Deena Shakir of Lux Capital joins Nick to discuss The Lux Capital Playbook, Deeptech and The Application Layer, and What the Future Holds for Digital Health. In this episode we cover:
- Investments in the fertility space.
- How do you think about the future of healthcare?
- Investing in healthcare companies.
- Innovation in healthcare.
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0:18
Deena Shakir joins us today from Menlo Park. Deena is General Partner at Lux Capital, an early-stage venture fund investing in transformative technologies improving lives and livelihoods. Her investments span stages and sectors, and include women’s health, digital health infrastructure , health equity, foodtech, and fintech. Prior to Lux, she was a Partner at GV, led product partnerships at Google for health, search, and AI/ML, and directed social impact investments at Google.org. Deena, welcome to the show!
0:51
Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here. Yeah, it’s such a pleasure to finally connect, talk us through your background a bit and your path to venture for sure. Well, you know, it’s been called nonlinear non traditional, I think there is no such thing in venture. So I’ll just say it’s, it is what it is. But I just certainly did not grow up thinking I was going to be a VC didn’t know what a VC was. I am a rare Bay Area native. So I was actually born in Mountain View, right by Google, where I ended up working years later. But you know, for me, I had this this vision of doing something really global. And a lot of that had to do with my background, being the daughter of immigrants from Iraq, I thought I would study, you know, international relations and do journalism or human rights or something in that sense. And that is sort of how I started my career, but ended up finding my way back to Silicon Valley after a couple years in the Obama administration, and really developing conviction around you know, tech as a as a vector for impact. And that it was no longer a separate sector, but it was a lot of it was going to be an effective way to do you know, many things better, and not just, you know, the sort of traditional semiconductor chips or enterprise SAS. And so that’s how I ended up a Google and how I got into venture was, you know, fast forward a couple a couple of years, I had the chance to work on a number of early stage products at Google, you mentioned some of them, there were many others that never saw the light of day, or you’ve never heard of, because that’s the nature of early stage, of course, but I sort of stumbled into healthcare at Google and ended up building Google’s first HIPAA helping build Google’s first HIPAA compliant product and what became Google Health. And that is really what led me to the belief that the real innovation in this industry, and frankly, many others was not going to come from big tech. It was coming from these incredible entrepreneurs that I was meeting who were doing so much more with so much than the teams I was working with. And so that’s kind of how I got into venture.
2:38
Amazing. Have you come across Google’s new project Bard sort of the competitor to chat? GPT?
2:44
Yeah, obviously, I’ve read read, read the headlines in the articles like like other folks. And you know, Google, of course, that I did work on early AI products. And you know, what eventually became what used to be research and machine intelligence. And now I think it’s mostly called Google Brain. I know that there were things in the works way before this was like a cool, you know, term anyone even knew. And so it’s not no surprise to me that this is something they’re launching.
3:07
Interesting. Well, curious to get your take more on on generative AI a bit later here. But before we get to that, can you tell us more about the thesis at Lux?
3:16
Absolutely. Well, you know, lux has been around for nearly 23 years, started off back in the day as a small seed fund, the first fund was only about $10 million. It was New York based it was me and my partners, the founders of lux, Josh Wolf, and Peter A Baird, in their early 20s, who had this really ambitious idea that there was this unique opportunity to invest in these crazy cutting edge, you know, scientific founders who were turning science fiction into fact, now we call that deep tech, hard tech frontier tech, take your term of choice. But back then, you know, there really wasn’t a clear bunch of return profile there. And you know, I think Lux in those days really helped put it on the map. Now we have about 4 billion AUM are investing across stages and sectors. And you know, that is still very much a part of our DNA, we’re looking for those breakthrough, you know, hard scientific founders, but it doesn’t always take the form of what it’s traditionally conceived of as deep Tech, I think some of my healthcare investments might fit that, you know, that description.
4:11
Awesome. And then from a talent standpoint, are you structured based on expertise or sector or, you know, how are the different partners and investors oriented?
4:21
We’re all generalists. And so some of us clearly have certain areas where we spend more time than others or have, you know, interest areas, but those evolve as well over time. But, you know, I’ve also invested in other areas outside of digital health, a number of other partners at Lux have also invested in health. And yeah, it’s really about the company, the founder and kind of the fit with the partner, but we take every investment through the holistic partnership kind of conviction perspective.
4:45
Perfect. So we’re in a bit of a different market situation. Of course for the past year or so early data is coming out and 23 and it’s not looking super rosy, at least relative to 21. How is the shifting Makro sort of changing deployment and plans at Lux?
5:04
Yeah, that’s for sure. And remains to be seen what the rest of 23 and even 24 look like, you know, I think if you’ve had a chance to read any of our quarterly LP letters that, you know, we actually usually publish redacted versions of them, you’d see that we’ve sort of been sounding the alarm on this for quite some time. And so luckily, we spent a lot of time before this became very obvious, making sure that our companies were really equipped to weather the storm that had that they, you know, took whatever means necessary to keep a close eye on burn and extend runway and raise additional funds, and think through strategic partnerships and so on. And so, you know, that’s not to say they’re, you know, forever, you know, accounted for. But you know, that was a really big focus for us. In those early days, we are still deploying capital, we’re still investing across the board across stages. But of course, things are different. And I would say in many regards, a little healthier than they were at the height of exuberance in 2021. Valuations are just starting to come down, but they are coming down, particularly at the later stage companies that are kind of it’s impossible to ignore the multiples compression that you’re seeing on the public side. But at the end of the day is venture true venture investors are horizons are 10 years and beyond. And so we’re not necessarily comping something directly to an existing multiple today. That’s just not the way it works. So you got to believe you got to believe in the founder. And you got to believe in the market and in some cases in expanding market, and that’s really what makes the job fun.
6:21
Are their proxies in the public markets that that are tracked at locks that kind of give you a sense for deep tech? valuations. It’s a tough one, right? Because it’s multi sector and multivariate. You’ve seen one deep tech company, you’ve seen one deep tech company, but you know, sacks, SAS has its indices that they track for forward multiples, or are there some that that you look to in the Publix?
6:44
I would say yes, and no, because part of our thesis is we like to invest before it’s obvious, right. And so I think an example of that is some of the investments we’ve made in the fertility space, where we were pretty early in doing so. And you know, now, there was just an article last week that Aaron brought when published in Axios, you know, calling it a flood of funding into fertility. But when we first started investing there, people really didn’t think there was a tam didn’t think it was venture bankable. But we looked at not necessarily public comps, but rather, you know, global demographic changes, like declining birth rates, other trends, you know, LGBTQ families wanting to wanting to, you know, proceed with IVF, and surrogacy and so on. And we’re able to sort of get a more holistic view of what that expanding tam would look like. And so that’s how we think about things. Also, in the context of other aspects of deep tech. Again, we wish there were direct clear comps, now an algorithm would be able to do this, it really is a little is a bit more than that.
7:37
Perfect. So Deena you know, we don’t often hear about folks leaving a partnership for another one. Clearly, lux is an incredible firm that you’ve joined. But but so is GV so maybe you share what you can what was this a long process of transition? I know, lux is still relatively newer for you, but how did you decide to make this move?
7:55
Yeah, well, you know, I’ve actually now but at least almost twice as long as as I was at GV, but so it’s hard to believe it. Yeah, it’s been almost three and a half years I was at GV a little less than two, you know, for me, it was a couple of different things. First of all, I’m still very close to the team at GV. And that was my, you know, first foot in the door, and vans, you know, we have a lot of amazing co investments with them. And frankly, that’s how I got to know Lux was we had about a dozen different co investments with GV. But for me, I had spent the pretty much the better part of my career in the Google and alphabet world, and it had been amazing. And I learned so much, but as I thought about where I wanted to hang my hat and venture, being a part of, you know, firm building, as well as company building was really important to me and wanting to experience venture outside the auspices of a corporate entity, even though GV is very much not a CVC. But a financial investor at that was something that was really important to me, and being able to do that, you know, when I joined Lux, in 2019, we were just about to launch, you know, an additional billion dollars or so AUM, we’ve now you know, doubled even since then are going to continue to grow. And so that like pace of growth, to me is really exciting at this stage of my of my career.
9:01
Amazing. So when when people think of deep tech, they’re often thinking of things that may be a bit sciency, or, you know, more in the domain of novel invention versus maybe the application layer innovation. How does healthcare fit into a portfolio of these sort of boundary pushing technologies?
9:21
Yeah, it’s a great question. And it’s one that we have a constant debate and discussion about internally, you know, there are a couple of different ways to think about it. But at the end of the day, some of the problems in healthcare, particularly in this country, are not rocket science. They’re around misaligned incentives. They’re around the business model. And by the day, the ability to innovate, there can be groundbreaking in a way that is, you know, the, literally the future of humanity. And so for us as we think about advancing human health, on the one hand, we do have, you know, myriad investments that are in you know, drug discovery and therapeutics and so on. We have investments on the in the infrastructure layer of our RnD companies like bench h one and trial library that are advancing human health as well through software. So we really think about kind of constructing a portfolio that, you know, advance the future of health across the board. And so sometimes that looks like, you know, a company like study and D that is enabling the future of care delivery. And sometimes it looks like, you know, a company building a new small molecule or advancing drug discovery through AI.
10:25
Perfect. Well, you teed it up perfectly for me. So I’d love to stay with healthcare. But I’d love to circle back to AI. We touched on it before any thoughts on how chat based or image based generative AI will affect the future of healthcare?
10:39
Yeah, I mean, it’s a question a lot of people are thinking about it is really early. But then again, even if you look at kind of the history, we talked about Google and Google and AI, some of those early, big, you know, moonshot advances were in healthcare, the, you know, the groundbreaking work around AI and identifying cases of diabetic retinopathy and pupils, I was actually involved in that back in the day at Google. So there are some really exciting applications at the intersection of AI and healthcare, one of our companies, a life health and the fertility space is, you know, using computer vision and AI to help advance the process of embryo selection optimization, ultimately creating better outcomes and fertility care, and a future that is more equitable and accessible for families that are that are expanding. So there’s a lot there in terms of where we are now with generative AI, it feels like we’re just just at the precipice like of obviously, there have been news stories about generative AI, passing medical boards and so on. You know, I think that’s really interesting. But we’re, you know, we haven’t quite seen that uptick when it comes to care delivery, because the truth is, you can’t mess up when you’re dealing with human lives, right. So it’s not the same as like having a weird pixel in an image that you’ve created on lenses. So it really needs to be however, there’s so much opportunity for creating efficiencies in healthcare, especially when we deal with kind of the staffing shortages that we’re that we’re dealing with right now. So there’s a lot of opportunity.
11:59
I recall a couple years ago now coming across some data set, I wish I had the link handy. But it was a set of training data, AI training data in the radiology space. So they had a bunch of images. And the the point of the article that was showing the AI was much better at appropriately predicting and diagnosing the issue. Whereas radiologists, if you showed them a sample set of 500 images, often they would look at, they would put the same image in the data set at different periods. And the radiologists would diagnose the problem differently. And so sort of this AI assisted, I would hate to call it human assisted but AI assisted diagnose
12:42
Maybe one day people will call it. I mean, I think that’s a fantastic example. And you know, as we mentioned, with diabetic retinopathy, the application of computer vision and AI in particular to radiology is one of the initial use cases. That’s part of the thesis behind embryology and looking at embryo optimization for fertility. It’s a lot of what kind of aura one of our companies which was acquired by Johnson Johnson did in the in the surgical intervention space with interventional radiology, anyone who’s ever had an ultrasound if you know, if you’ve been pregnant or dealt with that reader realize how much variance there is from one Sinagua, for looking at something to another, it is very much human eye, you know, with estimations, and I think the more precision that can be, you know, added there, the better. And we’re already seeing lots of those applications being put to work in clinic.
13:28
Interesting, you know, Deena and a number of digital health applications we’ve witnessed and observed that appear technology model is often insufficient, and maybe tech enabled services or a model that includes some services component, which along with technology is required to be successful in sort of the healthcare space, will you invest in a tech enabled services based model? You know, why or why not?
13:53
Yeah, we will. And we have? And I think that the answer is, it really depends. So we’re investors in carbon health, which you know, many are familiar with, it has a brick and mortar presence, but there is also a lot to what they do that is very much more tech than than serve. And, you know, we’re investors in companies that are doing care delivery, like city, MD, and Maven clinic, and so on. So I think when it comes to healthcare, it’s not as black and white, like even what we think of as tech enabled services is a little different. And obviously, for us to get excited, as you know, as locks, there does need to be something that’s really compelling in terms of a of a breakthrough in the application of technology to that space to that market to that, you know, indication, etc.
14:30
I guess next question is, could be from the investor perspective, or the founder perspective, but what do you think are some of the pitfalls when either launching a healthcare company or as an investor investing in health care companies that, you know, folks should look out for?
14:44
Oh, where do we start? There’s a lot I mean, I think, again, like I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to remember when we’re dealing with healthcare, that we’re dealing with human lives. And there have been some big headlines in the news in the last year or so, you know, showing the dangers of you know, advancing trying to Dan sees, you know, certain metrics, top line growth at all costs, not recognizing the very scary potential risk to human lives if you’re not accounting for, for what’s best for the patient. And, and so that’s why in terms of how I think about, you know, my my theses here, like I get really excited about companies that I think are cracking that nut on healthcare, which is the problem with healthcare, which is around misaligned incentives. And if you can incentivize from a business perspective, the promotion of value, so value based care, like if you can actually align healthier humans with profits and revenue, like, that’s ultimately some of what it takes to, you know, I think, to break to break and fix what’s, you know, what’s, what’s wrong with the status quo. And so, I think that’s something that’s really important to consider and healthcare, it’s not apples to apples, you can apply the same kind of metrics and so on that you do, although, of course, in this environment, we’d love to see healthy, growing businesses with really strong, you know, margins, and so on. But it’s also important to remember that factor is,
16:00
I mean, should we be optimistic about the future in healthcare, particularly in the US when there are misaligned incentives, or there are conflicts of interest between providers and payers and patients, and, you know, it is such a large industry that generates, you know, such large revenues for many different stakeholders, and some of those interests, you know, create some conflicts and some challenges to furthering, you know, patient health.
16:29
Totally. And that’s it, I think that’s part of what’s so complicated here, there’s so many stakeholders who are often at odds with one another, and, you know, I used to call them the three or the four P’s that the payers AKA, you know, insurance companies, the providers, aka health systems doctrine and other types of providers, the pharma come, and then of course, you’ve got the patients as well. So when you’re thinking about that, in the context of, you know, a fee for service environment, or the the world that many of us are living in, a lot of those are at odds with one another, right? So oftentimes, what is best for the patient, it is not best for the payer, or what is best, although it should be if you think about it from a long term view, but in the near term, not necessarily. And similarly, if you think about, you know, payers and providers, so again, that’s really where I think about, you know, what an amazing world that would be in if, you know, you and me, advancing our health was also in the economic interest of, of a pharmaceutical company of a payer of a health system. And I think that’s the hope and vision of moving, you know, toward value based care. And there’s a lot of work to be done on the way there. But there are some really interesting innovations being applied to health equity, again, whether it’s through care delivery, and companies like waymark, which we’re super excited about, who are, you know, leveraging community health workers and data science to help enable better care for patients in Medicaid or trial library, which is advancing health equity, through r&d, enabling, you know, the virtualization of clinical trials and finding diverse and inclusive patient sets to help advance better outcome.
17:57
You know, many are focused on all the issues in the US healthcare system. Are there some redeeming characteristics that make starting a company, you know, health oriented tech startup here in the US, you know, a worthy and an exciting endeavor?
18:14
Definitely, otherwise I wouldn’t be in this business. I think there’s a lot, there’s a lot there. I mean, the truth is, there is so much whitespace, there’s so much opportunity, even the kind of the basic, you know, software layers of running a business, whether it’s like accounting for, you know, a mental health provider, or you know, documentation or productivity software that like a lot of these things are still done very manually. There’s a lot of latency built in, there are entire industries that exist multibillion dollar industries that are making money off of that human labor and latency. And then in the environment that we’re in today, where so many of these stakeholders are suffering, there is a lot of appetite for increasing efficiency. And again, if you can marry those with better outcomes, like that’s where things get really exciting. So whether you’re building software to, you know, make it easier to get access to specialty meds, and like, you know, working on price transparency, and so on, or enabling asynchronous pediatric care like a company that we co lead with Sequoia called Summer health. If anyone has kids, you’ve got a download. It’s a game changer. It’s it’s definitely the across the board. Almost every every aspect of healthcare has a lot of whitespace in it.
19:22
Perfect. You know, I believe I read that early in your career, you had some work in government in both the Clinton and maybe the Obama administration’s you can correct me if I’m wrong about that. I’m curious for your take on value based care on one hand, it is designed to align out with you know, treatments, therapeutics, etc. How do you feel, you know, value based care has performed as sort of a positive tailwind for the future of healthcare?
19:51
Yeah. So I did work in the Obama administration. I’m a little bit too young to have worked for Bill Clinton, but I worked for Secretary Clinton in the Obama administration. So So Yeah, I mean, I was there. And that’s kind of how I found my way into into tech, as I mentioned in venture in the first place. value based care, as I’ve said, is really a big part of kind of how what I think is the future of healthcare and where I think we can kind of break the, the mold the that is contributing to a lot of the issues right now in healthcare. And again, it comes down to aligning those incentives. So what’s exciting there is you have the ability to actually pay for better health and so much of what, you know, the way that things are structured now, whether it’s how providers are being compensated or pharma companies, right, what patients are paying for is not about that. It’s about visits, it’s about number of pills. It’s about, you know, time. And so that’s something that I think is really exciting. And I’m glad to see a lot more interest in appetite, that seems to be much more of a hot topic now among investors. And you know, there are some great companies out there like, like those that I’ve mentioned, that are that are starting to show that this is a venture business to.
20:52
Perfect, do you, diverse and marginalized communities are often even more disadvantaged when it comes to health care? In what ways do you think VC can play a role in bridging some of these inequities?
21:03
Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up as it I mean, it is really, really mind boggling how how serious these gaps can be, and the impact of social determinants of health. You know, when it comes to maternal health, or women’s health, which is an area where I spend a lot of time on, if you’re a black woman in America, your chances of dying during childbirth is three to four times that of a white woman. And if you’re a white woman in America, your chance of dying during childbirth is already significantly more than it is in most other parts of the world, our maternal mortality rates are absolutely atrocious. And so that’s something that, you know, we we’ve got investments in in companies that are helping to advance that through culturally competent care through better access to care through asynchronous care Mavin clinic, of course, being one of the of the of the predominant exam, you know, some are health on the pediatric side being being another. So that piece of health equity is really important. And then the other piece of it is the fact that for a very long time, it was not mandated or even even considered to include a diverse patient base in your study population. So clinical trials would proceed, and it would be a predominantly white male, patient base. And what we realized at the end of the day, this was actually deleterious to outcomes. You know, there was a famous example of zolpidem, you know, brand name Ambien, where their women were underrepresented in the clinical trials and the dosing requirements, the dosing recommendations that came out, were far too strong for a typical woman. And therefore, they would be in situations kind of after they’ve woken up and taking the medication and getting car accidents and still be under the influence, and so on. So that’s one of the more classic examples. But another example that’s more recent that, you know, a lot of people were talking about, were actually around the COVID vaccines were, although there was much more of a focus on having people of color and women in clinical trials, we didn’t account for a very basic, you know, factor, which is almost a vital sign among among women, which is your menstrual cycle. And that wasn’t something that was tracked. And then it was only after the fact that there was a lot of controversy around what impact it may or may not have had on menstrual cycles and fertility and a bunch of misinformation spun out around that, and so on, which I think was really problematic. So clearly still a very long way to go, and quite bullish on our investment in trial library, led by Dr. hellebore. Now, who’s who’s advancing the future of clinical trials?
23:20
Are there any reasonable explanations as to why, you know, a common procedure like birth, the mortality rates have gone up and and in, you know, the incidences of adverse consequences have gone up? So significantly over time? It just, you know, it almost defies reason?
23:39
Yeah, I mean, there’s a whole body of literature on this, and many studies done by people far more equipped than I am. But you know, from what I understand, and what I’ve read, it’s a combination of factors. A big part of that, you know, when it comes to the racial aspect is sort of a systemic bias in our in our country. And certainly in our healthcare system. There are also studies that actually show that the race of the provider visa vie, the race of the patient has a significant impact on the outcome in terms of maternal mortality. So that’s a big part of it, too. I think also, it comes down to the fact that for a long time, Women’s Health was just seen as literally Nish, like would unbelievable considering it’s like half the population but also accounts for, you know, women account for anywhere from 70 to 80% of the dollars that are spent in health care. Dr. Neil Shaw from Maven calls women, the Chief Medical medical officers of the home and of the family. So there’s a really big market there, and yet it was seen as niche because the majority of I think, in large part because the majority of people who were thinking about it and writing those checks or considering those checks, were not, you know, thinking about childbirth, it would be something they wanted to ask their wives about or their or their or their, you know, mothers and so on. So that is beginning to change. And part of it also is around the transactional nature of of childbirth in this country, which is seen as episodic, and not thinking about women’s health holistically. And that’s another reason we’re excited about companies like Maven clinic, that don’t just look at women as you know, a body around reproductive organs. But as humans who, you know, whose journeys span the lifetime, you know, they just launched a menopause product. And that was actually something that came to be in large part because their customers, the employers were really demanding it as women were aging in the workforce, and we were experiencing this great resignation. So there’s still a lot of room for growth there.
25:18
So I got a couple curveballs for you. This is from a mutual friend of ours, Nate Williams, from Union labs. First question is, who are your mentors or your personal board of directors?
25:29
Great question, Nate is the best. So you know, I have I have, like, my personal one in terms of my personal life. And then of course, I have, like a set of peers that I also, you know, definitely cancer survive without and, you know, I would say, on the professional level, like, you know, quite close to our founders here at Lux, you know, and they are definitely individuals that I’ve learned a lot from consider mentors, I’m very close to my Ibrahim Kanan, who’s, you know, one of the, you know, first, if not the first kind of Arab American woman and venture and we might be among, you know, those you can count on one hand in the industry, and also a mother of two and someone that has, you know, was really early and kind of breaking the breaking into a field that is predominantly male. So she’s someone that I also look up to a lot. And then my pure set, you know, I have a group of particularly women in VC, but not just women who are also moms, I have two young children. And you know, if it wasn’t hard enough, being a woman and venture, being a mom of young kids is not easy. And so we all kind of lean on each other in every way. We feel like we have to work twice as hard. And, you know, I think it’s, it’s, it’s really special to be able to do it together.
26:31
Amazing. And then the other question for me is, what is one positive trend happening in VC that you’d like to accelerate?
26:39
Yeah, I frankly, I think the, the sort of additional scrutiny on like the health of a business is important, and perhaps a little bit of a slowdown in terms of what the process is, like, like, I personally did not like to make decisions under these compressed timelines where you’d meet someone, and they’d already have a bunch of pre emptive offers, and you couldn’t even meet them in person, that’s just not how I like to make decisions. And so, you know, there are some fields where I think that may still be happening right now. But I’m gonna, you know, give a term sheet and join someone’s board, like this is going to be a long term relationship. And I want, I want to feel good about it. I want them to feel good about it. And it’s nice that you know, when that can be done over a longer period of time,
27:15
Deena if we can feature anyone here on the show? Who do you think we should interview? And what topic would you like to hear them speak about?
27:21
Yeah, I think I mean, it would be interesting to hear the story from one of my portfolio company founders and Marissa Haley, who’s the founder of moss, a company that is building a challenger bank for students. Amira is one of the forces behind the Tunisian revolution. She’s a lifelong human rights activist and an absolutely breathtaking leader and individuals. So it’d be interesting to hear a bit about what she’s building and how she got there, and how she’s navigating it in this world.
27:47
Perfect. Any online resources or books that you have found really value valuable, and would recommend the listeners?
27:54
Well, I read a lot of books. So that would be a long list. And I’m constantly reading, you know, I think podcasts like this one hearing stories is so much of what we do as investors and so I think it’s really powerful to get a window into how decisions are made. And you know, to ask those tough questions. So I do love those types of podcasts, in terms of other other resources, honestly, you know, Twitter is still really a really good place to kind of get to know, folks and what’s on their mind. You know, although a lot of people think venture is a black box, like you’ll, it’s rare to find an industry where the individuals are putting so much out there into this world. And so it’s a pretty good window into into understanding how people are thinking about things.
28:31
True, what, what was the best? Or what was the last book that you read that that you really liked?
28:36
Well, I just finished reading, I just finished reading atomic habits, which I really liked by James Cleary, and that one was actually, you know, a great book, not only for, you know, like life and your own self, but also thinking about, you know, leadership and board responsibilities, and also thinking about parenting, like, there were so many aspects that could apply to both, or to all three of those worlds. Good one, do you know, do you have any habits, tactics or techniques that are a secret weapon? I mean, I have to say it, and I’ve written about this. So it’s not quite a secret anymore. But I really think that being a mom sort of, like elevated my level of productivity and insight in a way that I never thought was possible. Like many prospective parents, I was kind of scared shitless around what what how I could possibly do everything I do and be a mom, but it really forces you to be relentless about your prioritization. You learn things, you know, as your children grow in terms of negotiations, and how to co parent is like dealing with a coach. You know, there’s just so many aspects of it that are actually incredibly valuable to business. Quite a few of my, I think almost half of my portfolio founders are also moms, some of them, you know, with three or more kids, and it’s part of my thesis, I think they make incredible leaders. Amazing. Any final words of advice for the founders or the investors out there? I think there’s been a lot of advice in here. So, um, you know, keep it up and stay in touch and you know, you can find me on Twitter. Perfect. Dina, thank you so much for the time. This is such a pleasure. I’m glad we had a chance to connect and learn a bit more about Lux and healthcare. Yeah. Thank you.
30:00
Fun, perfect.
30:06
All right, that’ll wrap up today’s interview. If you enjoyed the episode or a previous one, let the guests know about it. Share your thoughts on social or shoot them an email. Let them know what particularly resonated with you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that some of the smartest folks in venture are willing to take the time and share their insights with us. If you feel the same, a compliment goes a long way. Okay, that’s a wrap for today. Until next time, remember to over prepare, choose carefully and invest competently. Thanks so much for listening
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
