Anu Duggal Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. I'm the founder and editor of Cherry Bombe Magazine.
Today's guest is Anu Duggal. Anu is the founding partner of Female Founders Fund. She is all about helping female entrepreneurs and female-led companies get the funding they need and deserve, despite all the obstacles around raising money. I got to see Anu in action recently at the Female Founders Fund CEO Summit held at the New York Stock Exchange in February. It was a very inspiring day, and Anu clearly loves women and creating community, two things we hold dear here at Cherry Bombe. Anu is a finance whiz, and I get some advice from her for those of you building your companies. Anu is also a major foodie, so we talk about her journey through La Varenne Culinary School, cooking in the south of France, opening India's very first wine bar, and more. Anu is a fascinating human, so stay tuned.
Today's episode is supported by Pernod Ricard, the creators of Conviviality. Pernod Ricard is a worldwide leader in the spirits and wine industry and embraces the spirit of conviviality, as we all should, and is focused firmly on a sustainable and responsible future. Their prestigious portfolio of brands includes classic names beloved by bartenders and mixologists around the world, from Jameson Irish whiskey to Perrier-Jouet Champagne, just to name a few. We're so thrilled that Pernod Ricard is partnering with us to celebrate Lidey Heuck and her debut cookbook, “Cooking in Real Life.” The party for Lidey is taking place on March 12th in New York City. Tickets are on sale right now at cherrybombe.com, if you'd like to join us. Of course, there will be lots to eat and drink. We'll be making three cocktails from Lidey's book, spicy paloma punch with Codigo 1530 Tequila, beach water with Absolut Vodka and a rosemary, and grapefruit martini with Malfy Gin. If you can't join us and you'd like to make the cocktails yourself, you can find the recipes in Lidey's book. To learn more about Pernod Ricard, head to pernod-ricard.com. The link is in our show notes. And don't forget, always drink responsibly.
This episode of Radio Cherry Bombe is also supported by OpenTable. We are excited to announce that OpenTable is partnering with Cherry Bombe's Sit With Us Community Dinner Series, which highlights amazing female chefs and restaurateurs in the Cherry Bombe and OpenTable Networks. Tickets for our next two dinners are on sale right now. We'll be at Chef Eileen Andrade's restaurant, Amelia's 1931, in Miami on March 7th, and Ellen Yin's Fork in Philadelphia on March 13th. Stay tuned for details about our dinner in Washington DC. How does it work? You can come solo and sit at a Cherry Bombe community table or bring a friend or two, and we will seat you together. Tickets are available exclusively on OpenTable. Just search for the restaurant on the OpenTable app or opentable.com, and go to the Experiences tab to purchase a ticket, which includes a welcome drink and a three-course or family-style meal. A portion of the proceeds from each dinner will benefit a local charity. Learn more about the OpenTable and Cherry Bombe Sit With Us Series at cherrybombe.com.
Now let's check in with today's guest. Anu Duggal, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Anu Duggal:
Thank you. So excited to be here.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm amazed to see you because you just completed your CEO Summit last week, and I would imagine that was a year in the works.
Anu Duggal:
Yeah, yeah, it definitely was. It was a weekend of just really relaxing and recovering.
Kerry Diamond:
Good. How are you feeling overall?
Anu Duggal:
Good. I think the feedback was great. The audience, some of whom have been coming now for years, it very much felt like a reunion and always great to have new people who provide different perspectives. So overall, very happy.
Kerry Diamond:
I was one of your newbies this year, so thank you for including me.
Anu Duggal:
Yes. Yeah, of course.
Kerry Diamond:
Bumped into a lot of old friends in food, fashion, other areas, and like I said to you, I wrote down so many notes and learned so much. It was very thought provoking, also.
Anu Duggal:
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Kerry Diamond:
Yes. Can't thank you enough. I want to start with your story because folks who read about you and the Female Founders Fund today might not realize you have such a cool food background. So let's start with college. What did you study in college?
Anu Duggal:
I graduated from high school in Tokyo and went to Vassar and studied political science and French, so international affairs basically.
Kerry Diamond:
Why did you choose those two things?
Anu Duggal:
I was seriously interested in being in the CIA for a certain period of years, and it felt-
Kerry Diamond:
For all we know, you could be in the CIA, right?
Anu Duggal:
It felt like two subjects that I was very passionate about. I spent a year in France, and so wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do with those two majors, but two areas that I was really ... I love history and was very much a Francophile.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. But you have to go back a little. CIA, there are other things you can do if you're a Francophile. Why the CIA specifically?
Anu Duggal:
I just have always been fascinated by the spy world. Growing up in 12 cities and spending time abroad, I just had a different lens on the way the world works. The CIA felt like an interesting opportunity to take advantage of that perspective.
Kerry Diamond:
I think you're the first person we've had on the show who wanted to be a spy. I'm sure another Francophile who may or may not have been a spy. Julia Child.
Anu Duggal:
Yes, I know. OSS, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
... was part of the OSS, the precursor to the CIA.
Anu Duggal:
Yes, absolutely.
Kerry Diamond:
So people like to say Julia might have been a spy, but I think they've debunked that over the years and she was more administrative.
Anu Duggal:
Right. Right. So they say.
Kerry Diamond:
Again, who knows? Who knows. You had had a very international childhood.
Anu Duggal:
Yes. I grew up in a number of different cities, Manila, Hong Kong, Tokyo. Spent a little bit of time in New York as a child. Living in New York as a city was very much my first experience and had always been very passionate about the food world. When I first moved to the city, I was thinking about writing a cookbook around Indian French cuisine and decided to try to get an internship basically at Tabla, which was my favorite restaurant. I approached the chef there. I used to work a few nights a week and on the weekend.
Kerry Diamond:
When you say chef, you approached Floyd Cardoz?
Anu Duggal:
Floyd, yeah. Chef Cardoz, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Floyd who tragically passed away during the pandemic.
Anu Duggal:
Yeah, so sad.
Kerry Diamond:
So many people in the food world love Floyd. But that was Floyd's restaurant, and it was part of Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group.
Anu Duggal:
Yes, and so spent about a year doing that and hadn't really decided what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, the week that I started working at McKinsey, it was September 11th, and so-
Kerry Diamond:
The week?
Anu Duggal:
The week, yeah. They decided to relocate me to Waltham, Massachusetts where I definitely was not going. But I wanted to pursue my interest in food. Wrote to La Varenne, the French culinary school based in Burgundy, started by Anne Willan, very much inspired by a book I read by Amanda Hesser, who at that point was really someone who was just incredibly inspiring to me and now has become a friend, which just shows you how life comes full circle.
Kerry Diamond:
A lot of you know Amanda Hesser because she's the co-founder of Food52.
Anu Duggal:
And was a New York Times food writer. So applied to work there as a stage and got accepted. So took about a six month sabbatical, traveled in Southeast Asia for three months by myself, backpacking, and then found myself in Burgundy in a small town called Joigny and spent about two months there and then another two months working at a restaurant in Lourmarin, which is in the south of France.
Kerry Diamond:
You worked for one of the most recognized female chefs at the time in France?
Anu Duggal:
Yes. Her name is Reine Sammut, and the name of the restaurant is Auberge La Feniere.
Kerry Diamond:
It was just coincidental that you were placed with a female chef?
Anu Duggal:
Yes. Yes. So crazy.
Kerry Diamond:
Because as we've discussed, it is still quite the patriarchy in French culinary circles. What do you remember about working there?
Anu Duggal:
I mean it was incredible. That whole experience working in France was just so eye-opening in terms of the level of appreciation for the simplicity of really great ingredients, technique. A lot of our work at the cooking school was focused on how do you make a consomme, things like that. What's amazing about the French cuisine, I should say, is really how the technique takes very basic ingredients and elevates them in a way that I haven't really seen necessarily other cuisines do as well.
So I just developed a really deep appreciation for really great produce, for eating with the seasons, for really using this basic French technique to take ingredients and create so many magical dishes. Working with Anne, especially, I think it was her 33rd cookbook or something along those lines that we were working on, it was just such an incredible few months.
And then the experience working at Auberge was also very intense. It was one of the hottest summers in Europe, and they are intense in their kitchens there and only spoke in French. Needless to say, my grasp on the French language improved significantly. But overall, it was one of the best six months of my life.
Kerry Diamond:
So, Anu, what was going through your head? Because from McKinsey to a restaurant in the south of France, two very, very different things. Were you hoping to pursue something in the food world?
Anu Duggal:
Yes. Yeah. I knew at heart always that I was an entrepreneur. I did the lemonade stands. I was always looking for opportunities to create business. I think where I was trying to gauge opportunity for me was how do I marry this interest in business with this passion for food? So this experience in France, I think, gave me a huge appreciation again for the whole industry. My next step was figuring out how do I take this and see where there's a place for me?
Kerry Diamond:
Where did you take it?
Anu Duggal:
So I came back to New York and actually ended up working at Zagat, which was also a great experience. I spent about a year and a half there. Ended up actually working directly for Tim, everyone knows as a legend in the food world. Learned a lot from him.
Kerry Diamond:
Tim Zagat. There might be some listeners who don't know what Zagat is. I hate to even say that. But I remember working at a bookstore in Soho, and when the Zagat book would come out, it was a huge moment for restaurants.
Anu Duggal:
OG of user-generated content forever.
Kerry Diamond:
This is right. When you were working for them, did they have a website at that point or was it still the red book?
Anu Duggal:
They had a website. They had a website.
Kerry Diamond:
So Zagat was this book that would come out once a year and people who were really diehard foodies and restaurant lovers would, I don't want to say live and die, but would kind of live and die by this book. Restaurants would compete to get the highest rankings. They were, like you said, user-generated. People would fill out, I guess, paper forms back then. But by the time you joined the company, what was happening there?
Anu Duggal:
There was definitely a website.
Kerry Diamond:
Had they been acquired?
Anu Duggal:
No, they had not been acquired. They were acquired after I left. But yeah, so I spent a year and a half there and applied to go to business school, again, just trying to figure out how to marry this passion for food with business, and ended up getting accepted and deferring business school because of an opportunity that I was pursuing to open India's first wine bar.
That really came about as a result of the fact that my parents had been living in India for a few years at that point. I had never spent significant amounts of time because they moved there after college. I would go back every winter, and one of the observations that I had was that there were a lot of wine drinkers, but nobody really had been educated on wine. There wasn't really any elevated wine experience in terms of buying or learning.
I approached the owner of one of India's largest vineyards, Sula, Rajeev Salmant is the owner, and I said, "I'd love to open India's first wine bar with you," and had no idea what I was doing. Moved to Bombay. Had never been there. Really knew nothing about wine at that point. Learned a lot of hard lessons. But yeah, it was an incredible, incredible experience. I was there for about a year and a half.
It was so funny. I was saying earlier, I was in Bombay in December. Almost 20 years now, I went back, and it's still there.
Kerry Diamond:
Congratulations. That must feel good.
Anu Duggal:
Yes. I'm really proud to see that legacy still there. But spent about a year and a half there and then went to business school in London.
Kerry Diamond:
We're seeing that you obviously have a skill for finding white spaces. But to have gone all the way to Bombay, a city you've never been in, to do a business that you didn't even know would be well-received or not-
Anu Duggal:
Nuts. Nuts.
Kerry Diamond:
I mean that's incredible.
Anu Duggal:
Nuts. In hindsight, nuts.
Kerry Diamond:
You, no doubt, learned a lot. What happens next?
Anu Duggal:
So graduated in 2008, which was not great timing. I had an offer to work at Starwood, which unfortunately was rescinded. And so-
Kerry Diamond:
Starwood, at the time, was a hotel company, right?
Anu Duggal:
Yeah. The hotel company, W Hotels, et cetera. It was quite a few months, actually, you may recall it was a really tough period of time, especially if you were a new graduate from business school. Many of my peers had been hired by Lehman Brothers, which collapsed during that period. So ended up getting approached by someone who I knew in New York who's an entrepreneur, wanted to start what he described as the Gilt for India.
At that point in time, I was living in India. I was fairly well-connected, and so I said, "Let me do some work on this for you."
Kerry Diamond:
Tell folks what Gilt ... Does Gilt still exist?
Anu Duggal:
Yes. They were acquired but still exist in their website and everything. Gilt, think of it as private sale. It's a website where every day they release new collections of designer clothing that is discounted for a specific period of time.
Kerry Diamond:
I remember when it launched in America. It was such a big deal.
Anu Duggal:
Huge. It was huge.
Kerry Diamond:
Didn't they hire Ruth Reichl to handle-
Anu Duggal:
The food.
Kerry Diamond:
... food things for them?
Anu Duggal:
Yes, yes. I remember that. I was so excited to see that. He and I started working together. He ended up moving to India. We built a team along with two other co-founders. Ended up being about 150 people. We raised about $20 million in funding. It was incredible, the ups and downs of tech entrepreneurship multiplied by the fact that in a developing country you have issues like the water is not working one day or the electricity is off or there's a bribe being asked to get your website back up and running.
It was really, really intense. About three years after we launched, we got acquired by a larger e-commerce player. I ended up moving back to New York.
Kerry Diamond:
What happened then?
Anu Duggal:
At that point was figuring out what I wanted to do. I had done a little bit of angel investing. What that means is writing small checks into entrepreneurs. I was meeting a lot of female entrepreneurs at that point and was thinking about the fact that a lot of them were facing a similar challenge, which is getting access to that first round of capital. These are the days of, again, Gilt, Rent the Runway, Birchbox, Food52, all of these what I thought were really interesting, consumer-facing companies were being started by women.
I felt like there was a white space in the sense that, for a lot of these women when you think about that first round of capital, you're often faced with a very similar demographic of male VCs who haven't had a lot of interaction or seen many role models of success that look like these women do. Decided to start a fund. Had no idea how hard it was, but the idea was to invest in companies started by women.
Kerry Diamond:
Was that your personal experience when you were fundraising?
Anu Duggal:
Yeah. I mean I was lucky to have a male co-founder, which helped. But there was definitely, I think, a lot of takeaways for me in the sense that almost every single investor we talked to was male, and that was such a sharp contrast to our employee base, our management team, our customer base, and it didn't really make sense. And then when I looked into the numbers, that's when it became clear that it was really indicative of a larger issue at hand, which was less than 2% of venture dollars going towards companies started by women.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll be right back with today's guest. You all know this, but March is Women's History Month, and of course, Cherry Bombe is celebrating. I want to give a special thank you to Walmart for supporting Radio Cherry Bombe throughout Women's History Month and for Walmart's commitment to empowering women all year long. Walmart is a big supporter of female entrepreneurs and carries an incredible range of female-founded and fueled brands, brands like Afro Unicorn, I love that name, the clothing and accessories company, founded by April Showers, Bloom Nutrition Supplements, created by Mari Llewellyn, and Siete Family Foods, the Mexican American food brand by Veronica Garza, and as the name says, her family. Check out these brands and more of our female-fueled favorites over at walmart.com/celebrateher. If you didn't write that down, you can find the link in our show notes.
For this episode, we're spotlighting Edna Lewis, the trailblazing farm-to-table pioneer and one of the most important American chefs. Edna was born in Virginia in 1916 and grew up in Freetown, the community founded by formerly enslaved individuals, including Edna's grandfather. Her landmark book, “The Taste of Country Cooking,” was published in 1976 and championed a way of life that included eating seasonally and sourcing locally. Edna's editor was none other than Judith Jones, who also worked on books by culinary icons, Julia Child, Madhur Jaffrey, and Marcella Hazan. Edna spent part of her life in New York City and cooked in restaurants such as Gage and Tollner in Brooklyn, where you can still find her she-crab soup on the menu. Edna passed away in 2006, but she continues to inspire modern chefs around the world with her recipes and her contributions to American foodways.
The idea for Female Founders Fund comes about. You did this at a time when there weren't a lot of people talking about this. I feel like today you've got several funds that are set up for them, which is great.
Anu Duggal:
Many.
Kerry Diamond:
Many set up for this purpose. Everyone can tell from your story. You are not afraid of a bold idea.
Anu Duggal:
No idea what I was doing.
Kerry Diamond:
What made you think this could work?
Anu Duggal:
I didn't really think about it that way. To me, it just felt like here's an opportunity. And again, I really had no idea. Didn't come from a financial services background. But I just saw it very clearly that this is the way the world is moving, and there's an opportunity to build something that is at the center of that. That first fund was $5.85 million. I had over 700 meetings to raise that fund with 75 investors, which in the world of venture capital is a lot of investors.
Kerry Diamond:
Wait, I'm doing the math. So 700 meetings you wound up with 75 investors.
Anu Duggal:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
That's a lot of meetings.
Anu Duggal:
It was a lot of meetings. It was a lot of meetings. Everyone I met, most people passed, but I always asked them for one more introduction. So that's how I-
Kerry Diamond:
Does that work?
Anu Duggal:
Yeah. I mean not everyone did it, but it wasn't a huge ask. I think that ended up being how I slowly built up that base.
Kerry Diamond:
When did you name it Female Founders Fund?
Anu Duggal:
Right in the beginning.
Kerry Diamond:
In the beginning, okay. I just want to go back to you again for a minute. Where does this fearlessness come from and this willingness to pursue an idea that you think is a good idea?
Anu Duggal:
If I look at my parents, I think my dad, he worked in finance for 30 years, but he's always had outside interests and things that he's pursued that he's passionate about in the philanthropic world. He actually started an organization in India to get more women on corporate boards, so they took that number from 10 to 200, which is super exciting.
So yeah, I think that drive and that persistence I definitely get from him. But the risk tolerance, I'm not really sure where that comes from. You have to be a little nuts, I think.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. So you name it Female Founders Fund. Were you worried about any resistance to that name?
Anu Duggal:
No.
Kerry Diamond:
You were like, "We're going to be super clear about what we are."
Anu Duggal:
Yeah. Exactly what we do.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. You raise, what did you say? 5.-
Anu Duggal:
5.85 million.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. For the first fund?
Anu Duggal:
Fund, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Got it. You are now on fund three, right?
Anu Duggal:
Fund three, yes. We're investing out of fund three, which is a $57 million fund, and we have currently $100 million dollars of assets under management.
Kerry Diamond:
Amazing. How did you start to build your team internally?
Anu Duggal:
It's interesting. In the early days of the fund world, I realized very quickly that most venture capital funds, they may have a lot of money, but what they don't invest in a lot of is marketing and brand building. I realized I can never compete with them on how much ... your billion dollar fund versus 5.85 million. But where I can compete is really on building a brand and ecosystem.
So the first hire on our team was a head of community, and the reason for that was we ended up doing a lot of events in the ecosystem. We would invite these billion-dollar funds to be our partners. The reason I mentioned that is because we would send out these invites, and they had a hard time saying no, quite frankly, because of what we stood for. We would send out these invites ,and our brand would be listed in the same invitation.
Automatically, people just assumed that we were much larger and more significant than we were. So I think that ended up really propelling people's knowledge of the fund in the early days because so few people, again, were doing community events and also were brand building. For me, it was very clear it was not just about investing. It was about building an ecosystem so that not only were we supporting the broader female founder community, but ultimately, it has ended up being where some of our best deals have come from.
Founders who've attended have talked to other founders. They've met investors that have led their follow-on rounds. That ecosystem and community has been, I think, integral to where we are today.
Kerry Diamond:
You knew in the very beginning you needed to build a community?
Anu Duggal:
Yes. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
What were some of the first brands you invested in?
Anu Duggal:
A few that you may know, one of our first exits is a company called Eloquii, so that's fast fashion for the plus-size market. They were acquired by Walmart. The second is BentoBox, actually very much going back to my interest in the food world. BentoBox is a software solution for the restaurant industry. When we invested, they had 100 restaurants using the platform, and they were acquired in 2021 when they had 18,000. Crystal there has built an incredible business.
Kerry Diamond:
Crystal was on the podcast a few years ago. Is she still involved with the brand?
Anu Duggal:
Oh, yeah. She's still CEO.
Kerry Diamond:
She is? Amazing.
Anu Duggal:
Yeah, yeah. She's working at Fiserv, which acquired them. Maven, which is the leading women's and family care platform that's selling into large employers. We were small investors in Rent the Runway. So those are a few.
Kerry Diamond:
Incredible. What were you looking for in the beginning?
Anu Duggal:
When you're investing at seed, you're often investing in just a person. You may have some early proof points, but ultimately, it comes down to your conviction in this individual or their team really thinking about why they are uniquely positioned to be successful. So what is their track record of success, how they dealt with adversity in the past? Who have they assembled even as advisors or early team members to really be part of their journey?
It's interesting. One of the things when people ask me, "What do you look for in a founder?" I always say the ability to sell. The reason I say that is because when you think about the role of a founder or CEO, I mean you know this, you're selling all day long. You're selling to potential employees, to potential investors. You're selling your product to customers. So if you can't really succinctly describe why what you're building is really compelling, then it's a really tough journey ahead. That ability to sell, I think, cannot be undervalued.
Kerry Diamond:
We're going to talk about a few terms. Our listeners are coming at this from all different levels of experience, so I don't want to assume that everybody knows every single term that we're going to be using. But I just wanted to read something from your website. You have, "Today, Female Founders Fund is the leading source of institutional capital for female founders raising seed capital with over three billion in enterprise value." Seed capital, you just mentioned that. What is seed capital?
Anu Duggal:
When you think about the stages of funding for a company, there are a few stages. There's friends and family, which is typically the smallest round. It could be 500 to a million. By friends and family, I mean people who may know you, who've worked with you, your extended network that are putting capital into your business. It's typically before you launch, really to help you get to a proof of concept.
The next stage is pre-seed or seed. Some people go directly to seed. Some people do a pre-seed round. Not much difference between the two. That is what can be considered your first institutional round of capital, and so that comes, in many cases, from funds. Those funds could be Female Founders Fund. I mean there's a whole plethora of seed and pre-seed funds. But that tends to be the point at which it could be two million, three million.
And then if things go well, you then graduate to the series A round, which can be anywhere from five to 15 million these days.
Kerry Diamond:
Enterprise value, what is that?
Anu Duggal:
Enterprise value is basically the combined value of the companies we've invested in. It looks at companies like TALA, Zola, and basically takes all their valuations and adds up.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you fund ideas?
Anu Duggal:
We do.
Kerry Diamond:
You do? Okay. So it doesn't have to be a fully built-out company brought to you?
Anu Duggal:
Yeah. I'll tell you a really fun one that we haven't announced yet is a company that is a luxury vintage-inspired EV, so think like 1930s, 1940s silhouette, similar to Rolls-Royce price point, but very, I would say, feminine, so tailored to a demographic that appreciates that style. It's very exciting.
Kerry Diamond:
So very cool electric vehicles?
Anu Duggal:
Yes. But very much investing in the team.
Kerry Diamond:
Female Founders Fund turns 10 this year. Congratulations. A lot of companies turning 10. We just turned 10. Vanessa from Goldbelly, who I met, thanks to you, Goldbelly is turning 10. What has changed for you and Female Founders Fund over the past decade?
Anu Duggal:
Number one, fund size. When we started out, we were writing smaller checks, 100K, We're now writing million-dollar checks, so substantial increase. We are leading rounds, so that means we are in a position to be able to give a term sheet to a founder.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell folks what a term sheet is.
Anu Duggal:
A term sheet is basically a legal document which defines a number of different terms, but most importantly I think, defines the value of your company. When I started the fund, we would invest alongside someone else's term sheet, but we're now in a position to be able to lead term sheets. The thing that I'm the most proud of probably is that we made a very bold statement when I started the fund, which was that you can generate top-tier returns by investing in women. No one has ever done that before.
Now reflecting back, we still have a long way to go, but the fact that we've had Eloquii acquired by Walmart, BentoBox acquired by Fiserv, Billie acquired by Edgewell, it's incredible to see that you can have a portfolio of companies that are 100% female-founded and actually deliver returns. I think that's probably the thing that I'm most proud of is that we're getting closer and closer to really the thesis that we put out there, making it happen.
Kerry Diamond:
Anu, you know what we didn't talk about? You don't invest in everything. You have some specific guidelines. Can you tell folks what those are?
Anu Duggal:
We typically at the start of every year map out industries or verticals that we feel have potential or where we think are just generally under invested in. In 2024, a few of those industries include digital health. Maven was a great early investment for us, and we've continued to invest behind not just women's health, but broadly speaking, digital health. The second would be climate. So I mentioned this EV investment we made. We think climate touches so many different important parts of people's lives. We invested in Compound, which is an alternative to coffee beans.
Kerry Diamond:
An alternative to coffee?
Anu Duggal:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Is there even such a thing? What is the alternative?
Anu Duggal:
You'll have to try it.
Kerry Diamond:
I will have to try it.
Anu Duggal:
It's a lab-produced alternative.
Kerry Diamond:
Huh? Yeah. Okay.
Anu Duggal:
Compound. We're also investing in vertical SaaS solutions, so that BentoBox is a software solution that falls into that category. And then beauty and personal care is the other category. We invested in Billie, which is the razor for women.
Kerry Diamond:
You talked about what has changed. What hasn't changed?
Anu Duggal:
What hasn't changed, I think, is there's still a huge need for additional capital going towards women. I think that while there's been progress, and you look at 2021 in particular that year, I think there were 10 IPOs that were led by female founders and CEOs. In the history of the stock exchange there had only been the 30. Things like that are reflective of the fact that we're moving in the right direction, but I think we have a long way to go.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about the 2% that came up earlier because that stat gets thrown around a lot. If I have it correct, it's 2% of all venture capital funds went to women-led companies.
Anu Duggal:
Correct.
Kerry Diamond:
I feel like the number has gone down over the past few years.
Anu Duggal:
It hovers around the same range. It may have gone down just because we're in the worst period in terms of funding generally in the last probably 25 years.
Kerry Diamond:
So why should that hit women even worse?
Anu Duggal:
I think it's probably hit them in a similar way. It doesn't feel like they've been hit worse. In fact, I think in some ways they've managed their businesses better than a lot of male founders who've just been spending and spending and spending.
Kerry Diamond:
But they're not being rewarded by the venture capital community?
Anu Duggal:
No. It's there's a funding freeze. No one's investing, unfortunately.
Kerry Diamond:
Explain what that means, that there's a funding freeze.
Anu Duggal:
It basically means that when you think about the last couple years, so 2020, 2021, we've kind of reached a peak where companies were raising extraordinary amounts of capital at very high valuations. All of a sudden, there was a shift in interest rates. War in Ukraine happened. The IPO market closed, which effectively means that there were no exits for a lot of investors.
As a result of that, they're looking at their portfolios, and they're thinking, all these companies are now overvalued. We need to see how these exits play out before we continue investing in more companies or we need to see these valuations come down. So I think there's a lot of waiting and watching unless you're in the AI space. That's the exception.
Kerry Diamond:
There's money for that.
Anu Duggal:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. I haven't noticed many women in that space. Am I not looking hard enough?
Anu Duggal:
There's actually more.
Kerry Diamond:
Am I listening to the wrong podcasts? What's going on?
Anu Duggal:
Yeah. I mean there's actually more than I anticipated, but I think that we're so early in the AI innings that it's hard to predict how things are going to pan out. I think there's actually been too much money put in, and there's not enough companies or talent to absorb that. It does feel a little bit like crypto where there was a huge rush to fund anyone who had some affiliation within that sector, and there's obviously been a huge correction in that space as well.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. I probably spent too much time thinking about AI because of its impact on media and how it will continue to impact media and trying to figure out ... You and I talked about NFTs earlier. There was so much pressure on us to do NFTs, and I was like, "Really? Does Cherry Bombe need to do an NFT?" And then the Metaverse and now AI. So you're left wondering what is hype versus what is something that really will impact my business for better or worse?
Anu Duggal:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Kerry Diamond:
Has Female Founders Fund invested in any AI business yet?
Anu Duggal:
We have invested in Amine. It is a platform focused on the African subcontinent and helping large agricultural players to get better access to weather data.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that's so funny. I read about them a few years ago. I think I tried to get the founder on the podcast, but she wasn't in New York that often. She was a very busy human being.
Anu Duggal:
She actually is. It's funny, I read about her in the Time 100 AI list and reached out to her, and that's how we ended up investing.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Well, you're going to have to put in a good word for us-
Anu Duggal:
Yes, of course.
Kerry Diamond:
... because I was very intrigued by what she's doing. All right. So the 2% we talked about. How do we improve that stat?
Anu Duggal:
Ultimately, the most effective way to improve that stat is thinking about what incentivizes this industry, and that's really returns and exits. I think the more examples we have of companies that are acquired or go public, the more attention will be paid to the fact that you're really missing out on returns by not taking these founders and these companies seriously.
Kerry Diamond:
Because it was my first CEO summit, I really didn't go into it with any expectations except that I would meet some amazing people and learn a lot. So much of the conversation was about investors, not onstage necessarily, but when people were talking, it was about investors. We had just finished our Wefunder and A) I was shocked how many people even knew about it. I didn't realize how obsessed the founder community is with raising money.
A lot of people told us how lucky we were because of what you talked about with the funding freeze. And then they talked about just how investing consumes them so much that they feel like they're always raising. They're always talking to their investors. It seems like it's a lot of pressure.
Anu Duggal:
It is. It is.
Kerry Diamond:
I do feel like you're a bit of a founder whisperer.
Anu Duggal:
Yeah. I mean I view myself as a founder. Ultimately, the three responsibilities of a CEO, so number one, to set the vision and to make sure your team is on board with that. Number two is hiring. I think number three is making sure you have cash in the bank, and that's not a one-time thing. It's a part of your role that has to extend beyond just a moment in time where you're raising a series A or a series B. It's investor relations.
So you have to be communicating. I have to do this as well with my investors. But you have to feel like the people who've backed you have adequate information, that they're not surprised, that they feel incentivized to want to continue backing you ultimately is the goal.
Kerry Diamond:
What is your advice for people who do want to raise today despite the funding freeze?
Anu Duggal:
Yeah. I mean I think a great example of success, your Wefunder, I think that's a wonderful option to explore. I think it really depends on what stage someone is at. I think if you have a product in market or if you have traction, it's definitely worthwhile to explore conversations with angel investors and funds. It's often said that the best companies come out of a downturn, which is what we're in. Airbnb, Uber, et cetera, all came out of the 2008 downturn.
So I think seed investors know that. I think what they're looking for is just these valuations to drop a little bit. But the example I mentioned is a great founder, second-time founder. She's had an exit before. So I think there's still appetite for seed-stage investing in particular.
Kerry Diamond:
Now, what if you have an idea but no company?
Anu Duggal:
Then I think you have to think through what your options are in the sense that do you have an extended base of people you've worked with or friends that can provide you with a little bit of capital to get going? I think that you can also look for a co-founder and see if what they bring to the table, complements what you do and extend your network with that individual.
Kerry Diamond:
I've talked to you about this before. But one of the things I loved learning, but was kind of disturbed by it, was I was listening to a podcast. You could tell I learn everything I know from podcasts these days. There was a venture capitalist being interviewed, and he said, "Men bring me ideas. Women bring me fully built-out companies." Why is that, Anu?
Anu Duggal:
Absolutely. It's interesting. The way I describe it is you have the same idea and a guy will come in and just say, "This is going to be a billion-dollar business," and there's nothing to back it up. The woman will come in. She has a business plan and all the things that can go wrong. Ultimately, I want to invest in vision, and I want to invest in someone who's incredibly excited, again, just has a vision to build something big.
Often, what I will tell our founders as they're going out for their next fundraise is there are two different ways of building your business. You have your internal approach and strategy and then your external approach. Your external approach is really linked to success in raising capital and what investors, like myself and others, looking for. They're looking for someone who sees a path to a billion-dollar outcome.
They don't want necessarily, particularly at the seed stage, all the details. They want to feel like you are incredibly passionate about this, that you see a huge opportunity, and they would be a fool to pass on it. That's really how we try to frame it because how you run your business is your business, ultimately. You can do all the things that you should be doing as a CEO, but I think when you're trying to successfully raise money, you have to think about your audience and what do they want to hear.
Kerry Diamond:
I was so shocked. I don't know if you want to comment on this at all. But I was so shocked when I read that Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, had raised another $350 million for his next idea from Andreessen Horowitz, and I think it was the single largest check they had ever written.
Anu Duggal:
Not surprised.
Kerry Diamond:
I was like, "How? How does this guy keep doing it?"
Anu Duggal:
Not surprised.
Kerry Diamond:
You have to be a good salesperson.
Anu Duggal:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
That's what you're telling us.
Anu Duggal:
It goes back to what I said, sales.
Kerry Diamond:
Sales. Speaking of the CEO summit, I took so many notes. But one of the things that I really took away was wage gap versus wealth gap, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, we've spent so much time focused on the wage gap. We should have been talking about these two things at the same time." What does wage gap versus wealth gap mean?
Anu Duggal:
Wage gap is how you're compensated, so how a male and female are compensated in the same role. We had Ali Krieger talk about the work she's done within women's soccer in addressing that. I mean it was just so incredible to hear her story and I think inspiring when you think about moments in time of success. I think that question was asked, and for me, it gave me chills.
The wealth gap is really how you think your personal wealth and your personal finances. For a long period of time, women were not really encouraged to think about where they were accumulating wealth. Sallie Krawcheck has done a great job with Ellevest in helping educate women and providing options in a way that no one's really done before. But ultimately, how much money you earn from your job is one component of it. But how you choose to allocate that, whether you want to explore real estate investing or the stock market or angel investing, there just hasn't been a lot of education or emphasis.
When women get together, they don't talk about deals necessarily. I mean some of my friends and I do. But generally speaking, you're not talking about ... I have one friend who does real estate in Florida on the side. She takes homes and she flips them. It's so rare to meet and have those types of conversations. But ultimately, that accumulation of wealth is not going to come from just your wages. It's going to come from being very intentional about where and how you're investing your resources.
Kerry Diamond:
Anu, you know what I realized? One thing we don't talk about is why it's so important to support women. We just take for granted that everyone knows why it is. But in the broader scheme of things that we're talking about, why is that important? Why should we be upset by the 98 versus the 2%? Why should we be bothered by the wealth gap?
Anu Duggal:
I mean I think ultimately economic power is important. Financial power is important, particularly when it comes to equality and ensuring that women are respected in the same way as men, I believe so. The reason why it's important is because you really want and need to see different role models of success, otherwise it's hard to imagine that things are possible.
Yes, it's important that we move the number on the percentage of money that goes to women. But I think, in my head, it's almost equally important that we are creating role models because those numbers will shift in time and hopefully get better, but if you don't see people who have achieved what you want to achieve, I think it's very hard to even think it's possible. That's why I think it's important.
Kerry Diamond:
How can our listeners support your work?
Anu Duggal:
If you are building an exciting company in any of the sectors I mentioned, feel free to email us at pitches@femalefoundersfund.com. You can follow us on social.
Kerry Diamond:
If someone out there has got a few spare million or billions, should they call you?
Anu Duggal:
Yes, yes. definitely contact us. Definitely contact us.
Kerry Diamond:
Would love to see that happen. Time for speed round. What beverage do you start the morning off?
Anu Duggal:
I have hot water with lemon. And then I follow it with an iced cappuccino, one shot, regular milk.
Kerry Diamond:
Real coffee or that coffee substitute?
Anu Duggal:
Oh, real coffee. I'm not there yet. I have my specific place I go to. It's my five minutes of just peace before the day starts.
Kerry Diamond:
Your little Zen moment.
Anu Duggal:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
What's always in your fridge?
Anu Duggal:
Champagne, cheese.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, my God. My kind of girl. Champagne and cheese.
Anu Duggal:
Mustard, Diet Coke.
Kerry Diamond:
What is your favorite food film?
Anu Duggal:
Oh, maybe “Julie & Julia.”
Kerry Diamond:
A treasured cookbook or book on food, food memoir, any of the above?
Anu Duggal:
I had this cookbook by a chef. Her name is Raji Jallepalli. She lived in Atlanta, and she had opened the first Indian-French restaurant. I was obsessed with this cookbook. It was like Thomas Keller meets Tabla. That is my favorite cookbook. She, unfortunately, also passed away very early. And then more recently, I was in Sag Harbor at the local bookstore there, and they had a section of vintage cookbooks. They only had four. One of them was the Anne Willan Cookbook from 1982. I was just like, "Oh, my God." Out of four, what are the chances?
Kerry Diamond:
That is so much fun. That's a sign of something, right?
Anu Duggal:
My God, yeah. I was very surprised and delighted.
Kerry Diamond:
She's been such a prolific author.
Anu Duggal:
She has.
Kerry Diamond:
What was your favorite childhood food?
Anu Duggal:
Probably comfort food, spaghetti, still my comfort food.
Kerry Diamond:
What's your snack food of choice today?
Anu Duggal:
My favorite canapé, which I'm obsessed with and I make all summer long is gougeres Burgundy. That's where gougeres were invented. It's just the most delicious snack, especially right out of the oven with ... Champagne also originated in Burgundy, so a glass of champagne and gougeres.
Kerry Diamond:
That is the best snack. I'm totally with you on that.
Anu Duggal:
Not every day.
Kerry Diamond:
Not every day. Not every day. But we might have to add what is your favorite canapé or hors d'oeurve to our speed-round questions In honor of you, Anu.
We did not talk about you cooking or not cooking. You have a project you do at the end of every summer.
Anu Duggal:
I do.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us about it.
Anu Duggal:
I do. One of the first things we learned at La Varenne was how to make jam. There was an orchard of peach trees, and we had strawberries and raspberries. The gardener would come every morning at 6:00 AM with these buckets full of fresh fruit. One of the first jams I learned how to make was peach. There's a very specific style and technique, and it takes hours.
But at the end of every summer, I have a house in Watermill and there's a farm down the street. I make 40 or 50 jars of peach jam. It's only for people who actually still eat jam because there's a lot of people who don't. Yeah, that's my end of summer project.
Kerry Diamond:
Who doesn't eat jam these days?
Anu Duggal:
I mean you'd be surprised, people who don't eat carbs.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, okay.
Anu Duggal:
Yeah. Sad. Sad.
Kerry Diamond:
That is sad. Well, I don't know who I have to bribe.
Anu Duggal:
You're on it. You're on it.
Kerry Diamond:
How do we get into the seed round of the jam list or whatever the equivalent of that would be?
Anu Duggal:
I love it. I love it.
Kerry Diamond:
But I would love to get that. Are you going to do your own food business one day?
Anu Duggal:
I have a few ideas, yeah. I have a few ideas. I'm an entrepreneur. I mean the fund is I'm in it for life, but I always have few things kind of circulating.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, if you do decide to launch a food business one day, I know a lot of people would love to invest in it, that's for sure, to thank you for all the work you've done for women over the years.
I didn't ask you the final speed-round question. If you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?
Anu Duggal:
Probably Ina because she's so funny. You need food, but also I love to laugh.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. You and Ina on a desert island. There we go. All right. Well, Anu, thank you so much. And again, like I said, thank you for everything you've done for women over the years.
Anu Duggal:
Thank you. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. I would love for you to subscribe to Radio Cherry Bombe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a rating and a review. Let me know what you think about the show and your ideas for future guests. Also, be sure to check out the other shows on The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network, She's My Cherry Pie, the country's number one baking podcast, hosted by Jessie Sheehan, and The Future of Food is You, our rising star pod, hosted by a rising star herself, Abena Anim-Somuah. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Joseph Hazan is the studio engineer at Newsstand Studios. Our producers are Catherine Baker and Elizabeth Vogt. Elizabeth, welcome to the team. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thanks for listening, everybody. You're the Bombe.