Valentina Milanova of Daye On 5 Things We Need To Do To Close The VC Gender and Racial Gap

As part of my series about “the five things we need to do to close the VC gender and racial gap” I had the pleasure of interviewing Valentina Milanova.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us the “backstory” that brought you to this career path?

I started my first period when I was very young — age 9. I didn’t know what was happening to my body and experienced severe period pain from the very start. My personal experience with seeking solutions to my pain and discomfort is one where I always felt very disempowered. I really wanted to get access to better gynaecological health information and to solutions to the issues I was facing, but I couldn’t. These experiences led me to believe that the experience of gynecological health today is deeply unfair. I think that the exclusion of women and assigned female at birth (AFAB) individuals from medical research is one of the greatest injustices, and it drives me to dedicate my life to finding ways to reduce the pain, shame and time wasted in gynecological care.

Can you share a story of your most successful Angel or VC investment? In your opinion, what was its main lesson?

We recently raised our series A after a gruelling 7-month fundraising process. We connected with over 400 investors, as many angels and VCs don’t invest in femtech or regulated industries. The main lesson we learned is that it’s important to be persistent when fundraising. You only need a few yeses, and you shouldn’t let the nos discourage you.

Can you share a story of an Angel or VC funding “failure” of yours? Is there a lesson or takeaway that you took out of that that our readers can learn from?

It’s really important to be well organised when fundraising. You need to fully commit to the process. Some founders think that they can fundraise on the side, but this elongates the fundraising process a lot. You should always be building relationships with investors, but the actual fundraising process should be structured and concise.

Was there a company that you turned down, but now regret? Can you share the story? What lesson did you learn from that?

Typically, gynaecological health companies don’t have the luxury of turning investments down as only 1% of healthcare funding goes to the sector, and less than 2.5% of public funding goes towards women’s health. That being said, founders shouldn’t hesitate to turn investors down if they are behaving poorly or treating them with disrespect. Choosing an investor is like choosing a life partner — it’s a huge decision that should be treated with a lot of care.

Ok let’s jump to the main focus of our interview. According to this article in Fortune, only 2.2% of VC dollars went to women in 2018. A similar number went to minority-owned companies. Can you share with our readers what your firm is doing to help close the VC gender and racial gap?

Daye is working to close the gender funding gap by raising awareness of the importance of the gynaecological health industry. Femtech has been chronically underfunded, and as a result, medical innovation has not kept up with changing needs of women. We hope that by creating a commercially successful business, we can make a strong case for why more investors should look at and consider the femtech sector.

Can you recommend 5 things that need to be done on a broader societal level to close the VC gender and racial gap? Please share a story or example for each

We need to support more female founders, provide more public funding for R&D for gynaecological health, and get more female investors to join VC. Specifically, here are my five ideas for bridging the gender funding gap in research and innovation:

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

One of Daye’s values is “Persistent AF”. I feel strongly that any challenge can be overcome as long as you don’t quit and keep at it. At Daye, we embrace playing without a playbook and find motivation in carving out a new path. We see “no” as an invitation to negotiate and try harder, not as a dead end. However, we know when we’ve exhausted our options and need to move on. We pride ourselves on grit. We’re always determined to accomplish our goals and have the stamina to pursue them over a long period of time. If we had to build Daye again from scratch, we would.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

I would love to meet Melinda Gates, as I think she’s one of the people doing the most today to bridge the gender gap in funding and innovation.

This was really meaningful! Thank you so much for your time.

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