud Sense
and who described his vision for building
the UK's leading venture firm
really wanted to serve
join him on the journey and learn from him
and Bruce Nolan the co founders of MMC
and then fast forward a few more years and um
we get to the start of your journey at Eka with John
and I think you'd you would
you'd raise your first fund in 2021
yes we closed our first fund
68 million pound fund in 2021
and um
and and it seems to have gone from strength to strength
you I gather you've now got
was it 123 million under management at the moment
which means things must be going well
um maybe
you know you could tell us about the categories
the areas that you've chosen to invest in
because IKA's gots we've talked about shared value
and you've explained how you kind of got to this point
through your work in the in the banking crisis
about wanting to make a difference to systems
you've you've been
you've been very
kind of clear cut in what you've chosen to invest in
and am I right in thinking
sustainable
consumption and consumer health are the two areas
yes so within shared value
we're really focused on sustainable consumption
consumer health we think those are two enormous um
opportunities to create shared value
sustainable consumption
and 90% of emissions start into consumer supply chains
that's all about decarbonizing
those big consumer supply chains
trillions of dollars of opportunity there
and consumer health which is about shifting
our healthcare system from a treatment LED
reactive system into a proactive
preventative healthcare system again
10% of global GDP is spent on healthcare
so much economic opportunity as well as um
societal opportunity there
and I think I've heard you talk about um
so the difference between the work you're doing
and what big companies are doing around their
ESG targets and how they're
how they're trying to sort of clean up
clean up their acts um
let me talk about that for a minute
because the work that you're doing
is not about helping businesses
sort of incrementally improve
it's about sort of changing the game entirely
I think isn't it
yeah 100%
so we is a great question
and so we separate our impact or shared value um
and ESG
so we think about impact and shared value as being
what does the company do
so if that company is successful
what is the change that it's gonna drive in the system
so going back to that sort of food box example
that should that should drive
greater sustainability through the food supply chain
and reduce wastage
reduce them CO2 emissions associated with food
and also improve nutrition and health
the ESG side of it is focused on governance
so that's more around like
does the company have good environmental policies
does it have good governance
we think that's important too
we encourage all of our companies to have good
sort of ESG governance
but what we're actually focused on is driving
this sort of system level change
yeah I think our listeners would be really
interested to hear about some examples
from your portfolio of where this is happening now
um you talked about gusto
which I just know from personal experience that's
that's from a past investment and previous business
so today in Eka um
maybe you can give a couple of examples of um
of the businesses that you've invested in
so one really great example is Flock Health
so Flock Health is the UK's first CQC regulated
provider of AI delivered
diagnostic and treatment plans
for lower back pain care um
the founders of that business had this vision that AI
would be able to deliver um
high quality healthcare in a way that was comparable
and could be benchmarked to traditional healthcare
and so they've really leaned into regulation
as they've developed out um
that solution um
so most recently
Flock Health has been used in Cambridge
um they had a 12 week wait there at Cambridge
um Lower Back Pain
Care Services had a 12 week waiting list
and Flock Health in a week
was able to reduce that down to less than 50%
and even more excitingly 90
88% of patients
that use flock have had their issues solved
and they haven't had to go back into the healthcare
system so
we think these types of technologies
and these types of solutions
really have the ability to improve lives
improve healthcare outcomes
and do that in a really low cost
affordable and accessible way
and we hear so many sort of uh
worries and negatives about AI
it's just super to hear it
offering some real positive benefits
and I think um
in the space you're talking about
it's really interesting because lower back pain is
is one area that I suppose
there's so many different things going on
that people try it's almost like there's not an obvious
if you got if you got an eyesight problem
you go for an eye test and you get some glasses
lower back pain people go and see a physio
they go and see a chiropractor
they see an osteopath they go and see um
a spinal surgeon and to be honest
the amount of options of things to do probably vast
and AI might be a great way of kind of
pulling out the best bits of all of them
it's amazing and I mean
I think I'm
so flock does both the diagnostics and the treatment
and within their diagnostics
there's a segment of patients
as you were saying that
where those patients aren't suitable for sort of AI
delivered treatment
because they have something that requires a sort of
surgical intervention and there are
AI has flagged up scenarios where that person need
that individual needs to get urgent treatment
and they've actually uh
stopped somebody being paralyzed
through flagging that up
in a scenario where they wouldn't have
otherwise had access to healthcare
um so it's really exciting um
the power that AI has to uh
change the healthcare system
delivering higher quality outcomes at a lower cost
well I think uh
all of our listeners are gonna be kind of uh
warmed up now
and having heard about one example from your portfolio
that's doing something uh
doing something really interesting
um maybe you'd like to share another
yeah
we are really I'm well delighted to share another one
and on in the sustainable consumption space
and one of our really early investments
is a business called hived
so hive
and saw that there was a huge increase in parcels
being delivered to people's doors
because of the rise of e commerce and
but the infrastructure behind that
and has really negative air pollution and um
CO2 emission profile and so they set out to solve that
um so hive delivers last mile logistics
um fully green electric fleet
fully optimised delivery and really incredibly
they have the best customer service
and the best net promoter scores out there
because they started
with a consumer first mindset to doing that
and that business has since raised a Series B
scaling exceptionally fast
and working with some of the UK's leading brands and
and I think those leading brands um
are maybe more used to traditional retailing
before the shift to doorstep delivery um
and everyone using kind of online purchasing
and so I guess introducing partners like hive to uh
to the mix allows them to transform and modernize
their businesses
I think that's what they're most excited about
I think the combination
it comes back to that shared value sort of aspect
the combination of both
decarbonizing their supply chains
whilst driving higher quality
and consumer experiences
through a better quality delivery
is really where the magic sits in hive
and that's enabled by extremely smart
application of technology and AI
in the background
which allows that real time optimization
and there's one other business
which I was gonna bring up Camilla
cause it's already been so publicly announced
you've you've been running your funds since 2021
but you've actually already had a great result with the
with runner haven't you
thank you Richard
ha ha ha um
so runner um
is a running training app and we first invested um
in that business in 2022 um
and why we were so excited about it is um
it helped people learn to run um
run safely and then it helped people get into
obsessed with that sort of habit
it was growing exceptionally fast
as it was like driving this movement behind that
um so since we invested that
that business has scaled exceptionally
and we've recently uh
sold it to Strava and I think this is a really
great example
of where the shared value thesis is able to drive
sort of economic value
and it's great to have us
a proof point around that
early in the fan's life cycle
yeah absolutely and and
and what a result with Strava
I mean that's the kind of best in class um ah
consumer exercise app that's out there
so you know
what a what an outcome for that whole team
they must have all been really ah
delighted by it I think the team are really delighted
I think they're particularly delighted
around combining with Strava
to continue to expand the impact
and to bring safe running to people globally
all around the world
brilliant let's go on and talk a little bit about Ika
um all of these great values that you're seeing
in your portfolio um
I'm imagining you're bringing
these things into your own business
and venture capital
hasn't always had the best of reputations
maybe you could talk to us about what you're doing
in the culture of your own business
to make it sort of
the right place for what's happening right now
and the changes you're bringing about
um it's a great question and one we very
very rarely I get asked about um
so I guess that John when John and I sort of set up Ika
we really thought about the type of fund and
that we wanted to set up
and the type of people we wanted to work with
so as an investment fund
we have a range of different stakeholders
so we have the investors that invest in our fund
and we have the entrepreneurs
that we're lucky enough to invest into
and then we have our sort of own team and the wider
sort of ecosystem
so we thought about on each of those dimensions
um how did we think about ensuring that
that was most aligned with this sort of shared value uh
concept um
so when we think about
where we've sort of raised capital from
we've been really fortunate to raise capital from um
individuals that are like yourself
who are sort of mission aligned
and want to help build the um
build a positive system
and then people like guys and Saint Thomas
and Better Society Capital
who are all trying to move this positive system
change forward um
on the entrepreneurial side
um we
a key part of our process
when deciding to work with entrepreneurs is we um
run something called a leadership assessment process
which is
trying to understand that individual in more detail
what motivates them
what drives them and why they want to um
drive towards the system change
um and we think that
that helps and helps us
find and get the opportunity to work
with those entrepreneurs
that do want to drive that change
and then from an internal perspective um
we've sort of built a very diverse team
so we have 60% women within the team
and
we thought quite carefully about things we would do
and wouldn't do so for example
when we were raising the fund
and we made a decision and not to hire interns
as we couldn't pay them properly
and we felt that
that would be an example of something that perpetuates
inequality as it would only enable people and
who could afford not to be paid
and to sort of work with us
so we sort of made
tried to make these conscious decisions uh
through that and then we've invested really heavily
in the infrastructure to help support our companies
and improve their impact practices
alongside their ESG practices
and when working with a range of different uh
sort of third parties on that
including going through the B Corp process ourselves
and and then in terms of the ecosystem work
we do as a fund we think about success as being
making impact mainstream and so
we engage really heavily with organizations
like Impact VC
and where John my business partner
is sort of one of the super trainers
and on the board of that well
it sounds like you're doing lots of great stuff there
and I'm kind of hearing a thread through that
that venture capital more broadly
is earning the right to a positive reputation
do you think that the
that the industry is moving the right way
is there more to be done still
so I think there's always more to be done um
but I think most people go into venture capital
because they believe that
that entrepreneurship is the route to build a more
sort of positive economy and a more positive society
and so I'm very positive that
the ecosystem is driving towards that
and I also think as a venture capitalist
there is a responsibility
and that you have to try and be part of that positive
system change because
when you look at the companies that define the economy
today and they are companies in the whole
that have been backed by venture capitalists
and we anticipate that will
continue to be the case in the future
maybe just for a minute we can talk about
there's some great examples of
companies you've invested in
and actually there's
you've talked a couple of times about businesses
that really achieved some scale
when it all goes right and it goes well
what's the sort of journey that these
companies go on to make that system
change that you're talking about
cause you invest in them quite early stage don't you
so we do invest very early stage um
we often invest in companies as they're incorporating
um as uh
as we say very focused on
investing in these shared value concepts
with fantastic people um
so the journey uh varies by different company type
and we think there's a whole way
whole range of different ways that you can build
fantastic companies and
but the companies that we invest into
most typically follow a journey
where they achieve certain milestones
and then they go on to raise certain capital
how we think about it internally is
how do you reach your first
hundred thousand of revenue
how do you reach your first £1 million of revenue
how do you reach your first 10
10 50
100 as
we think revenue is a really good milestone
of starting to serve scale into like a large company
and then having the resource
to double down on hiring great people
and continuing to to drive that sort of system change
and sometimes
I suppose some of these businesses don't go well um
in every portfolio
and certainly I imagine you've seen a lot when you've
when you've done your founder assessments
and you've talked to the leaders
what are the sort of things that that go wrong
you know
you've been working in this sector for a little while
now I bet there's some patterns that come through
yeah definitely he
he um
it's a so
so I think failure is part of the venture capital model
and of being an entrepreneur um
so we're very comfortable with the concept of failure
um and we do really um
try to think about fund as focusing on
how big could this be if it goes right
rather than spending too much time on failure
although
we do think it's important to look at the lessons
of failure um
so I think failure happens on a spectrum
so sometimes it happens where um
a founder just doesn't find
find product market fit so what they believed or what
what their thesis was isn't true
um that is unfortunate
but it definitely happens
and sometimes
it happens because the fundraising market has changed
or the environment has changed
and they're no longer able to raise capital
and sometimes it happens
and because the entrepreneur no longer wants to
to run that business which is always the case
I guess we we really try to avoid
yes but
you know I think in the best case
often those companies find a different home
where they're able to continue to scale
and in the worst case they are unfortunately and and
and end up in administration
yeah yeah
well I guess
you know all these things happen
and you get to see the good and the bad
and as you say in your space um
failure is part of the model
um so it's helpful just to hear some of those things
but it
there's a there's a sector at the moment which um
we keep in touch we see each other occasionally
but we don't get a chance to uh
see each other that much
so I follow what you're doing um
on social media and there is a sector
that seems just
very close to the values that you can promote um
and which is going through very positive change
and there's a lot of um there's lots of uh
growth in the market and that's around women's health
and I see you talking a lot about that
it's clearly a topic which um
you know has energized you um
and that you are interested in and investing in
can we talk some more about that please
definitely so women's health um
is a really key investment theme for us
and we first sort of wrote our
so initial theses on it as we were raising the fund
in 2020 so when you look at the data um
women live in bad health for 25%
more of their time than men
at the World Health Organization believes
it's a trillion dollar um
opportunity by 2040 um
and the real reason behind we
we believe a lot of the reason behind that
is that the healthcare system has traditionally
not incorporated um
women's health into their data
so clinical trials up until the
so early 2 often only uh were run on men
so
women just weren't included in those clinical trials
often that was because um
the pharmaceutical companies
were concerned about the impact of hormones
and the drugs wouldn't work really
really crazy you're running a clinical study
you know these drugs aren't gonna work on women
so you just run a clinical trial with men and
but the result of this is
we think the technology is now good enough
there's entrepreneurs in the market
that want to change this and that runs across
the whole spectrum of a woman's life
from very early care all the way through um
to elderly care
and we would like to invest across that whole spectrum
um in Fund 1 we made one investment in the space
um into a business called Jude
which is focused on incontinence
crazy stat that I didn't know
until I started looking at the space
is 1 in 3 women globally
experience incontinence at some point in their life
and there's virtually no solution
um for that and so Jude set up
I set out to solve that
and they have one sort of hero product at the moment
which is a supplement that helps people
sort of manage their incontinence
incredible results already
impacting tens of thousands of women in the UK
in a positive way
hearing the story is terrible story and you know
it shouldn't have happened
but you can kind of almost chart back and see
that happening can't you
if you go back and look at the scientists of old
and all the way through history
it's always men you know
it always has been and making very kind of uh
male oriented decisions
and it sounds like it's gone on far too long
but you're now starting to uh to
to to
to make a difference um
and um
you know starting to um
ensure that the funds are flowing towards
understanding how the female body
quite obviously works very different from a
from a male body um
you know produces children and
you know all of the
all of the additional medical dimensions to
to that and um
so that was your first investment at Jude
but there've been many more
haven't there there have been many more
um and actually we're um
so in 2025 we will have made uh
three new investments uh
in women's health
two of which we've announced we can talk about
and one and focused on endometriosis
uh which we can't yet
um but we're so excited
I think the quality of entrepreneurs
coming out and trying to solve this problem um
is absolutely extraordinary
so we've made one investment into a business called
Ditto Daily
and founded by a PhD nutritionist called Alice
and her um
key insight was
there's been an increasing body of academic research
over the last 10 years into women's health
but none of that has yet been translated into products
that people can buy um
and so they can't actually access
the benefit of this research
and her vision was to translate that research
into products that people can buy um
their first product uh
launched in April of this year uh
is called uh Ditto Daily
it's a menstrual um
menstrual health um
supplement that helps people manage
their menstrual pain um
Eco just ran a survey of 1,000 women in the UK um
and they found of women who are sort of menstruating
over 80% have experienced pain
70% of women are buying painkillers on a monthly basis
many of the problems associated with period pain
can actually be solved through nutrition
and the very early clinical study
data from Ditto shows this
so we're super excited
about that business
and the potential it has to improve
women's daily lives and so
you're saying that
rather than needing to put painkillers
into their bodies and
you know
and killers obviously have downsides too that that uh
more natural nutrition based uh
answers are out there 100%
so having the right sort of nutritional
balance of nutrients can help alleviate many of these
um symptoms
and do that in a way that's more effective
than painkillers um
so we're super excited about the potential um
for that is this becoming a
a big market then now are there
are there investors
waking up to this and starting to back these companies
so I would say it's early
um from a sort of overall fundraising perspective
but I think that there is a big market
from a consumer perspective
sure um
so I think half the world population
half the world population
no really good solution yeah um
so
I think for products and services that come out on a
efficacious though
they're gonna be able to build really large revenue
profitable companies
and that will enable access to funding
and so we invested in ditto about eight weeks ago
that business already grown 100% since then
and I think those numbers start to get other investors
excited that maybe less mission LED
but are definitely economically LED
yeah absolutely
and you said
there were a couple that you've invested in this year
that that you can talk about
yes so the second investment um
that we made is into a business called Hester Health
um Hester has two incredible co founders um
a Doctor Sujitha who is an OBGYN um
doctor and healthcare influencer
focused on maternal health
um and Amanda Coulter's
who most recently
was the MD of Airbnb in the UK and Europe
um and they've come together to build a platform
to improve a woman's health
over their full lifespan
they've started by developing a product
focused on postpartum care
in particular focused on postnatal depression
which is a really large problem
that's underserved by the
existing healthcare services within the UK
although the government has recognised that
that needs to change yeah
and that's the point in time for most women
where their healthcare
starts to diverge the most from men
and we're really excited about potential of that
and business and
and you hear um
lots of stories of um
women suffering from postnatal depression
um after
after having children
and then doctors not really being able to offer them um
a a solution and sort of
you know
I could suppose trying antidepressants and then
you know
um continuing to have problems for
for for years and years to come
so it's huge I mean
so the survey that we did
found that 78% of people were dissatisfied
with the mental health support 78%
78% uh
were dissatisfied in that sort of mental health support
uh they received postpartum
the UK government themselves has sort of recognized
it's an 8 billion opportunities
an 8 billion economic loss
from postnatal related depression
this is a really huge huge problem
but maternal services in general
we believe is a massive opportunity
and you can see it coming through in the healthcare
outcome so
maternal deaths globally have been increasing
rather than decreasing
in a world where we have improved access to healthcare
that just shouldn't be the case
no it shouldn't be
and it shows all sorts of access problems there
and thinking as um
thinking as an entrepreneur as well
you start to imagine the
the deficit that this brings into
into the workforce as well
um on a sort of very practical level when you know
women are unable to to
to to
to do their jobs the way they want to
because of the impacts of the of
of of
of well of
of of all of these um
all of these aspects of women's health that your
that your portfolio companies are
are working on hugely and I think that's
one of the areas
we definitely see as a potential route to market
is working with employers
to ensure that women have great
quality support and healthcare
so that when they come back to work off parental leave
um
they're really able to operate at full capacity again
a really positive um
use of your funds and your time
and your focus as a business
and I'm sure that our listeners um
I'm sure that our listeners here
are going to be able to take a lot away from that and
and have confidence that these
you know huge societal concerns are
are starting to get the the focus that they need
yeah I believe the wave of entrepreneurs coming out now
really has the ambition to tackle these huge
yeah huge
huge opportunities
and create amazing businesses that drive this uh
societal value out of the other side
what I love about all of this is
it's not just building another app for something
you know that's sort of the the
the cliche of fundraising in
in the venture world to build a new app
to do something that's better than Uber
or something like that
and this is just kind of in a completely
completely different space
different mindset and uh
you know there's a beauty to it
we hope so I mean
we get up excited
or inspired by the entrepreneurs we're working with
every day yeah
yeah um
and and that brings me sort of to my
to my to my final question really
which is um
I'm sure there'll be lots of people interested in this
uh in this interview Camilla
um and maybe some of them will come to it a bit later
so if someone was listening to this podcast
in 5 years time you know
what's the thing
that you would really like them to take away from it
I think the one thing I'd really like
really like them to take away from it is
if they believe in a system change enough
anyone can make that happen
and entrepreneurship is a route to making that happen
so please do
go out and build the companies
that you're thinking about
and make that help drive that change
take the agency and just do it
we love it yeah
exactly better articulated
just do it just do it
yeah I think that's been used before
anyway thank you
Camilla for coming on the podcast
it's been a pleasure talking to you
thank you for having me