00:00:04
Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. This week's guest is the incredibly cool, incredibly smart, incredibly accomplished Amanda Calabreeze. Now, I'm gonna preface this by saying that we have a lot of synergies. We are both former competitive athletes, we both went to Stanford, we both are operating in male dominated fields, and we both care deeply about women's hygiene and femcare products, which is how Amanda became the CMO and co founder of Seql, a women's health company that's focused on product innovation addressing unmet needs of women. The company's first product, a redesign of the tampon as the Sequel Spiral tampon is FDA approved as a medical device and features a proprietary spiral design that is engineered to be more fluid mechanically efficient, meaning it is designed to absorb more evenly and not leak before it's full, which if you've used tampons, you know that that is an incredibly important feature, something that doesn't always work out in our favor and causes a lot of stress. Amanda was named to the twenty twenty three Forbes thirty Under thirty List. She represented the United States and the sport of surf life saving. She's a nine time national champion and has the most wins in her event, which is beach Flags for any person, male or female, in the history of life saving sport in the US. What a badass. When not working on SQL or competing, Amanda is searching for her next adrenaline rush, surfing, swimming, and skiing in San Francisco, where she lives. I adored this conversation. I was so happy to be introduced to Amanda. I see so many similarities between her and myself. I really admire the mission driven nature of the products that she and her co founder have been creating, and as someone who is so big on women's empowerment, so much of that is just getting us to a level playing field and trying to alleviate some of the stress that's associated with some of the things that women uniquely have to deal with. And we talk about everything from starting up the company, how they got the idea, the R and D, how they are partnering and expanding their time at the Paris Olympics, recent partnerships they've had, what they're looking to for the future. We get into what it's like to be a woman seeking VC funding. We talk about the importance and the critical nature of storytelling, how that plays throughout our lives, and it's just so much fun. So I really hope that you enjoy this conversation with Amanda Calabreez, who is the CMO and co founder of SQL. Amanda, thank you so much for joining me on. If I'm honest with Julia Landauer, I.
00:02:37
Speaker 2: Am so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:02:39
Speaker 1: Oh, of course, now we have a lot of synergies, right. We both were competitive athletes, both went to Stanford, Both cared deeply about women's health and feminine care and hygiene, and so it was just a matter of time before our paths met, I think. And it's just so cool to see what you have done and for some addition context for our listeners. For a long time, I have said that my dream sponsor would have been a tampon company because a number of things. One I really care about destigmatizing and getting rid of the taboo and just normalizing like women's health and menstruation and everything like that. I also thought it would be so audacious to put a big tampon on the side of a race car. Like, just from a marketing perspective, it seems cool. NASCAR has a almost forty percent female fan base, so just kind of like it seemed like it would be super cool, and like I pitched it. I was able for a few years period to pitch some smaller companies, some global companies. It didn't stick, but that's okay. I think that the work you're doing is so cool. So anyway, I personally was really interested in talking with you. I think this is really exciting. And I think one thing that I read some in some press that you had was that you guys wanted to focus on revitalizing a quote unquote sleepy industry, which is kind of what I want to jump into first. So, like, how did you come up with the idea to shake up the sleepy industry? How did you come up with the idea of redeveloping a tampon? And can you talk about this SEQL shape and what makes it different?
00:04:16
Speaker 3: So we actually started with our own experiences, right, I mean, similar to your athletic career racing, and I'm sure you've had your fair share of having your period having to go out for a race.
00:04:30
Speaker 2: My co founder and I had these same.
00:04:32
Speaker 3: Experiences in our athletic careers, right, So I was wearing a red, white and blue bikini going out and racing all over the world. I competed for the US Life Saving Team for almost ten years. My co founder played you on the cross at Stanford wearing a white home team skirt, and the idea FIRSTQL came from those moments. And for gretit was you know, her teammates yelling can you check me?
00:04:55
Speaker 2: Like can you? Can?
00:04:55
Speaker 3: You look at my skirt and you're like supposed to be focusing on the game you're playing, but actually you're focusing on whether you have a red stain. And for me it was like, I'm totally I'm competing against some of.
00:05:08
Speaker 2: The best people in my sport in the world.
00:05:10
Speaker 3: I'm lining up at the beach and instead of being like, Okay, what's my race plan? What am I doing entering the ocean? Where am I going? What are the conditions looking like, I'm like, Okay, what is my tampon doing? How long have I been wearing it? Do I trust it to hold up in this race? And that's the checklist I'm going through it's not my race plan. And when Greta and I came together and realized that we had these shared experiences, we knew that we also had the expertise from our time at Stanford to think about a better solution, and so it really started with our own experiences as high level athletes. Now we were in the perfect environment to really see if we could make a difference, and we started more broadly with the period space and period category right talking to people about what they were using. We're using tampons, pads, menstrual cups, munstrual discs were really popular when we were starting the company, and we recognized everyone we were speaking.
00:06:16
Speaker 2: To, or most people that we were speaking to, we're using tampons.
00:06:19
Speaker 3: And that was because we were speaking to a lot of very active women, a lot of people that were on our sports teams.
00:06:25
Speaker 2: Or people that we exercised with. And so we landed on.
00:06:31
Speaker 3: Re engineering or at that point, attempting to re engineer tampon because that's what most of the people we spoke to were using. And that's also seventy percent of us women report tampons is their product of choice, So that's where we could have the biggest impact. In the market, everybody was saying the same thing. My tampon leaks far before it's full. It's unreliable, it's uncomfortable. I pull it out, there's a red line down the side. The whole rest of the product is there. I'm like, are you even doing your job right? And so we really wanted to focus on that, that failure, right, the product failure that causes the distraction whether the products could a fail or not. And so we I mean, we discovered that vertical channels that are present on almost all of the tampons in the market are funneling the fluid away from the absorbent core, causing it to not absorb evenly and then in turn causing the product to potentially leak before it is full.
00:07:33
Speaker 2: And so what.
00:07:34
Speaker 3: We ideated at the D School at Stanford and what we ultimately ended up developing is a helical spiral that goes around the outside of the tampon. This helps the tampon absorb more evenly in stages and to completion without failing before it is full. And again it helps prevent that premature leakage. And so the goal is to have the tampon that is more relying liable, and the goal is to have a product that we all can wear, whether we're in sports, competing at the top of our game or just going to yoga or walking down the street, having something that we can actually depend on in trust. And so it's been five years of developing that product since since we started at Stanford, But I mean, I couldn't be more proud to actually have the product out in the world today. It's it's really cool to go from like, you know, dorm room sketch to Okay, this is actually real, this is crazy.
00:08:32
Speaker 1: I feel like that's like the like Stanford vibe, like Silicon Valley vibe of like the dream of that ideation to actual product, which I want to get to in a little bit. But I also just want to take a second to give some context for our listeners who have not used Tampa or don't have a period right, because like, yeah, I think what you talked about about the distractions that you then have to deal with when you should be focusing on whatever task is at hand, and this spans like competitive athletes, but also like you know, you're not supposed to keep a tampon in for more than eight hours for risk of bacteria development and all that, and so you know, if you're lucky enough to sleep more than eight hours or don't have to do that, Like you have to think about it as it relates to when you're sleeping, or do you have to set on early, or you know, if you have to fly when you have your period, Like so many different factors can affect the flow and the heaviness and it could change. And if you're in a foreign environment or if you're like in a different climate or tropic, like, it can impact your body. And so there are just so many times where you then have to think about that. And it's partially because there's still taboo in people for whatever reason, shame women about period stuff, and there's negative connotations with it, but it's also a public health thing, Like it's not sanitary if you're if anyone from any type part of your body is bleeding around other people, right Like, that's so it's it's I don't mean that in a negative way. It's just like, you know, there's a reason people have to put on gloves if they cut themselves when they're chefs, right Like, you're not supposed to have that, you know, permeate other things so it's just a constant going on in the background, and so it can it's really it can be really stressful, and especially for like teenagers or people just starting like it's it's so different. So the work that you're doing is incredible. So jumping into the time at Stanford. So for those who don't know, the D School, which it stands for Design School, is a really innovative, creative resource rich part of the school which different majors can have classes in their different lectures. I clearly remember one class that I didn't take. What I read about I just didn't work with my schedule. It was called fail Faster, and the concept was how you know when you're ideating, when you're problem solving, you want to not be super married to one single idea, and it's about kind of having an idea, testing it, analyzing it, learning from it, adapting, evolving, changing your approach. Did you do a lot of that as you were coming up with the design and like what did that look like?
00:10:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so much of it is iterating.
00:11:00
Speaker 3: I think the thing that's different for us is that we are a medical device, and so in the way that you can test different iterations of a software product or landing pages or things like that. We were very limited in what we could actually do from a physical prototyping perspective because we are regulated by the FDA and we are a medical device.
00:11:24
Speaker 2: We are a product that goes into somebody's body.
00:11:28
Speaker 3: Now, what we can do is talk about the needs with our users. Right, we can go and have endless conversations and collect as much user insight as we possibly can.
00:11:43
Speaker 2: Right, talk to people about.
00:11:44
Speaker 3: The period routines, their period habits, what is something that is distracting you when you're preparing for your day, for your game, whatever you're doing. And so we spend a lot of time in what the d School calls the need finding phase, so that we can really understand You don't want to jump into a solution, right, I think very often we jump to conclusions, we make assumptions, and then we build a solution that is based on a wobbly tower of assumptions and opinions.
00:12:16
Speaker 2: And we want to make sure that any solution that we arrive at is.
00:12:21
Speaker 3: Grounded in the true needs of the users that we want to solve a problem for.
00:12:27
Speaker 2: And so we spent a lot of.
00:12:28
Speaker 3: Time on the need finding phase to make sure that we were actually solving a problem that we had, because if people were happy with their period products, then there would be no reason for us to innovate in the category. If people are happy with the performance of their tampons, then we wouldn't need a better tampon.
00:12:46
Speaker 2: But that wasn't the case.
00:12:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And then also, I guess when you're going through that process, how do you know when you have identified enough of a problem, Like how many people do you need to speak to? How many perspectives do you need to have before you're like, all right, this clearly has legs, let's go with it.
00:13:05
Speaker 3: I mean, when you start hearing it's about pattern recognition, right, when you start hearing the same things over and over again, that's when you know that you have found something. And we kind of like we have different words for those, like we're that's when you know you have a finding, right, and when that finding leads to something that you can understand about this particular user or customer or population, that's when you've developed an insight. And so I think a line that I used before that I think is so was so resonant with us and our users and ultimately resulted in this insight was finding that we had was I pull out my tampon, there's a red line down the side, and the whole rest of the product is there. And we heard that over and over and over again by asking question like interesting questions about periods, like, you know, take me through your experience with your tampon, Take me through your routine, walk me through step by step. So you put the tampon in, how long are you wearing it for? Your taking it out? What are you noticing when you take it out? There's a red line down the side. Okay, that's really interesting. And we collect all of these findings that we have, we keep hearing this over and over again, and the insight from that is that the reason, like the tampons are failing before they're full because there's a line down the side, right, And that's really interesting. Well, why are tampons leaking before they're full and causing this pretty much more product failure and then in turn causing distraction. Oh, it's because there's these vertical the vertical channels are causing this red line down the side.
00:14:50
Speaker 2: Okay, that's the problem.
00:14:52
Speaker 3: Is that there are this red line down the side there are these vertical channels down the side, and that leads us to our solution that, Okay, how do we disrupt the vertical channels. How do we create something that is different from the vertical channels. And that's kind of like how you get like from like a kind of a building block like block by block by block.
00:15:14
Speaker 2: That's how you get to your solution.
00:15:16
Speaker 3: Instead of saying, Okay, everybody hates tampons, we should just design a new type of period product, right, Like, maybe that's somewhere we would have gone, but we spoke to our users and they were very regimented in their period routines, and we didn't want to disrupt that. We didn't want to say, oh, you don't like your tampon, here's some new product that we invented that you're gonna have to learn how to use and you're gonna have to trust us that it's going to work.
00:15:43
Speaker 2: And you've never seen it before. We had to educate you on it. Right.
00:15:47
Speaker 3: We actually just noticed that people were people were choosing tampons because they were convenient, because they allowed them to move their bodies, exercise, go swimming, all of these things.
00:15:57
Speaker 2: It was very very liberating product.
00:16:00
Speaker 3: At the same time, it's still had its constraints, and so how do we look at the constraints of the product where the product may be lacking and innovate there so that we can impact.
00:16:13
Speaker 2: A huge market and a large amount of users.
00:16:16
Speaker 1: Right, And am I correct that a very large percentage of feminine care users use the same type of product that they were taught to when they first got their period, like with their mom.
00:16:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's it is a category that is so influenced by mom, or by your big sister.
00:16:40
Speaker 2: Or even from a sports.
00:16:42
Speaker 3: Like so many athletes talk about getting their first period when they're traveling with their team and it's like the older girl on the swim team or the team captain on your lacrosse team is giving you a tampon and explaining to you how to.
00:16:57
Speaker 2: Put it in. So it's somebody it's passed down.
00:17:00
Speaker 3: It is it is knowledge that has passed down from somebody in your life that you trust.
00:17:05
Speaker 1: M H. And that like carries such a psychological weight with it. I don't mean that in a negative way, but just like you're you know, as you're going through this huge change in your body, like all of the chemicals in your body are changing when you're going through puberty and you're you know, it's a fairly traumatic thing to experience for the first little while. I mean, it's so different and like the comfort that comes with the initial like technique that you used. So I totally get that. So did you pretty much know by the time you graduated or before you graduated, that you were going to pursue this entrepreneurial journey of trying to make this this idea come to life.
00:17:47
Speaker 2: I think we didn't know how far we could take it.
00:17:51
Speaker 3: Right, We had raised quite a bit of grant funding while we were at Stanford, and that was it's such a benefit of being added an institution like it is, right, and also we were working on this project that a lot of people saw merit and they saw the ability for impact in a category that hasn't seen a ton of innovation for a population that has can placent for decades. So we went into the summer after graduation with grant funding. But I think we didn't know, you know, was this a fundable business. Were we going to be able to raise the capital that we needed to invest in the R and D? And so the goal for the summer after graduation for Greta and myself was to go out and figure out if this was a fundable business. And so we use the grant funding that we had, the advisors that we had to put ourselves in the best position, whether that be setting up R and D, doing initial research, interviewing the candidates to do the R and D, to work like institutions and places that we could work with, putting ourselves in the best position to then bring in funding to kickstart a lot of the R and D. And we were able to get a term sheet and an offer for investment in the summer after graduation, and not to us.
00:19:22
Speaker 2: That to us was the indication that people not.
00:19:26
Speaker 3: Only believed in the product and the potential for the product, but they believed in us. And that's so much of early stage startups is like do I believe is the market big enough? Is this a problem that needs to be solved, and are these the right people to solve this problem? And so the ability for us to get an offer for investment a few months after graduating really kicked off our first fundraise, which we did from friends and family and from some smaller vcs in Silicon Valley and Stanford Associated vcs and that allowed us to invest in R and D y early on.
00:20:05
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah, because the question I was going to ask is like, how do you determine whether or not it's a fundable initiative? And obviously getting a term sheet is a very clear indication. But is that something that you, like, were actively pitching. And I have never attempted to pitch. I haven't had anything that is VC fundable, so I don't know the exact process. I understand it on a conceptual level, but like, is that something that you guys actively went out and pitched or did it kind of come to you through the initial research and you know, initial funds grants that you were utilizing.
00:20:37
Speaker 3: We were we were going on and pitching. We had put together a pitch check, we were pitching you know, friends and family, angel investors, looking for introductions from people that we met through Stanford, people that we met through our past like work experiences, and we were like pounding the pavement, like getting in front of anybody that we could telling any But I think so much of it is being confident in what you're doing. So when somebody says, oh, what are you doing this summer? What are you doing after graduation. I am building a company where we are re engineering the tampon.
00:21:18
Speaker 2: For the first time in eighty years.
00:21:20
Speaker 3: And there is power and there is confidence in that statement, and there's also a commitment in that statement, because people want to fund and people want to fund a business where there are people that are committed to what they are doing, that believe in what they're doing, and they're confident in what they're doing. And so I think something that Greta and I always said to ourselves that first summer is like, we're building a tampon. We are building a tampon company, we are building a women's health company.
00:21:47
Speaker 2: And we would just like say it over and over.
00:21:48
Speaker 3: Again because that was the like outward commitment and confidence that we needed to have going into every room.
00:21:58
Speaker 1: I love that, and I gave me goosebumps because you're so right that it's like it's the self belief that, especially when you've put so much time in like you earn it right like and you like should have full faith in yourself. Understand it's a tough landscape out there and nothing comes easy, But that's really incredible. Did you enjoy the pitching process, like the actual being in the room and pitching the product and why it was worth investing in.
00:22:24
Speaker 2: I think that it can get exhausting.
00:22:27
Speaker 3: It's like very it's very tiring, like just to lap after your lap after lap doing the pitching. That being said, I love telling stories and I love using storytelling as a way to connect with people. And I think that when you tell your story, when you find a way to tell your story that connects with people and you can see it on their faces when you're telling.
00:22:59
Speaker 2: Your story, the story of the business.
00:23:01
Speaker 3: I think that that there's like a little bit of magic to that that I do enjoy, and I think that it is rewarding when you see residents in a room, right.
00:23:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, completely, and like there are so many again, so many synergies between us, because I was going to say that with my you know, sponsorship pitching, which largely was not successful over the course of my ten years, because just you get so many more no's than yes. Is totally the creativity involved in telling that story and to your point, that storytelling and I love how you just said, like the magic in that storytelling, it's it's really addicting in a way, like it's so cool to know that you have that impact. So I'm really glad that you got to experience that as well.
00:23:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think so much of that, so much of that learning is so much of it you're learning on the fly, right you're doing this for the first time. You're like, I'm trying to figure this out. But it was really cool for me to feel like a lot of the things that I the things that I was doing, actually were rooted in experiences that I had had as an athlete, and you know, also pitching myself for sponsorship opportunities and pitching I worked in hospitality and I was I didn't I haven't had a very.
00:24:26
Speaker 2: Formal work experience in my life.
00:24:30
Speaker 3: I worked as a lifeguard, I worked as a surf instructor. Where I grew up, I had a surf lesson swim lesson business, and so much of having my own business was that was centered on the services that I was offering. Was pitching myself to people because they were paying for a service that I was providing. So my brand, my personal brand, and the way that I would tell my story was inextricably tied to the services that I was pitching as my business. In the same way that the personal brand that I had built for myself in the context of my sport. That's a story to tell as well. And so you kind of you're nervous and I'm doing this for the first time. I have no idea what I'm doing. But then you get in the room and you start telling the story of the business and yourself in the context of the business and what you're trying to build.
00:25:26
Speaker 2: And a lot of those.
00:25:27
Speaker 3: Learnings from my days having my search LUs in business and my SI lesson business, they were coming back and I was like, I have done this before, but in a different form or a different outcome, right, Like, it's the same process, it's a similar these are similar lessons, and like I can take the experiences that I've had, albeit not very standard work experiences. I can be effective in this room even though I haven't had the fancies, internships or the most common work experience.
00:26:02
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, totally. And I think that that ethos is really relevant to kind of most people because people have to kind of pitch themselves essentially, whether it's a job interview, if it's data whatever it is, like when you are trying to build that relationship your storytelling, and so I think that concept of leaning into all your past experiences and rooting what it is you're trying to get across in those personal stories and personal experiences is some of the most impactful ways to do that. So I think that's really cool. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to be right back with Amanda and if I'm honest as Julia Landauer, we are back on If I'm honest with Julia landa Er with Amanda Calbreys, who's the co founder of seql. Naming something, naming a product, naming a service, a company name is monumental. And my understanding is that Sequel is the current name, but it was not the original name. Can you talk a little bit about how you came to the original name and how you decided that it was time to change it.
00:27:10
Speaker 3: We started out with a very funny naming history. Are so I talked about I think I talked about this as a class project, right, So it started at Stanford of the class project. The original presentation had the name Tampro on it and it was like, okay, professional Tampon's Tampro like he and I think that was very like class. It's a very class project name, like it's very it's slightly juvenile like it, but it it was perfect for that moment in time, and I think it's important to appreciate like where you were in that moment in time and what we called the class project. But we needed to bring ourselves into a moment any space where we had something that reflected the gravity and the expanse of what we wanted to build, and that was we want we are building, and we want to build a company that is introducing women's health products that have never been available because we haven't invested in them, we haven't innovated on them, and we want to create products that deserve better, right like they've always deserved better. We've been complacent about them, we've ignored them. These products deserved better. So that's where sequel comes from.
00:28:36
Speaker 2: Sequels. It's the tampon two point zero.
00:28:39
Speaker 3: It's the sequel that these forgotten products, particularly the tampon, deserved and it's the next chapter of these women's health products. So that that's where that comes from, and we feel that that's a much more accurate representation of the world that we want to build. Love to think about brand as like a world building exercise, Like your.
00:29:05
Speaker 2: Brand is a world. What is the world that you want to build?
00:29:08
Speaker 3: Well, we want to build a world where period products, necessary products, essential products for women are not being forgotten and they're brought into their next chapter.
00:29:19
Speaker 1: That's such a great and I think it emphasizes the holistic nature of your products, which are so important, it's so essential, so integral to the fiber of you know, menstuating people's life that it carries the appropriate gravity, which I think is really cool from a logistic standpoint. Is it an early enough switch that you like didn't have to do too much on the consumer facing side or.
00:29:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's that's right.
00:29:52
Speaker 3: I mean, we went through so many iterations of like what should our name be, how like what should we do? How should we change it?
00:29:58
Speaker 2: But we were.
00:29:58
Speaker 3: Still so early in R and D that by the time we changed the name, it was it was easy to do. I think we're very thankful that we did that. Now that we're consumer facing and looking at the way that we show up with certain partnerships and announcements, and like, I think that it's it's very fun to have a name that is very different from the category and have it be a little like, you know, we all know that the Tampon brand names that all sound similar, and we expect those types of names to be a part of this category. And I think it's really cool when we see one of our partners putting out an announcement, like we're announcing our partnership with SQL, and people are like, what is that, I don't know, like and then reading about it, understanding the very logical and.
00:30:52
Speaker 2: I think cool reason why we are named the way that we are. It's very fitting.
00:30:59
Speaker 1: That's so true. And I am going to come back to kind of being a CpG company in a second, but since you've been talking about partnerships, I do want to discuss some of the very very cool partnerships that you have had. So first, about a month ago, you announced a partnership with Stanford Athletics, which is the first of its kind, and so can one as a Stanford grad also, I just think that's really cool. It's so fun to see the progress and the reinvestment back in students that are really making or former students who are really making a change in the world. So can you talk about that.
00:31:35
Speaker 3: This Stanford partnership feels just like your goal to have a Tampon on the side of your car.
00:31:41
Speaker 2: Right.
00:31:42
Speaker 3: It feels like one of those partnerships that is groundbreaking and I think will be the beginning of a shift in what does it mean to have sponsors, what does it mean to do something that nobody has done before.
00:32:02
Speaker 2: But we should have been doing this whole time.
00:32:04
Speaker 3: And I'm so thankful to the Stanford athletics team because they we met and there was immediate alignment and it wasn't like, oh no, how could we make this work. I don't know this, We've never done anything like this before. It was immediate alignment and it was we don't care that nobody has done anything like this before. We don't care that there's no playbook for this. We are happy to be the first. We are happy to do something that nobody else has done before. I make a statement, and so we announced last month that we are the Tampon of Stanford Athletics. It's the first collaboration between a tam On company and an NCAA program ever, and obviously we wouldn't have wanted to do it with anybody other than Stanford Athletics. My co founder Greta played for the Stanford lacrosse team, so it's amazing to hear her talk about how meaningful it is that will now see sequel tampons in the lacrosse locker room that she used to be in.
00:33:11
Speaker 1: That is so cool. Congratulations, I mean, that is soak and I'm so glad to hear that it was a fairly streamlined process. Because of all the universities, you would think that Stanford would be like innovative and open to try things. And so it's really cool to kind of not only I mean I know this and you know this, but not only like talk to talk, but walk the walk on all of the core values of the university. And so talk to me about some of your other partnerships because you had a presence at the Paris Olympics. I just we want to hear all about it and we want a fangirl over.
00:33:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:33:44
Speaker 3: We have had such a busy back half of twenty twenty four. The summer, we announced that we are the official tampon of the USL Super League, which is the newest professional women's soccer.
00:33:56
Speaker 2: League in the US.
00:33:58
Speaker 3: We're really proud to partner with them. They're building something that is incredible and that I mean we are partnering them from day one, and we're so excited to see them grow and grow with them.
00:34:14
Speaker 2: I mean, Stanford is a highlight of this year.
00:34:20
Speaker 3: Because that is so against the grain and it's something that nobody's done before. We did go to the Paris Olympics. We were a part of the Athleta Power of She activation in Paris. We sampled with them and Athleta is an incredible brand.
00:34:39
Speaker 2: It's perfect brand alignment for us.
00:34:42
Speaker 3: Athleta as the most beautiful workout sets that I can wear to yoga, I can.
00:34:51
Speaker 2: Wear them out and about.
00:34:53
Speaker 3: I can wear them casually, but they're also being worn by Katie Ladeki and Simone Biles, who are two.
00:34:59
Speaker 2: Of their athletes, and they're the goats.
00:35:01
Speaker 3: So it's it's a wonderful partnership for us because it shows that.
00:35:09
Speaker 2: You can you can Simone Biles.
00:35:11
Speaker 3: And Katie Oldecki can wear the same athletic workout outfit that you can wear to yoga or walking down the street in the same way that you can be the best athlete in the world, and you still need a tampon that is reliable in the same way that I need a tampon when I walk down the street that's going to be.
00:35:32
Speaker 2: Reliable for me.
00:35:33
Speaker 3: So I think that like the versatility of both our product and athletics products for any type of woman is really important and I love that alignment. What it was a surreal experience to be at the Olympics. We also had the opportunity to get some product out to some of our favorite Team USA athletes prior to them being a part of the Olympics, and we saw we saw a couple Instagram posts from some of our favorite athletes posting some of our merge and.
00:36:11
Speaker 2: So that was very cool.
00:36:13
Speaker 3: It was very very cool knowing that some of the best athletes in the world, competing for the hardest arguably the hardest Olympic team to make, are recognizing our product, our brand like and showing it to their audiences.
00:36:29
Speaker 2: It was it was a dream. It was so so cool.
00:36:33
Speaker 3: And then we also just we just announced that we are the official tampon of Athletes Unlimited, which is the only professional acrosse and professional softball league in the US for women, and they also have volleyball, they have basketball, and they're really pioneers in women's professional sports leagues. They have this like very interesting league and game structure that's really exciting and like content oriented, action oriented, and like really for the fans, so that fans can feel super close to their bivorite players. Volleyball is one of the fastest growing youth sports in the US, and they've really made professional volleyball accessible for a lot of these young fans and so perfect partner alignment there as well.
00:37:26
Speaker 1: That's incredible And something that I've picked up as we've been talking, which I think is super admirable, is as you're talking about your product that you're building, and that's like first and foremost, but you talk about like the importance of like every step of the ecosystem that you are kind of serving, and I think that that's so important and something that's overlooked a lot, and it's just it's really like, kudos to you, and I applaud you because I think that like the passion you clearly convey for women's sports and women's well being and the team dynamic and you know, being able to focus on the spoorart, it's like it's so cool, like this is this feels perfect, and so I just want to give that shout out because I think it's really cool. Throwing it back real quick before we take our next break with being a CpG. And obviously there's so much that goes on behind the scenes, and you've talked about some of the things like the name or like doing research and R and D and all that stuff. Well, were there any things that were particularly unexpected on the like logistical back end, behind the scenes side of starting a consumer package good company?
00:38:36
Speaker 3: I mean, everything is everything is unexpected and crazy all the time.
00:38:41
Speaker 2: I mean, we spent five years in R and D making this, and it's funny. You speak to like CBG people and they're like, that's forever.
00:38:51
Speaker 3: And then you speak to medical device people because we went through the FDA were a class to medical device, were regulated by the FDA in the United States. You speak to medical device people and they're like, you went from notebook sketch to an FDA five ten K clearance in four years, Like that's crazy, right, So it's all about perspective, and so for us, it's like, you.
00:39:12
Speaker 2: Know, you speak to CpG people and they're like, that's so.
00:39:15
Speaker 3: Long, that's insane. And then the other perspective is that that was really fast. But there's so many challenges when you're building a physical product that you don't foresee when you're starting, there's everything from building and developing the product, getting a manufacturer that you trust and can rely on. It's it's like making sure that the quality of your product coming off the line is what you want it to be. Then once you get through that, it's the regulatory piece. When you get through that, it's the warehousing, the fulfillment, the logistics, making sure that our customers are getting their products. And then when the product gets to the customer, are they happy with the product? What do they think about the product? What's going to get them to continue using our product? And then obviously there's the whole marketing piece as well, which is like what is the right audience for us to go after? How do we and I think for us, like we have the perspective that you know, women's sports isn't just about people that play sports.
00:40:21
Speaker 2: It's not just.
00:40:22
Speaker 3: About like the people watching women's sports are not just people that play sports. If if the only people that watched the WNBA were people that played basketball, we wouldn't be seeing the explosive growth in fandom that we're seeing of that league today, right, And so we need to think about our customers as not only.
00:40:41
Speaker 2: People that play sports, but people that watch sports.
00:40:43
Speaker 3: So there's that marketing component as well that we're working through and testing and figuring out.
00:40:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, And is it safe to say that, like you were figuring it out as you go and learning as you go.
00:40:55
Speaker 3: That's the nature of a startup, right, That's why we get our hands dirty and we work on a small, scrappy team on really interesting problems that we want to solve, right, Yeah.
00:41:09
Speaker 1: And I think that's an important flag though, because I think, you know, especially especially people who like aren't going to an you know, an entrepreneurial focused university or not in that regional area where so much of you know, startups are born, this idea that you have to have a clear idea of how you're going to get there, or you know, or it's not worth it. Like, I think it's so important to reiterate the message that many, many people have the vision, have the idea, and just and most importantly, I think, have the belief in themselves and confidence in themselves that they will figure it out along the way. I think there's a misconception that you need to you know, you don't need a supply chain, you know, manufacturing background to go into this physical product, you can figure it out. So I think that's a really nice example of you know, just that dive in head first, believe that you'll figured out, ask questions around yourself with good people, outsource when you need to.
00:42:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the biggest thing is like bringing I think the biggest the biggest asset that a founding team or a founder can have is knowing when to bring on help and bringing on people that know more than you'll ever know about a topic or a part of your business, right, like bringing on somebody with so much experience that they can help execute and that you as the founder, your job is not to do everything. Your job is not to be the best at everything. Your job is to facilitate and create a space for the best people to do their best work. That's the best way to be a founder.
00:42:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that brings back the importance of the storytelling component that you talked about earlier. Like the way that you're going to bring in these really knowledgeable experience like top ten to your talent people is by articulating the vision and sharing the passion. And that's where I think, like especially that that little GENIESI qua from a founder is so important because you bring that magic to it that then makes people want to get involved.
00:43:16
Speaker 2: Totally, totally.
00:43:18
Speaker 1: I love it. Oh, I love it so much. We're going to take one more break, but then we're going to be back with Amanda Calbreys. We are back on if I'm honest with Julia landau Er with our guest Amanda Calbres from the sequel. So you talk about how pretty early on after graduating you were able to get out and start pitching for some VC funding, and it has been widely reported, especially in the recent past, that women founders receive a very small percentage of overall VC funding, and we hope that that's changing. There's awareness now at least. But can you talk little to the experience that you personally had you and Greta had being female founders going after VC funding.
00:44:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, when we were when we were going out and pitching for funding, we recognized that we were two young women and we were pitching a product that was meant for women, and so we had we had some hurdles to overcome. But I do think that for us going out and pitching, a lot of it was about against storytelling and making sure that we were clearly communicating to whoever our audience was on the other side of the pitch, but they understood that this was a need that needed to be solved, whether they could empathize with the problem or whether they could sympathize with the problem, that this was a this was a critical problem that needed to be solved.
00:44:53
Speaker 2: And I think that what we did really.
00:44:56
Speaker 3: Well was asking our audience to, you know, ask around if they couldn't empathize and they can only sympathize with the problem, ask your wife, your daughter, your female friends, ask them what they think about this category, this market, do some research and come back to us with any questions that you have.
00:45:21
Speaker 2: And I think being open to that, being open to investors wanting to do research with the people around them that they care about the most. I think people feel the most comfortable.
00:45:31
Speaker 3: Taking risks on things and taking that some things when they understand it, which is why like which is why it's so hard to raise money for pampons or anything in the women's health space, because if it doesn't if you don't feel like it affects you and you don't feel like you can relate to it, it's much more difficult to take a risk on it so making sure that we are telling the story in the way in a way where people feel comfortable asking questions, they feel comfortable engaging with us and comfortable engaging with the pep in their lives to ask some really hard questions or ask some maybe questions that they never thought they'd be asking of their friends, of their partners. We need to facilitate an environment and a conversation where they.
00:46:13
Speaker 2: Can feel comfortable doing that.
00:46:15
Speaker 3: And so that means we need to be really confident in our belief that this would be a huge business. We need to be confident that this is a business that needs to exist. This is a problem that needs to be solved. But this is a company that were the right people to do it. This is a company being built by people that are exactly the.
00:46:34
Speaker 2: Founders that should be doing it.
00:46:36
Speaker 3: And I think that's a huge founder product fit, especially for CPGG, is a huge deal when pitching as well.
00:46:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you talking reminded me of I don't know who said this. I cannot find the accreditation needed, but a quote that privilege is invisible to those who have it, and I feel like that is probably like an additional hurdle that you have to deal with to your point, as a female Letting co founded female product company Pitching too, I would assume majority men like needing to have that education process, which not every investor is going to want to be educated like you hope that they do, but like there's clearly like you should, I would assume that it almost can make the process easier if you see that willingness, and or I should say I shouldn't make the process easier. Nothing about raising money is easy, but like you know, makes it maybe smoother if you see that there's that willingness to learn totally.
00:47:34
Speaker 3: And I have one of our one of our investors is absolutely incredible. It's Mark Hershinson at Pair VC, and I love this anecdote from when we were raising money. She is a woman, and she obviously understood the need that we were trying to solve very deeply, and in trying to communicate that to some male investors, it was more it was us and some male investors. She knew that in order to get these male investors to understand what we what the gravity of what we were trying to solve, she had to put it in their terms. And so she said, you know, some of you are new parents. Some of you have, our parents have had children, you've all been through the diaper phase. And she's like, imagine you're running through the airport, you're changing planes, and your child.
00:48:37
Speaker 2: Of wearing diapers.
00:48:39
Speaker 3: What's the one thing, like you're in this kind of like state of chaos, what is the one thing that you need that diaper to do as you're trying to execute something that absolutely must happen, high pressure, high stakes.
00:48:53
Speaker 2: They cannot leak And that was such a powerful use of store.
00:49:00
Speaker 3: Are you telling to build mpathy with an audience, But we'll never experience their tampa leaking. They'll never experience how many US tampas, but they'll experience a diaper leaking while you're changing planes, running through an airport with a child in a lot of suitcases.
00:49:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh my goodness. This makes me like a little angry because you may saying that example of diapers, It's like that is such a similar product. I had never I had never drawn the parallels there. And there has been, to my understanding, quite a bit of innovation around diapers, around materials, around sustainable stuff, Like that's a whole no totalization with like not putting chemicals in your body on your body whatever, and like there's so much iteration around that, and yet a very similar product that affects roughly fifty percent of the population has not been innovating, Like women just keep getting screwed, Like, oh my goodness, So thank you again for stepping up for the space, because yeah, I haven't thought about it like that, and oh yeah, but I'm glad that that story resonated because it does. It's it's that would be terrible.
00:50:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, And for all the super dads in the room, as they all are, they were like, of course, like, of course, I'm like carrying my child and I don't want the diaper to leap, like I've got to get on the plane, and like and they knew like immediately they resonated with that, right, So.
00:50:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's that's a really to your point, great example of storytelling, and I appreciate that on behalf of all the women out there. I only have a couple more questions for you before we get into our rapid fire if you're honest, But what would you say so far have been some of your proudest moments with SQL.
00:50:45
Speaker 3: We Oh, my god, proudest moments. I think everything I think I think both my co founder and I we would say that one of our proudest moments is watching the first like at scale production line of our product, like like spiral tampons, like coming off the line and like seeing it and holding it for the first time and being like, oh my god, this is real.
00:51:13
Speaker 2: I think that's one.
00:51:14
Speaker 3: I think another one is being in Paris this past summer was so incredible for all of us, for the team, like it just that was such a huge moment because you're like, you know, you're in it's like twenty twenty and you're trying to build this product and everybody's always talking. Everybody's always talking about the next Olympics. When the Olympics is happening, right, so it's like Tokyo twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and this whole conversation around the Olympics, and although you guys going to the Olympics, you guys doing anything from the Olympics.
00:51:49
Speaker 2: We're like, no, we're not doing anything to the Tokyo Olympics.
00:51:52
Speaker 3: We like, you're still in R and D and two four years later, three years later, be there in Paris.
00:51:59
Speaker 2: That was that was huge moment.
00:52:01
Speaker 1: Oh, that's incredible. Yeah, and on a global stage. I mean, like that is with like the definition of human excellence and to be associated with that, like that's I'm really glad that you guys got to go there.
00:52:14
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:52:15
Speaker 1: So what's next, What's next for you? What's next for SQL? What are we going to manifest here? Today?
00:52:23
Speaker 3: We have some really exciting partnerships coming up, So.
00:52:28
Speaker 2: So excited for twenty twenty five.
00:52:30
Speaker 3: Also, we're starting to build out our athlete rosters, so we are finally I mean, this is such a dream for me to be able to work with some of the most amazing athletes in the world that want to talk about periods and talk about what it's like to perform on their period. We're building our athlete roster and that's a big focus for twenty twenty five and I'm so excited to start announcing some of the athletes that we will be working with next year.
00:52:57
Speaker 1: That's incredible. Oh well, I am rooting for you. I am so excited to follow along on that. And also I have I have bought my sequel so the next time that I need them, I will be.
00:53:06
Speaker 2: Trying them out and amazing.
00:53:07
Speaker 1: I'm really looking forward to it because it is such a I don't know, it's a little like it's emotional and it's like a comfort thing, and I think you can get in your own head about it. So I'm really excited totally to pivot to our final segment. I can't believe all this time has already gone by, but the rapid fire. If you're honest, what is your go to quick and easy dinner?
00:53:30
Speaker 3: Oh, I am such a like a bunch of veggies in a cast iron like on the stone rice, Like I don't know, just like I feel like it's my athlete days. Like if I'm like getting home tired after a long day work, I'm like grilled chicken veggies on the cast iron rice, like just reverting back to the like grinding it out athlete days.
00:53:53
Speaker 2: And then I like sit down with my k meal and I'm like, oh my god, this is literally like I'm training again.
00:53:59
Speaker 1: But it's new tree and dense and it doesn't have but.
00:54:03
Speaker 2: Non quick and easy.
00:54:04
Speaker 3: Like I love making homemade pizza, like actually rolling out dough with like letting it rise with the yeast and like actually making that for my friends.
00:54:14
Speaker 2: Like I actually think that's super easy, but it seems like.
00:54:17
Speaker 1: It's not so my husband Ben, and especially our friends here. There are a few friends here where like we have we have a wood burning oonie oven, and then our friend has the gas powered Ouoni pizza oven and like they like have so fun red sheets of different like the chemical properties of the dough that they're making are not chemical, but like the ingredient properties of the does that they're making and like with sugar and oil and wetness and yeast, and it's like, oh my goodness, yes, like keep making pezza.
00:54:45
Speaker 2: No, we we're gonna have a pizza day.
00:54:47
Speaker 3: We're gonna fast and loose in my household, it's like I don't even know where our measuring cups are and like a little bit of yeast, a little bit of water dough like or flour, oil, sugar, and then it just comes together. And my friends are like my friends have like my French friends have watched me cook and they're like, okay, started.
00:55:11
Speaker 1: On behalf of Ben, because I can like, no, stop not measuring your baking.
00:55:21
Speaker 3: My good friends is like a chef and has worked in Michelin Star restaurants and is like he'll come over and like be watching me cook and he'll just be like you got it, you got it, like no worries, you got this.
00:55:35
Speaker 1: Hey, if it tastes good and it's edible at the end, that's all that matters. I don't cook very much. I'm like the professional dishwasher in the house, so I can't really contribute it to styles of Yeah, yeah, you know what, we each serve a purpose. What musical artists are you listening to a lot right now?
00:55:53
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm listening to travel Aroone like everyone else. I feel like that's a like a just classic answer, But.
00:56:00
Speaker 1: I love it. She's on several of her songs are on my rotation on Spotify. Ye the last. If you're honest, what is something that you're grateful for right now?
00:56:12
Speaker 3: But I'm so grateful that I am two blocks from the ocean right now. I'm so grateful to live in a city and get to be close to the ocean right now.
00:56:22
Speaker 2: I'm a surfer.
00:56:23
Speaker 3: I am an ocean person through and through, and just to be able to jump in the water at the end of a long day is something I think I'll look back on later in life and be like, Wow, you got to live.
00:56:37
Speaker 2: That close to the beach in your twenties. That's so cool.
00:56:40
Speaker 1: That is so cool and also very brave because it's very cold water out there.
00:56:44
Speaker 2: It is cold.
00:56:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, Amanda, that's amazing. Where are some of the best places for people to find you online and to find SQL.
00:56:53
Speaker 3: So at triseql is our Instagram and TikTok. You can find me at ap Calibres on Instagram and then sometimes I post on LinkedIn and sometimes I don't see goodbye me there, but yeah Instagram to talk for SQL and myself.
00:57:10
Speaker 1: I will link all that in description and include the website. Amanda, thank you so much. This was so cool to hear your journey. I am so excited to now know you and follow you on this journey because it's such impactful work and making stand for proud for sure.
00:57:27
Speaker 3: So so thankful to be here to know you and appreciate everything.
00:57:34
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
00:57:36
Speaker 1: Thank you everyone. That is our episode. I will be sharing all this information on Amanda and SEQL and Greta, her co founder, and if you like this episode, please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. And as always, thank you for letting us be honest with you. And I will see you in two weeks
Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. This week's guest is the incredibly cool, incredibly smart, incredibly accomplished Amanda Calabreeze. Now, I'm gonna preface this by saying that we have a lot of synergies. We are both former competitive athletes, we both went to Stanford, we both are operating in male dominated fields, and we both care deeply about women's hygiene and femcare products, which is how Amanda became the CMO and co founder of Seql, a women's health company that's focused on product innovation addressing unmet needs of women. The company's first product, a redesign of the tampon as the Sequel Spiral tampon is FDA approved as a medical device and features a proprietary spiral design that is engineered to be more fluid mechanically efficient, meaning it is designed to absorb more evenly and not leak before it's full, which if you've used tampons, you know that that is an incredibly important feature, something that doesn't always work out in our favor and causes a lot of stress. Amanda was named to the twenty twenty three Forbes thirty Under thirty List. She represented the United States and the sport of surf life saving. She's a nine time national champion and has the most wins in her event, which is beach Flags for any person, male or female, in the history of life saving sport in the US. What a badass. When not working on SQL or competing, Amanda is searching for her next adrenaline rush, surfing, swimming, and skiing in San Francisco, where she lives. I adored this conversation. I was so happy to be introduced to Amanda. I see so many similarities between her and myself. I really admire the mission driven nature of the products that she and her co founder have been creating, and as someone who is so big on women's empowerment, so much of that is just getting us to a level playing field and trying to alleviate some of the stress that's associated with some of the things that women uniquely have to deal with. And we talk about everything from starting up the company, how they got the idea, the R and D, how they are partnering and expanding their time at the Paris Olympics, recent partnerships they've had, what they're looking to for the future. We get into what it's like to be a woman seeking VC funding. We talk about the importance and the critical nature of storytelling, how that plays throughout our lives, and it's just so much fun. So I really hope that you enjoy this conversation with Amanda Calabreez, who is the CMO and co founder of SQL. Amanda, thank you so much for joining me on. If I'm honest with Julia Landauer, I.
00:02:37
Speaker 2: Am so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:02:39
Speaker 1: Oh, of course, now we have a lot of synergies, right. We both were competitive athletes, both went to Stanford, Both cared deeply about women's health and feminine care and hygiene, and so it was just a matter of time before our paths met, I think. And it's just so cool to see what you have done and for some addition context for our listeners. For a long time, I have said that my dream sponsor would have been a tampon company because a number of things. One I really care about destigmatizing and getting rid of the taboo and just normalizing like women's health and menstruation and everything like that. I also thought it would be so audacious to put a big tampon on the side of a race car. Like, just from a marketing perspective, it seems cool. NASCAR has a almost forty percent female fan base, so just kind of like it seemed like it would be super cool, and like I pitched it. I was able for a few years period to pitch some smaller companies, some global companies. It didn't stick, but that's okay. I think that the work you're doing is so cool. So anyway, I personally was really interested in talking with you. I think this is really exciting. And I think one thing that I read some in some press that you had was that you guys wanted to focus on revitalizing a quote unquote sleepy industry, which is kind of what I want to jump into first. So, like, how did you come up with the idea to shake up the sleepy industry? How did you come up with the idea of redeveloping a tampon? And can you talk about this SEQL shape and what makes it different?
00:04:16
Speaker 3: So we actually started with our own experiences, right, I mean, similar to your athletic career racing, and I'm sure you've had your fair share of having your period having to go out for a race.
00:04:30
Speaker 2: My co founder and I had these same.
00:04:32
Speaker 3: Experiences in our athletic careers, right, So I was wearing a red, white and blue bikini going out and racing all over the world. I competed for the US Life Saving Team for almost ten years. My co founder played you on the cross at Stanford wearing a white home team skirt, and the idea FIRSTQL came from those moments. And for gretit was you know, her teammates yelling can you check me?
00:04:55
Speaker 2: Like can you? Can?
00:04:55
Speaker 3: You look at my skirt and you're like supposed to be focusing on the game you're playing, but actually you're focusing on whether you have a red stain. And for me it was like, I'm totally I'm competing against some of.
00:05:08
Speaker 2: The best people in my sport in the world.
00:05:10
Speaker 3: I'm lining up at the beach and instead of being like, Okay, what's my race plan? What am I doing entering the ocean? Where am I going? What are the conditions looking like, I'm like, Okay, what is my tampon doing? How long have I been wearing it? Do I trust it to hold up in this race? And that's the checklist I'm going through it's not my race plan. And when Greta and I came together and realized that we had these shared experiences, we knew that we also had the expertise from our time at Stanford to think about a better solution, and so it really started with our own experiences as high level athletes. Now we were in the perfect environment to really see if we could make a difference, and we started more broadly with the period space and period category right talking to people about what they were using. We're using tampons, pads, menstrual cups, munstrual discs were really popular when we were starting the company, and we recognized everyone we were speaking.
00:06:16
Speaker 2: To, or most people that we were speaking to, we're using tampons.
00:06:19
Speaker 3: And that was because we were speaking to a lot of very active women, a lot of people that were on our sports teams.
00:06:25
Speaker 2: Or people that we exercised with. And so we landed on.
00:06:31
Speaker 3: Re engineering or at that point, attempting to re engineer tampon because that's what most of the people we spoke to were using. And that's also seventy percent of us women report tampons is their product of choice, So that's where we could have the biggest impact. In the market, everybody was saying the same thing. My tampon leaks far before it's full. It's unreliable, it's uncomfortable. I pull it out, there's a red line down the side. The whole rest of the product is there. I'm like, are you even doing your job right? And so we really wanted to focus on that, that failure, right, the product failure that causes the distraction whether the products could a fail or not. And so we I mean, we discovered that vertical channels that are present on almost all of the tampons in the market are funneling the fluid away from the absorbent core, causing it to not absorb evenly and then in turn causing the product to potentially leak before it is full.
00:07:33
Speaker 2: And so what.
00:07:34
Speaker 3: We ideated at the D School at Stanford and what we ultimately ended up developing is a helical spiral that goes around the outside of the tampon. This helps the tampon absorb more evenly in stages and to completion without failing before it is full. And again it helps prevent that premature leakage. And so the goal is to have the tampon that is more relying liable, and the goal is to have a product that we all can wear, whether we're in sports, competing at the top of our game or just going to yoga or walking down the street, having something that we can actually depend on in trust. And so it's been five years of developing that product since since we started at Stanford, But I mean, I couldn't be more proud to actually have the product out in the world today. It's it's really cool to go from like, you know, dorm room sketch to Okay, this is actually real, this is crazy.
00:08:32
Speaker 1: I feel like that's like the like Stanford vibe, like Silicon Valley vibe of like the dream of that ideation to actual product, which I want to get to in a little bit. But I also just want to take a second to give some context for our listeners who have not used Tampa or don't have a period right, because like, yeah, I think what you talked about about the distractions that you then have to deal with when you should be focusing on whatever task is at hand, and this spans like competitive athletes, but also like you know, you're not supposed to keep a tampon in for more than eight hours for risk of bacteria development and all that, and so you know, if you're lucky enough to sleep more than eight hours or don't have to do that, Like you have to think about it as it relates to when you're sleeping, or do you have to set on early, or you know, if you have to fly when you have your period, Like so many different factors can affect the flow and the heaviness and it could change. And if you're in a foreign environment or if you're like in a different climate or tropic, like, it can impact your body. And so there are just so many times where you then have to think about that. And it's partially because there's still taboo in people for whatever reason, shame women about period stuff, and there's negative connotations with it, but it's also a public health thing, Like it's not sanitary if you're if anyone from any type part of your body is bleeding around other people, right Like, that's so it's it's I don't mean that in a negative way. It's just like, you know, there's a reason people have to put on gloves if they cut themselves when they're chefs, right Like, you're not supposed to have that, you know, permeate other things so it's just a constant going on in the background, and so it can it's really it can be really stressful, and especially for like teenagers or people just starting like it's it's so different. So the work that you're doing is incredible. So jumping into the time at Stanford. So for those who don't know, the D School, which it stands for Design School, is a really innovative, creative resource rich part of the school which different majors can have classes in their different lectures. I clearly remember one class that I didn't take. What I read about I just didn't work with my schedule. It was called fail Faster, and the concept was how you know when you're ideating, when you're problem solving, you want to not be super married to one single idea, and it's about kind of having an idea, testing it, analyzing it, learning from it, adapting, evolving, changing your approach. Did you do a lot of that as you were coming up with the design and like what did that look like?
00:10:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so much of it is iterating.
00:11:00
Speaker 3: I think the thing that's different for us is that we are a medical device, and so in the way that you can test different iterations of a software product or landing pages or things like that. We were very limited in what we could actually do from a physical prototyping perspective because we are regulated by the FDA and we are a medical device.
00:11:24
Speaker 2: We are a product that goes into somebody's body.
00:11:28
Speaker 3: Now, what we can do is talk about the needs with our users. Right, we can go and have endless conversations and collect as much user insight as we possibly can.
00:11:43
Speaker 2: Right, talk to people about.
00:11:44
Speaker 3: The period routines, their period habits, what is something that is distracting you when you're preparing for your day, for your game, whatever you're doing. And so we spend a lot of time in what the d School calls the need finding phase, so that we can really understand You don't want to jump into a solution, right, I think very often we jump to conclusions, we make assumptions, and then we build a solution that is based on a wobbly tower of assumptions and opinions.
00:12:16
Speaker 2: And we want to make sure that any solution that we arrive at is.
00:12:21
Speaker 3: Grounded in the true needs of the users that we want to solve a problem for.
00:12:27
Speaker 2: And so we spent a lot of.
00:12:28
Speaker 3: Time on the need finding phase to make sure that we were actually solving a problem that we had, because if people were happy with their period products, then there would be no reason for us to innovate in the category. If people are happy with the performance of their tampons, then we wouldn't need a better tampon.
00:12:46
Speaker 2: But that wasn't the case.
00:12:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And then also, I guess when you're going through that process, how do you know when you have identified enough of a problem, Like how many people do you need to speak to? How many perspectives do you need to have before you're like, all right, this clearly has legs, let's go with it.
00:13:05
Speaker 3: I mean, when you start hearing it's about pattern recognition, right, when you start hearing the same things over and over again, that's when you know that you have found something. And we kind of like we have different words for those, like we're that's when you know you have a finding, right, and when that finding leads to something that you can understand about this particular user or customer or population, that's when you've developed an insight. And so I think a line that I used before that I think is so was so resonant with us and our users and ultimately resulted in this insight was finding that we had was I pull out my tampon, there's a red line down the side, and the whole rest of the product is there. And we heard that over and over and over again by asking question like interesting questions about periods, like, you know, take me through your experience with your tampon, Take me through your routine, walk me through step by step. So you put the tampon in, how long are you wearing it for? Your taking it out? What are you noticing when you take it out? There's a red line down the side. Okay, that's really interesting. And we collect all of these findings that we have, we keep hearing this over and over again, and the insight from that is that the reason, like the tampons are failing before they're full because there's a line down the side, right, And that's really interesting. Well, why are tampons leaking before they're full and causing this pretty much more product failure and then in turn causing distraction. Oh, it's because there's these vertical the vertical channels are causing this red line down the side.
00:14:50
Speaker 2: Okay, that's the problem.
00:14:52
Speaker 3: Is that there are this red line down the side there are these vertical channels down the side, and that leads us to our solution that, Okay, how do we disrupt the vertical channels. How do we create something that is different from the vertical channels. And that's kind of like how you get like from like a kind of a building block like block by block by block.
00:15:14
Speaker 2: That's how you get to your solution.
00:15:16
Speaker 3: Instead of saying, Okay, everybody hates tampons, we should just design a new type of period product, right, Like, maybe that's somewhere we would have gone, but we spoke to our users and they were very regimented in their period routines, and we didn't want to disrupt that. We didn't want to say, oh, you don't like your tampon, here's some new product that we invented that you're gonna have to learn how to use and you're gonna have to trust us that it's going to work.
00:15:43
Speaker 2: And you've never seen it before. We had to educate you on it. Right.
00:15:47
Speaker 3: We actually just noticed that people were people were choosing tampons because they were convenient, because they allowed them to move their bodies, exercise, go swimming, all of these things.
00:15:57
Speaker 2: It was very very liberating product.
00:16:00
Speaker 3: At the same time, it's still had its constraints, and so how do we look at the constraints of the product where the product may be lacking and innovate there so that we can impact.
00:16:13
Speaker 2: A huge market and a large amount of users.
00:16:16
Speaker 1: Right, And am I correct that a very large percentage of feminine care users use the same type of product that they were taught to when they first got their period, like with their mom.
00:16:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's it is a category that is so influenced by mom, or by your big sister.
00:16:40
Speaker 2: Or even from a sports.
00:16:42
Speaker 3: Like so many athletes talk about getting their first period when they're traveling with their team and it's like the older girl on the swim team or the team captain on your lacrosse team is giving you a tampon and explaining to you how to.
00:16:57
Speaker 2: Put it in. So it's somebody it's passed down.
00:17:00
Speaker 3: It is it is knowledge that has passed down from somebody in your life that you trust.
00:17:05
Speaker 1: M H. And that like carries such a psychological weight with it. I don't mean that in a negative way, but just like you're you know, as you're going through this huge change in your body, like all of the chemicals in your body are changing when you're going through puberty and you're you know, it's a fairly traumatic thing to experience for the first little while. I mean, it's so different and like the comfort that comes with the initial like technique that you used. So I totally get that. So did you pretty much know by the time you graduated or before you graduated, that you were going to pursue this entrepreneurial journey of trying to make this this idea come to life.
00:17:47
Speaker 2: I think we didn't know how far we could take it.
00:17:51
Speaker 3: Right, We had raised quite a bit of grant funding while we were at Stanford, and that was it's such a benefit of being added an institution like it is, right, and also we were working on this project that a lot of people saw merit and they saw the ability for impact in a category that hasn't seen a ton of innovation for a population that has can placent for decades. So we went into the summer after graduation with grant funding. But I think we didn't know, you know, was this a fundable business. Were we going to be able to raise the capital that we needed to invest in the R and D? And so the goal for the summer after graduation for Greta and myself was to go out and figure out if this was a fundable business. And so we use the grant funding that we had, the advisors that we had to put ourselves in the best position, whether that be setting up R and D, doing initial research, interviewing the candidates to do the R and D, to work like institutions and places that we could work with, putting ourselves in the best position to then bring in funding to kickstart a lot of the R and D. And we were able to get a term sheet and an offer for investment in the summer after graduation, and not to us.
00:19:22
Speaker 2: That to us was the indication that people not.
00:19:26
Speaker 3: Only believed in the product and the potential for the product, but they believed in us. And that's so much of early stage startups is like do I believe is the market big enough? Is this a problem that needs to be solved, and are these the right people to solve this problem? And so the ability for us to get an offer for investment a few months after graduating really kicked off our first fundraise, which we did from friends and family and from some smaller vcs in Silicon Valley and Stanford Associated vcs and that allowed us to invest in R and D y early on.
00:20:05
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah, because the question I was going to ask is like, how do you determine whether or not it's a fundable initiative? And obviously getting a term sheet is a very clear indication. But is that something that you, like, were actively pitching. And I have never attempted to pitch. I haven't had anything that is VC fundable, so I don't know the exact process. I understand it on a conceptual level, but like, is that something that you guys actively went out and pitched or did it kind of come to you through the initial research and you know, initial funds grants that you were utilizing.
00:20:37
Speaker 3: We were we were going on and pitching. We had put together a pitch check, we were pitching you know, friends and family, angel investors, looking for introductions from people that we met through Stanford, people that we met through our past like work experiences, and we were like pounding the pavement, like getting in front of anybody that we could telling any But I think so much of it is being confident in what you're doing. So when somebody says, oh, what are you doing this summer? What are you doing after graduation. I am building a company where we are re engineering the tampon.
00:21:18
Speaker 2: For the first time in eighty years.
00:21:20
Speaker 3: And there is power and there is confidence in that statement, and there's also a commitment in that statement, because people want to fund and people want to fund a business where there are people that are committed to what they are doing, that believe in what they're doing, and they're confident in what they're doing. And so I think something that Greta and I always said to ourselves that first summer is like, we're building a tampon. We are building a tampon company, we are building a women's health company.
00:21:47
Speaker 2: And we would just like say it over and over.
00:21:48
Speaker 3: Again because that was the like outward commitment and confidence that we needed to have going into every room.
00:21:58
Speaker 1: I love that, and I gave me goosebumps because you're so right that it's like it's the self belief that, especially when you've put so much time in like you earn it right like and you like should have full faith in yourself. Understand it's a tough landscape out there and nothing comes easy, But that's really incredible. Did you enjoy the pitching process, like the actual being in the room and pitching the product and why it was worth investing in.
00:22:24
Speaker 2: I think that it can get exhausting.
00:22:27
Speaker 3: It's like very it's very tiring, like just to lap after your lap after lap doing the pitching. That being said, I love telling stories and I love using storytelling as a way to connect with people. And I think that when you tell your story, when you find a way to tell your story that connects with people and you can see it on their faces when you're telling.
00:22:59
Speaker 2: Your story, the story of the business.
00:23:01
Speaker 3: I think that that there's like a little bit of magic to that that I do enjoy, and I think that it is rewarding when you see residents in a room, right.
00:23:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, completely, and like there are so many again, so many synergies between us, because I was going to say that with my you know, sponsorship pitching, which largely was not successful over the course of my ten years, because just you get so many more no's than yes. Is totally the creativity involved in telling that story and to your point, that storytelling and I love how you just said, like the magic in that storytelling, it's it's really addicting in a way, like it's so cool to know that you have that impact. So I'm really glad that you got to experience that as well.
00:23:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think so much of that, so much of that learning is so much of it you're learning on the fly, right you're doing this for the first time. You're like, I'm trying to figure this out. But it was really cool for me to feel like a lot of the things that I the things that I was doing, actually were rooted in experiences that I had had as an athlete, and you know, also pitching myself for sponsorship opportunities and pitching I worked in hospitality and I was I didn't I haven't had a very.
00:24:26
Speaker 2: Formal work experience in my life.
00:24:30
Speaker 3: I worked as a lifeguard, I worked as a surf instructor. Where I grew up, I had a surf lesson swim lesson business, and so much of having my own business was that was centered on the services that I was offering. Was pitching myself to people because they were paying for a service that I was providing. So my brand, my personal brand, and the way that I would tell my story was inextricably tied to the services that I was pitching as my business. In the same way that the personal brand that I had built for myself in the context of my sport. That's a story to tell as well. And so you kind of you're nervous and I'm doing this for the first time. I have no idea what I'm doing. But then you get in the room and you start telling the story of the business and yourself in the context of the business and what you're trying to build.
00:25:26
Speaker 2: And a lot of those.
00:25:27
Speaker 3: Learnings from my days having my search LUs in business and my SI lesson business, they were coming back and I was like, I have done this before, but in a different form or a different outcome, right, Like, it's the same process, it's a similar these are similar lessons, and like I can take the experiences that I've had, albeit not very standard work experiences. I can be effective in this room even though I haven't had the fancies, internships or the most common work experience.
00:26:02
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, totally. And I think that that ethos is really relevant to kind of most people because people have to kind of pitch themselves essentially, whether it's a job interview, if it's data whatever it is, like when you are trying to build that relationship your storytelling, and so I think that concept of leaning into all your past experiences and rooting what it is you're trying to get across in those personal stories and personal experiences is some of the most impactful ways to do that. So I think that's really cool. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to be right back with Amanda and if I'm honest as Julia Landauer, we are back on If I'm honest with Julia landa Er with Amanda Calbreys, who's the co founder of seql. Naming something, naming a product, naming a service, a company name is monumental. And my understanding is that Sequel is the current name, but it was not the original name. Can you talk a little bit about how you came to the original name and how you decided that it was time to change it.
00:27:10
Speaker 3: We started out with a very funny naming history. Are so I talked about I think I talked about this as a class project, right, So it started at Stanford of the class project. The original presentation had the name Tampro on it and it was like, okay, professional Tampon's Tampro like he and I think that was very like class. It's a very class project name, like it's very it's slightly juvenile like it, but it it was perfect for that moment in time, and I think it's important to appreciate like where you were in that moment in time and what we called the class project. But we needed to bring ourselves into a moment any space where we had something that reflected the gravity and the expanse of what we wanted to build, and that was we want we are building, and we want to build a company that is introducing women's health products that have never been available because we haven't invested in them, we haven't innovated on them, and we want to create products that deserve better, right like they've always deserved better. We've been complacent about them, we've ignored them. These products deserved better. So that's where sequel comes from.
00:28:36
Speaker 2: Sequels. It's the tampon two point zero.
00:28:39
Speaker 3: It's the sequel that these forgotten products, particularly the tampon, deserved and it's the next chapter of these women's health products. So that that's where that comes from, and we feel that that's a much more accurate representation of the world that we want to build. Love to think about brand as like a world building exercise, Like your.
00:29:05
Speaker 2: Brand is a world. What is the world that you want to build?
00:29:08
Speaker 3: Well, we want to build a world where period products, necessary products, essential products for women are not being forgotten and they're brought into their next chapter.
00:29:19
Speaker 1: That's such a great and I think it emphasizes the holistic nature of your products, which are so important, it's so essential, so integral to the fiber of you know, menstuating people's life that it carries the appropriate gravity, which I think is really cool from a logistic standpoint. Is it an early enough switch that you like didn't have to do too much on the consumer facing side or.
00:29:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's that's right.
00:29:52
Speaker 3: I mean, we went through so many iterations of like what should our name be, how like what should we do? How should we change it?
00:29:58
Speaker 2: But we were.
00:29:58
Speaker 3: Still so early in R and D that by the time we changed the name, it was it was easy to do. I think we're very thankful that we did that. Now that we're consumer facing and looking at the way that we show up with certain partnerships and announcements, and like, I think that it's it's very fun to have a name that is very different from the category and have it be a little like, you know, we all know that the Tampon brand names that all sound similar, and we expect those types of names to be a part of this category. And I think it's really cool when we see one of our partners putting out an announcement, like we're announcing our partnership with SQL, and people are like, what is that, I don't know, like and then reading about it, understanding the very logical and.
00:30:52
Speaker 2: I think cool reason why we are named the way that we are. It's very fitting.
00:30:59
Speaker 1: That's so true. And I am going to come back to kind of being a CpG company in a second, but since you've been talking about partnerships, I do want to discuss some of the very very cool partnerships that you have had. So first, about a month ago, you announced a partnership with Stanford Athletics, which is the first of its kind, and so can one as a Stanford grad also, I just think that's really cool. It's so fun to see the progress and the reinvestment back in students that are really making or former students who are really making a change in the world. So can you talk about that.
00:31:35
Speaker 3: This Stanford partnership feels just like your goal to have a Tampon on the side of your car.
00:31:41
Speaker 2: Right.
00:31:42
Speaker 3: It feels like one of those partnerships that is groundbreaking and I think will be the beginning of a shift in what does it mean to have sponsors, what does it mean to do something that nobody has done before.
00:32:02
Speaker 2: But we should have been doing this whole time.
00:32:04
Speaker 3: And I'm so thankful to the Stanford athletics team because they we met and there was immediate alignment and it wasn't like, oh no, how could we make this work. I don't know this, We've never done anything like this before. It was immediate alignment and it was we don't care that nobody has done anything like this before. We don't care that there's no playbook for this. We are happy to be the first. We are happy to do something that nobody else has done before. I make a statement, and so we announced last month that we are the Tampon of Stanford Athletics. It's the first collaboration between a tam On company and an NCAA program ever, and obviously we wouldn't have wanted to do it with anybody other than Stanford Athletics. My co founder Greta played for the Stanford lacrosse team, so it's amazing to hear her talk about how meaningful it is that will now see sequel tampons in the lacrosse locker room that she used to be in.
00:33:11
Speaker 1: That is so cool. Congratulations, I mean, that is soak and I'm so glad to hear that it was a fairly streamlined process. Because of all the universities, you would think that Stanford would be like innovative and open to try things. And so it's really cool to kind of not only I mean I know this and you know this, but not only like talk to talk, but walk the walk on all of the core values of the university. And so talk to me about some of your other partnerships because you had a presence at the Paris Olympics. I just we want to hear all about it and we want a fangirl over.
00:33:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:33:44
Speaker 3: We have had such a busy back half of twenty twenty four. The summer, we announced that we are the official tampon of the USL Super League, which is the newest professional women's soccer.
00:33:56
Speaker 2: League in the US.
00:33:58
Speaker 3: We're really proud to partner with them. They're building something that is incredible and that I mean we are partnering them from day one, and we're so excited to see them grow and grow with them.
00:34:14
Speaker 2: I mean, Stanford is a highlight of this year.
00:34:20
Speaker 3: Because that is so against the grain and it's something that nobody's done before. We did go to the Paris Olympics. We were a part of the Athleta Power of She activation in Paris. We sampled with them and Athleta is an incredible brand.
00:34:39
Speaker 2: It's perfect brand alignment for us.
00:34:42
Speaker 3: Athleta as the most beautiful workout sets that I can wear to yoga, I can.
00:34:51
Speaker 2: Wear them out and about.
00:34:53
Speaker 3: I can wear them casually, but they're also being worn by Katie Ladeki and Simone Biles, who are two.
00:34:59
Speaker 2: Of their athletes, and they're the goats.
00:35:01
Speaker 3: So it's it's a wonderful partnership for us because it shows that.
00:35:09
Speaker 2: You can you can Simone Biles.
00:35:11
Speaker 3: And Katie Oldecki can wear the same athletic workout outfit that you can wear to yoga or walking down the street in the same way that you can be the best athlete in the world, and you still need a tampon that is reliable in the same way that I need a tampon when I walk down the street that's going to be.
00:35:32
Speaker 2: Reliable for me.
00:35:33
Speaker 3: So I think that like the versatility of both our product and athletics products for any type of woman is really important and I love that alignment. What it was a surreal experience to be at the Olympics. We also had the opportunity to get some product out to some of our favorite Team USA athletes prior to them being a part of the Olympics, and we saw we saw a couple Instagram posts from some of our favorite athletes posting some of our merge and.
00:36:11
Speaker 2: So that was very cool.
00:36:13
Speaker 3: It was very very cool knowing that some of the best athletes in the world, competing for the hardest arguably the hardest Olympic team to make, are recognizing our product, our brand like and showing it to their audiences.
00:36:29
Speaker 2: It was it was a dream. It was so so cool.
00:36:33
Speaker 3: And then we also just we just announced that we are the official tampon of Athletes Unlimited, which is the only professional acrosse and professional softball league in the US for women, and they also have volleyball, they have basketball, and they're really pioneers in women's professional sports leagues. They have this like very interesting league and game structure that's really exciting and like content oriented, action oriented, and like really for the fans, so that fans can feel super close to their bivorite players. Volleyball is one of the fastest growing youth sports in the US, and they've really made professional volleyball accessible for a lot of these young fans and so perfect partner alignment there as well.
00:37:26
Speaker 1: That's incredible And something that I've picked up as we've been talking, which I think is super admirable, is as you're talking about your product that you're building, and that's like first and foremost, but you talk about like the importance of like every step of the ecosystem that you are kind of serving, and I think that that's so important and something that's overlooked a lot, and it's just it's really like, kudos to you, and I applaud you because I think that like the passion you clearly convey for women's sports and women's well being and the team dynamic and you know, being able to focus on the spoorart, it's like it's so cool, like this is this feels perfect, and so I just want to give that shout out because I think it's really cool. Throwing it back real quick before we take our next break with being a CpG. And obviously there's so much that goes on behind the scenes, and you've talked about some of the things like the name or like doing research and R and D and all that stuff. Well, were there any things that were particularly unexpected on the like logistical back end, behind the scenes side of starting a consumer package good company?
00:38:36
Speaker 3: I mean, everything is everything is unexpected and crazy all the time.
00:38:41
Speaker 2: I mean, we spent five years in R and D making this, and it's funny. You speak to like CBG people and they're like, that's forever.
00:38:51
Speaker 3: And then you speak to medical device people because we went through the FDA were a class to medical device, were regulated by the FDA in the United States. You speak to medical device people and they're like, you went from notebook sketch to an FDA five ten K clearance in four years, Like that's crazy, right, So it's all about perspective, and so for us, it's like, you.
00:39:12
Speaker 2: Know, you speak to CpG people and they're like, that's so.
00:39:15
Speaker 3: Long, that's insane. And then the other perspective is that that was really fast. But there's so many challenges when you're building a physical product that you don't foresee when you're starting, there's everything from building and developing the product, getting a manufacturer that you trust and can rely on. It's it's like making sure that the quality of your product coming off the line is what you want it to be. Then once you get through that, it's the regulatory piece. When you get through that, it's the warehousing, the fulfillment, the logistics, making sure that our customers are getting their products. And then when the product gets to the customer, are they happy with the product? What do they think about the product? What's going to get them to continue using our product? And then obviously there's the whole marketing piece as well, which is like what is the right audience for us to go after? How do we and I think for us, like we have the perspective that you know, women's sports isn't just about people that play sports.
00:40:21
Speaker 2: It's not just.
00:40:22
Speaker 3: About like the people watching women's sports are not just people that play sports. If if the only people that watched the WNBA were people that played basketball, we wouldn't be seeing the explosive growth in fandom that we're seeing of that league today, right, And so we need to think about our customers as not only.
00:40:41
Speaker 2: People that play sports, but people that watch sports.
00:40:43
Speaker 3: So there's that marketing component as well that we're working through and testing and figuring out.
00:40:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, And is it safe to say that, like you were figuring it out as you go and learning as you go.
00:40:55
Speaker 3: That's the nature of a startup, right, That's why we get our hands dirty and we work on a small, scrappy team on really interesting problems that we want to solve, right, Yeah.
00:41:09
Speaker 1: And I think that's an important flag though, because I think, you know, especially especially people who like aren't going to an you know, an entrepreneurial focused university or not in that regional area where so much of you know, startups are born, this idea that you have to have a clear idea of how you're going to get there, or you know, or it's not worth it. Like, I think it's so important to reiterate the message that many, many people have the vision, have the idea, and just and most importantly, I think, have the belief in themselves and confidence in themselves that they will figure it out along the way. I think there's a misconception that you need to you know, you don't need a supply chain, you know, manufacturing background to go into this physical product, you can figure it out. So I think that's a really nice example of you know, just that dive in head first, believe that you'll figured out, ask questions around yourself with good people, outsource when you need to.
00:42:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the biggest thing is like bringing I think the biggest the biggest asset that a founding team or a founder can have is knowing when to bring on help and bringing on people that know more than you'll ever know about a topic or a part of your business, right, like bringing on somebody with so much experience that they can help execute and that you as the founder, your job is not to do everything. Your job is not to be the best at everything. Your job is to facilitate and create a space for the best people to do their best work. That's the best way to be a founder.
00:42:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that brings back the importance of the storytelling component that you talked about earlier. Like the way that you're going to bring in these really knowledgeable experience like top ten to your talent people is by articulating the vision and sharing the passion. And that's where I think, like especially that that little GENIESI qua from a founder is so important because you bring that magic to it that then makes people want to get involved.
00:43:16
Speaker 2: Totally, totally.
00:43:18
Speaker 1: I love it. Oh, I love it so much. We're going to take one more break, but then we're going to be back with Amanda Calbreys. We are back on if I'm honest with Julia landau Er with our guest Amanda Calbres from the sequel. So you talk about how pretty early on after graduating you were able to get out and start pitching for some VC funding, and it has been widely reported, especially in the recent past, that women founders receive a very small percentage of overall VC funding, and we hope that that's changing. There's awareness now at least. But can you talk little to the experience that you personally had you and Greta had being female founders going after VC funding.
00:44:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, when we were when we were going out and pitching for funding, we recognized that we were two young women and we were pitching a product that was meant for women, and so we had we had some hurdles to overcome. But I do think that for us going out and pitching, a lot of it was about against storytelling and making sure that we were clearly communicating to whoever our audience was on the other side of the pitch, but they understood that this was a need that needed to be solved, whether they could empathize with the problem or whether they could sympathize with the problem, that this was a this was a critical problem that needed to be solved.
00:44:53
Speaker 2: And I think that what we did really.
00:44:56
Speaker 3: Well was asking our audience to, you know, ask around if they couldn't empathize and they can only sympathize with the problem, ask your wife, your daughter, your female friends, ask them what they think about this category, this market, do some research and come back to us with any questions that you have.
00:45:21
Speaker 2: And I think being open to that, being open to investors wanting to do research with the people around them that they care about the most. I think people feel the most comfortable.
00:45:31
Speaker 3: Taking risks on things and taking that some things when they understand it, which is why like which is why it's so hard to raise money for pampons or anything in the women's health space, because if it doesn't if you don't feel like it affects you and you don't feel like you can relate to it, it's much more difficult to take a risk on it so making sure that we are telling the story in the way in a way where people feel comfortable asking questions, they feel comfortable engaging with us and comfortable engaging with the pep in their lives to ask some really hard questions or ask some maybe questions that they never thought they'd be asking of their friends, of their partners. We need to facilitate an environment and a conversation where they.
00:46:13
Speaker 2: Can feel comfortable doing that.
00:46:15
Speaker 3: And so that means we need to be really confident in our belief that this would be a huge business. We need to be confident that this is a business that needs to exist. This is a problem that needs to be solved. But this is a company that were the right people to do it. This is a company being built by people that are exactly the.
00:46:34
Speaker 2: Founders that should be doing it.
00:46:36
Speaker 3: And I think that's a huge founder product fit, especially for CPGG, is a huge deal when pitching as well.
00:46:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you talking reminded me of I don't know who said this. I cannot find the accreditation needed, but a quote that privilege is invisible to those who have it, and I feel like that is probably like an additional hurdle that you have to deal with to your point, as a female Letting co founded female product company Pitching too, I would assume majority men like needing to have that education process, which not every investor is going to want to be educated like you hope that they do, but like there's clearly like you should, I would assume that it almost can make the process easier if you see that willingness, and or I should say I shouldn't make the process easier. Nothing about raising money is easy, but like you know, makes it maybe smoother if you see that there's that willingness to learn totally.
00:47:34
Speaker 3: And I have one of our one of our investors is absolutely incredible. It's Mark Hershinson at Pair VC, and I love this anecdote from when we were raising money. She is a woman, and she obviously understood the need that we were trying to solve very deeply, and in trying to communicate that to some male investors, it was more it was us and some male investors. She knew that in order to get these male investors to understand what we what the gravity of what we were trying to solve, she had to put it in their terms. And so she said, you know, some of you are new parents. Some of you have, our parents have had children, you've all been through the diaper phase. And she's like, imagine you're running through the airport, you're changing planes, and your child.
00:48:37
Speaker 2: Of wearing diapers.
00:48:39
Speaker 3: What's the one thing, like you're in this kind of like state of chaos, what is the one thing that you need that diaper to do as you're trying to execute something that absolutely must happen, high pressure, high stakes.
00:48:53
Speaker 2: They cannot leak And that was such a powerful use of store.
00:49:00
Speaker 3: Are you telling to build mpathy with an audience, But we'll never experience their tampa leaking. They'll never experience how many US tampas, but they'll experience a diaper leaking while you're changing planes, running through an airport with a child in a lot of suitcases.
00:49:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh my goodness. This makes me like a little angry because you may saying that example of diapers, It's like that is such a similar product. I had never I had never drawn the parallels there. And there has been, to my understanding, quite a bit of innovation around diapers, around materials, around sustainable stuff, Like that's a whole no totalization with like not putting chemicals in your body on your body whatever, and like there's so much iteration around that, and yet a very similar product that affects roughly fifty percent of the population has not been innovating, Like women just keep getting screwed, Like, oh my goodness, So thank you again for stepping up for the space, because yeah, I haven't thought about it like that, and oh yeah, but I'm glad that that story resonated because it does. It's it's that would be terrible.
00:50:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, And for all the super dads in the room, as they all are, they were like, of course, like, of course, I'm like carrying my child and I don't want the diaper to leap, like I've got to get on the plane, and like and they knew like immediately they resonated with that, right, So.
00:50:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's that's a really to your point, great example of storytelling, and I appreciate that on behalf of all the women out there. I only have a couple more questions for you before we get into our rapid fire if you're honest, But what would you say so far have been some of your proudest moments with SQL.
00:50:45
Speaker 3: We Oh, my god, proudest moments. I think everything I think I think both my co founder and I we would say that one of our proudest moments is watching the first like at scale production line of our product, like like spiral tampons, like coming off the line and like seeing it and holding it for the first time and being like, oh my god, this is real.
00:51:13
Speaker 2: I think that's one.
00:51:14
Speaker 3: I think another one is being in Paris this past summer was so incredible for all of us, for the team, like it just that was such a huge moment because you're like, you know, you're in it's like twenty twenty and you're trying to build this product and everybody's always talking. Everybody's always talking about the next Olympics. When the Olympics is happening, right, so it's like Tokyo twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and this whole conversation around the Olympics, and although you guys going to the Olympics, you guys doing anything from the Olympics.
00:51:49
Speaker 2: We're like, no, we're not doing anything to the Tokyo Olympics.
00:51:52
Speaker 3: We like, you're still in R and D and two four years later, three years later, be there in Paris.
00:51:59
Speaker 2: That was that was huge moment.
00:52:01
Speaker 1: Oh, that's incredible. Yeah, and on a global stage. I mean, like that is with like the definition of human excellence and to be associated with that, like that's I'm really glad that you guys got to go there.
00:52:14
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:52:15
Speaker 1: So what's next, What's next for you? What's next for SQL? What are we going to manifest here? Today?
00:52:23
Speaker 3: We have some really exciting partnerships coming up, So.
00:52:28
Speaker 2: So excited for twenty twenty five.
00:52:30
Speaker 3: Also, we're starting to build out our athlete rosters, so we are finally I mean, this is such a dream for me to be able to work with some of the most amazing athletes in the world that want to talk about periods and talk about what it's like to perform on their period. We're building our athlete roster and that's a big focus for twenty twenty five and I'm so excited to start announcing some of the athletes that we will be working with next year.
00:52:57
Speaker 1: That's incredible. Oh well, I am rooting for you. I am so excited to follow along on that. And also I have I have bought my sequel so the next time that I need them, I will be.
00:53:06
Speaker 2: Trying them out and amazing.
00:53:07
Speaker 1: I'm really looking forward to it because it is such a I don't know, it's a little like it's emotional and it's like a comfort thing, and I think you can get in your own head about it. So I'm really excited totally to pivot to our final segment. I can't believe all this time has already gone by, but the rapid fire. If you're honest, what is your go to quick and easy dinner?
00:53:30
Speaker 3: Oh, I am such a like a bunch of veggies in a cast iron like on the stone rice, Like I don't know, just like I feel like it's my athlete days. Like if I'm like getting home tired after a long day work, I'm like grilled chicken veggies on the cast iron rice, like just reverting back to the like grinding it out athlete days.
00:53:53
Speaker 2: And then I like sit down with my k meal and I'm like, oh my god, this is literally like I'm training again.
00:53:59
Speaker 1: But it's new tree and dense and it doesn't have but.
00:54:03
Speaker 2: Non quick and easy.
00:54:04
Speaker 3: Like I love making homemade pizza, like actually rolling out dough with like letting it rise with the yeast and like actually making that for my friends.
00:54:14
Speaker 2: Like I actually think that's super easy, but it seems like.
00:54:17
Speaker 1: It's not so my husband Ben, and especially our friends here. There are a few friends here where like we have we have a wood burning oonie oven, and then our friend has the gas powered Ouoni pizza oven and like they like have so fun red sheets of different like the chemical properties of the dough that they're making are not chemical, but like the ingredient properties of the does that they're making and like with sugar and oil and wetness and yeast, and it's like, oh my goodness, yes, like keep making pezza.
00:54:45
Speaker 2: No, we we're gonna have a pizza day.
00:54:47
Speaker 3: We're gonna fast and loose in my household, it's like I don't even know where our measuring cups are and like a little bit of yeast, a little bit of water dough like or flour, oil, sugar, and then it just comes together. And my friends are like my friends have like my French friends have watched me cook and they're like, okay, started.
00:55:11
Speaker 1: On behalf of Ben, because I can like, no, stop not measuring your baking.
00:55:21
Speaker 3: My good friends is like a chef and has worked in Michelin Star restaurants and is like he'll come over and like be watching me cook and he'll just be like you got it, you got it, like no worries, you got this.
00:55:35
Speaker 1: Hey, if it tastes good and it's edible at the end, that's all that matters. I don't cook very much. I'm like the professional dishwasher in the house, so I can't really contribute it to styles of Yeah, yeah, you know what, we each serve a purpose. What musical artists are you listening to a lot right now?
00:55:53
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm listening to travel Aroone like everyone else. I feel like that's a like a just classic answer, But.
00:56:00
Speaker 1: I love it. She's on several of her songs are on my rotation on Spotify. Ye the last. If you're honest, what is something that you're grateful for right now?
00:56:12
Speaker 3: But I'm so grateful that I am two blocks from the ocean right now. I'm so grateful to live in a city and get to be close to the ocean right now.
00:56:22
Speaker 2: I'm a surfer.
00:56:23
Speaker 3: I am an ocean person through and through, and just to be able to jump in the water at the end of a long day is something I think I'll look back on later in life and be like, Wow, you got to live.
00:56:37
Speaker 2: That close to the beach in your twenties. That's so cool.
00:56:40
Speaker 1: That is so cool and also very brave because it's very cold water out there.
00:56:44
Speaker 2: It is cold.
00:56:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, Amanda, that's amazing. Where are some of the best places for people to find you online and to find SQL.
00:56:53
Speaker 3: So at triseql is our Instagram and TikTok. You can find me at ap Calibres on Instagram and then sometimes I post on LinkedIn and sometimes I don't see goodbye me there, but yeah Instagram to talk for SQL and myself.
00:57:10
Speaker 1: I will link all that in description and include the website. Amanda, thank you so much. This was so cool to hear your journey. I am so excited to now know you and follow you on this journey because it's such impactful work and making stand for proud for sure.
00:57:27
Speaker 3: So so thankful to be here to know you and appreciate everything.
00:57:34
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
00:57:36
Speaker 1: Thank you everyone. That is our episode. I will be sharing all this information on Amanda and SEQL and Greta, her co founder, and if you like this episode, please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. And as always, thank you for letting us be honest with you. And I will see you in two weeks
