March 25, 2021 • 43 mins
This week on What’s Her Story, we’re joined by entrepreneur Cindy Eckert, the pioneer behind “women’s Viagra” who built and sold a $1B company. This is a can’t miss tale of perseverance amidst countless obstacles and a woman who never gave up.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women. They're professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. Today, we're
(00:22):
so excited to welcome American entrepreneurs Cindy Ecker to the show.
Cindy is the mastermind of the female version of Viagra, Addie,
and she's also the founder of the Pincubator platforms to
help women entrepreneurs start their companies. One of the things
I love about Cindy is that she's not just an entrepreneur,
but she's also an entrepreneur who truly lifts up other
(00:45):
women around her. And I even I mean, I know
you've met her many times. I've only met her once,
but I feel such a connection to her ever since
that dinner we had, and I feel that she is
just she talks the talk, she walks the walk, and
she really means it. And she says that she wants
other women to succeed. I agree, Cindy, you moved around
(01:06):
a lot as a child. Why oh my dad is
such an adventurer. So I'm originally from upstate New York, Rochester,
New York, which is basically like Canada from the cold right.
And so my dad came home when I was in
the fourth grade and he said, um, would you like
to go to Fiji? And I gotta tell you, like
(01:27):
these way before the days of Fiji water and fancy
resorts and everybody knowing where Fiji was. So I ran
to our living room because like a good suburban, you know,
American family, we had this globe that sat on the
table and I spun the globe and I saw Fiji
was the other side of the world. And I ran
back and I told him, yeah, I want to go
to Fiji. And he goes, great, because we're moving there.
And my dad was State Department um off and on
(01:50):
in his in his life and career, and it kept
us bouncing. So every year from the fourth grade through
my senior year of high school, I changed schools. So
but until fourth grade, you were very stable in one
place I was. I used to read every single profile
of you know, celebrities or luminaries. And one thing that
(02:11):
almost every actor and actress had in common is that
they had lived in so many places by the time
they left high school. Why do you think that is?
You know, I think it's that you get very comfortable
being uncomfortable. So can you imagine you're perpetually the new kid.
You show up on day one, you don't know anybody,
(02:31):
You're standing on the outside of the room. And I
think what that does is it makes you very observant
and also really sort of comfortable with flexing that muscle
of resilience over and over and over again. And when
I look back on it, don't get me wrong, like
I went kicking and screaming, you know, I cried every
time I had to leave my friends and go to
a new school. Um. But as I look back on that,
(02:54):
the the real gift was I never was defined, you know,
as a child, Nobody ever defined which kind of group
I was in. I wasn't the jock or the geek
or the whatever. I sort of melded in with everybody, um,
And I'm really grateful for that. Now. I think it
really is that constant change. Does that make you keep
in touch with people more or less? Like do you
(03:16):
just move on like forget them? And it's very sad
statement by sort of by forever like that was a
little bit of a chapter. Of course, now you know,
with Facebook and social it's been so fun to go
back and reconnect with people. Um, you know through the
my childhood. Did your mom work through your childhood? She couldn't. Um,
so she did up until the time we started doing
(03:38):
this insane like move move move move, and um, you know,
make no mistake, my mom is the boss and uh
and she definitely had a job in and of itself too.
I think transition me I have two big brothers all
of the time, over and over again, on like a
twelve to eighteen month cycle. She returned to work for me,
which is one of the best things. I mean, I'm
(04:00):
so grateful. I convinced my mom when I started my
first business to come work for me, and um, she
ran my HR group and actually a lot of my bookkeeping,
and she really became the company mom. And it's the
coolest thing ever. I think. You guys know, I nickname everybody,
So my mom's like company nickname was two cent And
you know it's because every mom has her two cents
on everything, and she was not afraid to give her
(04:22):
two cents to to me or to anyone in the company,
So talk to us about your first job. I was
fortunate enough to have a business professor who recognized in
me this like weird obsession with businesses, like I really
liked why some businesses were better than another business, and
so she would always give me extra homework and along
that path it made so crystal clear to me who
(04:46):
I was going to work for. And I was going
to work for fortunes most admired company. And I'm telling you,
it could have been anyone, could have been IBM, it
could have been Bowing. That year, it happened to be
uh Merk, which is a pharmaceutical company. And so I
was hell bound and determined. And in fact, they weren't
hiring when I first got out of school. So I
went and worked for another company for seven months, literally
(05:07):
just waiting until Mark opened up hiring again. And the
minute they did, I went. I got the job. I
called my professor and I said, I told you I
was going to get this job, and she said, great,
we're going out tonight and you're buying. How did you
get the job? I'll tell you what I did. I
researched like an insane person. I must have consumed every
(05:32):
single thing I could learn about Mark online. I read
their public filings, I read the Mark Manual. I thought
I had every disease as I went through it, Like
you know, I really deeply entrenched myself into the homework
of it all. And I think about, you know, showing
up for this very entry level sales position. It was
the first rung of the ladder you could get into
(05:53):
and um, and I think that the person who interviewed
me was impressed by the depth of research but also
slightly amused because they've never seen it before. So they
were like, we we have to give this girl the job.
So that's how I got the job is really just
being prepared, I think, going in and being so singular
(06:14):
in my focus of who I wanted to work for
and why I wanted to work for them, and what
was that position? Like, it was great. I mean it was, um,
you know, sales one oh one out in the field
calling on doctors at a moment in time actually in
this industry where what was so impressive to be about
Mark is they were at the cutting edge of research
(06:34):
and development. So how fun was it that they were
constantly innovating, They were breaking through in new categories, new
classes of drugs, women's health, and to get to you know,
just be out there educating the clinical community. Besides, you know,
it's intimidating. You're you're speaking with people with much, you know,
deeper education than you have, UM and actually becoming a
(06:56):
partner to them in education. It was awesome. It was
really I'm so grateful for that training. I will say
to you that a few years into that, I thought,
wait a minute, like, I'm employee four thousand, three hundred
and fifty seven, and no one's listening to all my
good ideas and so. And while I'm so grateful for
(07:19):
the training that they gave me and an appreciation of
how corporate America really works, UM, it was clear to
me that that was not going to be where I
was going to stay forever. I was going to chase innovation,
and I was going to chase smaller. Before we jump
into the chasing of innovation, which you have done brilliantly,
I do wonder you know, your mother didn't work, but
(07:40):
you seem to have had a very clear kind of
knowledge of what you wanted to do and how you
wanted to get there. Who were your work idols or mentors,
like who did you look up to when you were
a teenager and in college to decide to take the
path that you took. You know, it's funny because my
family is not really a business family, and so, UM,
(08:01):
I think that my idols were the people I was
reading about on pages, reading about these people who were
crushing it on customer service or built loyalty, or who
had employees that stayed there for years, Like what are
they doing right? And so it was always consuming, I
think the pages of papers and people that I never
got to meet, but we're all we're absolutely influencing me.
(08:24):
Here's my mom's influence. You must have independence, and independence
was money. You will have financial independence and um, and
so we really had. While we never had the money
conversation like sitting down and teaching me how to balance
a checkbook necessarily, there was always a thread of why
(08:45):
you must be independent financially. So what made your mom
so passionate about financial independence? You know? I think it
was just her era and the fact that she didn't
see that same access for herself, and so she was
held bound and determined that I was going to have
that access. And um, she understood that, you know, financial
(09:06):
independence for her would have allowed her to probably make
a lot of different decisions than she was able to.
I think it would be great for you to sort
of share with everyone in the audience, everyone who's listening,
what exactly happened, because when you read about it, it
doesn't do it justice. When I first met you and
you shared the story, my jaw was on the ground.
So when I finally made the decision in corporate, I
(09:28):
went smaller, smaller, and I had the courage to start
my own company. I started a company with one of
the male sexual health drugs. I did it because it
was actually a category in science. It's really newish, it's emerging,
and there's exciting new discovery. And so I built this
business from scratch, and I, you know, made all the
mistakes of my first company and um and all the
(09:51):
joy of figuring out you actually can build this to success.
And I looked around and I thought, wait a minute,
there's twenty six f d a proved drugs for some
form of male sexual dysfunction, but not a single one
for women. Are we joking? Actually more women than men
have issues in the bedroom, and the science is awesome,
(10:12):
And I'm thinking, oh, you know, finally women are going
to get one. And then I look around in every
single kind of big company, deeply resourced company, isn't running
towards it, They're running away from it. And that was
my signal to run in. So I sold off my
business and men. I decided I'm going to take this
on for women. We're going to cross the finish line
with the first ever treatment for women's sexual dysfunction, and
(10:34):
we're going to basically crash the door so that many
more come forward. And um, that was insane because I
thought I knew how to do this, having built a
company with men. But guess what. All of the rules
are different when you're trying to do it for women.
The playbook was totally different. How oh I mean, my god.
(10:55):
I'll give the parallel. So when Viagra was approved for men,
like the watershed moment for men's sexual um, you know,
dysfunction drugs, it was deemed to meet such an important
medical need that they rushed it to approval of six months.
So now let's take our my drug, Addie. So Addie
addresses women's most common sexual dysfunction, same prevalence as e
(11:18):
D has for men. It took us six years and
two rejections in the regulatory queue. By the way, footnote,
we had three times as many patients worth this data
of data. We studied this in thirteen thousand women. It's
just that, um, the path that the dirty little secret
is the path will be longer in the hurdles will
be higher in women's health because we're making value judgments.
(11:41):
Talk about those value judgments. You know, I think we
think about it. For twenty years. You haven't turned on
the radio or your television. You haven't watched a single
Super Bowl without having been told that sexual satisfaction makes
for a better life. It makes you run through fields together,
makes you hold hands in separate bathtubs. As it turns out,
who knew. But here's the punchline. If you're a man,
(12:04):
and we're not even conscious almost that we've never received
that narrative for women, and that of itself has created
a narrative, which is it does not matter. Sexual satisfaction
matters for men. Pleasure as ours to give, not receive.
And what was so obvious to me is just put
(12:25):
the women at the center of the conversation. Why are
we not talking to women who are dealing with this
and that was the ultimate maneuver with the f d A.
They had turned me down. Um, it was really the
death of the company. I mean, they completely controlled my fate.
And it happened on a Friday, and I had done
(12:45):
all the work, I've met all the outcomes. I submitted
my data to the FDA and I waited for approval
because that's just how this works. And on the day
that approval was supposed to come, I got a rejection.
And by the way, my whole office I had been away.
I was flying back in to the office and they
were waiting for me to come and like crack the champagne.
Like the champagne was chilling because we met all the
(13:08):
outcomes in the study, so it seemed that that was
the natural outcome. So I get this news at the airport.
My assistant calls me. I said, don't tell anybody, just
give me a minute. And I sat down and like
didn't move for an hour, and I thought I got
to go in, and I went into the office. I
called everybody around the table and they're like waiting, smiling,
(13:30):
like this is it. We got it, we got it,
And I'm like, we just got turned down. I need
you to all go home and work on your resumes
this weekend. And it was devastating, like we were crying,
you know. I went home, I took to the bed,
I cried it out. I got up the next morning
my phone was blowing up. I didn't want to answer
(13:50):
any of the calls. I didn't have any answers. And
I happened to, um, you know, go to my inbox
and get a note from a woman who had been
in our clinical trial. Else she'd been on Addie and
she had heard the news because she was watching closely
for our approval. Most people weren't watching at that time.
They didn't even know about this little company. And she said,
I want to meet with you. She lived in d C.
(14:13):
It was a car ride away from me. I went
up and I met with her, and she told me
her story, and her story was every story I'd ever heard.
She had a wonderful husband who she adored. She had
raised these two beautiful children. She ran her own business,
she was in charge UM. And she looked at me
and she said, I have succeeded in every aspect of
(14:34):
my life other than this. And I thought, there's the
portrait of a woman. She actually has something going wrong medically,
but she has been told by every single person that
it's her fault, that it's in her head, that it's
hers to overcome. And I opened up my computer and
I showed her brain scan imaging and so you can
see this condition on brain scans, and it was totally
(14:57):
outside of her control. Right. I was showing her it's
not you, it's this, and she started to just cry.
And I thought, this is why I'm doing it, Like,
pull your ship together, go figure it out, Sindy. I
drove back home. I took Sunday to kind of get
myself together. I went in on Monday, called everybody around
the table again and I said, um, okay, here's the decision.
(15:20):
And they're all thinking like, okay, what are we like
closing next week? Are we closing in two weeks? Like
what's the wine down? And I'm like, we're going to
dispute the f d A And it was silence and
my I t I raised his hand and he's like
can you do that? And I'm like, we're about to
find out. So um. He put a pair of pink
boxing gloves on my desk that day and they're still
there today. We decided to take on the government. And
(15:42):
I did it for two reasons. Data We had the data,
and empathy. And empathy was data is informed differently looking
at the people who are affected, and they needed to
be talking to those women just like I was. And
ultimately we won. And now for a quick break, So
did the employees keep their jobs? They did? And then
(16:06):
what because it wasn't there there there's a whole other
chapter that we want to hear about. So we ultimately
one um science, one women one because so many women
came and shared their stories. Can you imagine at a
federal agency. But they knew if they didn't speak up,
it wasn't going to change for anybody. They're the real
heroes of the story. And then we got approval and
(16:27):
two days later I sold the company for a billion
dollars cash and it was the dream come true. They
were going to march it across the globe. They were
going to make it affordable and ways I couldn't and um,
you know, it took a few months for the deal
to close. The deal closed one week later. Um, that
company started to crumple and they put it on the shelf.
(16:48):
They basically their house was on fire. They got a
Department of Justice letter and I couldn't have written this
movie more dramatically, And they basically walked away from the
drug so it never got launched, and I was devastated, devastated.
We didn't fight that hard for women to finally have
one on the board, for now them to not even
have access to it. Um, So I went back to work.
(17:11):
I fought them. I ultimately when I got it back,
we kept the billion dollars and now I invested another
female disraptors. You went back to work? What did that
even mean? You know? So I will tell you get
smarter as you go along. I'd sold my first company,
Slate the mail company, in order to basically make a
return for investors, and say, okay, now give me some
(17:32):
of that back because I want to do this for women.
And um, when I wrote that contract, most transactions have
some kind of upfront and some kind of back end
right the back end, maybe royalties, they may be milestone payments.
And when I did that, I had that kind of structure.
I had an upfront payment and this back end, well,
the back end was governed by a best efforts clause.
(17:55):
And now you sell it, somebody else is in charge.
Of your baby in your Wait a minute, are those
really your best efforts? Because my best efforts are different
than your best efforts. So when I've sold Sprout, that
was in the first contract best efforts, I was like, no, no, no,
We're going to be really specific here. You're going to
spend this much money on education, You're gonna have this
(18:18):
many sales people calling on O B g NS. You're
going to And they agreed to it, and that is
what ultimately became my leverage. So they weren't up, you know,
um honoring their half of the equation and they're part
of the deal. What they had contractually agreed to do.
That gave me leverage to actually get it back. What
happened to the buyer Valiant? So can you imagine, we
(18:41):
announced they were going to buy us in August, the
transaction closed in October. In that meantime, I'm like getting
ready to launch. We were launching in October. I'm building
out sales people, We've got the supply chain, like everything's
going in October comes the deal closes, and literally like
a week later, they got a letter from the Department
(19:03):
of Justice that basically they had not disclosed a relationship
they had with the pharmacy. No one knew. Could you
already have your billion dollars wired cash cash? And all
of your employees also have equity, absolutely, every single one. Yes,
that's so important, by the way, I mean, if I
could say a secret to success for for anybody building
(19:26):
it who's listening, give other people's skin in the game.
Everybody who's ever come worked to me, I don't care
if they packed our boxes or they ran my sales team.
They have been an owner in the company alongside of me.
And to watch those moments like the transformational moments, um
you know, of sales has been really the most rewarding
thing of all. So we all had had the money
(19:48):
in the bank, but they really it was a two
and a half billion dollar sale, so a billion and
a half of it was structured on the back end
that nobody got access to. But we got it back
and now we get to launch it on our own terms.
So they're they're accused of fraud, right, And where did
that leave all of you? On an island? And um,
(20:12):
I will say, I think you know, we had gotten
a lot of press. This was a big news story
when we were approved and the world was watching and
I was Mama bear, matt as hell, what's going on?
What did what wasn't? I told, what is happening here?
I want answers, and I think probably that were very
(20:33):
thin on my new acquirer. And I got a phone
call one day from their then CEO. He was replaced
actually in this process, but he called me and he said,
it's clear that you don't want to be here anymore.
And I said, like, hell, I don't want to be here.
This is my baby, Like I immediately had a reaction
to that, and he goes, well, you're not going to
be and they cut off my email that very afternoon,
(20:54):
So he he got rid of me as quick as
he could because I was a liability. I was asking
a lot of questions. I was loud, the press were
in contact. I mean, that's my my side of the story, right.
His version is his house was burning to the ground,
he had hundred million dollar brands that he had to protect,
and frankly, this was the last thing in the door
(21:15):
that they hadn't even begun investment spending on. And they weren't.
They couldn't afford to, so tell us about getting your
company back? Yeah, it's crazy, Um, I. I. They got
a new CEO. I sat down with him. He'd only
been on the job a few weeks, and he's he's lovely.
And I said, Okay, you're not going to do anything
with this, give it back. And I think he looked
(21:37):
across the table, like, wait a minute. They just paid
you a billion dollars for this. You can't have it
back and UM. And I said, yeah, but you're not
going to do anything with it. And you have to understand, like,
we fought this fight for millions of women who deserve
access to this, and it's not right to shelve it.
It wasn't stocked in pharmacies. None of that spade work
(21:58):
had been done. And so that eventually turned into maybe
a little bit more contention, which is, yeah, but you
owe us these things by the contract and um. And
ultimately it was if you'll basically go away, you can
you can have it back. And getting it back has
been interesting because you know, I had to spend a
little bit of time on the sidelines and think to myself, well,
(22:22):
what would I do differently if I got it back.
You know, the world keeps advancing, technology keeps moving in
all of those years, and I think I looked at
a future and said, Okay, the future of medicine is telemedicine.
And boy do we all know that from this last
year right, It's like rocket fuel was put on to
that we need this ability. This is a condition that
(22:42):
doesn't require a physical exam. And frankly, as as much
as I wish this wasn't true, it's embarrassing for a
lot of women to bring this up, even with their
trust and healthcare provider. So what if they could sit
on their couch, have a phone call and have it
delivered to their doorstep and so kind of the fun of,
you know, the pink lining in my world of having
(23:05):
a time away from it and getting it back as
we imagined a different path and I think a very
different patient experience, and so far that's paying off. And
where is it today? Attie dot com? So it's a
d d y I dot com. You really can speak
to a doctor license in your state. It can ship
to your doorstep, or you can absolutely go in and
(23:25):
ask your doctor about it. And it's stocked in all
the pharmacies. Do you think the narrative around women's sexual
health is changing? Yes, I think it is. Um So
this is maybe one of my proudest stats. When we
crossed the finish line in UM, it was such an
upside down world, and what I hoped for was not
(23:46):
that we would be the one and only, but that
all of these would come forward. In two sen the
term fem tech was coined, and it's now projected to
be a fifty billion dollar category by five Can you
imagine is going to be a fifty billion dollar category?
But here's the truth of it, Well, what is fem tech?
(24:07):
Femtech is really anything affecting sort of women from reproductive years, right,
whether it be my now organic tampons that I can buy,
whether it can be the fact that I've got a
fertility testing at my fingertips. So I'm not waiting until
I'm struggling to get pregnant, but I'm, you know, twenty
five years old and getting a picture of what my
(24:28):
fertility journey is going to look like, and that's coming
to me in a kit. Like how great is that
I made my husband insane saying that we were going
to have fertility issues, and I made him get a
fertility test and I got pregnant like the day he
got his results, and he was and the doctor was like,
we've never had a guy come in for fertility test
before there's something diagnosed. I was just so sure it
(24:48):
would take us two years. But I do think there's
there's such an opaque lining between women and their understanding
and of fertility, of sexuality, of so men, any of
these things that you're addressing. It's just and and it's
so crazy. It's what we're all good. Is part of
our human experience, and yet we don't talk about it,
(25:09):
not candidly, and it remains this great mystery. And I
think that what I love seeing is that you know what,
the medical establishment, the regulatory bodies, they waited too damn long.
So guess what, we're taking power into our own hands.
And I think about all of these young founders in
this space and fem tech, and what they're doing is
(25:31):
they're putting power in our hands. Because women are the
most informed health care purchasers in that regard. They will
do all of the homework and so why shouldn't they
have all the tools at their disposal. When will we
see a Super Bowl commercial for Addie Oh, I am
working on it. Actually that was part of my deal.
(25:51):
Um My contract was that they would put a Super
Bowl add on it, and that was such an important thing,
and then it didn't happen. Um, So you'll start to
hear about it. You're mostly through podcast advertising, UM and radio,
and then we'll graduate to some television. But I can't wait.
I can't wait to finally have that the little pink
pill for women. Can we can we actually talk about
(26:13):
pink for a minute? Yes, yes, we can? You wear pink?
How did that start? Why? You know? When I was well,
first of all, I have always loved pink. I'm really
challenged to find a picture where I'm not in pink.
Um and pink for me is about femininity being the
strength and business not a weakness. I reject that notion completely.
(26:36):
And I think in in any areas in which there
are stereotypes, you have two decisions. You can either sort
of lean away from them and be frustrated or even
it caused self doubt, or you can just lean right
toward them. And um, if you've got my personality, you
you lean right toward it. When people would say to me, oh,
the little pink pill, all that was missing was like
(26:58):
the head tilt and the pad on the show Older,
And I thought, yes, the little pink pill and I
would show up in like neon pink from head to
toe at the f d A, and I would wave
from the audience like, guess we're going to talk about
today because I think we need to address those things. Well,
there is one thing that I find so admirable about
your personal brand, which is the fact that you don't
(27:20):
have to make the choices other women have to make
when they get ready for a business meeting or speaking
engagement or a board meeting. You just know what you're
gonna wear. And so I would like to adapt that
for myself. But tell us about the process. You go
into a store and you just immediately try to find
what's pink, and if you like it, you buy it.
I mean, what is how do you create so much?
(27:42):
It's so much easier? And do you ever not wear pink? Never? Never,
working out, going out to dinner with your husband or
is your fiance or your husband fance? Still yeah, okay,
so you're going out to dinner with your fiance and
you're wearing pink every time I am. You know, like
there's a black elements sometimes at the Popu pink, but
(28:02):
otherwise it's mostly it's mostly pink. Yeah, do your employees
wear pink? Yes? In fact, you know, it's funny that
it's by no means what you have to do. But
pink for us is a bit of a philosophy, and
I think it is what you realize when you come
into our spaces. There's an irreverence to it. There's a
(28:24):
you know, underestimated to unapologetic in who we are. And
so we we work beside another office would like developers,
and these guys are you know, just imagine developers for
a second, like really geeky, sort of introverted. And we
go up and down in the elevator together and they
look at us and they're like, do you have to
(28:45):
wear pink? No, but we like to wear pink, And
and can I share this one story about about pink.
This made such an impression on me. So when I
was out there trying to raise money for Sprout, I
was laughed out of every room by the way. I
was showing up having built a successful business already, but
this notion of female viagra through everybody for such a loop.
(29:09):
I think they didn't know how to handle this woman
in pink talking about this. And there was one particular
investor that would have meant the world in terms of validation,
like sort of the godfather, you know, in in healthcare.
And he was particularly unkind when I showed up to
pitch him. Fast forward to two years ago. He was
(29:30):
sitting in my pincubator across the table in a hot
pink board chair, and he was still in his buttoned up,
like you know, gray suit, and he said to me, hey, Cindy,
and he reaches down to his pant leg to show
me his socks, and he's wearing hot pink socks. And
in that moment, it was a little bit of like
I got it. And what I loved about that moment
(29:53):
is that, you know, he really I gave him room
to change his mind and he won't make that mistake again.
And now he invests alongside of me in a lot
of the incubator companies. And I think right now, particularly
when I talked to a lot of female founders, we know,
we all know the stats, right, two percent of funding ridiculous. Um,
you know the products that serve a female audience. Niche nonsense,
(30:17):
like it's half the population. We can keep going through
these stats, so it can be very easy to get
very frustrated by that or very beaten down by that.
And I think that when we when we do that,
sometimes we close ourselves off from allowing people to do better.
And if I had just cut him off forever, like
(30:39):
you're the asshole who left me out of the room,
we wouldn't have real change, which is him recognizing it
and now doing his part to invest in women too.
And now for a quick break, how do you think
investors treat women entrepreneurs differently than male entrepreneurs. Inherently they
don't believe they have the chops to do it. And
(30:59):
I'm that's not the Cindy echort um, you know point
of view. That's data that show even the difference in
the questions you are asked. When you you can pitch
an identical pitch right all of the data. Man walks
in the room, they literally read a script and do
a pitch. A woman walks in the room, she gives
that verbatim pitch. They're asked different questions. What happens for
(31:21):
men is I think they're always expansion questions like um,
they relate to you can do it and how will
you grow it? And with women they're always like um,
problematic questions like you won't be able to handle it.
So it's a different between like promotion and emotions sort
of um in the questions and there's a great I
think it's out of pen who did the study where
(31:41):
you can read like the differences and how they ask questions. Okay,
backing up to a question I asked about your employees
a little bit. Yeah, you have worked with a lot
of family. You mentioned you worked with your mom and
you worked with your ex husband. Yes, and my brother
and your brother. Yeah, what was it like we're with
your ex husband. We were separated actually for a long
(32:02):
period of that time. But you know, it's delicate when
you are running these small companies and no one wants instability. Um,
if you will there, So we we probably kept that
to ourselves for a lot longer than people knew. Um.
You know, for us, the truth is our relationship was
based on work. We had met at work, and um,
(32:25):
for me, maybe it was the first time I felt
seen by a guy because he understood my dedication to this,
and I think we mistook professional chemistry for personal chemistry.
But we you know, we still interact today because he
was a shareholder in Sprout and uh, and so we
still have interaction and I think we've just held onto
the good pieces, which is we've had a lot of
(32:47):
fun together and you know, done a lot of pretty
crazy things. Tell us about your fiancee. Ah, he's such
a sweetheart, Like he's the man you know, I'm I'm
older now, Um, and I think, you know, he's the
guy that I never met earlier on to know that's
what it could be. Like. He's a fellow entrepreneur. So
(33:07):
you know, as I was building this company in Raleigh,
I just had my head down doing the work like
I never did anything. And so I'd heard his name
around town because he was known for being so helpful
with all of the startup community here. And we were
put on a panel together and I sat down next
to him and I was like, that's just a miller.
Nobody nobody told me. He looked like that, So wait
(33:31):
a minute, um, and uh and then he started. You know,
he kept in touch, but I'm thinking that every time
he reaches out, he really just wants to talk business.
And uh, finally I think he confessed I was leaving
my office. I work with almost all women, and I
was leaving office late on a Friday night and they said,
where are you going? And I said, oh, I'm I'm
meeting I'm meeting Justin. And they're like, for a date,
(33:55):
and I said, no, it's not a date. We're just talking.
I mean we're talking business. And they're like, it's Friday night,
you're going to a bar. It's a date. Call us
from the bathroom. And of course I get there and
I go to the bathroom. I'm like, oh my god,
it's a date. So there's a little naivete here from
from all of those years of just that not even
(34:15):
being on my radar. And do you work together now?
We do? Yeah, he works with me. He's really mastermind
and most of our digital strategy. Your brand seems to
be soaring right now, just not just the brand that
you're building, but also your personal brand. Where do you
see yourself in five years, ten years? That's such a
sweet comment. Thank you for that. Um. I don't know
(34:37):
if I ever have that same perspective. There always feels
like there's more work to be done. And you know,
if I look down the line, my ambition is this,
I want to create a billion dollars worth of wealth
for women. That's what I'm working towards and it's really
my pincubator is all about you know, investing in these
really you know first market um, these radical changes and
(35:03):
social catalyst if you will. Um. But ultimately it's the
multiplier effect. How do I get more women to outcomes?
Who are going to get more women to outcomes? We're
going to get more women to outcomes. So that's the ambition. UM,
I'll tell you. I say that, But my every day
is just wake up and do the best you can do.
In ten years, I'm going to come back to you
and you're going to be involved in my obsession with
(35:24):
getting more women investors into the mix because I think
that every woman who is a vice president of a
company has a little expendable income. They should all be
investing in some giant fund for women. And it drives
me crazy that guys will go out to dinner with
each other and they'll be like, hey, you want it
on this deal? Sure, I'll put in contents. Women never
(35:48):
think of doing that, even if they have the money,
and it just it kills me. It's oh, I'm so on,
I sign me up for any of those lectures. I'd
like to get those two because it's such a you know,
I do think of it that way, and it's not
an anti philanthropy, But who gives the most dollars away?
Women give away the most dollars. In fact, we control
most of the wealth and that's continuing to come. So
(36:11):
if you think about that, why are we not investing
to make more money? And more money? Money is just
a tool, right, and it's a conduit for good and
so go if you can invest in somebody else to
make more money, then you can give that away and
then you can keep paying it forward. I'm with you, ad.
I really do hope that you know, you are very
(36:32):
much leading the way in this across the country, which
I'm so grateful for. Uh. And I really do hope
that other women who have accumulated a lot of wealth
and invest in women owned companies and do philanthropy. But
that it's at least an end. But it's not an
either or, because too much we see it as an
either or. I agree with that. One more question before
(36:53):
we go into the lightning round. You told us about
the woman you met in d C who you like
inspired you to double down after your drug was initially rejected.
How is she doing sexually? How's her sexual health? You know? Great, Um,
and listen, And it's not for everybody. I always want
to be careful, right, There's no perfect panacea of a medication.
It has risk, it has benefits. But I've got to
(37:15):
tell you it's just incredible and the gift to me
that I hear these stories. I spoke at a conference
in San Francisco in twenty nineteen. I got off the
stage and a woman came like running for me, and
she said, I need to talk to you. She said,
I was with divorce lawyers. We were already there. Um,
it had fallen apart in the bedroom and then everything
(37:37):
else started to fall apart. She said, I heard you
on a podcast, and I thought to myself, but what
if this is it? She said, I went to the
doctor the next day. I got on Addie. Can I
take a picture with you and show my husband? Because
we stayed together? And I mean, I still choke up.
Like that is story. It's incredible and we minimize it.
(37:57):
But you know what this is like, this lead was
ruining women's self esteem, their their marriages and relationships. And
it matters, and it matters that we talk about it
and that whether they take it or not they deserve
an option. Alright, we're going to our lightning round. Now
you go into a boardroom. You're pitching a group of men.
A man makes a joke when you mentioned women's sexuality.
(38:21):
How do you handle it? What is this the nineteen fifties?
You didn't mean to say that. Let's move on. I
love it. What are you reading? Rituals Roadmap by Erica Kesswyn.
It's so good about you know the rituals right that
we I don't know how it forms cultures and everything else.
It's a great book. What is your daily morning routine? Okay?
(38:44):
I feed pigs because I have pet pigs, and um,
there's I have a laugh about that. You got to
scrape the ship from your boots in the morning. And honestly,
like I'm the anti everyone else that I immediately get
on social media and and I do that because I'm
just I love all the characters in my life. I
(39:04):
love to see what the two of you are doing.
Like something about that connection and how fortunate I am
by all the people I'm surrounded by doing really important
things that like fires me up every day. Well, Lou
always comes in with our male perspective and I'm sure
he's going to come in with a big question for you.
You are a badass woman. You know. In the hood,
(39:27):
we call what you did a come up. I'm in amazement.
You're changing the world for women, you know. And I'm
starting to see a correlation to how the world is
treating UM women to how they treat blacks. And I'm
like and I'm like, wow, I must be really bad
for a black woman. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
(39:47):
Those statistics are less than one percent from venture. Obviously,
you're doing something um with this drug called Addie. Is
any of that money now, because this is all to
come up now because profit, is any of that money
get geared towards that helping black women? For sure? So
not only through mentorship at the Pinkybator, but also some
(40:08):
of our investments are the most incredible black female founders.
I mean, there's a two out of Birmingham, Alabama. They
run a company called Mixedtros Leather Daughter Team. You know, really,
that's such an important piece of this loo. And even
if I look at my employee base, most most of
my I have great guys in my organization, um, but
(40:29):
but of my organization or women of color, and we're
really proud of that because we need to diversity a
thought at the table for sure, and and to find
all those great ideas. There's people out there doing such
incredible things. It's you know what, for everybody listening, it's
really good business to go where other people aren't looking,
go swoop in and invest in those opportunities. Amy, I'm
(40:56):
I'm bowled over by Cydey as always, but I also
have to say selfishly, I'm really obsessed with suddenly having
a signature color. So seriously, her life is so easy,
just because every day she wakes up and she's like,
what should I wear pink? It's just obvious. And she
goes into a store she's like, what should I buy
something pink? Well, okay, so Sam, what will your signature
(41:18):
color be? Maybe it should be part place green. I
like part play screen. I think you should wear different
shades different shades of green, though, like not one. And
that's what she has, different shades of pink. So, you know,
every time I talked with Cindy, they're about a thousand
sage pieces of wisdom. But in this conversation, you know,
(41:39):
one of the big takeaways I had was her comment
that it's really good business to go where people aren't looking,
and I love that, right, you know, she she still
holds to that, even though when she made the decision
to do that, it proved to be almost impossibly hard
because frankly, like the world didn't really give a shit
about women's sexual health. But she still made it happen.
And I do agree that there's something really important to
(42:02):
to finding problems that no one else is looking to solve,
but that we all have. And so I think that's
just like a really great grounding place to start a
conversation about what you're passionate about and what you want
to do. And she said it so well, and I think,
you know, for me personally, that's as you know, Aim,
that's what I've done, right. I went into a totally
male dominated industry that seems super unsexy and the outside
(42:25):
like who wants to talk about payment processing? And we're
now like the top women's company in the payment processing industry.
And I think that having a vision for what do
you want to change, and it doesn't necessarily need to
be the shiny object that you go after absolutely look
where other people are not looking. I love it. Thanks
(42:50):
for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
We would so appreciate if you would leave a review
wherever you get your podcasts, and of course, connect with
us on social media at her Story podcast. What's Her
Story with Sam and Amy is powered by my company,
The Riveter at the Riveter dot c o in Sam's company,
park Place Payments at park place payments dot com. Thanks
(43:11):
to our producer and editor Laurel Mowglin, our podcast associate
Phoebe crane Fus, and our male perspective Luberans
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women. They're professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. Today, we're
(00:22):
so excited to welcome American entrepreneurs Cindy Ecker to the show.
Cindy is the mastermind of the female version of Viagra, Addie,
and she's also the founder of the Pincubator platforms to
help women entrepreneurs start their companies. One of the things
I love about Cindy is that she's not just an entrepreneur,
but she's also an entrepreneur who truly lifts up other
(00:45):
women around her. And I even I mean, I know
you've met her many times. I've only met her once,
but I feel such a connection to her ever since
that dinner we had, and I feel that she is
just she talks the talk, she walks the walk, and
she really means it. And she says that she wants
other women to succeed. I agree, Cindy, you moved around
(01:06):
a lot as a child. Why oh my dad is
such an adventurer. So I'm originally from upstate New York, Rochester,
New York, which is basically like Canada from the cold right.
And so my dad came home when I was in
the fourth grade and he said, um, would you like
to go to Fiji? And I gotta tell you, like
(01:27):
these way before the days of Fiji water and fancy
resorts and everybody knowing where Fiji was. So I ran
to our living room because like a good suburban, you know,
American family, we had this globe that sat on the
table and I spun the globe and I saw Fiji
was the other side of the world. And I ran
back and I told him, yeah, I want to go
to Fiji. And he goes, great, because we're moving there.
And my dad was State Department um off and on
(01:50):
in his in his life and career, and it kept
us bouncing. So every year from the fourth grade through
my senior year of high school, I changed schools. So
but until fourth grade, you were very stable in one
place I was. I used to read every single profile
of you know, celebrities or luminaries. And one thing that
(02:11):
almost every actor and actress had in common is that
they had lived in so many places by the time
they left high school. Why do you think that is?
You know, I think it's that you get very comfortable
being uncomfortable. So can you imagine you're perpetually the new kid.
You show up on day one, you don't know anybody,
(02:31):
You're standing on the outside of the room. And I
think what that does is it makes you very observant
and also really sort of comfortable with flexing that muscle
of resilience over and over and over again. And when
I look back on it, don't get me wrong, like
I went kicking and screaming, you know, I cried every
time I had to leave my friends and go to
a new school. Um. But as I look back on that,
(02:54):
the the real gift was I never was defined, you know,
as a child, Nobody ever defined which kind of group
I was in. I wasn't the jock or the geek
or the whatever. I sort of melded in with everybody, um,
And I'm really grateful for that. Now. I think it
really is that constant change. Does that make you keep
in touch with people more or less? Like do you
(03:16):
just move on like forget them? And it's very sad
statement by sort of by forever like that was a
little bit of a chapter. Of course, now you know,
with Facebook and social it's been so fun to go
back and reconnect with people. Um, you know through the
my childhood. Did your mom work through your childhood? She couldn't. Um,
so she did up until the time we started doing
(03:38):
this insane like move move move move, and um, you know,
make no mistake, my mom is the boss and uh
and she definitely had a job in and of itself too.
I think transition me I have two big brothers all
of the time, over and over again, on like a
twelve to eighteen month cycle. She returned to work for me,
which is one of the best things. I mean, I'm
(04:00):
so grateful. I convinced my mom when I started my
first business to come work for me, and um, she
ran my HR group and actually a lot of my bookkeeping,
and she really became the company mom. And it's the
coolest thing ever. I think. You guys know, I nickname everybody,
So my mom's like company nickname was two cent And
you know it's because every mom has her two cents
on everything, and she was not afraid to give her
(04:22):
two cents to to me or to anyone in the company,
So talk to us about your first job. I was
fortunate enough to have a business professor who recognized in
me this like weird obsession with businesses, like I really
liked why some businesses were better than another business, and
so she would always give me extra homework and along
that path it made so crystal clear to me who
(04:46):
I was going to work for. And I was going
to work for fortunes most admired company. And I'm telling you,
it could have been anyone, could have been IBM, it
could have been Bowing. That year, it happened to be
uh Merk, which is a pharmaceutical company. And so I
was hell bound and determined. And in fact, they weren't
hiring when I first got out of school. So I
went and worked for another company for seven months, literally
(05:07):
just waiting until Mark opened up hiring again. And the
minute they did, I went. I got the job. I
called my professor and I said, I told you I
was going to get this job, and she said, great,
we're going out tonight and you're buying. How did you
get the job? I'll tell you what I did. I
researched like an insane person. I must have consumed every
(05:32):
single thing I could learn about Mark online. I read
their public filings, I read the Mark Manual. I thought
I had every disease as I went through it, Like
you know, I really deeply entrenched myself into the homework
of it all. And I think about, you know, showing
up for this very entry level sales position. It was
the first rung of the ladder you could get into
(05:53):
and um, and I think that the person who interviewed
me was impressed by the depth of research but also
slightly amused because they've never seen it before. So they
were like, we we have to give this girl the job.
So that's how I got the job is really just
being prepared, I think, going in and being so singular
(06:14):
in my focus of who I wanted to work for
and why I wanted to work for them, and what
was that position? Like, it was great. I mean it was, um,
you know, sales one oh one out in the field
calling on doctors at a moment in time actually in
this industry where what was so impressive to be about
Mark is they were at the cutting edge of research
(06:34):
and development. So how fun was it that they were
constantly innovating, They were breaking through in new categories, new
classes of drugs, women's health, and to get to you know,
just be out there educating the clinical community. Besides, you know,
it's intimidating. You're you're speaking with people with much, you know,
deeper education than you have, UM and actually becoming a
(06:56):
partner to them in education. It was awesome. It was
really I'm so grateful for that training. I will say
to you that a few years into that, I thought,
wait a minute, like, I'm employee four thousand, three hundred
and fifty seven, and no one's listening to all my
good ideas and so. And while I'm so grateful for
(07:19):
the training that they gave me and an appreciation of
how corporate America really works, UM, it was clear to
me that that was not going to be where I
was going to stay forever. I was going to chase innovation,
and I was going to chase smaller. Before we jump
into the chasing of innovation, which you have done brilliantly,
I do wonder you know, your mother didn't work, but
(07:40):
you seem to have had a very clear kind of
knowledge of what you wanted to do and how you
wanted to get there. Who were your work idols or mentors,
like who did you look up to when you were
a teenager and in college to decide to take the
path that you took. You know, it's funny because my
family is not really a business family, and so, UM,
(08:01):
I think that my idols were the people I was
reading about on pages, reading about these people who were
crushing it on customer service or built loyalty, or who
had employees that stayed there for years, Like what are
they doing right? And so it was always consuming, I
think the pages of papers and people that I never
got to meet, but we're all we're absolutely influencing me.
(08:24):
Here's my mom's influence. You must have independence, and independence
was money. You will have financial independence and um, and
so we really had. While we never had the money
conversation like sitting down and teaching me how to balance
a checkbook necessarily, there was always a thread of why
(08:45):
you must be independent financially. So what made your mom
so passionate about financial independence? You know? I think it
was just her era and the fact that she didn't
see that same access for herself, and so she was
held bound and determined that I was going to have
that access. And um, she understood that, you know, financial
(09:06):
independence for her would have allowed her to probably make
a lot of different decisions than she was able to.
I think it would be great for you to sort
of share with everyone in the audience, everyone who's listening,
what exactly happened, because when you read about it, it
doesn't do it justice. When I first met you and
you shared the story, my jaw was on the ground.
So when I finally made the decision in corporate, I
(09:28):
went smaller, smaller, and I had the courage to start
my own company. I started a company with one of
the male sexual health drugs. I did it because it
was actually a category in science. It's really newish, it's emerging,
and there's exciting new discovery. And so I built this
business from scratch, and I, you know, made all the
mistakes of my first company and um and all the
(09:51):
joy of figuring out you actually can build this to success.
And I looked around and I thought, wait a minute,
there's twenty six f d a proved drugs for some
form of male sexual dysfunction, but not a single one
for women. Are we joking? Actually more women than men
have issues in the bedroom, and the science is awesome,
(10:12):
And I'm thinking, oh, you know, finally women are going
to get one. And then I look around in every
single kind of big company, deeply resourced company, isn't running
towards it, They're running away from it. And that was
my signal to run in. So I sold off my
business and men. I decided I'm going to take this
on for women. We're going to cross the finish line
with the first ever treatment for women's sexual dysfunction, and
(10:34):
we're going to basically crash the door so that many
more come forward. And um, that was insane because I
thought I knew how to do this, having built a
company with men. But guess what. All of the rules
are different when you're trying to do it for women.
The playbook was totally different. How oh I mean, my god.
(10:55):
I'll give the parallel. So when Viagra was approved for men,
like the watershed moment for men's sexual um, you know,
dysfunction drugs, it was deemed to meet such an important
medical need that they rushed it to approval of six months.
So now let's take our my drug, Addie. So Addie
addresses women's most common sexual dysfunction, same prevalence as e
(11:18):
D has for men. It took us six years and
two rejections in the regulatory queue. By the way, footnote,
we had three times as many patients worth this data
of data. We studied this in thirteen thousand women. It's
just that, um, the path that the dirty little secret
is the path will be longer in the hurdles will
be higher in women's health because we're making value judgments.
(11:41):
Talk about those value judgments. You know, I think we
think about it. For twenty years. You haven't turned on
the radio or your television. You haven't watched a single
Super Bowl without having been told that sexual satisfaction makes
for a better life. It makes you run through fields together,
makes you hold hands in separate bathtubs. As it turns out,
who knew. But here's the punchline. If you're a man,
(12:04):
and we're not even conscious almost that we've never received
that narrative for women, and that of itself has created
a narrative, which is it does not matter. Sexual satisfaction
matters for men. Pleasure as ours to give, not receive.
And what was so obvious to me is just put
(12:25):
the women at the center of the conversation. Why are
we not talking to women who are dealing with this
and that was the ultimate maneuver with the f d A.
They had turned me down. Um, it was really the
death of the company. I mean, they completely controlled my fate.
And it happened on a Friday, and I had done
(12:45):
all the work, I've met all the outcomes. I submitted
my data to the FDA and I waited for approval
because that's just how this works. And on the day
that approval was supposed to come, I got a rejection.
And by the way, my whole office I had been away.
I was flying back in to the office and they
were waiting for me to come and like crack the champagne.
Like the champagne was chilling because we met all the
(13:08):
outcomes in the study, so it seemed that that was
the natural outcome. So I get this news at the airport.
My assistant calls me. I said, don't tell anybody, just
give me a minute. And I sat down and like
didn't move for an hour, and I thought I got
to go in, and I went into the office. I
called everybody around the table and they're like waiting, smiling,
(13:30):
like this is it. We got it, we got it,
And I'm like, we just got turned down. I need
you to all go home and work on your resumes
this weekend. And it was devastating, like we were crying,
you know. I went home, I took to the bed,
I cried it out. I got up the next morning
my phone was blowing up. I didn't want to answer
(13:50):
any of the calls. I didn't have any answers. And
I happened to, um, you know, go to my inbox
and get a note from a woman who had been
in our clinical trial. Else she'd been on Addie and
she had heard the news because she was watching closely
for our approval. Most people weren't watching at that time.
They didn't even know about this little company. And she said,
I want to meet with you. She lived in d C.
(14:13):
It was a car ride away from me. I went
up and I met with her, and she told me
her story, and her story was every story I'd ever heard.
She had a wonderful husband who she adored. She had
raised these two beautiful children. She ran her own business,
she was in charge UM. And she looked at me
and she said, I have succeeded in every aspect of
(14:34):
my life other than this. And I thought, there's the
portrait of a woman. She actually has something going wrong medically,
but she has been told by every single person that
it's her fault, that it's in her head, that it's
hers to overcome. And I opened up my computer and
I showed her brain scan imaging and so you can
see this condition on brain scans, and it was totally
(14:57):
outside of her control. Right. I was showing her it's
not you, it's this, and she started to just cry.
And I thought, this is why I'm doing it, Like,
pull your ship together, go figure it out, Sindy. I
drove back home. I took Sunday to kind of get
myself together. I went in on Monday, called everybody around
the table again and I said, um, okay, here's the decision.
(15:20):
And they're all thinking like, okay, what are we like
closing next week? Are we closing in two weeks? Like
what's the wine down? And I'm like, we're going to
dispute the f d A And it was silence and
my I t I raised his hand and he's like
can you do that? And I'm like, we're about to
find out. So um. He put a pair of pink
boxing gloves on my desk that day and they're still
there today. We decided to take on the government. And
(15:42):
I did it for two reasons. Data We had the data,
and empathy. And empathy was data is informed differently looking
at the people who are affected, and they needed to
be talking to those women just like I was. And
ultimately we won. And now for a quick break, So
did the employees keep their jobs? They did? And then
(16:06):
what because it wasn't there there there's a whole other
chapter that we want to hear about. So we ultimately
one um science, one women one because so many women
came and shared their stories. Can you imagine at a
federal agency. But they knew if they didn't speak up,
it wasn't going to change for anybody. They're the real
heroes of the story. And then we got approval and
(16:27):
two days later I sold the company for a billion
dollars cash and it was the dream come true. They
were going to march it across the globe. They were
going to make it affordable and ways I couldn't and um,
you know, it took a few months for the deal
to close. The deal closed one week later. Um, that
company started to crumple and they put it on the shelf.
(16:48):
They basically their house was on fire. They got a
Department of Justice letter and I couldn't have written this
movie more dramatically, And they basically walked away from the
drug so it never got launched, and I was devastated, devastated.
We didn't fight that hard for women to finally have
one on the board, for now them to not even
have access to it. Um, So I went back to work.
(17:11):
I fought them. I ultimately when I got it back,
we kept the billion dollars and now I invested another
female disraptors. You went back to work? What did that
even mean? You know? So I will tell you get
smarter as you go along. I'd sold my first company,
Slate the mail company, in order to basically make a
return for investors, and say, okay, now give me some
(17:32):
of that back because I want to do this for women.
And um, when I wrote that contract, most transactions have
some kind of upfront and some kind of back end
right the back end, maybe royalties, they may be milestone payments.
And when I did that, I had that kind of structure.
I had an upfront payment and this back end, well,
the back end was governed by a best efforts clause.
(17:55):
And now you sell it, somebody else is in charge.
Of your baby in your Wait a minute, are those
really your best efforts? Because my best efforts are different
than your best efforts. So when I've sold Sprout, that
was in the first contract best efforts, I was like, no, no, no,
We're going to be really specific here. You're going to
spend this much money on education, You're gonna have this
(18:18):
many sales people calling on O B g NS. You're
going to And they agreed to it, and that is
what ultimately became my leverage. So they weren't up, you know,
um honoring their half of the equation and they're part
of the deal. What they had contractually agreed to do.
That gave me leverage to actually get it back. What
happened to the buyer Valiant? So can you imagine, we
(18:41):
announced they were going to buy us in August, the
transaction closed in October. In that meantime, I'm like getting
ready to launch. We were launching in October. I'm building
out sales people, We've got the supply chain, like everything's
going in October comes the deal closes, and literally like
a week later, they got a letter from the Department
(19:03):
of Justice that basically they had not disclosed a relationship
they had with the pharmacy. No one knew. Could you
already have your billion dollars wired cash cash? And all
of your employees also have equity, absolutely, every single one. Yes,
that's so important, by the way, I mean, if I
could say a secret to success for for anybody building
(19:26):
it who's listening, give other people's skin in the game.
Everybody who's ever come worked to me, I don't care
if they packed our boxes or they ran my sales team.
They have been an owner in the company alongside of me.
And to watch those moments like the transformational moments, um
you know, of sales has been really the most rewarding
thing of all. So we all had had the money
(19:48):
in the bank, but they really it was a two
and a half billion dollar sale, so a billion and
a half of it was structured on the back end
that nobody got access to. But we got it back
and now we get to launch it on our own terms.
So they're they're accused of fraud, right, And where did
that leave all of you? On an island? And um,
(20:12):
I will say, I think you know, we had gotten
a lot of press. This was a big news story
when we were approved and the world was watching and
I was Mama bear, matt as hell, what's going on?
What did what wasn't? I told, what is happening here?
I want answers, and I think probably that were very
(20:33):
thin on my new acquirer. And I got a phone
call one day from their then CEO. He was replaced
actually in this process, but he called me and he said,
it's clear that you don't want to be here anymore.
And I said, like, hell, I don't want to be here.
This is my baby, Like I immediately had a reaction
to that, and he goes, well, you're not going to
be and they cut off my email that very afternoon,
(20:54):
So he he got rid of me as quick as
he could because I was a liability. I was asking
a lot of questions. I was loud, the press were
in contact. I mean, that's my my side of the story, right.
His version is his house was burning to the ground,
he had hundred million dollar brands that he had to protect,
and frankly, this was the last thing in the door
(21:15):
that they hadn't even begun investment spending on. And they weren't.
They couldn't afford to, so tell us about getting your
company back? Yeah, it's crazy, Um, I. I. They got
a new CEO. I sat down with him. He'd only
been on the job a few weeks, and he's he's lovely.
And I said, Okay, you're not going to do anything
with this, give it back. And I think he looked
(21:37):
across the table, like, wait a minute. They just paid
you a billion dollars for this. You can't have it
back and UM. And I said, yeah, but you're not
going to do anything with it. And you have to understand, like,
we fought this fight for millions of women who deserve
access to this, and it's not right to shelve it.
It wasn't stocked in pharmacies. None of that spade work
(21:58):
had been done. And so that eventually turned into maybe
a little bit more contention, which is, yeah, but you
owe us these things by the contract and um. And
ultimately it was if you'll basically go away, you can
you can have it back. And getting it back has
been interesting because you know, I had to spend a
little bit of time on the sidelines and think to myself, well,
(22:22):
what would I do differently if I got it back.
You know, the world keeps advancing, technology keeps moving in
all of those years, and I think I looked at
a future and said, Okay, the future of medicine is telemedicine.
And boy do we all know that from this last
year right, It's like rocket fuel was put on to
that we need this ability. This is a condition that
(22:42):
doesn't require a physical exam. And frankly, as as much
as I wish this wasn't true, it's embarrassing for a
lot of women to bring this up, even with their
trust and healthcare provider. So what if they could sit
on their couch, have a phone call and have it
delivered to their doorstep and so kind of the fun of,
you know, the pink lining in my world of having
(23:05):
a time away from it and getting it back as
we imagined a different path and I think a very
different patient experience, and so far that's paying off. And
where is it today? Attie dot com? So it's a
d d y I dot com. You really can speak
to a doctor license in your state. It can ship
to your doorstep, or you can absolutely go in and
(23:25):
ask your doctor about it. And it's stocked in all
the pharmacies. Do you think the narrative around women's sexual
health is changing? Yes, I think it is. Um So
this is maybe one of my proudest stats. When we
crossed the finish line in UM, it was such an
upside down world, and what I hoped for was not
(23:46):
that we would be the one and only, but that
all of these would come forward. In two sen the
term fem tech was coined, and it's now projected to
be a fifty billion dollar category by five Can you
imagine is going to be a fifty billion dollar category?
But here's the truth of it, Well, what is fem tech?
(24:07):
Femtech is really anything affecting sort of women from reproductive years, right,
whether it be my now organic tampons that I can buy,
whether it can be the fact that I've got a
fertility testing at my fingertips. So I'm not waiting until
I'm struggling to get pregnant, but I'm, you know, twenty
five years old and getting a picture of what my
(24:28):
fertility journey is going to look like, and that's coming
to me in a kit. Like how great is that
I made my husband insane saying that we were going
to have fertility issues, and I made him get a
fertility test and I got pregnant like the day he
got his results, and he was and the doctor was like,
we've never had a guy come in for fertility test
before there's something diagnosed. I was just so sure it
(24:48):
would take us two years. But I do think there's
there's such an opaque lining between women and their understanding
and of fertility, of sexuality, of so men, any of
these things that you're addressing. It's just and and it's
so crazy. It's what we're all good. Is part of
our human experience, and yet we don't talk about it,
(25:09):
not candidly, and it remains this great mystery. And I
think that what I love seeing is that you know what,
the medical establishment, the regulatory bodies, they waited too damn long.
So guess what, we're taking power into our own hands.
And I think about all of these young founders in
this space and fem tech, and what they're doing is
(25:31):
they're putting power in our hands. Because women are the
most informed health care purchasers in that regard. They will
do all of the homework and so why shouldn't they
have all the tools at their disposal. When will we
see a Super Bowl commercial for Addie Oh, I am
working on it. Actually that was part of my deal.
(25:51):
Um My contract was that they would put a Super
Bowl add on it, and that was such an important thing,
and then it didn't happen. Um, So you'll start to
hear about it. You're mostly through podcast advertising, UM and radio,
and then we'll graduate to some television. But I can't wait.
I can't wait to finally have that the little pink
pill for women. Can we can we actually talk about
(26:13):
pink for a minute? Yes, yes, we can? You wear pink?
How did that start? Why? You know? When I was well,
first of all, I have always loved pink. I'm really
challenged to find a picture where I'm not in pink.
Um and pink for me is about femininity being the
strength and business not a weakness. I reject that notion completely.
(26:36):
And I think in in any areas in which there
are stereotypes, you have two decisions. You can either sort
of lean away from them and be frustrated or even
it caused self doubt, or you can just lean right
toward them. And um, if you've got my personality, you
you lean right toward it. When people would say to me, oh,
the little pink pill, all that was missing was like
(26:58):
the head tilt and the pad on the show Older,
And I thought, yes, the little pink pill and I
would show up in like neon pink from head to
toe at the f d A, and I would wave
from the audience like, guess we're going to talk about
today because I think we need to address those things. Well,
there is one thing that I find so admirable about
your personal brand, which is the fact that you don't
(27:20):
have to make the choices other women have to make
when they get ready for a business meeting or speaking
engagement or a board meeting. You just know what you're
gonna wear. And so I would like to adapt that
for myself. But tell us about the process. You go
into a store and you just immediately try to find
what's pink, and if you like it, you buy it.
I mean, what is how do you create so much?
(27:42):
It's so much easier? And do you ever not wear pink? Never? Never,
working out, going out to dinner with your husband or
is your fiance or your husband fance? Still yeah, okay,
so you're going out to dinner with your fiance and
you're wearing pink every time I am. You know, like
there's a black elements sometimes at the Popu pink, but
(28:02):
otherwise it's mostly it's mostly pink. Yeah, do your employees
wear pink? Yes? In fact, you know, it's funny that
it's by no means what you have to do. But
pink for us is a bit of a philosophy, and
I think it is what you realize when you come
into our spaces. There's an irreverence to it. There's a
(28:24):
you know, underestimated to unapologetic in who we are. And
so we we work beside another office would like developers,
and these guys are you know, just imagine developers for
a second, like really geeky, sort of introverted. And we
go up and down in the elevator together and they
look at us and they're like, do you have to
(28:45):
wear pink? No, but we like to wear pink, And
and can I share this one story about about pink.
This made such an impression on me. So when I
was out there trying to raise money for Sprout, I
was laughed out of every room by the way. I
was showing up having built a successful business already, but
this notion of female viagra through everybody for such a loop.
(29:09):
I think they didn't know how to handle this woman
in pink talking about this. And there was one particular
investor that would have meant the world in terms of validation,
like sort of the godfather, you know, in in healthcare.
And he was particularly unkind when I showed up to
pitch him. Fast forward to two years ago. He was
(29:30):
sitting in my pincubator across the table in a hot
pink board chair, and he was still in his buttoned up,
like you know, gray suit, and he said to me, hey, Cindy,
and he reaches down to his pant leg to show
me his socks, and he's wearing hot pink socks. And
in that moment, it was a little bit of like
I got it. And what I loved about that moment
(29:53):
is that, you know, he really I gave him room
to change his mind and he won't make that mistake again.
And now he invests alongside of me in a lot
of the incubator companies. And I think right now, particularly
when I talked to a lot of female founders, we know,
we all know the stats, right, two percent of funding ridiculous. Um,
you know the products that serve a female audience. Niche nonsense,
(30:17):
like it's half the population. We can keep going through
these stats, so it can be very easy to get
very frustrated by that or very beaten down by that.
And I think that when we when we do that,
sometimes we close ourselves off from allowing people to do better.
And if I had just cut him off forever, like
(30:39):
you're the asshole who left me out of the room,
we wouldn't have real change, which is him recognizing it
and now doing his part to invest in women too.
And now for a quick break, how do you think
investors treat women entrepreneurs differently than male entrepreneurs. Inherently they
don't believe they have the chops to do it. And
(30:59):
I'm that's not the Cindy echort um, you know point
of view. That's data that show even the difference in
the questions you are asked. When you you can pitch
an identical pitch right all of the data. Man walks
in the room, they literally read a script and do
a pitch. A woman walks in the room, she gives
that verbatim pitch. They're asked different questions. What happens for
(31:21):
men is I think they're always expansion questions like um,
they relate to you can do it and how will
you grow it? And with women they're always like um,
problematic questions like you won't be able to handle it.
So it's a different between like promotion and emotions sort
of um in the questions and there's a great I
think it's out of pen who did the study where
(31:41):
you can read like the differences and how they ask questions. Okay,
backing up to a question I asked about your employees
a little bit. Yeah, you have worked with a lot
of family. You mentioned you worked with your mom and
you worked with your ex husband. Yes, and my brother
and your brother. Yeah, what was it like we're with
your ex husband. We were separated actually for a long
(32:02):
period of that time. But you know, it's delicate when
you are running these small companies and no one wants instability. Um,
if you will there, So we we probably kept that
to ourselves for a lot longer than people knew. Um.
You know, for us, the truth is our relationship was
based on work. We had met at work, and um,
(32:25):
for me, maybe it was the first time I felt
seen by a guy because he understood my dedication to this,
and I think we mistook professional chemistry for personal chemistry.
But we you know, we still interact today because he
was a shareholder in Sprout and uh, and so we
still have interaction and I think we've just held onto
the good pieces, which is we've had a lot of
(32:47):
fun together and you know, done a lot of pretty
crazy things. Tell us about your fiancee. Ah, he's such
a sweetheart, Like he's the man you know, I'm I'm
older now, Um, and I think, you know, he's the
guy that I never met earlier on to know that's
what it could be. Like. He's a fellow entrepreneur. So
(33:07):
you know, as I was building this company in Raleigh,
I just had my head down doing the work like
I never did anything. And so I'd heard his name
around town because he was known for being so helpful
with all of the startup community here. And we were
put on a panel together and I sat down next
to him and I was like, that's just a miller.
Nobody nobody told me. He looked like that, So wait
(33:31):
a minute, um, and uh and then he started. You know,
he kept in touch, but I'm thinking that every time
he reaches out, he really just wants to talk business.
And uh, finally I think he confessed I was leaving
my office. I work with almost all women, and I
was leaving office late on a Friday night and they said,
where are you going? And I said, oh, I'm I'm
meeting I'm meeting Justin. And they're like, for a date,
(33:55):
and I said, no, it's not a date. We're just talking.
I mean we're talking business. And they're like, it's Friday night,
you're going to a bar. It's a date. Call us
from the bathroom. And of course I get there and
I go to the bathroom. I'm like, oh my god,
it's a date. So there's a little naivete here from
from all of those years of just that not even
(34:15):
being on my radar. And do you work together now?
We do? Yeah, he works with me. He's really mastermind
and most of our digital strategy. Your brand seems to
be soaring right now, just not just the brand that
you're building, but also your personal brand. Where do you
see yourself in five years, ten years? That's such a
sweet comment. Thank you for that. Um. I don't know
(34:37):
if I ever have that same perspective. There always feels
like there's more work to be done. And you know,
if I look down the line, my ambition is this,
I want to create a billion dollars worth of wealth
for women. That's what I'm working towards and it's really
my pincubator is all about you know, investing in these
really you know first market um, these radical changes and
(35:03):
social catalyst if you will. Um. But ultimately it's the
multiplier effect. How do I get more women to outcomes?
Who are going to get more women to outcomes? We're
going to get more women to outcomes. So that's the ambition. UM,
I'll tell you. I say that, But my every day
is just wake up and do the best you can do.
In ten years, I'm going to come back to you
and you're going to be involved in my obsession with
(35:24):
getting more women investors into the mix because I think
that every woman who is a vice president of a
company has a little expendable income. They should all be
investing in some giant fund for women. And it drives
me crazy that guys will go out to dinner with
each other and they'll be like, hey, you want it
on this deal? Sure, I'll put in contents. Women never
(35:48):
think of doing that, even if they have the money,
and it just it kills me. It's oh, I'm so on,
I sign me up for any of those lectures. I'd
like to get those two because it's such a you know,
I do think of it that way, and it's not
an anti philanthropy, But who gives the most dollars away?
Women give away the most dollars. In fact, we control
most of the wealth and that's continuing to come. So
(36:11):
if you think about that, why are we not investing
to make more money? And more money? Money is just
a tool, right, and it's a conduit for good and
so go if you can invest in somebody else to
make more money, then you can give that away and
then you can keep paying it forward. I'm with you, ad.
I really do hope that you know, you are very
(36:32):
much leading the way in this across the country, which
I'm so grateful for. Uh. And I really do hope
that other women who have accumulated a lot of wealth
and invest in women owned companies and do philanthropy. But
that it's at least an end. But it's not an
either or, because too much we see it as an
either or. I agree with that. One more question before
(36:53):
we go into the lightning round. You told us about
the woman you met in d C who you like
inspired you to double down after your drug was initially rejected.
How is she doing sexually? How's her sexual health? You know? Great, Um,
and listen, And it's not for everybody. I always want
to be careful, right, There's no perfect panacea of a medication.
It has risk, it has benefits. But I've got to
(37:15):
tell you it's just incredible and the gift to me
that I hear these stories. I spoke at a conference
in San Francisco in twenty nineteen. I got off the
stage and a woman came like running for me, and
she said, I need to talk to you. She said,
I was with divorce lawyers. We were already there. Um,
it had fallen apart in the bedroom and then everything
(37:37):
else started to fall apart. She said, I heard you
on a podcast, and I thought to myself, but what
if this is it? She said, I went to the
doctor the next day. I got on Addie. Can I
take a picture with you and show my husband? Because
we stayed together? And I mean, I still choke up.
Like that is story. It's incredible and we minimize it.
(37:57):
But you know what this is like, this lead was
ruining women's self esteem, their their marriages and relationships. And
it matters, and it matters that we talk about it
and that whether they take it or not they deserve
an option. Alright, we're going to our lightning round. Now
you go into a boardroom. You're pitching a group of men.
A man makes a joke when you mentioned women's sexuality.
(38:21):
How do you handle it? What is this the nineteen fifties?
You didn't mean to say that. Let's move on. I
love it. What are you reading? Rituals Roadmap by Erica Kesswyn.
It's so good about you know the rituals right that
we I don't know how it forms cultures and everything else.
It's a great book. What is your daily morning routine? Okay?
(38:44):
I feed pigs because I have pet pigs, and um,
there's I have a laugh about that. You got to
scrape the ship from your boots in the morning. And honestly,
like I'm the anti everyone else that I immediately get
on social media and and I do that because I'm
just I love all the characters in my life. I
(39:04):
love to see what the two of you are doing.
Like something about that connection and how fortunate I am
by all the people I'm surrounded by doing really important
things that like fires me up every day. Well, Lou
always comes in with our male perspective and I'm sure
he's going to come in with a big question for you.
You are a badass woman. You know. In the hood,
(39:27):
we call what you did a come up. I'm in amazement.
You're changing the world for women, you know. And I'm
starting to see a correlation to how the world is
treating UM women to how they treat blacks. And I'm
like and I'm like, wow, I must be really bad
for a black woman. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
(39:47):
Those statistics are less than one percent from venture. Obviously,
you're doing something um with this drug called Addie. Is
any of that money now, because this is all to
come up now because profit, is any of that money
get geared towards that helping black women? For sure? So
not only through mentorship at the Pinkybator, but also some
(40:08):
of our investments are the most incredible black female founders.
I mean, there's a two out of Birmingham, Alabama. They
run a company called Mixedtros Leather Daughter Team. You know, really,
that's such an important piece of this loo. And even
if I look at my employee base, most most of
my I have great guys in my organization, um, but
(40:29):
but of my organization or women of color, and we're
really proud of that because we need to diversity a
thought at the table for sure, and and to find
all those great ideas. There's people out there doing such
incredible things. It's you know what, for everybody listening, it's
really good business to go where other people aren't looking,
go swoop in and invest in those opportunities. Amy, I'm
(40:56):
I'm bowled over by Cydey as always, but I also
have to say selfishly, I'm really obsessed with suddenly having
a signature color. So seriously, her life is so easy,
just because every day she wakes up and she's like,
what should I wear pink? It's just obvious. And she
goes into a store she's like, what should I buy
something pink? Well, okay, so Sam, what will your signature
(41:18):
color be? Maybe it should be part place green. I
like part play screen. I think you should wear different
shades different shades of green, though, like not one. And
that's what she has, different shades of pink. So, you know,
every time I talked with Cindy, they're about a thousand
sage pieces of wisdom. But in this conversation, you know,
(41:39):
one of the big takeaways I had was her comment
that it's really good business to go where people aren't looking,
and I love that, right, you know, she she still
holds to that, even though when she made the decision
to do that, it proved to be almost impossibly hard
because frankly, like the world didn't really give a shit
about women's sexual health. But she still made it happen.
And I do agree that there's something really important to
(42:02):
to finding problems that no one else is looking to solve,
but that we all have. And so I think that's
just like a really great grounding place to start a
conversation about what you're passionate about and what you want
to do. And she said it so well, and I think,
you know, for me personally, that's as you know, Aim,
that's what I've done, right. I went into a totally
male dominated industry that seems super unsexy and the outside
(42:25):
like who wants to talk about payment processing? And we're
now like the top women's company in the payment processing industry.
And I think that having a vision for what do
you want to change, and it doesn't necessarily need to
be the shiny object that you go after absolutely look
where other people are not looking. I love it. Thanks
(42:50):
for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
We would so appreciate if you would leave a review
wherever you get your podcasts, and of course, connect with
us on social media at her Story podcast. What's Her
Story with Sam and Amy is powered by my company,
The Riveter at the Riveter dot c o in Sam's company,
park Place Payments at park place payments dot com. Thanks
(43:11):
to our producer and editor Laurel Mowglin, our podcast associate
Phoebe crane Fus, and our male perspective Luberans
Hosts And Creators
Samantha Ettus
Amy Nelson
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.