Welcome to the Innovation Conversation, a podcast
about innovators, both in business and real life.
Hosted by myself, Ricardo Rescual and Harry McCona.
This podcast is also sponsored by ODEV Tech.
ODEV Tech is your premier software development
partner. Make sure you check them out at odev
.tech. The podcast is also sponsored by Notion
.so. Notion is offering six months for free for
new users. Make sure you check out our website,
thestoreofevents .co .uk to read in the software.
Hi and welcome to another episode of the Innovation
Conversation. Today we are joined by Ahana Banerjee.
Ahana, welcome to the podcast. Thanks Ricardo,
it's a pleasure to be here. Ahana, obviously
it's very delightful having you here. Would you
like to introduce yourself to the audience, please?
Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Ahana. I'm the
founder and CEO of Clear, which is a YC -backed
beauty tech company. So we have a free app that
helps consumers figure out which skincare products
to use and whether they're actually working.
The app works very similar to a period tracker
or a diet tracker, but it's a skincare tracker.
And I started the company in my final year of
university. I was studying physics at Imperial
College London. And long story short, although
I'm sure we can get into the story, Y Combinator
ended up investing in the company during my final
year, so I ended up dropping out of my master's,
turning down my graduate jobs in finance and
starting to build the company full time in January
of 2021. Professor, sorry. So you'll be the one
that actually going to make this ugly mug pretty
again, which is not so... Well, I would have
thought you brought you to be a user, Ricardo.
Whatever you're doing is working. Thank you.
But yeah, it sounds quite interesting. So how
was it? Because this is your first startup, right?
Well, this is the first, my first full -time
job really upon finishing full -time education.
But I did have experience technically in two
startups before starting Clear. Was it very scary?
Cause you know, you got a white combinator as
well. So that, that must've been a crazy process.
Ambitious, crazy, bold, audacious, all those
wonderful things. I think so. Yes. I think terrified
is a fair word to use to describe my first full
day at work. I mean, that's the craziest way
to start one's career. my first day at full -time
work as an adult was going through YC. But I
think more broadly, I never really imagined that
I would be an entrepreneur. I wasn't one of those
people that was born and thought that that's
how I was going to have my impact. In fact, I
think for me it kind of goes a bit deeper if
I go back to my childhood. I was raised mostly
in the UK so I lived here till I was 14 and then
my family and I moved to New Delhi, India and
I am of Indian origin but at that point not very
culturally Indian. There was such a stark contrast
in my life in the UK versus in India in the sense
of In the UK I went to a regular state school
and suddenly moving to New Delhi I was going
to this very nice international school, I was
meeting people from all around the world, their
parents were CEOs of companies, ambassadors to
their countries, it was all very high flying.
But at the same time, and I don't know if you've
ever visited India, it's a country of massive
extremes and so on the one hand I was experiencing
privilege. like I'd never seen it before, while
also witnessing poverty like I'd never seen it
before. And I think that just made me incredibly,
it made me feel this massive sense of responsibility
of what did I do to deserve this privilege in
life? How am I gonna give back and do something
with it? And so I think from a young age, from
about the age of 14, I always knew that I wanted
to do something that was meaningful to me with
my career, using the education that I've had,
using the skills that I've had, but at the time
I thought it would be more broadly through technology
and innovation and science, which is why I went
to study a physics degree. But when I started
my degree it wasn't quite what I had imagined
and I think I'd looked at it very philosophically
as far as what is physics and you know, how does
it shape your worldview? but not so much as a
career and like what are the realities of actually
being an academic and I realised well it's not
just science there's still politics that comes
into it there's still grant writing there's still
all of that fun stuff that I hadn't really thought
about when I was younger and so I just thought
well I'm not sure that this is the career I want
to pursue and if it's not physics what is it
going to be how am I going to have that impact?
And so then during my undergrad, I launched on
this mission to figure out my purpose from a
career perspective, what I wanted to do. And
from the first year itself, I applied to any
and every internship. Um, so I was applying for
roles in software engineering and banking, and
I was super lucky to be in London where you've
got access to so many different companies and
so many different industries and so the first
internship that I did was in software engineering
at an investment bank at Morgan Stanley and so
that was a great insight into what is an investment
bank because I had no idea but also what is the
job of a software engineer you know like what
does the day -to -day look like beyond just writing
the code and I learned a lot from that experience
but I think the biggest learning was that I was
probably more interested in the companies and
the transactions than I was in the writing code
part of it. And so from there in my second year,
I geared my applications a bit more towards the
banking and consulting internships because I
wanted to learn about business. And so I did
some more internships. And then my first foray
into entrepreneurship actually happened in my
third year of uni where I'd done a few internships,
spring weeks, summer internships at this point
and like most of my best stories start, I got
a cold message on LinkedIn and it was from a
student who was at a different uni and he'd reached
out to me, cold, we didn't know each other, basically
saying that he had a startup idea and the idea
was to build a tech platform that matched students
who were looking for graduate jobs with graduate
employers and he wanted someone with three specific
skills. The first was someone that could code
and build the platform for him, which I could.
The second is someone who was based at a London
uni who had access to lots of students and could
throw events and get them to sign up. And the
third was someone who had access to the early
careers recruiters at all of the big companies
which because of all my internships and coffee
chats and insight talks and all the rest I did.
And at this point I didn't know any entrepreneurs,
I didn't really know what entrepreneurship was
and I think especially in the UK culturally there's
not really a culture of entrepreneurship at university
as much as there should be and I think it's slowly
starting to change now, but for the most part,
most uni students are still geared towards graduate
schemes. And so I wasn't really thinking about
it from a career perspective, but the job itself
just sounded like tremendous fun. And so I said,
yes. And I did it alongside my third year of
uni. So when you asked, have I done startups
before? Kind of had. This was the first startup
job and it was going from super duper early stage.
I had to do everything and learn everything.
And I absolutely loved it. It was the first job
that I completely fell in love with. And so I
think it had a huge impact on me in terms of
my broader vision for how I was going to have
that impact that I talk about. Because I realized
that actually I do like writing code some days.
I do like talking to customers some days. I do
like doing the strategy and planning some days.
Other days, you know, I just wanted to learn
as much as I possibly could. And I'm, you know,
I'm sure you know this yourself, but I think
when you're a founder, There is no job that will
teach you more about everything. And so I learned
that very quickly from from doing my first startup
job when I was 20 years old. And so that was
really the turning point for me where I knew
that this is what I wanted to do long term. Interesting.
So it's funny because you mentioned things that
most people never, never mention. First of all,
privilege in the sense that you were able to
born in the family, which is completely random,
obviously, but give you access to a certain type
of education, but also you were aware that you
had that privilege. You were aware that you should
make the most out of it and actually give back
to society and build something with it. And how
did you get your idea for the startup that you
have now? Because it's quite impactful and obviously
applying for Y Combinator, let me rephrase it,
obviously applying for Y Combinator must have
been a crazy experience. So how do you get from
the one you're working to then Y Combinator?
What was that? So the short answer to why Clear
and why the company that I'm building today,
my terrible skin. I really suffered with my skin
all through my teens, still through my 20s. I
mentioned I moved internationally after India.
I then moved to Singapore and there was no communication
between my doctors in different countries. I'd
be prescribed in some cases the same medication
but they wouldn't know I've already been on it
and it didn't work and so I would build all these
tracking tools with spreadsheets to say this
is what I'm using, this is what's working, what's
not and then I was kind of like, I've got an
app to track my period, I've got an app to track
my diet, why do I have three spreadsheets and
50 Google folders to track my skincare routine?
And so, you know, the motivation and the passion
and the personal problem was always there. But
in terms of actually starting the company, it
wasn't so straightforward, especially because,
so if we come back to when I was in my third
year working on this graduate recruitment startup,
as I said, I loved that experience and it really
shaped me in many ways. But I didn't necessarily
see myself starting my career with that specific
company and in terms of my responsibilities there,
I was doing all of the operations but the one
thing I didn't do was fundraise because it was
a family -funded business. That was part of the
reason that I ended up leaving. There were some
things that I felt I didn't have a say over but
I had the confidence that I could do it myself
one day. But the thing that I didn't have confidence
about was raising funds and I wasn't in the position
where I could use family funding. So I just thought,
well, I'm an undergraduate uni student. I can't
raise funding. That sounds absurd. All I knew
about fundraising was I'd watched a couple of
episodes of Dragon's Den growing up. That looks
awful. And I don't want to be a part of that.
So I almost dismissed fundraising as even an
option. And I knew to build a tech company, I
would need some initial capital because practically
who's going to pay rent while I'm writing the
code before I commercialize. And I thought, well,
I've got these great graduate job offers. They
pay well. I should just take this, save up as
much as I can in the early years of my career.
And then I will seed fund my own business in
a few years time. So that was my career plan.
I left that first startup after, I think it was
about six to eight months. And I went into, and
so it finished third year of uni and I had this
career plan in place. I had these great graduate
job offers lined up for when I was going to finish
uni. Everything was on track. I was happy. Parents
were happy. I'd found my purpose. I was going
to deliver on it one day. But then in the fourth
year is when Covid hit and so all of a sudden
I had gone from working what on paper was a part
-time job but in hours was a full -time startup
job. I wasn't doing that anymore. I did a lot
of charity events planning stuff at uni. All
of the events got cancelled because of the pandemic.
I also was And tries to still be an avid guitarist.
I don't know if you can see in the background,
but all my music gigs got canceled as well. So
is that all electric guitars? There is one acoustic,
which actually isn't mine, but there's one bass
guitar and two electric guitars, which are pretty
cool. Um, and so, you know, all my gigs got canceled,
all this to say I had a lot more free time and
I'd already secured graduate jobs. So I wasn't
doing job applications. And I just thought to
myself, well if one day I want to start a company,
why not start working on something now? Purely
as a learning experience, there's no pressure
on it, I'll still graduate, take my job, etc.
And so the first thing I did during Zoom was
I attended a webinar from this random VC and
at this point I don't think I knew what the letters
VC stood for because I just knew nothing about
fundraising so my goal was just to learn. And
one of the key insights from that webinar which
was really quite, I don't know if rogue is the
right word, but it certainly had an impact on
me was if you're a woman, stay away from anything
lifestyle, anything beauty, anything wellness.
And I believe the point that the investor was
trying to make is that like the numbers are bad.
If you're a woman trying to raise funding, don't
make it any harder than it needs to be. Build
something that's B2B SaaS and you know, that's
the best thing you can do. And so even though
I'd had these skin issues for years and years
and years, and I also am a believer in solving
a problem that you've experienced, I thought,
well, this is like my entire sample size of one,
but this is the only investor I've ever met.
And he's saying to build B2B SaaS. So I guess
I'm going to come up with a B2B SaaS company.
And so like many people did in 2020, I came up
with the idea to build an AI note -taking app
called Quill. about two weeks into working on
Quill and at this point I really had a name,
a logo and not much else. I again just googled
how to get funding for startups and I must have
submitted Claire's name and logo to the first
five pages worth of Google results for raising
money so lord knows who has my personal phone
number, details, all of that. But of course,
on the first page where there was some legitimate
results, YC was one of them. And again, at this
point, if I didn't know what VC was, there was
no chance I knew what YC was. Of course, their
website looked a bit more legitimate than some
of the other sites I submitted my information
to. And I recognised some of the companies that
they'd invested in, companies like Stripe, Dropbox,
Instacart, etc. So I thought, okay, this seems
fine, let me just... it's worth a shot. And it's
funny now because I think had I actually not
been so naive and known what YC was, I probably
wouldn't have had the confidence to apply at
that stage. But it was more due to my major ignorance.
I just viewed it as well. It's another opportunity.
I'm just here to learn. Perhaps being at that
life stage where I'd just come from, you know,
interviewing for graduate jobs and stuff, I'd
just done a lot of applications. So I knew some
of the basic principles of just be clear, just
be concise, tell a story, all of that, and, you
know, highlight the key traction, et cetera.
And so I filled out this YC application, not
really thinking too deeply about it. It was just
one of the 200 random things that I applied for.
And slowly the rejection started rolling through,
including one from my own university from Imperial,
which was, I think, a 50 pound grant to conduct
user interviews. So when I say that I wasn't
expecting anything to materialize, I truly mean
it. They actually said no to 50 pounds. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. It was, it was 50 pounds. So, but
I didn't get it. And I thought if I'm not getting
50 pounds, the prospect of 125 ,000 seems a little
bit unrealistic. But it didn't matter to me too
much, you know, again, I was just doing it for
the learning. And two months go by and I still
hadn't heard from YC. At this point, I'd forgotten
about it, you know, just thought that whatever,
it's not worked out. I was not expecting that
anyway. And then I get an email saying that I've
been invited to interview. And so at this point,
I'm like, okay, let me Google this properly,
figure out what this is, maybe talk to some alumni.
And the more Googling I did, the more alumni
I spoke to, I realized, oh, this is serious.
This is a seriously serious opportunity. And
without sounding overly dramatic, it could change
my life if it works out because the thing I lack
is capital. I would love to be able to build
my company today, but I just don't have the funds
to do it. It's very, very hard to get an investor
to even talk to me at this stage. You know, I
was just an undergrad student. I appreciate investors
get so much inbound from founders that I didn't
really have anything that made me stand out too
much. So I was just grateful for the opportunity
to interview and I did my very best to prepare
for that interview with Quill. There were several
key glaring errors with Quill as a company. The
first was the product itself was not very good.
So as I said, it was an AI note taker. The first
step of taking notes is transcribing. The second
step is summarizing. And this was sort of just
pre -LLMs, and even if it wasn't pre -LLMs, I'm
not qualified to build an LLM anyway. So the
speech -to -text algorithm I'd used was trained
on an American speaking dataset, which meant
that in my accent, the demos didn't work. Really?
The way that I was selling this product was I'd
be messaging strangers on LinkedIn. I'd say,
look, I've got this note taking up. I'll give
it to you for free. Just like, I just want feedback,
blah, blah, blah. I'd get on the call. I'd say,
hi, Ricardo. It's great to meet you. I'm going
to show you Quill. We're just going to hit record
and then we're going to talk totally normally
and it's going to transcribe all of our notes
and we're going to see a real time summary, right?
And I would have to put on the best American
accent I could so that the product would work.
And then these people would just look at me like,
why has she started speaking like this? And I
was just truly terrified. What if YC asked for
a demo? Like, do I just put on an American accent
from the start and say I went to an international
school? Do I just, like, do the accent switch?
Like, what do I say here? I just felt that there's
no way this is actually how companies are built.
But I think the bigger thing was, again, just
coming back to that impact point, the whole reason
I wanted to start a company and, you know, the
thing that really drives me is that feeling of
doing something for someone else and sure you
know I was potentially trying to save other people
from taking meeting notes but that wasn't quite
the life mission that I set out to achieve. Equally
though I was terrified of YC because at this
point I knew what it was and I thought well they've
accepted me to interview on the basis of Quill
so I better just give the best pitch for Quill
that I can. And in fairness to myself, I had
made a reasonable amount of progress in a short
amount of time. I had built an entire sort of
beta version. I had some initial unpaid pilots
by the time the YC interview came around. So
I did the interview and again, I'm not sure how
much you know about the YC interview process,
but it's just 10 minutes long. So they're very,
very short. Okay. So it's extremely short then?
Extremely short. There's three to four interviewers
and It's, again, I think terrifying is probably
the best word to describe it. They interrupt
each other, they interrupt you. It's very fast
-paced, understandably, it's only ten minutes.
And so, by the end of it, you kind of feel like
you've come out of a washing machine, you don't
know what time it is, like you don't really know
much, I think. And it's quite hard to read how
you've done, because it goes by so quickly. All
that I knew was I had to be available for the
six hours following the interview in case they
had any follow -up questions because they tend
to have a turnaround time of about 24 hours.
It's really, really quick. And so again, because
it was COVID, it was all Pacific time. My interview
was at 10 PM and I had to be around till 4 AM
the next morning in case of any follow -up. So
I do the interview. And the other thing I know
is that if you're successful, you get a phone
call. If you're unsuccessful, you get an email.
Now, of course I'm thinking it's never gonna
work out, like it's already too good to be true
to get to the interview stage, but there's that
tiny tiny tiny part that's hoping for the phone
to ring. So about two hours go by, it's about
midnight, and my phone vibrates and it's an email.
So my heart sinks a little bit, I thought I was
fine, like I wasn't expecting it to work out
anyway, it's okay. It's not a rejection. It's
an email clarifying my education and my degree
program. They were like, what is an integrated
masters? We don't have this in the US. Like,
are you an undergrad, a post -grad? Like, do
you have a degree? Can you explain? So I send
them the most comprehensive overview of an MSci
degree that they've probably ever received. Another
hour goes by, another email comes through and
it's a cryptic one -liner. How married are you
to this idea? I thought, you know, like I've
heard that they ask trick questions sometimes.
Are they testing to see how strong my conviction
is? Or do I, you know, are they seeing that I'm
young and coachable and able to adapt and pivot?
Which one is it? And so I just went with the
honest answer, which was, I don't think there
is a market leading solution yet. If I am better
suited to solve a different problem, then I will.
And so I send that to them. Another painful two
hours go by and finally I get the last long email
of the night and essentially the crux of it was
We like you you've made a reasonable amount of
progress in quite a short amount of time on quill
But we don't like your idea So we want to talk
to you again in a week Come up with something
better Okay, pressure's on ever pressure absolutely
The whole experience wasn't sufficiently terrifying.
To make matters worse, it also coincided with
my final week of term of university before Christmas.
So I had all of my master's thesis deadlines
that week as well. And I just ended up sitting
down and it ended up being only four days between
my two interviews by the time we got a specific
time in the calendar. And I just time boxed every
single hour of that next week to think from this
time to this time, I'm going to brainstorm. And
even though I mentioned the skin issues at the
start, to be clear, I didn't have clear my company
as my backup idea at this stage. So I set some
time to brainstorm, set some time to build a
landing page. I didn't know what it would be,
but I just said like, at the end of my two hour
brainstorming session, I have to have an idea.
I have to do something. So I planned my week
like that and I sat down during my brainstorm
and I thought to myself, okay, what problems
do I understand? Well, I think that's a good
place to start. But Importantly, and this is
what I've failed to consider with the quill idea,
what solution can I build better than anyone
else? So I wrote down all of my problems, there
were many, and I just thought, you know, step
by step, where do I have a unique insight? Where
does my specific skill set actually give me an
unfair advantage? And when going down my list,
The skincare stuff was really sticking out at
me and I was kind of almost that like demon of
that first VC that said like stay away from beauty
and wellness like ringing in the back of my mind.
But I just thought to myself that it is so hard
to know which products to use. It is so hard
to know if they're working. This is a huge industry.
It's $200 billion and there's comparatively little
tech innovation and to put it very bluntly how
many skincare enthusiasts are also software engineers
and would want to build a company like this and
would be able to conduct user interviews with
people with acne like me for hours who would
have industry insights on the products, the brands,
the trends, the influences, etc. So I thought,
you know what? I actually think from a pure business
perspective, this is a great problem to solve
and I'm going to go for it. So In those four
days, I made more progress on what is now clear
than the prior four months of working on Quill.
I ended up doing user interviews with about 60
of the skincare enthusiasts I'd met over the
years on Reddit groups and Reddit threads and
Facebook groups. I'm sorry, this is all within
four days? Within four days. Wow. Okay. Yeah.
And I was just tenacious, just messaging. And
again, it comes back to the founder market fit,
which is also what stood out to me that I know
who my target customer is I find it so easy to
reach them because for fun I have spent every
single day of the last 10 years on these communities
because of my own skin problems and so I did
these 60 user interviews I built a landing page
I got over 300 signups for it and on the night
of the interview I managed to put together a
very basic prototype and managed to do four user
demos get some initial feedback on a version
of the physical product as well um And so I went
into the second YC interview and Ricardo, you
can imagine I hadn't slept for a while. I was
dazed, confused. I'd also bullied a poor LinkedIn
stranger into paying me 20 quid for Quill to
prove that I could get a paid pilot. Just for
the sake of it, just to show them that I had
made some progress on Quill as well. And so I
go into the second interview. It's very different
from the first. There's only one interviewer
and it goes on for an hour and the interviewer
first starts by saying hello, which was already
different from the first interview. There were
some pleasantries at the beginning and she just
says, you know, tell me what you want to talk
about today. And I said, I didn't quite frame
it as I've bullied a stranger on LinkedIn to
pay me. I said, I've secured a paid pilot for
Quill. More excitingly, I've come up with this
new idea and that's what I want to talk about
first. So we had an in -depth conversation about
the idea for Quill, sorry, for clear. And we
spent a little bit of time on Quill as well.
And then it ended very abruptly with her saying,
okay, you've got my email. If you need anything,
reach out to me. Bye. And I'm like, okay, bye.
And then I thought, no, this can't be where it
ends. So I go straight back into my email client,
literally as soon as she leaves the Zoom, and
I'm about to send a strongly worded email to
be like, where do I stand? Like, you know, should
I apply again? Was this the rejection? Like,
what was all of this for? Fortunately, before
I could send any angry email, I received an email
from her within two minutes. Just saying, are
you still on the Zoom call? Can, like, can we
talk again? I thought what more could they want
from me? I've built them a company in four days.
So she gets back on the Zoom and she just says,
yeah, I spoke to my colleague at YC. The batch
starts in two weeks. Incorporate a company in
the US, open a bank account, leave your degree.
See you then. Do you have any questions? And
so my first question was... Again, just in shock.
Like I just asked, are you sure? And the second
question was, which company? Like, do I do the
skincare thing or the meeting notes thing? And
she just said it's your company. Figure it out.
And how? OK, so they told you yes, but you have
two companies at this stage. One that came very
naturally and organically. The other one that
you, I guess, logically would make some sense,
but not fully. Yeah. How do you how could you
pick between these two? I mean, what was the
thought process? You know, it's funny because
it's such a big decision in hindsight of like,
which company do I actually commit to? And this
is where I'm going to give the really unhelpful
answer of intuition. Something was just drawing
me to be clear. And I suppose, you know, intuition
is just pattern matching for, I suppose, more
intricate patterns we witnessed. That's a proper
scientific guess right there. That is a scientific
guess. I think what I'm trying to say is that
Objectively, I had made so much more progress
on Clear in a short amount of time that even
though, objectively, it was a four -day -old
idea, it was really a 12 -year -old idea that
I'd been doing the market research for since
the age of 10, since I got my first pimple. And
so I think it was just the way that it excited
me was so different to Quill. And so the first
thing I actually did, even before the batch started,
and this is one of the amazing things about YC,
is you can book office hours with the partners.
So I was again very terrified of saying, hi,
you've just accepted me to this program, but
I don't know what company I should build. So
can we talk about this and brainstorm together?
And I kind of just bounced ideas with one of
the group partners about like the sort of pros
and cons for going for each. And he kind of just
said, I was like, I think you know the answer.
And I said, yeah, I think I do. We're building
clear. Interesting. And I mean, obviously you
then had to fly over to the US, get the company
started, get all their learnings and education
and all that. And how was the raising funds process?
Obviously having Y Combinator makes a huge difference.
Was it very, how should I put this, was it a
big leap up? Was it a big shock or actually you
knew what you needed to do and it was actually
a split process? No, it was the opposite. It
was the worst part of my founder journey. Of
course YC helped tremendously. Without YC, to
put it again very handedly, I probably wouldn't
have a company. I think to be a 21 year old girl
who wanted to build a skincare app, which is
trivializing the whole thing massively, but you
know on the outside that's what it was, to have
an investor, especially me being based in Europe,
to have a European VC fund take that seriously,
to even take the meeting is next to impossible.
But that's not down to your skills, that's down
to their own mindset. Oh, 100%. And so, you know,
I think the big shock that I had from fundraising
is that it was absolutely not down to my skills,
it was to do with their mindset. And that was
the whole problem. Fundraising shifted my opinion
on so many things. And I think the biggest one
was what it meant to be a female founder. Before,
you know, having done a physics degree, having
done software engineering internships, banking
internships, I'd always been in... traditionally
male -dominated spaces and I think especially
in education you're slightly shielded from some
of the realities of the real world so to speak
and you know as a girl doing physics I was never
it was never assumed I could do less or you know
my professors would never look at me and assume
I wasn't following the lecture you know there
was none of that whereas even today even last
week I'd be at an event and the shock and horror
on the man's face when he heard I could code
and built the app was It was as if I was telling
him that I'd flown to the moon and back yesterday,
you know, it was, you built the app and it's
like, why is that so hard to, I've been told,
you're a physicist? You don't look like a physicist.
And so I was so unprepared for these kinds of
interactions because I'd always prided myself
on my competency, on my intelligence, on my academics.
That's what I wore as a badge of honor. up till
that point of my life and there was no clear
sort of gentle introduction to the world of work.
It was one day I'm a student, the next I'm dropping
out of my degree and here I am being thrown in
the deep end. And so I think because of how the
very first funding I received, how that crazy
story happened, what I understood from it or
what I like extrapolated was they were investing
in me, but they're investing in what I could
do because I'd proven to them in four days, I
can do this. Imagine what I can do in four years,
for example. And so I thought, well, it's about
the traction. And from those episodes of Dragon's
Den I've watched, it's about the numbers, it's
about showing what you can do. So I worked so
hard during YC to build the app, to get as many
signups as I could, to try and get as much traction
as I could. Bear in mind, the company was very
early stage when we did that first funding round.
You know, I thought that the numbers would speak
for themselves. I thought the fact that I'd gone
from idea to an app with around a thousand users,
in three months was good and you know I was comparing
like to like with my peers at YC knowing these
are some of the best companies as well and I
thought you know what by like these metrics of
progress I am progressing probably faster than
a lot of them and so on the first sort of day
of the fundraise when demo day finished and I
was released into the this wild west of fundraising
I went in with such confidence I thought I'm
so proud of myself look at what I've achieved
in the last three months and it was not quite
the reception that I was anticipating. It was
a lot harder than I expected. And so, again,
I think that there were many, many reasons why
it was difficult. But to kind of give you the
headline stats, it took me 200 meetings to close
my round. 200 pitches. So this isn't even like
the non -meetings, this is just the pitches.
YC of course helped in many, many, many ways.
However, of all of the leads I had, none of the
investors that came into our round actually came
through YC. These are all people that had been
following my startup journey on LinkedIn, actually
me posting about what I was doing separately.
And so of course, like the YC branding helped
tremendously. It's what enabled me to start the
career at this stage of my company. So I'll always
be grateful for that. But it didn't quite prepare
me for the realities of fundraising and the dynamics
and the games and you know, the narrative side.
I think Again, I went into it very naive and
I thought, well, I know what my numbers are,
I know what the guys next to me numbers are,
so I should win this, right? And I didn't realise
how relationship driven, how network driven the
process was, and at this point I just had my
22nd birthday, it was during Covid, so all of
these meetings are happening over Zoom. I know
none of the people I'm pitching, this is my first
time meeting every single one of them, which
isn't a problem, but - Of course, when comparing
me, no matter how impressive I may seem or my
companies might be doing, if there's an equally
impressive founder, which there are many and
many more impressive with equally impressive
companies, but you've worked together for five
years, you've known each other for 10 years.
It's different, yeah. Investors are human beings
at the end of the day. They're susceptible to
the same human biases that I'm susceptible to.
I didn't quite think about this when I started
fundraising and so I think that there were a
lot of mechanisms working against me in the sense
of I had zero network. Really, really, I knew
nobody and it was just the YC badge that was
getting my foot in the door for the meetings.
The second thing is the company that I'm building
is in the beauty tech space, but unfortunately
not too dissimilar from what that very first
investor I'd ever interacted with had said. Unfortunately,
this does sometimes create the notion that my
company is me standing in a kitchen like mixing
lotions and potions together, which is absolutely
not what my company is. But as soon as you hear
the word beauty, most investors firstly are men,
which is another part of the problem that I'll
come to in a second. The eyes glaze over and
in the same way that, you know, if the first
thing that you talked to me about is football,
I'm instantly probably. Nummy. Nummy. I mean,
I watched the national team and that's the full
extent of it and that's it. The point is familiarity
bias. If it's not something you're familiar with
from a personal interest standpoint or even a
traditionally VC backed company, how many beauty
tech companies are there? There's not enough.
There's not that many VC backed examples that
investors can point to, which also makes the
whole selling the story. harder when it's a space
that many investors are unfamiliar with. Most
of the beauty companies that have done well or
beauty tech companies that have done well have
only received funding at the PE stages, much,
much later stage. There's a few examples that
have raised VC funding, but not enough that this
is common knowledge for your average investor.
And so, you know, I think there was that side
of things that was working against me. And many
other mistakes I made in my own strategy. I didn't
know the difference. It sounds so ridiculous.
I didn't know the difference in process between
an angel investor and a VC. I didn't even know
that VCs had investment committees and how decisions
were made. And so, you know, I would get emails
from all the top VC funds. I'd be massively flattered.
I'd take those as my first meetings. In hindsight,
I would have started with angels. I would have
built up, you know, got the small checks first.
And YC was kind of trying to give this advice.
And they'd say, you know, start with friends
and family. Just get like 10Ks, 20Ks. Then you
can go to your first VC meetings and say you've
already raised 50K. But I'm there sort of looking
like an idiot being like, but my friends are
at you. Like, who's going to give me 10k? Where
do I get that from? You know, that doesn't sound
like a very viable strategy. So, you know, again,
a lot of mistakes were made through my own naivety,
through my own not realizing how important the
storytelling side of things was. And it wasn't
just as simple as build a good product and people
will invest. I struggle to believe you're ever
bad at storytelling because unlike most podcasts,
I haven't actually asked them any questions.
You just keep going on so well, I'm like, you
know what? I can talk for days. Well, that's
what 200 pitches in like three weeks. You can
tell, yeah, a lot of rejection happened there,
but it's, you know, serve its purpose, I guess.
Exactly. I've had a lot of practice telling the
story. And, and, you know, I do look at it on
the flip side. In the end, I ended up getting
36 investors on my cap table. And that was a
mix of funds and angels. And in some ways, you
know, Again, all of these people I met for the
very first time and for them to have believed
in me and my story from that a 30 minute call
is amazing. And I'm so grateful for them and
from their support from day one. But what really
stood out to me at the end of my funding round
was, and again, I'd come in with this just purely
on the gender point, I want to address it. I'd
come in with this belief that it shouldn't matter.
Like whether I'm a woman man, I should be judged
on what I do. Fine. So I got to the end of my
round and just very randomly I thought it was
just me or most of my investors women and so
then I just added a gender column to my sort
of like CRM like investor tracker and it turned
out of all the meetings I did about 75 % were
with male investors which is roughly expected.
In terms of number of investors on my cap table
over 80 % are female and in terms of dollars
invested over 90 % of the dollars I've raised
were from female investors. meaning that my success
rate with female investors was orders of magnitude
higher than with male investors. If I'd have
known that insight at the start of my funding
round, I would have done things very, very differently,
but I didn't even think about that. I didn't
even think that would be a consideration. And
then slowly I started reflecting on my meetings
of, oh yeah, like there were all of these investors
that said no, because they said the market was
too small, which is also an absurd statement
because it's just not... but you know it was
in some ways a stupid question but you can't
say that to an investor you have to make them
feel valued and loved and appreciated and and
so you know i i would be up against this of like
yeah but do people actually buy these products
like self -care is the larger trend or makeup
and i'm like no actually by revenue skincare
is higher than makeup it's the most lucrative
of all the beauty segments and on its own it's
a 200 billion dollar industry so there's many
things that could go wrong with this business
the market being too small is not one of them
and i just reflect i said Oh yeah, none of the
women I pitched were even remotely concerned
about the market because it's an absurd thing
to be concerned about if you know the market.
So, you know, that there were these small interactions
and, you know, I think subtle, like subtleties.
Now, I think because I've just met so many people,
some people are foolish enough to say it and
say these things like, wait, you built the, like,
you know, I think sometimes that it wouldn't
even register that I was the person that sits
there writing the code and has done all this
that has got got the users it's not just a girl
with an idea for a skincare app um and so you
know i i think that there were all these small
things working against me and i was being perceived
in a way different from other peers who were
similar in similar positions there was another
young guy in my yc batch who had also dropped
out and the feedback he was getting was sort
of like oh you're this really like laid back
like cool genius dropout and It was like, which,
which degree was he on? I'm actually curious
on this one. Here's the thing. He wasn't even
a, sorry, like a university degree, high school
dropout. And he was a, like, and I guess he wrote
code. So he was a tech guy. School dropout. Okay.
He was a high school dropout, but he had been
a couple of years since he dropped out. Okay.
And the kind of vibe or the excitement was all
around. really smart guy. I never once had that
notion. The only responses I got to my dropping
out was, why would you do that? You're too inexperienced.
How will you get the experience to build the
product? I was like, number one, this is not
what was being said to my male counterpart. Exactly,
yeah. And secondly, you know, I have a technical,
like I am extremely qualified, you know, and
it's, and I'd never once been questioned on my
qualifications and my competence. So I was just
really shocked that that was even something that,
that I went through and it still happens today,
four years in, if I enter a room where somebody
knows my backstory and knows who I am, to again,
put it bluntly. versus not knowing who I am,
the treatment I receive is so astonishingly different.
And that's something that I'm really struggling
to grapple with in just what it means to be a
woman, a female founder, all of this, because
these just weren't things that I was thinking
about. And again, as a founder, you know, there's
actual business problems and a lot for you to
be thinking about. But, you know, last week I
was at an event, they were talking, I was in
this group, they were talking about finance.
Again, I've done banking internships. I've raised
a whole round of VC and, you know, the conversation
just paused. I was the only woman in the conversation
and the guy who's much older, maybe in his 50s
or 60s, he just turns to me, he's like, oh, I'm
sorry, sweetheart. Like if we're, if you're not
following the conversation. Yeah. And it's like,
it's, you know, and I'm not the kind of person
that likes to have to say actually, no, I, I've
done this, I've done that and feel like I have
to say my achievements and accolades to prove
that I can. keep up with a conversation about
interest rates. Like it's not in my personality
to do any of this, but it just makes me question
like, what is it about me that makes you think
that I'm not following? It's not about you, it's
about them and it's about their ability to see
the world in a different angle. People are very
biased as you know, they just see the world as
they see the world, right? And then they don't
even allow themselves to ask the right questions
or ask any question to question Is this the correct
way of seeing this problem or seeing this person?
Yeah, and to some people's bad luck, actually,
this has happened when hiring. I remember so
distinctly one of the interviews I did for a
software engineering role at my company. It was
with this guy. Needless to say, he didn't get
very far in the interview process. He comes in
and he says, oh, but I thought this was the technical
interview. And I said, yep, it is. Are you ready?
He's like, wait, but like, who's doing it? Well,
there's two people in this hall. You're the interviewee,
so I'm the interviewer. I'm sure he went really
far, didn't he? That was a good start. But he
went as far as to say, he was like, oh, sorry,
I just thought this was the HR, and he was dumb
enough to say that. And to his bad luck, and
to many people's bad luck, our CTO, who I hired
in a year after building the company, so I already
raised, and now he leads the tech side. He also,
he has the same exact degree as me from Imperial
in physics, but he's actually five years older
so we never crossed paths when we were at university.
And he's a white guy and no one has once entered
a room with him and asked him if he can code.
That's never, and it's like we have the same
technical qualification. So what am I supposed
to read from this shock and horror that I'm the
one who's built my app? Okay, yeah, that's um,
yeah, but but I don't know it shocks me that
people still don't realize that There's no difference
and they they should expect people to be of both
sexes To be able to do the same amount of things
that I mean, I don't get it for me It's always
shocking to assume that a woman cannot do the
same thing as a man and they cannot do things
a lot better than men in a lot of cases So why
why is this even still a problem like like wake
up? Yeah. I think it's tough, but again, it comes
down to pattern matching and sort of deep rooted
societal biases for the most part. I don't think
people or investors are any more racist or sexist
or ageist than your average member of society.
In fact, they're probably less. A lot of them
are more educated and stuff, but it's just the
broad scale pattern matching. If you've been
working for the last 50 years, like that man
who asked me if I understood interest rates,
you know, and if every company he's been in.
His entire department has been men and the only
women he's seeing are in HR. He's pattern matching,
right? And that is the reality of our world.
What I find to be more problematic is not acknowledging
that there is a difference in experience and
the numbers reflect it. It's well documented,
you know, the 2 % of VC funding goes to women.
Yeah, it's horrible. It's well documented. the
difference in how pictures go with the promotion
versus prevention questions with female founders
but interestingly even within the community of
female founders I think there can sometimes be
two approaches on how you address this issue
or even start to think about it and this can
actually be generalized to most problems in society
of does it help to call out a group for being
different and acknowledge that there is a difference
or Do we say that there's no problem and if I
can do it as a woman, anyone can do it? You know,
is it less helpful to point out the differences?
And so I've met many female founders actually
who have a very different opinion on this to
me and it's much more, well, I raised this much
money so it is possible. It's just that women,
and again, it pains me to say, I've been told
by other female founders, women aren't as ambitious.
How many women do you actually know want to build...
a billion dollar company, how many women do you
know are actually willing to quit their jobs,
do this, that, and the other? I know a lot like
that, actually. Yeah, I was like, hello, you're
talking to us. But you know, it kind of, I don't
even think that there is consensus on how to
best approach the problem because there is still
some people even willing to acknowledge that.
It's a problem was shocked me. I was really shook
to the core that not only it's not not like it's
a random person It's another woman who has gone
through this experience herself and come out
with a completely different learning and I'm
all for different opinions on on topics but especially
like now and I'm talking now with this whole
DEI thing going on and you know all the closet
xenophobics coming out it's it's actually very
very scary because there is such a difference
in how different groups in society experience
life and to say that, you know, it's, I mean,
basically, my takeaway from this is, it is objectively
harder to fundraise. It was objectively harder
for me to fundraise as a young, brown, 22 year
old than to do any other part of my business.
If anything, I thought the fact that I was young,
that I'm skin of colour, I'm a woman, I really
understand my target market. These have all been
superpowers in building my company. The one aspect
I feel it's been a hindrance was truly on fundraising
because it is so relationship dynamic driven.
And it is much more about this, you know, that
first story, all these biases that come into
play and investors, again, just being human beings,
pattern matching, making decisions and the unconscious
biases take over. You would assume that an investor
would probably have, let's assume more than half
of them are heterosexual. So they'd probably
be in a relationship with a female. If they have
kids, if they have two kids, the likelihood of
being 50 -50 is actually quite high. So they'll
probably have a son and a daughter. And then
it does make you wonder, do you think that your
daughter will be less able than your son? Because
ultimately it comes down to that, right? Because
if I'm a VC, I'm interviewing a a woman, I always
think she's someone's daughter, someone's girlfriend,
you know, wife. So why should I expect less of
her? I shouldn't, right? It's so true, but interesting,
you know, I do think there are some, what I would
call gray areas, and certainly not like on the
competency perspective, but there was an interaction
I had with a group of female founders again,
and it was with regards to a company where there
were two female founders. They had just closed
a big seed round and one of the founders had
just given birth, so had to take a maternity
leave from this point. The round has just closed,
one founder's gone for like basically a year
and their lead investor was not very happy about
this whole situation. So I was in this group
with these women and they were saying like, how,
like, this investor is so awful. Can you believe
how they've responded to this situation? It's
her right to have a baby, blah, blah, blah. But
Ward sort of took Mia back as someone who hasn't
yet started or especially at that point, you
know, really far from thinking about family and
kids. Part of me was also like, yeah, that would
a horrible VC. Like, of course she should be
able to have her child. But on the flip side
of it, I was like, well, if I had a co -founder,
like, I know how hard fundraising is. I know
how hard building a company is. We've just closed
around and then half the team disappears. That's
a hint. Like, that is a legitimate challenge
to a business and then you know I reconciled
with it a little bit I was like well you know
men also do take paternity leave like anything
could also happen to a male founder but but it
was just things like this that I think that was
one of the first points where I did have to think
that okay this is like a legitimate biological
difference for example and it is a fair question
to ask like so what's gonna happen if we just
made this investment in the company or even if
I'm the other co -founder How would I feel? Like,
what would I do in this situation? You know,
I think it is important to acknowledge that men
and women are not the same. We're not biologically.
Don't believe that. But it's just when it comes
to some of these broader biases and complexes
and beliefs that we have, that's where it needs
challenging. And again, where I really don't
think it is conscious. I don't think the dads,
the VC dads out there think that their son is
more capable. than their daughter. I think they'd
be horrified if their daughter was the one pitching
another man and having this experience. I think
pattern matching is the only is the best I can
do to come up to rationalize this. And I also
therefore think that the only solution is that
when an investor says you don't look like a physicist
is for me to snap back and say, well, tell me
what a physicist looks like. Well, that's easy,
right? White coat and crazy hair, right? I'm
thinking Einstein. Yeah. What I'm hoping is they
leave with a picture of me and say the next time
they see somebody like me, it's not such a shock
and horror that this person has a physics degree.
And so I think in a way just by persevering,
just by continuing on with your journey as a
founder, doing everything you can to see your
own company thrive and succeed is solving part
of the problem from the buyer's perspective of
the more investors see founders like me. Hopefully
the more it should help with those implicit biases.
And secondly, you know, going back to those stats
about the female investors, I think that women
in VC have their own challenges in terms of rising
up the ranks by being a successful founder myself.
The hope is that one day I can be on the other
side of the table and I have enough capital that
I can be the woman on the other side of the table,
be able to give back. So that's how I see it.
I don't think it's personal. but it has very
personal and very real implications on me as
a human and my company and the way that I have
to plan and the way that I have to carry myself
and the responses that I have to come up with
when I'm dealing with people in the open. But,
you know, it's all part of the journey. And for
all the challenges that have come with fundraising,
I do still have to say that this is my absolute
dream job. As I said, like I knew I wanted to
build a company The thing that I wanted to most
optimize for especially at this career stage
was learning and as we already spoke about I
couldn't have picked a better job to learn this
much about everything and I get to build the
company of my dreams at solving a problem so
close to my heart every day I talk to my users
I see the impact that we have on them on their
skin journeys and seeing how much better their
skin is through the app and even my own skin
journey through the app is all documented as
well and how much the product I have built has
helped me. is also the most rewarding feeling.
And so, you know, on those days where it'd be
bad pitch after bad pitch after bad pitch, I'd
always ask myself, like, would I rather be doing
anything else? And the answer was always no.
This is actually really funny. This is probably
the only podcast episode where I honestly don't
have any questions to ask you because you've
been literally answer all my questions. It's
just fascinating. I just want to give my opinion
on one thing, which is if you're a male VC listening
to this, stop being needed and just invest in
female founders because there are tons of them
out there, great ideas, and it shouldn't even
be a question. As for the having kids and, oh,
I need to take some time off to take care of
the kid, that's perfectly normal. That's how
we renew society. That's literally part of our
species is you need to have some babies. So I
don't see that as a problem ever. And I actually
think when... because obviously I'm a little
bit older, but when a woman has a kid, she actually
ends up doing a lot more things than a guy just
because she needs to take care of the child as
well. Obviously the guy also takes care of the
child, but just it's a lot more on our plate
and she always delivers. So how is this even
an issue today? It shouldn't be. But yeah, I
know that kind of pisses me off to be honest.
And I spoke with a couple of female founders
and knowing that they will suffer because of
that even today is like, no, that's a no go for
me. But yeah. But again, some of the biggest
allies I've had are male investors at the same
time and it's not all gloom and gloom. There
are so many amazing supportive men and amazing
women mentors as well that I have and I've been
lucky to come across. So, I'm still optimistic
about the future. I think it's getting better.
In the grand scheme of society, one could argue
that it's only recent that women have entered
the workplace, which is shocking. Since, like,
human civilisation, it's still a relatively modern
occurrence and so I think it will obviously take
time for things to level out. But as long as
there are people that are, you know, the first
step of any problem is acknowledging that there
is a problem, which hopefully we have done. That's
death. And so, you know, that's a step in the
right direction and hopefully we can continue
to address it and also, especially in this time
of such political... happening as far as concerned
with DEI. I think we just need to remain resilient
and kind of stick to morals and values. If people
want to reach out to you, what's the best way
of doing so? LinkedIn, email, maybe LinkedIn
DM is probably the most effective way. You can
just search my name, Ahana Banerjee. I'm the
founder of Clear. Thank you so much for your
time. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you,
Ricardo. I really enjoyed the conversation. Notion
is offering six months for free for new users.
Make sure you check out our website, the startupevents
.co .uk to read them this offer. This podcast
is also sponsored by startupnetworks .co .uk.
Startup Networks, it's an online forum where
you can find all the resources you need to run
your startup, from grants to investors to tips
and tricks on how to be successful in your startup.
This podcast is also sponsored by Odev Tech.
Odev Tech is your premier software development
partner. Make sure you check them out at odev
.tech.