Forward Thinking: Founder stories - Episode 1 (Claire Reach | MapHealth)

Welcome to our brand new podcast Forward Thinking. Our first series ‘Founder Stories’ shines a light on the remarkable journeys of underrepresented founders. As part of our ongoing efforts to support diverse entrepreneurial talent, we’ve created a platform where these inspiring people share their stories, lessons learned, and the unique challenges they’ve overcome.

Throughout this series, we’ll delve into the personal business journeys of our guests, explore pivotal moments that shaped their success, and uncover invaluable insights for other aspiring entrepreneurs.

In our first episode, we speak to Claire Reach, co-founder of MAP Health who shares her journey to becoming a founder.

At Fox Williams, we’re committed to creating opportunities for underrepresented founders by connecting them with investors and legal teams, helping them access the guidance and support that can be crucial to a business’s growth and success.

We hope you find this conversation as inspiring as we did when recording it.

For more information in our underrepresented founder and investor mornings, please get in contact with us https://www.foxwilliams.com/contact-us/. 

Episode Transcript

Bayley (00:00):
Welcome to today's episode of Forward Thinking Founder Stories brought to you by Fox Williams. Our Founder Stories series shines a light on the remarkable journeys of underrepresented founders. As part of our ongoing efforts to support diverse entrepreneurial talent, we've created a platform where these inspiring people share their stories, lessons learned, and the unique challenges they've overcome.

Claire (00:01):
Sure. So my name is Claire Reach. I'm the founder of MAP Health. So I developed this business and this idea about three years ago, actually during COVID, where I wanted to improve my own health and not get COVID.So I put together a program for myself that incorporated genetics, blood testing, and a continuous glucose monitor to actually give me an idea of where my health was. Now, the issue that I found is even though with a degree in biochemistry, I didn't know how to put it all together to give me something meaningful.
It's been really up and down. , I think like any founder, the challenge is that sometimes you're all go and it's really, really fast. And other times you have to step back and just wait a little bit. , I think financially there's always an extra challenge and trying to make sure that you can still eat day to day. , so you have to keep some kind of, , work going on the side. , so although like from now I would love to be fully devoted to that, it's now the process of how do we get funding? How do we really launch this idea and still eat?
So it's really getting the confidence. , and the understanding of what I see is a very male or male dominated business. , Events like these have been really valuable to help me understand that actually I'm not that far away from where I need to be to, to get funding and to really launch this business properly. , , Building that confidence is really important. Been the challenge over the three years. , and of course it's always the understanding the customer as well. So thankfully my background, my experience is really working with these customers anyway, but trying to create something that's really specific for their needs.
I'm thankful that I've got some really supportive family around me , and my husband as well. , But yeah, three kids, a dog, a husband that works a lot of hours, trying to run a business and work for someone else. , I'm also a triathlete. , So 10 to 14 hours training a week, , is a lot of fun, but I can't imagine life any different. In fact, I've tried to only do one thing at a time and I find actually everything suffers. , It's better to kind of spread yourself out and feel like you're doing your best and just do what you can. Those individual things that actually works well for me.
, Just do it. , I live my life by that motto. Sorry, Nike , and then also, you can't, jump across a big chasm with just one small jump, you've got to just take that big leap of faith. In saying that, there's got to be a little bit of an idea of a bit of a backup support for that, but I really like to run with those big ideas and just push forward as hard as I can. I think children and family and life really make you have those backup ideas and that support behind you, but at some point you've just got to go for it.
Why am I doing this? So on one hand that's a big failure for me because it was something that I was focused on and I haven't progressed. On the other hand it's just a major learning curve, like you're either winning or you're learning. For me that was all about learning in that stick to your big idea, stick to your passion, stick to what you're going to do, keep driving that forward, even if it is tiny, even if it takes 10 years, , that is where you should be , and I deviated from that and that was a big learning for me. .
Well, I guess the major thing is thank you so much to those that have organised today, because it's been absolutely brilliant. , the legal aspect, the little insights from the VC people, and then from the other founders, like I couldn't have asked for anything more , so, always valuable. , I think really, for me, it's just, again, giving me the confidence, and just, actually helping me work out what I do need to do to get those next steps going a bit more and I need to just do it as I said, just do it. I need to take my own advice and just do it, so yeah, that's what i'll take from today.