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The Investors Everybody Ignored · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. So of course I knew about the wage gap.
0:23
Speaker 1: You know, on average, women earn less than men for
0:26
Speaker 1: comparable work. What I did not know about was the
0:30
Speaker 1: investing gap. Even when you control for variables like wealth
0:35
Speaker 1: and income, women are much less likely than men to
0:39
Speaker 1: invest in real estate or the stock market. And that,
0:43
Speaker 1: of course means that women are much less likely than
0:46
Speaker 1: men to build wealth over time. And this problem has
0:51
Speaker 1: gone largely unnoticed and unaddressed, in part because most investment
0:56
Speaker 1: companies have been run by and for men. I'm Jacob
1:05
Speaker 1: Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where
1:08
Speaker 1: entrepreneur and engineers talk about how they're going to change
1:11
Speaker 1: the world once they solve a few problems. My guest
1:14
Speaker 1: today is Sally Crotchet, founder and CEO of laves. It's
1:19
Speaker 1: an investment firm aimed at women, and it has around
1:22
Speaker 1: one point five billion dollars in assets under management. Sally's
1:27
Speaker 1: problem is this, how do you convince women to become investors?
1:31
Speaker 1: Before Sally founded Lavest, she spent decades working in finance,
1:36
Speaker 1: and as she worked her way up to top jobs
1:38
Speaker 1: at City Bank and Merrill Lynch, one thing kept being true.
1:43
Speaker 1: She was often the only woman in the room. She
1:46
Speaker 1: told me that started way back at her first job
1:49
Speaker 1: in finance at Solomon Brothers back in the late eighties.
1:53
Speaker 1: It was stay up all night, run for the airplane,
1:59
Speaker 1: work on deals, sharp elbows, lots of gender discrimination, all
2:06
Speaker 1: the stuff you read. Just take it, you know, if
2:09
Speaker 1: that's a five, take it to a ten. Well, what
2:12
Speaker 1: was it like being a woman there? It was horrible.
2:15
Speaker 1: It was horrible. It was horrible everything about it. I
2:18
Speaker 1: remember my literally my very first day, literally my very
2:22
Speaker 1: vers day. I'm sitting there. I grew up in Charleston,
2:24
Speaker 1: South Carolina. I went to UNC. I was wearing the
2:27
Speaker 1: absolute most professional thing you could buy in the city
2:31
Speaker 1: of Charleston, South Carolina. It was a you know, sort
2:35
Speaker 1: of loosely fitting jacket and a loosely fitting sort of
2:40
Speaker 1: longish skirt. And I remember standing by my desk, Oh, look,
2:44
Speaker 1: here are my pencils, and smelled cigar smoke. And a
2:49
Speaker 1: man went by smoking a cigar. He pauses, he looks
2:53
Speaker 1: at me, he says, what is that effing discount maternity wear?
2:58
Speaker 1: He kept going And I said to someone, who the
3:01
Speaker 1: heck was that, Oh, that's the head of the department.
3:04
Speaker 1: Your boss's boss's boss's boss. From there on it got worse.
3:08
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because I read now research that sexual
3:13
Speaker 1: harassment you think it comes from powerful men, but apparently
3:16
Speaker 1: it comes from men who want to be powerful. And
3:20
Speaker 1: so for those individuals who were a leveler two ahead
3:23
Speaker 1: of me, you know, in the evening, putting xerots copies
3:26
Speaker 1: of male genitalia on my desk. On one level, I
3:31
Speaker 1: know I shouldn't be surprised, like I read Liar's Poker.
3:33
Speaker 1: I've read research, and yet it's strangely still shocking to me.
3:38
Speaker 1: I know better than to be shocked, and yet I
3:40
Speaker 1: am shocked. I know, I know, but there was nothing
3:43
Speaker 1: I could do except just keep going. I had signed
3:48
Speaker 1: a lease, a twelve month lease in New York City
3:51
Speaker 1: that I did not have money in the bank, of course,
3:54
Speaker 1: to pay for. My parents did not have money in
3:56
Speaker 1: the bank to pay for. All I could do was
3:59
Speaker 1: keep going to work and just survive through it, and
4:04
Speaker 1: over time be good enough, be indispensable enough that that
4:10
Speaker 1: stuff had to fall away. And then over time, as
4:12
Speaker 1: I became more senior. Of course, don't don't stand for it.
4:16
Speaker 1: And it seems like, I mean, this is jumping ahead
4:18
Speaker 1: a bit now, but it seems like you eventually really
4:21
Speaker 1: kind of found your your niche, your groove in finance
4:25
Speaker 1: as an analyst. Um, tell tell me about that part
4:28
Speaker 1: of your career. Oh, I loved it. I loved it,
4:31
Speaker 1: and probably part of what it went to things I
4:35
Speaker 1: love to do. I your your listeners gonna be like,
4:38
Speaker 1: she's such a she's such a goober. Um, I love
4:41
Speaker 1: to get lost in. It's a very good I mean,
4:46
Speaker 1: I you know, I will start looking at at an
4:49
Speaker 1: Excel spreadsheet or Google sheets and I will look up
4:53
Speaker 1: in four hours have passed and how did that happen?
4:56
Speaker 1: That was being a research annelist. I loved it. It
4:59
Speaker 1: probably helped that one. I found that job at Sanford Bernstein,
5:04
Speaker 1: which you know was a group of I used to
5:07
Speaker 1: call it the Island of the misfit toys. It was
5:09
Speaker 1: not sor to wear traditional Wall Street pulled from, and
5:14
Speaker 1: that the sexism sort of fell away because you were
5:18
Speaker 1: an individual contributor. You weren't working on teams and jostling
5:22
Speaker 1: with folks, and people wanted to make money and if
5:25
Speaker 1: you could help them make money or have insights that
5:28
Speaker 1: others didn't, there was something about it where the sexism
5:32
Speaker 1: sort of fell away, And in fact, I would argue
5:36
Speaker 1: that being a woman probably helped me because if I
5:39
Speaker 1: was competing against fifteen men, you couldn't forget me, and
5:43
Speaker 1: particularly if the research was any good, which humbly it was,
5:47
Speaker 1: you couldn't forget me. So there's one piece of research
5:51
Speaker 1: in particular that seems to sort of stand out, and
5:55
Speaker 1: that was this report you wrote about American General. Tell
5:59
Speaker 1: me just a little bit about that, like very like,
6:02
Speaker 1: what was that? When was that? Why was it important?
6:04
Speaker 1: For years? So it was actually my first piece of
6:06
Speaker 1: research before I knew how the game was supposed to
6:08
Speaker 1: be playing, which which was a benefit. And American General
6:13
Speaker 1: was an insurance company and they were finding growth in
6:17
Speaker 1: lending and making loans, and the analyst at the time said, oh,
6:21
Speaker 1: look they've found this avenue to growth. This is exciting,
6:23
Speaker 1: this is an outperform. And I, using the same information
6:27
Speaker 1: other analysts had looked at it and said, you know,
6:31
Speaker 1: the credit quality appears fine when you look at it
6:37
Speaker 1: versus today's loans, but credit quality only emerges over time, right,
6:41
Speaker 1: bad credit quality? So let me lag the ratios and
6:44
Speaker 1: see how today's credit quality looks versus last year's loans.
6:48
Speaker 1: The answer was terrible. So I wrote this up. I said,
6:52
Speaker 1: you know what, they're growing because they're they're reducing their
6:55
Speaker 1: credit standards and making loans other people won't. This is
6:58
Speaker 1: going to blow up. I published it. I called it
7:01
Speaker 1: woan ally. The company was furious, other analysts were furious,
7:06
Speaker 1: and a couple months later, damn it if it didn't
7:09
Speaker 1: blow up. And when the bubble burst and we stood
7:12
Speaker 1: alone and our business exploded, I was on the cover
7:15
Speaker 1: of Fortune as the Last honest Analyst, which is still
7:19
Speaker 1: still when I think back on it, is like the
7:21
Speaker 1: most surreal thing that ever happened to me. Uh say,
7:24
Speaker 1: more surreal, how because your face is on the cover
7:28
Speaker 1: of a magazine and you walk through the airport, You're like,
7:30
Speaker 1: there's my face on the cover of a magazine. And
7:33
Speaker 1: by the way, the face on the cover was bigger
7:36
Speaker 1: than my own actual face. I think, did you hold
7:40
Speaker 1: it up? I would have definitely held it up to
7:41
Speaker 1: see it. But I held it up and tried to
7:43
Speaker 1: track it, and it was even so big that there
7:46
Speaker 1: was a little mole on my chin that I thought
7:48
Speaker 1: i'd have removed. And I started the magazine. I'm like
7:50
Speaker 1: it didn't. They didn't fully get that little mold, did they.
7:54
Speaker 1: So so you're like Nerd famous at this point, you're
7:58
Speaker 1: Wall Street famous, right, you know you ascend. Right. You
8:04
Speaker 1: have a very senior job at was it Smith Barney
8:09
Speaker 1: within City and you lose that job. And then you
8:13
Speaker 1: have a very senior job at Mary Lynch when it's
8:16
Speaker 1: part of Bank of America after the financial crisis, and
8:19
Speaker 1: you lose that job. Thanks for bringing that up. Really,
8:23
Speaker 1: you know, it's a story has a happy is a
8:27
Speaker 1: happy ending. Um, we know, we know it's going to
8:30
Speaker 1: work out. But tell me tell me about losing that
8:33
Speaker 1: second job. I mean, it seems like that sets you
8:35
Speaker 1: up to found Elves. So yeah, tell me about about
8:38
Speaker 1: losing the merrilleam. So it was it was a shocker,
8:43
Speaker 1: and it wasn't. Um it wasn't because um, I knew
8:50
Speaker 1: the CEO and I were not big buddies. He never
8:53
Speaker 1: stopped by my office on the way to the leadership
8:55
Speaker 1: team meeting and said, Hey, Sally, can I run something
8:58
Speaker 1: by you? You know I would. I was the last
9:00
Speaker 1: on the leadership team to know. It was a surprise
9:04
Speaker 1: because we had turned the business around, the business was growing,
9:07
Speaker 1: we were gaining share. We were beating plan and I remember,
9:12
Speaker 1: you know, saying to my husband, I mean, he doesn't
9:14
Speaker 1: we're not getting along, but the results are there. And
9:17
Speaker 1: we were like, well, if the results are there, and
9:19
Speaker 1: I would check in with his you know, entourage, or
9:22
Speaker 1: am I doing okay? Yeah, you're doing fine. You're doing fine.
9:26
Speaker 1: And then you know, one day after, you know, just
9:30
Speaker 1: as I'm feeling like this is great, I was pulled
9:33
Speaker 1: into his office and he said, we're gonna reorg. You're out.
9:37
Speaker 1: We're going to have this gentleman who happened to be
9:42
Speaker 1: a white man in his I think early sixties, who
9:45
Speaker 1: had worked with the you know, the CEO in the past,
9:50
Speaker 1: who would never run a wealth management business. But we
9:53
Speaker 1: you know, essentially, we think this guy who's never done
9:55
Speaker 1: this job before can do a better job than you
9:59
Speaker 1: when it's what you do in your career and you've
10:01
Speaker 1: you've actually turned the business around by and just like
10:05
Speaker 1: what and and hes sort of hearing, well, we don't
10:10
Speaker 1: think you're a culture fit, which is you know, code
10:15
Speaker 1: language obviously for we all like you, you know, or
10:17
Speaker 1: you're too loud, or you're too flashy, or you're too something.
10:22
Speaker 1: But that was sort of a shocker because I always
10:25
Speaker 1: sort of thought, just deliver the results, be respectful, keep
10:29
Speaker 1: your head down, and good things will happen. And it didn't.
10:32
Speaker 1: It did not. And what did you do when you
10:37
Speaker 1: got fired? What? What? What happened next? Yeah? So I
10:40
Speaker 1: went home and drank Okaya Classic for a reason, you
10:45
Speaker 1: know why not? Drank and felt sorry for myself for
10:50
Speaker 1: a day, and then you know, I do remember, I
10:54
Speaker 1: absolutely remember thinking to myself, first of all, recognizing that
10:57
Speaker 1: success and failure two sides of the same coin. Right,
11:00
Speaker 1: the you're not a culture fit means you're standing out
11:03
Speaker 1: too much. Well, in order to actually get to where
11:06
Speaker 1: I was, Remember, as we just talked about, I had
11:08
Speaker 1: to stand out. If I'd played the game the same
11:11
Speaker 1: way everybody played it, I never would have gotten to
11:13
Speaker 1: those senior levels. I had to see the research differently,
11:18
Speaker 1: have different strategies. And what's my evidence of that, Well,
11:21
Speaker 1: if you look up at the time, there were like
11:23
Speaker 1: zero women in senior leadership, and so I had to
11:27
Speaker 1: play the game differently. By playing the game differently, I
11:30
Speaker 1: stood out and therefore risk losing my job. And you
11:33
Speaker 1: can't have I wish I had the secret for a
11:35
Speaker 1: while you can be super successful, but without taking risks,
11:38
Speaker 1: you can't do that. So the second day, I definitely knew.
11:42
Speaker 1: At the time, I knew it was one of the
11:45
Speaker 1: best things that ever happened to me. I knew I
11:48
Speaker 1: was going to look back on that day and be like,
11:49
Speaker 1: thank goodness, why, because honestly, I wasn't happy there. You know,
11:53
Speaker 1: if you're not part of the inner team and your
11:56
Speaker 1: leadership team and you feel out, that's not a good
11:58
Speaker 1: place to be. But I never could have left. I
12:01
Speaker 1: never could have called my dad and said, hey, Dad,
12:03
Speaker 1: I have X tens of thousands people reporting to me.
12:06
Speaker 1: We're turning around command of the financial crisis. I just
12:08
Speaker 1: don't feel like I'm part of the inner team. I
12:11
Speaker 1: just feel like I should leave. Never would I have
12:15
Speaker 1: done that, But I knew this was a catalyst for
12:19
Speaker 1: me to do something different and bigger and more important.
12:22
Speaker 1: It's just at the time I didn't know what it was.
12:24
Speaker 1: So how do you get from there to founding Elvest Law?
12:28
Speaker 1: It was a law, It was not overnight. How did
12:31
Speaker 1: I get here? Well, people said to me, when I'm
12:34
Speaker 1: on a little journey, you should start an investing firm
12:37
Speaker 1: for women, And I thought that is no, no, no, no no,
12:42
Speaker 1: women do not need their own thing. And by the way,
12:45
Speaker 1: if I'm going to be honest, I'm a varsity player.
12:47
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do some look at us girls together, right.
12:52
Speaker 1: I mean there is a way in which the idea
12:55
Speaker 1: could be seen as as patronizing, right for sure. And
12:59
Speaker 1: when we launched, a double digit percent of women told
13:03
Speaker 1: us so we had it, Like that was your first response,
13:08
Speaker 1: that is, why why do girls need a special Like, yeah,
13:11
Speaker 1: we can do that, we don't need. But the issue
13:17
Speaker 1: is we don't. We don't. How did you go from?
13:21
Speaker 1: How did you go from thinking that's that's an insult
13:24
Speaker 1: to women to being, oh, that's actually something women need.
13:27
Speaker 1: How did you how did you get from you know,
13:29
Speaker 1: I went around a corner and threw a pasture and
13:32
Speaker 1: ended up. And the momentum was actually when I was
13:37
Speaker 1: one morning putting on my mask era and just was
13:39
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, my mind is wandering, and all
13:42
Speaker 1: of a sudden I had I thought, I'm gonna have
13:44
Speaker 1: a big insight and I did, and I did. I
13:50
Speaker 1: don't know it. Sometimes it happens to me where I'll
13:51
Speaker 1: be like I'm about to like, some thing's coming together
13:55
Speaker 1: and the thing that came together was that the retirement
13:59
Speaker 1: saving shortfall in this country is a woman's problem. It's
14:04
Speaker 1: a woman's issue. Why because eighty percent of women die single,
14:09
Speaker 1: We live sixty eight years longer than the men. In
14:11
Speaker 1: our lives. Half of marriage is end in divorce. We
14:13
Speaker 1: end up sadly alone. I mean, look at any nursing
14:16
Speaker 1: home in this country and you know this to be true.
14:19
Speaker 1: And so therefore, if there's not enough money for retirement,
14:24
Speaker 1: it's us huh huh. So that in that universe, even
14:29
Speaker 1: if everybody has the same amount of money saved at
14:32
Speaker 1: age whatever, sixty, it's still a bigger problem for women,
14:36
Speaker 1: just because women will live longer than men be more
14:39
Speaker 1: likely to run out of money as a result. And
14:41
Speaker 1: by the way, add to that, if you want to
14:43
Speaker 1: back up, that women earn less for doing the same jobs,
14:46
Speaker 1: we take more career breaks and our salaries peak sooner.
14:49
Speaker 1: So there's actually compounding issues here as well. So I'm
14:53
Speaker 1: I'm looking at this and I'm saying that is a problem. Huh.
14:58
Speaker 1: And eventually got to women have thirty cents of wealth
15:03
Speaker 1: for every dollar men have. Black women a penny. Okay,
15:07
Speaker 1: so we talk about your your listeners may have heard
15:09
Speaker 1: of the gender pay gap, and it's eighty cents. The
15:12
Speaker 1: wealth gap, which is what we keep and what we
15:14
Speaker 1: have is thirty something since to a man's dollar and
15:17
Speaker 1: going in the wrong direction. You've used the phrase, and
15:20
Speaker 1: forgive me if you're about to get there. You used
15:22
Speaker 1: the phrase investing gap. What's the investing gap? Well, there
15:26
Speaker 1: are two ways that we have built wealth in this
15:30
Speaker 1: country over time, right. One is real estate, in buying
15:34
Speaker 1: real estate, and the other is investing in the stock market.
15:36
Speaker 1: And when I look at this and said, well, how
15:39
Speaker 1: do we close this gap? Right, A lot of people
15:42
Speaker 1: are working on the pay gap, but this investing gap,
15:45
Speaker 1: where women keep the majority of their money in cash,
15:49
Speaker 1: is costing women hundreds of thousands, some women millions of
15:53
Speaker 1: dollars over the course their lives. This is the issue. Ah, well,
15:56
Speaker 1: let me turn around. Yep, So you touched on in passing.
16:00
Speaker 1: But you just said women keep the majority of their
16:03
Speaker 1: wealth in cash. Yeah? About that? Like, is this this
16:06
Speaker 1: thing you knew before? Did you discover that this period?
16:10
Speaker 1: So there were things I knew, So I sort of
16:13
Speaker 1: knew women didn't invest as men as much as men do.
16:15
Speaker 1: What I really knew, having run Merrill and Smith Barney,
16:19
Speaker 1: is that women leave the financial advisor they and their
16:23
Speaker 1: spouse have in the year after their partner's death or
16:26
Speaker 1: in the year after a divorce, at a rate of
16:28
Speaker 1: eighty to ninety. So I knew that men are very
16:32
Speaker 1: happy with their financial advisor, but women leave. What I
16:35
Speaker 1: also knew is the industry is aware of this. The
16:39
Speaker 1: industry's narrative around this, which I accepted, is well, it's
16:47
Speaker 1: because women are risk averse. It's because women aren't as
16:51
Speaker 1: good with money. It's because men enjoy investing more. It's
16:55
Speaker 1: because women need more financial education. In other words, it's
16:58
Speaker 1: her fault and everything we as an industry do. The
17:02
Speaker 1: products we offer are super. They're super. Women just have
17:06
Speaker 1: this issue. Okay, so let's put together a marketing plan.
17:11
Speaker 1: Let's market at women and tell them they should invest in.
17:15
Speaker 1: I said that, You know, I didn't quite happen that
17:18
Speaker 1: day with the mask era, but as I sort of
17:20
Speaker 1: process through it will wait a minute, maybe maybe that's
17:25
Speaker 1: what is going on. But maybe in an industry where
17:29
Speaker 1: ninety eight percent of mutual fund dollars are managed by
17:31
Speaker 1: men and ninety nine percent of investment dollars are owned
17:35
Speaker 1: and managed to companies owned by men and eighty six
17:37
Speaker 1: percent of financial advisors, and maybe they built a business
17:40
Speaker 1: for themselves. What if we center instead on women. What
17:44
Speaker 1: if that's what we build and that was the genesis
17:47
Speaker 1: of ls. Why don't we change the underlying product to
17:50
Speaker 1: take into account the thousands of different needs women have
17:55
Speaker 1: that you know the industry isn't. So that's the big idea,
18:01
Speaker 1: But how does it actually work? What specific problems do
18:05
Speaker 1: you have to solve to build an investing firm for women?
18:08
Speaker 1: That's up in a minute. Now back to the show.
18:20
Speaker 1: In some ways, lavest is pretty straightforward. You can join
18:23
Speaker 1: for a few dollars a month, they help you invest
18:26
Speaker 1: in low cost ETFs, or if you have more money
18:29
Speaker 1: to manage, you can pay higher fees and get a
18:31
Speaker 1: financial advisor. But of course there is this big twist.
18:35
Speaker 1: Lavest is for women, and part of that is branding
18:39
Speaker 1: and marketing, but part of it is that they actually
18:42
Speaker 1: make different investment recommendations based on gender. I asked Sally
18:47
Speaker 1: how that part works. If you have a man and
18:49
Speaker 1: a woman with the same income, same net worth, same
18:52
Speaker 1: investing goals, why do you need different investing strategies? She
18:57
Speaker 1: lives longer than he does, she earns less, or her
19:04
Speaker 1: salary trajectory. From the point if you're saying they both
19:07
Speaker 1: are earning the same, her salary trajector will be lower
19:09
Speaker 1: and her salar will peak sooner. All things being equal,
19:13
Speaker 1: then some things have to be different. One thing could
19:17
Speaker 1: be that we give her a portfolio with more risk
19:21
Speaker 1: in it because she can afford to take that risk
19:23
Speaker 1: because of her longer life. But another change could be
19:27
Speaker 1: that she invests more. Right, she invests, I mean a
19:30
Speaker 1: higher percentage of her exactly right, that's exactly right. So
19:34
Speaker 1: and it depends on what she's comfortable with. Our solutions
19:38
Speaker 1: are highly customized, so she can do that back and forth. So, yes,
19:42
Speaker 1: there is that core difference in the algorithm based on gender,
19:46
Speaker 1: but there are a thousand other small things in the
19:49
Speaker 1: product that are different. One of the things we learned
19:54
Speaker 1: is men will if they see jargon in an investing flow,
19:59
Speaker 1: they will oftentimes keep going. Women will stop oftentimes and say, WHOA,
20:05
Speaker 1: that seems important. So what we discovered is in the
20:09
Speaker 1: on the onboarding, you ask a man is risk tolerance?
20:12
Speaker 1: He's not sure. He takes an educated guest and continues.
20:15
Speaker 1: She stops and leaves. Oh, I've got to figure that out.
20:18
Speaker 1: So we spent a couple of years doing deep research,
20:23
Speaker 1: finding those little points of friction, little points of friction
20:28
Speaker 1: along the way to make the experience feel effortless. So
20:31
Speaker 1: you start the company, women are investing with you. You
20:36
Speaker 1: have well at this point you have a billion, more
20:39
Speaker 1: than a billion dollars under management. Then yeah, one point four,
20:43
Speaker 1: one point five. And then at some point, not that
20:47
Speaker 1: long ago, you have to raise a Series B. Right,
20:49
Speaker 1: you want to raise more money to keep the company.
20:54
Speaker 1: A lot of people say, why, blah, what tell me
20:57
Speaker 1: about why do you hate it's terrible Series B? Just
21:00
Speaker 1: to be clear, it means raising more venture capital funding, right, basically, yea,
21:05
Speaker 1: why what? Why so bad? Well, you may have heard
21:11
Speaker 1: the research that says that women, despite women, run startups
21:17
Speaker 1: delivering higher returns, and men run startups despite that, women
21:22
Speaker 1: raise just want you know, four or five percent of
21:26
Speaker 1: venture dollars and Series B later stage call it one percent? Okay,
21:34
Speaker 1: so even less so the gap between what women founded
21:38
Speaker 1: companies and men founded companies, It actually gets bigger once
21:42
Speaker 1: the companies are up and running, yep, which you think
21:45
Speaker 1: it wouldn't because if the returns and the numbers are there.
21:50
Speaker 1: Why not? But it's that's a long couple glasses of
21:54
Speaker 1: wine about gendered expectations and all the all the things
21:59
Speaker 1: you have called this. I don't know if you made
22:01
Speaker 1: this up, but I saw it in connection you did.
22:03
Speaker 1: Did you make up the phrase series B cliff? I
22:06
Speaker 1: didn't know that I did, but then somebody told me
22:09
Speaker 1: I did, and then I googled it and like, I
22:10
Speaker 1: think I made that up. And so just to be clear,
22:13
Speaker 1: what is the series B cliff? So there is today
22:16
Speaker 1: a fair amount of capital coming in to fund women
22:20
Speaker 1: startup CEOs. Seed stage that's when you have just the
22:23
Speaker 1: PowerPoint presentation. Series A that's when you raise the first
22:26
Speaker 1: real chunk of money. Then Series B is when you
22:29
Speaker 1: tend to raise more and the company's product market fit
22:32
Speaker 1: has been proven. You know, things aren't perfect, but you've
22:35
Speaker 1: you've got a real business here. You've you're motoring along.
22:38
Speaker 1: You would think Series B women would raise more because
22:42
Speaker 1: the numbers are there, but I hypothesize there are fewer
22:46
Speaker 1: people on the other side of the table venture. There's
22:49
Speaker 1: a fair amount of capital coming in at seed in
22:50
Speaker 1: series A women funding women, They're they're really much fewer
22:55
Speaker 1: women writing the big checks, writing the big Series B checks. Yeah,
23:00
Speaker 1: and so I still found even at Series B, even
23:04
Speaker 1: with the numbers, and the numbers were good, the payback
23:07
Speaker 1: was within it. You know, every marketing all we spent,
23:09
Speaker 1: the payback was took eight months. Is former CFO you
23:13
Speaker 1: do that all day long. But what I found was
23:16
Speaker 1: I still got well, but don't their husbands and well,
23:21
Speaker 1: you know, your numbers are good, but they're going to
23:23
Speaker 1: get worse because you're going to scale through your early
23:25
Speaker 1: adopters because your target market. I mean, like, how many
23:28
Speaker 1: women really want to invest? I'm like pretty much. I
23:31
Speaker 1: think all of them should be. And you still you
23:34
Speaker 1: still get the if what if Fidelity gets in? You're like,
23:38
Speaker 1: the market's plenty big, plenty big, right, there are plenty
23:40
Speaker 1: of multi billion dollar wealth tech companies serving man. Yeah,
23:44
Speaker 1: I don't know. So the Series B is tough. So
23:48
Speaker 1: when you ask why did you make a face when
23:50
Speaker 1: I talked about raising your Series B, that is why.
23:54
Speaker 1: That is why, Because the amount of time and just
23:57
Speaker 1: pain is tremendous. And so what happened in the end,
24:01
Speaker 1: I mean that was not that long ago that you
24:03
Speaker 1: were setting out to raise this money right. That was
24:05
Speaker 1: earlier this year, more or less we it was it
24:08
Speaker 1: was last year and then into early this year, and
24:12
Speaker 1: the women came to the rescue. It was the damnedest
24:16
Speaker 1: thing I've ever seen. We were out raising money. We
24:20
Speaker 1: got a great strategic but you know, sort of a
24:24
Speaker 1: bank like, oh, we love what you're doing, we love
24:26
Speaker 1: to learn with you. We got an investment, we got
24:29
Speaker 1: it priced, so we had sort of the structure in place.
24:33
Speaker 1: And then I had a woman call me from Ada
24:36
Speaker 1: on the West coast, never met her before, and she said,
24:38
Speaker 1: I heard from Bump Up Up that y'all are raising money.
24:43
Speaker 1: I don't have enough. I'm an early stage investor. I
24:46
Speaker 1: can't reach her minimums. But let me make a proposal.
24:50
Speaker 1: What if I pull together my network of women and
24:53
Speaker 1: we invest together and what's called a special purpose sp
24:57
Speaker 1: special purpose vehicle? But what if we do that? And
25:01
Speaker 1: I'm like sure? And she said, I think we can
25:04
Speaker 1: raise X million dollars for you, and they did. And
25:07
Speaker 1: then someone in that network said, I've got a network
25:11
Speaker 1: of my colleagues and friends who love what y'all or
25:15
Speaker 1: what have I pulled together? And then someone of that's
25:17
Speaker 1: what have I pulled together and then along Cam Gangels
25:20
Speaker 1: Gay investors. What have we pulled together? And we brought
25:23
Speaker 1: in hundreds of new investors through these special purpose vehicles
25:28
Speaker 1: and sort of found that in between place between institutional
25:32
Speaker 1: dollars and crowdfunding where you know, you can't really raise
25:36
Speaker 1: enough in order to raise a fifty three million dollars
25:39
Speaker 1: Series B investment and just buck every trend that was
25:43
Speaker 1: out there gives me chilling. I've got chills. I'm chilling.
25:48
Speaker 1: I'm chilled. Good, I know, I know. Okay, briefly, what's
25:55
Speaker 1: the next hard thing you want to do that you
25:56
Speaker 1: haven't done yet? Get all of us to profitability. We
26:04
Speaker 1: have reached what I think of escape velocity. We've proven
26:07
Speaker 1: the model, we've proven product market fit. We understand what
26:13
Speaker 1: it takes the issue with these wealth tech companies is
26:17
Speaker 1: they take a while to become profitable. You know, people
26:20
Speaker 1: come and they are with you for five years, ten years,
26:23
Speaker 1: twenty years, thirty years. So it's not like selling a
26:26
Speaker 1: T shirt where you get all the revenue upfront. The
26:28
Speaker 1: revenue emerges over time and so you go now and
26:32
Speaker 1: then they make more money and they pay you more
26:34
Speaker 1: money later. So is there is there sure time when
26:38
Speaker 1: you when you want to be profitable by fully certain
26:43
Speaker 1: it would be really great. But the challenge with the
26:48
Speaker 1: economics is you have to build out the whole thing
26:51
Speaker 1: before you get revenues. It's not like, oh, I'm gonna
26:55
Speaker 1: do a you know, sort of an early version of
26:59
Speaker 1: information security right or compliance. You don't care if we're
27:02
Speaker 1: not compliant, do you? And so there's a built now, right,
27:06
Speaker 1: I mean, the sort of minimum viable product exists. So yes,
27:10
Speaker 1: so we just need to bring in more folks, yeah,
27:13
Speaker 1: and get more money from existing folks. In a minute,
27:18
Speaker 1: the lightning round, including what to do when you get
27:21
Speaker 1: fired and a red flag to look out for when
27:25
Speaker 1: you're investing in the stock market. That's the end of
27:34
Speaker 1: the ads. Now we're going back to the show. Let's
27:37
Speaker 1: close with the lightning round. What's one piece of advice
27:40
Speaker 1: you'd give to somebody when they get fired. It is
27:45
Speaker 1: the best day of your life. You just don't know
27:47
Speaker 1: it yet, and it's your job now to find the
27:51
Speaker 1: opportunities that are out there that sometimes come by you
27:55
Speaker 1: and you don't even see them, and take advantage of them.
27:58
Speaker 1: Success will look different, but it can be even better.
28:02
Speaker 1: Makes me want to get fired? Well, if people don't
28:05
Speaker 1: want you know, but if people don't want you there,
28:08
Speaker 1: you don't want to be there. I just not as
28:10
Speaker 1: That's a really good way to put it. I didn't
28:11
Speaker 1: mean to be clip, but that is a really good
28:13
Speaker 1: way to put it. I have read in other interviews
28:16
Speaker 1: that you like to cook. I also like to cook.
28:19
Speaker 1: I'm not fancy, but I enjoy it, and I'm always
28:21
Speaker 1: looking for like quick ish weeknight dinners. Do you have
28:25
Speaker 1: any tips or recent favorites. The Marcella Hassanne tomato pasta
28:31
Speaker 1: sauce with the butter is a winner every time. It's
28:34
Speaker 1: every time you use it with canned tomatoes is even
28:37
Speaker 1: better than with fresh tomatoes. That's the kind of tip
28:40
Speaker 1: I can use. I appreciate that. So Okay, So the
28:45
Speaker 1: market is down a lot this year. I know I'm
28:49
Speaker 1: not supposed to look. I know I'm not supposed to
28:51
Speaker 1: pay attention. I know I'm not supposed to sell. But
28:53
Speaker 1: how do I not do that? You got a tip
28:56
Speaker 1: for how to do not doe it? Just don't freak out,
28:59
Speaker 1: go for a walk, do not freak out. Presumably the
29:03
Speaker 1: money you're investing is not money you need tomorrow. Otherwise
29:06
Speaker 1: you need to be with Ali best because we would
29:08
Speaker 1: have put you in a less risky portfolio if you
29:11
Speaker 1: need it right away. So do not look, just don't
29:15
Speaker 1: sit on your hands. Going back to your life as
29:18
Speaker 1: an analyst, Yes, as an analyst, what was one warning
29:21
Speaker 1: sign you never wanted to see in a company? Ah,
29:26
Speaker 1: when they would consistently beat consensus estimates by a penny
29:32
Speaker 1: every quarter. When you saw consistency of earnings out of
29:37
Speaker 1: a financial services company. We talked about American General AIG.
29:42
Speaker 1: They later blew up Wells Fargo, CONCCO City Group to
29:47
Speaker 1: some extent. What it said is they were managing earnings
29:51
Speaker 1: because they're just it's just not that stable, and every
29:53
Speaker 1: one of them blew up, it's fishy. That's a fishy
29:56
Speaker 1: sign that that's not what they say. For sure um
30:00
Speaker 1: bitcoin or ethereum. Please ethereum because it uses less less energy,
30:09
Speaker 1: better for the environment. One piece of advice for women
30:12
Speaker 1: going into finance or other still male dominated fields. If
30:19
Speaker 1: you can the company you go into, look up and
30:23
Speaker 1: if you don't see anybody in the c suite who
30:25
Speaker 1: reflects you, just understand it's going to be much harder
30:29
Speaker 1: if you are the first. If you do see people
30:32
Speaker 1: in the c suite who reflect you. It's still going
30:34
Speaker 1: to be difficult, but your chances are much greater. What's
30:39
Speaker 1: one piece of advice you'd give to someone trying to
30:41
Speaker 1: solve a hard problem. Get into the zone, see what's
30:48
Speaker 1: really work, to approach it differently than others. It hadn't
30:52
Speaker 1: been solved in the traditional way because there's a reason
30:54
Speaker 1: for that, and so you've got to come around the
30:56
Speaker 1: back or of the side in order to get there.
31:05
Speaker 1: Sally Crocheck is founder and CEO of Elves. Today's show
31:10
Speaker 1: was edited by Robert Smith, produced by Edith Russolo, and
31:13
Speaker 1: engineered by Amanda K. Wall. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and we'll
31:17
Speaker 1: be back next week with another episode of What's Your Pap?
31:20
Speaker 1: Happy Thanksgiving