Obstacles
I was excited to start my own venture, I felt I was finally in a position where I could channel my inner do-gooder and try to make a meaningful and lasting impact in the MedTech space. There seemed to be a lot of opportunities through government funding such as Innovate UK, the government’s innovation strategy and potential investments. I’d managed to work on a contract a few years prior that was SBRi funded and I’d made contacts through attending conferences such as ‘girls just want to have funds.’ I became hopeful and enthusiastic that we could make our idea a reality.
With great optimism I started to apply for Innovate UK grants only to be rejected, I’d reapply and along would come more disappointing rejections. I tried a different strategy, I received some coaching to get our pitch deck ready. I started reaching out to potential investors and joined a platform called Connectd. There was a lot of interest and enthusiasm in our idea, with one where we were whittled down to one of the three that the investor was interested in investing in. Then Brexit actually happened and they pulled out, pretty much every other investor didn’t want to take the risk without seeing a prototype or they only wanted an advisory role.
In the midst of this, my co-founder had to take a step back due to personal reasons, which felt like another crushing blow. I was left all on my own with this company that I felt I wasn’t making any progress with. I wanted to persevere, my brother Adam stepped up in the absence of my Oncologist to help with the scientific research that we needed. We found ourselves an amazing female ethnic minority advisor through the Connectd platform and it felt like a second wind, that we could actually make this happen.
Our Advisor Daniya was invaluable from the onset, she really helped steer (and continues to do so) the company in the right direction. We decided to move away from trying to secure funding and grants in order to build the product and focus on building the prototype. We decided in order to do this, we would have to grow the team. From March – June 2021 we put out job adverts for hands-on CTOs who could help write the code but also provide strategic input from a technology perspective. I felt hopeful, I wanted to champion diversity and equality, I put that in the job advert and was excited to interview. Once again it all came crashing down. The applicants were mostly male (which is fine) however during the interview process I experienced the following from them:
- Talking over me because they felt they knew more about technology than I did
- Talking to me in a condescending manner or ‘mansplaining’
- Bringing up Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos like it was somehow relevant to my company
- Making strange requests such as wanting 50% of my company having only just graduated off a masters or PhD programme
The recruitment process was a massive fail and then an article emerged in an edition of New Scientist outlining that a study they conducted shows organisations such as Innovate UK underfund female and ethnic minority founders. I was already experiencing a real lack of support especially from a diversity aspect, but this just left me feeling hopeless and dejected. I was ready to give up and close my company….