S2EP1: We Need to Build Our Own Infrastructure with Cindy Gallop

The venture capital system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed. And that is precisely the problem.

In this episode of The Capital Flex, I sit down with Cindy Gallop — founder of Make Love Not Porn, builder of the world's first sex tech fund, and one of the most consequential thinkers in any room she walks into. 

Cindy has been building for nearly 17 years in a sector VC refuses to fund and one which the financial system actively blocks. But this conversation is not about her fundraising experience. It is about what it would take to tear down the existing venture ecosystem and rebuild it through a female lens.

We talk about what core financial architectures would look like, including the supporting systems and vehicles; how fund timelines and fund constructions would change to deliver on opportunities beyond the profiles and systems we have today; and what new thesis statements would activate women to invest across private markets. Especially when the math would say there’s potentially $5B already in the room.

This is where the new system starts. 

Key Takeaways:

• What a female-designed venture system actually looks like at the structural level: timelines, incentives, and a completely different definition of aspiration
• How emotional levers can move capital that rational arguments never will
• The two groups sitting on significant capital, yet who have never been given a real reason to deploy it towards women
• Why community is the mechanism to move money faster than any fund pitch
• The $5 billion already in the room and the math that makes it real
• Why the stories we don't tell shrink what founders believe is possible

My Reflection & Challenge:

What struck me most was the specificity underneath the vision. Cindy does not just say women should build a new system, she names who has the capital, what would move them, and why the current approach isn't working. That level of clarity is rare and it made this feel less like a conversation about what could exist and more like the first meeting for something that should. 

This Week's Challenge:

• Who in your network is sitting on capital they have never been asked to deploy toward women? What is the one thing they have lived through that would move them?
• What room could you create, a dinner, a salon, a conversation, where the right women in the same space starts to move capital because of what they have in common?

Links and Resources:

https://makelovenotporn.tv/

https://www.makelovenotporn.academy/

https://www.instagram.com/cindygallop

https://www.instagram.com/makelovenotporn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindygallop/

This episode is brought to you by Phoenix Fund Services
Learn more about Phoenix Fund Services aby visiting: https://www.phx-fs.com/ and https://www.linkedin.com/company/phoenix-fund-services/

If you enjoyed this conversation, follow The Capital Flex, leave a rating and share this episode with a founder who needs it.

And if you’re looking for a more candid space to talk fundraising, power and building inside systems not designed for you, stay close. The conversation continues.

Production and Administration work completed by Smart Podcast Solutions and Elevate Virtual Business Solutions. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

This is the Capital Foot. I'm the same Sayani. This show codifies the Capital Playbook because no founder should have to learn the hard way. We talk about what really happens behind closed doors, the bias, the breakthroughs, and the things no one says out loud. If you've ever walked into a room and felt the system wasn't built for you, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Capital Flex. My guest today is none other than the formidable Cindy Gallup. I have been a fan for ages. We've very recently become the dearest of friends, which I'm so excited about. And she's joined me here to talk about all things adventure and fundraising and all the things that we all love and hate and are going to fix in short order, hopefully. So a bit of an introduction on my good friend. Cindy Gallup is a graduate of Somerville College in Oxford and has over 30 years of experience in brand building, marketing, and advertising. Everyone knows you well, but I'd like to go through the accolades because it's important. She started up the U.S. office of ad agency Bartle, Bogle, and Haggerty in New York in 1988 and was named Advertising Woman of the Year in 2003. She is also the founder of Make Love Not Porn, a social sex tech platform designed to promote good sexual behavior and good sexual values. The core value proposition is pro-sex, pro-porn, pro-knowing the difference. As a result of the fundraising challenges she has encountered, she is raising the world's first and only sex tech fund, all the sky holdings. She acts as a board advisor to a number of tech ventures and works as a personal brand life executive coach and consultant on brand and business innovation for companies around the world, describing her consulting approach as I like to blow shit up. I'm the Michael Bay of business, which I love. So, Cindy, thank you so much for being here today. It is such an honor to have you on the Capital Flex. Oh, thank you, Nassio. I'm thrilled to be here. If you will, for everyone listening, everyone knows you, of course, but if you wanted to add a little bit more to your intro, to your background, anything else you want to share, please feel free to.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Sure. I mean, I think what I would say is, you know, make love not porn continues to be my primary focus. But I will make our listeners aware that because of the specific challenge, like challenges I face building a sex tech platform, that has really defined my product roadmap. And so I have a number of infrastructure products in play, but I'm sure we'll have the chance to come on and talk about those in in more detail during our conversation. So I'll just flag that up at the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Okay, perfect. Well, the, and you know, the mission of this podcast is to get into the fundraising stories of female founders. And we all know these, hear these, share these in rooms and over text pretty constantly. We'll spend a little bit of time there and our conversation, as we talked about, we're gonna future cast VC and just envision what it might look like once we fix it. But before we go there, I would love to ask you one question that I do ask everybody. If you had to describe your fundraising experience in three words, what three words will you use? What comes to mind? Absolutely fucking awful. I I had a feeling, I had a feeling that's what you might say. Say a little bit more. Give us give us a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Sure. So I represent the triple whammy of unfundability. I'm female, I'm older, and I have a sex tech venture. I actually represent the quadruple whammy of unfundability because I am, in fact, a woman of color. I'm half Chinese, my mother was Malaysian Chinese, but I'm white passing, so I don't include that in the barriers of ISP simply face. But I have to tell you that sex is literally the final investment frontier. And so anybody operating in my sector just faces challenges that are even greater than female face generally.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah, because it it is wrapped in stigma still, and we don't talk about it. And it's it's it's shrouded in so much misinformation, and and it also it's such a male-led conversation that when women talk about sex, it ends up being something that people get nervous and uncomfortable, and they they don't want to talk about it because somehow it feels shameful.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Well, I'll I'll tell you what's interesting, Nassim, is the extraordinary hypocrisy that exists in the investor VC world around this. Because, you know, I mean you mentioned earlier that my background is advertising and I have a sex tech venture. The two things that uh every tech that play defaults to when the time comes to, oh my god, gotta produce revenue are advertising and sex. And so the latest example of that is A, Sam Altman announcing in the past few weeks that he is going to allow Chat GPT to sext, which by the way is a really bad idea.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Really bad idea. It's terrible.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Yeah, and um and B making a number of noises, and you know, we've seen a number of developments that indicate that, you know, he is leaning on advertising as the way for Chat GPT and OpenAI to generate revenue in a situation where they are absolutely not delivering against the billions that are being poured into their investments. And and so this infuriates me because, you know, the the VCs funding OpenAI are absolutely fine with this, but they will not fund what I do. And, you know, I've I've been saying for years that sex tech is the next trillion dollar category in tech. And it absolutely is when founders like me get the same level of funding, support, championing, and door opening that other founders do in mortgage sectors.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Right, right, right. And that even so deeply problematic because we also were watching, and you you must know Deedra over at Hertility and all of the controversy and the problems with the censorship around just even marketing a women's health company. Like we can't say words like public floor, and you can't say menstruation, and you can't talk about pads and tampons because it gets pulled down as controversial. And yet he is over here saying Sam Altman can say that open AI or that ChatGPT can sexed. You know, these two things can't sit next to each other because we're not letting it coexist. And I don't understand why that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

I mean admit no, exactly, Nelsima. And so this is why, you know, I'm just gonna expand on what I alluded to earlier, because my fundraising challenges have led me to take a different path that I never originally intended to take. So, just for the benefit of our listeners, I and my tiny team fight a battle every single day, not even to grow Make Love Not Born, just to keep it alive. Basically, because every piece of business infrastructure other tech startups take for granted, we can't, the small print always says no adult content. And that is all pervasive across every single area of the business. I can't get funded, I can't get banked. Earlier this year, Make Love Not Porn was debanked three times in two months into 825. Every tech service I need to use to operate a video platform, hosting, encoding, encrypting, the terms of service always say no adult content. My two biggest business growth inhibitors are number one, payments. So PayPal won't work with adult, strite won't, mainstream fintech won't. I have to work with the murky subculture of adult-friendly payments, who, because anybody adult doesn't know where else to go charge extortionate fees. I pay out 12% of my revenue every month in payment processing fees alone when mainstream is through CLS. And my other business growth inhibitor is what you alluded to, which is that we are banned from advertising and promoting make love not porn anywhere. We cannot advertise on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Google, Reddit.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Look at what's on Reddit. Reddit has insane stuff and you can't advertise there.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

So I'm a great believer that when you have a truly world-changing startup, you have to change the world to fit it, not the other way around. If the ecosystem that is meant to enable you to scale and thrive shuts you out, build your own ecosystem. So I have a product roadmap, make love not porn, that is focused on infrastructure. So at the heart of it is Make Love Not Porn itself, sex tech platform, very hard to raise funding for. Around it, I have an ed tech product, a fintech product, an ad tech product, and an AI product. And by the way, Nassim, I did not intend to be an ed tech founder, a fintech founder, an ad tech founder, an AI founder, but I am all at the same time, right? Because it's easy to do. Right. So the ed tech product is and the point about these infrastructure products is I believe in building solutions to my own problems that everybody else facing the same problems can use, which in turn make me a shit ton of money, which provides the funding I need to build my core business. So, and the ed tech product is in direct response to the fact that parents and teachers have begged me for years to build the zero to 18 and beyond sex education expansion of what we do. And so I had the idea for makelovnot porn.academy 10 years ago. That's how long investors refused to fund it. But we raised a small amount of equity crowdfunding last year, and we which enabled us to design and build it. And, you know, listeners' special sneak preview. If you go to makelovemotporn.academy, we have just taken a very bare bones MVP, um, very early stage beta live under the radar to real world test. And what this is, is it is a global aggregator hub for the best of the world sex education content that is already out there, but is being blocked, censored, and de-platformed everywhere. So our mission with Make Love Not Born Academy is to organize the world's information, sex education information, to make it universally accessible and useful. That's a deliberate paraphrase of Google's original mission statement: organize the world's information, because today in this area, Google is not doing that. The algorithm itself is censored. Parents and teachers tell me they search resources they need, they can't find them. So we're building the Google of sex ed. And by the way, Lassim, with a very straightforward goal in mind, at MakeLove. We operate a 100% human curated model, humanize, vet every educator, every piece of content, make sure it's educational, fact-based, non-judgmental. And the game plan is when I prove I can operate a dedicated sex education platform safely and securely, giant ed tech company buys it from me for a shit ton of money. Okay, that's that game plan. At the same time, as we've just released the Academy, and by the way, we're real world testing, we will officially launch it early next year when we have a critical mass of educators and content. Listeners, when you go to governmentportn.academy, be forgiving. We're still loading on the educators.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

In beta, right? They can test it out.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Yeah, yeah. But but at the same time, I I am also in the process of realizing my second product, which is a fintech product. And this is a fintech product because I'd said for years publicly, I want to build the stripe of sex tech. Because the first payments that welcomes legal, ethical, transparent ventures like mine cleans up. There is a huge market opportunity in so-called restricted business. Because it's not a sex tech and adult like mine, it's cannabis, it's psychedelic, it's crypto itself, and it's also businesses you you would not think would be restricted. So in the past couple of months, I came across on LinkedIn two separate posts from female founders, each one of whom is building a crowdfunding platform. Stripe has just decided that crowdfunding is restricted business. They'd integrate Stripe at cost to themselves. And Stripe had told them we won't work with you. So so I am working on, um, I've found a partner. We are integrating them into Make Love Not Porn for payments in and also payouts, because paying our creators on Make Love and Pawn stars is equally, you know, difficult. And the game plan is we're gonna proof test this solution on our own platform, make sure it works for us the way we need it to, then we're gonna turn it into a standalone app that everyone else can use. Now I'm calling it block free. We have a holding page at blockfree.us. I like the Rag and Crypto block free us because I want to free us all the blocks of fintech and justice, but also because we're building this on the blockchain. And again, it's 100% human curated, humanized debt to every applicant, make sure they're ethical, you know, transparent, legal. And again, the path to exit is very clear. When I prove it is possible to take restricted business payments safely and securely, giant fintech buys me for a shit ton of money, and that funds the whole business.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Right, right. And now you've built the scaffolding that other companies can use that they don't have right now, and not everybody has to build their own small versions of something with a bunch of money.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Exactly. And also now seeing this is this is designed to unlock funding for everybody else. Because I have to tell you, so I'm one of a whole cohort of wonderful female femtech, sex tech founders, and each one of us has struggled to raise funding. But you know, in drips and drabs, we have all found investors. Here's the problem sex tech investors only invest once. And and the reason for that is is um demonstrated by I had a conversation many years ago when I was looking for seed funding for make love not porn. I spoke to an angel investor, a man, who had invested in Jimmy Jane, which is one of the first vibrator companies to design really cool vibrators, you know, sell them online. And and and this investor had absolutely seen the potential in sex tech. And so he'd invested in Jimmy Jane, and he had then discovered all of the barriers I referenced to promotion, to distribution, to sales, and and he said to me, he said, I'm never investing in this sector ever again. And that's the issue. You know, sex tech investors invest once, then their eyes are open to all the barriers. You know, there are no big exits in our sectors yet because it's so incredibly difficult to get to the point where you are a desirable acquisition. And so if I can build the infrastructure that unlocks revenue flow and therefore funding for all of us, then I can hopefully make this sector explode and absolutely be the next trillion-part patriot.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

100%. Then it makes the scale so much easier for everybody else. You could take all the barriers out. 100%. Oh, I love that. That's fantastic. And so, in the in the same way, how how we think about what venture looks like in the future, because they've there's so many things that we can that we have to, that we have to fix, that have to change. And and part of what I keep thinking about is there's there's you know, the fund structures are a certain way. It's you know, it's a 10-year life and it's two and 20, and there's certain some sectors don't line up to typical fund structures in easy, like biotech in particular. You can't fund early stage biotech because it doesn't commercialize in 10 years. It takes 14 or 15 years. We need a different way to fund early stage biotech. We also have so much embedded, I'm still gonna call it pattern recognition, even though folks don't seem to like that word anymore, but it's just embedded in the system on how people, where signals for success come from, and how do we adjust what that looks like. There's also the profile of the investor and how we, given the$83 trillion that's headed towards women in the next 10 years, how we get more women primed to actually know what to do with that capital. And so I'm trying to spend a lot, I'm trying to brainstorm on how to move the needle on those things in significant ways so that when we look around in three, five, eight years, we can actually see the whole system working better. And part of I'm doing my my parts of it are I'm bringing a lot of insight and resources to female founders in whatever way that I can, hosting sessions, doing education, bringing speakers. And then one thing I've done in a few rooms, and just to get some of our brainstorming going, is in rooms where I'm talking about wealth and women, and it's always half the room is like, oh yeah, absolutely. And then half the room is like blank faces because no one's ever asked them to invest before. And everyone thinks that it's big money. They go, I don't have$250,000, or I don't even know where to start. And what I've said a few times, it's gotten the room to kind of sit back and go, oh shit, that's we could do that, is if we wanted to, we as women, we could put five billion dollars into the system right now. Because there in 2024, there were 11 million women in the United States who were older than 35 years old. This is the math problem I take people through. And if even 1% of those women are accredited, that's about 100,000 women. If 100,000 women put 50k into venture today, that's$5 billion. Now, 100,000 might sound like a lot of people, but Rose Bowl Stadium here in LA, which is where I live, holds 90,000 people. Can we fill the Rose Bowl with 90,000 women who could put 50K into venture today? Goodness, I feel like we could. Right? And it starts to become this number that suddenly is achievable. And you go, okay, let's do the Rose Bowl, let's do other stadiums around the country and let's fill the stadium with women who are putting 50K into venture. Because actually the 50K is not all due today. It's spread out over four years. So, how how do we get money to move by way of those kinds of stories? Because if we start there, everything else can move with it. Because now the capital is not beholden by a bunch of dudes. We can actually just decide where it goes ourselves, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:30

So, what I really want to see happen this scene is I want to see women blow up the current venture capital system and completely reinvent it. You know, I've been saying for years to women, I want every one of us to unashamedly and unembarrassedly set out to make an absolute god-un fucking shit ton of money. I deliberately articulate like that because that is how much money I want us all to make. And I explain that I want us to make that kind of money, not just to benefit ourselves, but because when we make that kind of money, we can then use it to fund other women, support other women, help other women, donate to other women. We need to build our own financial ecosystem because the white male one is winning for us. So I I would like to see women create their own venture capital system that owes absolutely nothing to the existing one. And I'm gonna give you a different example of what I mean, because this thought was sparked by a conversation I was having with a female friend last week about this precise issue. And we were talking about you know, what what is what is currency for women? Because currency and wealth means different things to us than it does to men. My thought off the back of this discussion was so if we were to design our own system of a currency, what would that be? In other words, you know, by the way, we do not know that Sata Satoshi Nakamoto was not a woman. We don't know that, right? I've had that conversation a few times. We don't know. But what would the female version of Bitcoin be? What would the female version of crypto be? Because it would not be what is out there right now. Imagine completely reinventing currency through the female lens in a way that creates an ecosystem that is ours, that that values what we value, and that generates what we need to generate, and that makes what we need to happen happen. And by the way, that's as far as my friend and I got in our discussion. She she is really interested. She said she wants us to take some time to kind of read up and think about all of this. But that is literally how we need to reinvent how the system works. Because when we reinvent how the system works through our lens, it becomes a lot easier to invite women into it because they get it.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Because it'll work. This episode is brought to you by Phoenix Fund Services, a fund administration firm built for fund managers who want more than a back office provider. Founded by experienced fund professionals, Phoenix combines institutional grade technology with senior hands-on service, giving fund managers the infrastructure, responsiveness, and operational support they need to grow with confidence. Working with Phoenix means you are not just getting a fund administrator, you are getting a partner that understands what matters to you. Timely reporting, a smooth investor experience, responsive communications, and confidence that the operational infrastructure supporting your fund is built and managed properly. That means less time managing the back office and more time where you create the most value, raising capital, supporting investors, and building the fund's portfolio. Visit Phoenix at phx fs.com to learn more.

SPEAKER_00 21:59

Right. Now, um, another dimension of this is also something I've been thinking about for years. And because unfortunately, until I raise the funding I need, I cannot I cannot, I'm not freed up to actually pursue things. But my friend Jana Histova, I don't know if you know her, she has a one of a podcast called The Purse. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

I'll have to listen to it. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

And she's all about women and wealth and getting women funded. And I've been on a podcast a couple of times, and this idea came out of Jana and I having exactly this conversation after one of those interviews. And what we were talking about was something a bit different to what you've identified with women, which is actually there are a lot of women out there with a huge amount of money who have no idea they could be using it to fund other women.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Because they're putting it into philanthropy in spades.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Well, not even that, actually, because and actually out of this conversation, Jana and I have decided we actually registered a company in the UK called Ultimate Asset Class, because that that's what we are. And and the goal of this company, which would be a for-profit business, would be to persuade women, certain groups of women, I'll come on to that in detail, to actually fund other women by tapping emotional levers, not rationalized. I'll give an example of a a Target room. You know, this is the woman who married young, stayed home, raised the children, you know, supported a husband as he built a billion-dollar company. You know, the kids leave home, the husband has a mistress, dumps the one, she takes into court and she gets half of everything. Um, think by the way, the UK version of this is Russian oligarch's wife. Okay, yeah. She is now sitting on billions of dollars, and she is buying 15 MA Birkin bags and matching outfits, and you know, because that's all she knows to spend the money on. And emotional lever for her is he kicked you to the curb. Want revenge, fund these women, build a billion-dollar empire way bigger than his ever. And so that that's a very specific emotional lever that that would absolutely trigger, you know, a woman who's penetrated in the world. She would redirect her funding. Yeah, exactly. Then there's another group of women. Okay, so so these are the women who you know joined at the bottom completely male-dominated industries, worked their way up through the ranks. These are the women who are tough enough to make it to the top through the sexism, the misogyny, the sexual management, made partner, you know, at the war firm, at the finance firm, they have now retired. They are sitting on billions, okay. But because it took everything they had to make their way up through the ranks to make partner to get to that position they they retired from, they've retired and they don't know what to do with their money. And and and the idea of funding female funds has never crossed their minds. And so the emotional leverage for that group of women is, you know, all of that shit that you went through, you know, climbing the ladder in your industry, you can fund female founders who are completely reinventing your industry to change it for the better and yank it out from under the complacent, mediocre white boys who we had to deal with every fucking minute, every fucking day. You know, and obviously we're talking law. And and and by the way, the opportunity to reinvent law as an industry is colossal. And so, again, again for these women, we're talking about an emotional lever that gives them a reason why they should consider deploying their funds in this way.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

It's an emotional lever, and it can also connect because the other thing that I also think a lot about is community as a superpower for women, because it it you put women in a room and create a safe space and give them room to talk and share and really connect the dots on their lived experience, and you put a lot of those women that became partners at different law firms in a room to talk about that, and they will all move their money together because they all want to get after those incompetent white men together, right? And so we can do that in multiple instances by combining the emotional lever with that community superpower and actually make design that whole system differently.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yep, yep, um, yep, and and that's because we have all been there. Okay. We've been, you know, um, I mean, broadly speaking, you know, absolutely had the husband leave for the mistress, you know, absolutely had to suffer those mediocre white men every day of our working lives. That is that is a completely different, to your point, communal commonality of understanding that can absolutely be leveraged to build a new financial, a female financial system.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Yeah, yeah. And we can do that in so many different ways and have those conversations. And I've seen it work in small instances where we have done women in wealth salons in in someone's home, in their living room, wine and charcuterie, and you just start to talk and you start to hear these stories and the and the emotional experiences of their relationship with their job or their career or their or with money, and you start to see these alliances form. And they none of them knew each other when they walked in the room, but they leave the room having made a new best friend as a grown woman, which is so hard to do. And all of a sudden now we're having different conversations when we leave. And the more and more we can do that, designing a new ecosystem or a new venture structure could absolutely be possible because we also have different financial tools we could be using. We could be using our retirement assets differently. We could also change what those look like. We could use DAFs differently because women have those things, but they're not activating them.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

And also to your point earlier, Nassim, you know, design a financial ecosystem on a completely different timeline. We, boy oh boy, as women, do we ever know patience because we have to operate so much of it. Okay. You know, we are not, you know, the gender that gets instant gratification because nobody wants to give us instant gratification. And also we are the gender that uh, you know, plots things out along longer timelines. You know, when you've had children, you are projecting out through the course of their lives, you know. And and I bring that up because, you know, a venture capital system completely redesigned through the female lens, designed for women, it is absolutely about the time it takes to get the best possible returns.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

Yeah, gosh. Designing venture capital through a female lens would be like that's a whiteboarding exercise we have to do. And sit in a room with a whole room of whiteboards and figure out what that would look like would be tremendous. What else do we put in that room to figure that out? Like we need it's the financial structures, it's how we design, how we design the funds would be different, who the investor is is different. How we bring, how we bring the money out from people is different. These emotional levers become really important. How we connect with founders is different. Like there's there's a probably a whole conversation to be had about how we make sure founders benefit from this structure as well, not just by way of the money we give them, but potentially by also having a stake in the fund itself, because that the communal nature of being part of the fund that also invented invested in you and the collaboration that that would drive within the fund and the portfolio companies could be really interesting and reinforces that community superpower as well.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

The opportunity to do something that I've been talking a lot about for many years, which is the opportunity to reinvent aspirational culture around venture capital and funding. Now, I I've I've talked about this for years, especially to my own industry advertising, because my industry advertising invented aspiration. We made people want things, but we made you want material things. You know, in the madmen days, we made you want the right watch, the right house, the right car. Today, you know, I say to my industry, we have a huge opportunity to reinvent aspiration around things that will actually vastly improve people's lives, where the brands that actually do that reinventing then build strong emotional relationships with consumers because of them. And and I talk about that across a whole lot of different areas. But in this particular case, we have the opportunity to, in reinventing venture around through the female lens, to reinvent what is considered aspirational about founders and funding. So at the moment, in the white male-dominated, you know, VC ecosystem, obviously what is considered aspirational is working 24-7, sleeping under your desk, you know, sacrificing everything, you know, all of that absolute bollocks. And we have the opportunity to reinvent aspiration around what it looks like when you have supportive investors, long timelines, phenomenal work-life balance. Imagine a public face of venture investing that shows that everybody involved is having a very good time. Imagine that.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Gosh. Well, but things like founder care sitting at the front rather than left behind, where we're thinking about mental health and we're building in executive coaching into term sheets, and we're building in child care into term sheets, and we're building in things that make sure that that founder's personal stability and their sustainability as a human is something we're prioritizing because it because there's all there's studies that support all of this. And if that founder stays well and isn't sleeping, you know, underneath their couch or something and not eating well, if they are well, their company is well and revenues deliver on the other side. And we can build that into how we structure term sheets. It just can be part of how we think.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

And so what becomes aspirational is a completely different type of founder mode.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Yeah, 100%. Because we I've got I've been on panels just recently where it was me and there was a a male BC, and he said out loud that once I write you a check, I expect you to be working all the time. It would be very weird to me if I heard that you were taking weekends off. And I, oh my god, oh my god, I looked at him and yes, it was insane. I looked at him and then I looked at the crowd and I was like, I need you to sleep. Like, I really do need you to sleep because I need to sleep. So I get it, but my my founder relationship and what I need you to be is completely different. And you know, we just have different ways of writing checks. And I couldn't believe he said it out loud. I was like, You you cannot tell a room of founder something like that. I cannot believe it.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

God, it was awful.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

Awful. Yeah, I love it. Founder sustainability, I think, is has to be front and center. And they're already starting to do it. Uh, so many of us are already paying a lot of attention to that. That and that would have to be part of the ingredients that went into it. Absolutely. And then how we think about, you know, the this thing about how the the returns, once there's a return event or a you know, because what gets showcased right now is the IPOs. It's the big bunch of zero IPOs or the big events, and that's what everyone has their eye on, is that it's only if I get the big IPO have I succeeded. And the the strategic MA exits, the sm quote unquote smaller exits or things like that, don't get the kind of celebrity that the big IPOs get. And we I would want to make sure that every kind of exit gets attention. Because I've had founders ask me, so but if I get acquired by another company, does that count? Or if it's not, if I don't make an you know, eight-figure paycheck out of it, does that count as an exit? And I said, every single exit counts. Oh my god, yeah, every single exit counts. It doesn't have to be you made a billion dollars, but you got acquired that counts as an exit. That's it. But we have to tell all of the stories and say them out loud. Exactly. And and that's the same.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Are you familiar with theygotacquired.com?

SPEAKER_01 34:42

No.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

I'll have to go to the show. Right. Okay, so so so for you and all our listeners, go to theygotacquired.com and sign up for their weekly newsletter. So they got acquired was started about three years ago now by a wonderful woman, Alexis Grant, who got completely fed up with seeing all those headlines of Silicon Valley billion dollar exits. She started They Got Acquired to be a media platform and a resource center to showcase, celebrate, and advise on exits on a spectrum from at the low end, a couple of hundred thousand, to at the high end 50 million. The point being, at every point along that spectrum is life-changing money for founders, which by the way can fuel your next startup, you know, going forwards. And and so I came across they got acquired and signed up right at the beginning. And I found their weekly newsletter an absolute revelation in terms of realizing that anything you start has acquisitional value for somebody. And that there are many different models of acquisition. You know, it it doesn't have to be the one people think it is, which is you've got to raise, you know, you've got to have this much revenue for this many years. You know, to, I mean, to um one of the case studies was a group of founders started something, forgotten exactly what it was, but they launched it. One week later, American Eagle acquired it. That can happen. And and also, Alexis does things like she does collections of, you know, the other, the other um a while back, she showcased 15 exits where the companies have no full-time employees. That's incredible, and you can still have a really good exit. And and and so I um I I encourage, I mean, all the um women I coach um and people generally, you know, go to thegodequire.com, check it out, sign up for the newsletter, because that just gives you a very different sense of what an exit can be. And as I say, it can be your first exit, and then you go on to build something bigger.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

Yeah. Well, and that that's great because there's so much myth busting that gets built into that because it's not one formula all the way through. And we just don't hear these stories to know enough of that. I had I had Kiki from Hey Jane on a previous, previous episode, and she, and I didn't know this until she said it, she's never had a lead investor. She has raised more than up to, I think almost$15 million now, and she's been through a series A, never had a lead investor. She's been able to raise all of her rounds without a lead. And it's because of the momentum in the brand, it's because of what's going on in the market, it's because she builds incredible relationships with the investors that write her checks. But everyone else has always assumed that there's a lead investor or that you have to have a lead investor, but you don't. You can still raise significant cash without a lead.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

No, and by the way, Nussin, it's so great to hear that because I mean, this is what I found. When I was trying to raise funding for Make Love Lockpool, which I have back burnered because it was it proved impossible, which is why I'm taking the infrastructure route. You know, what what I heard regularly was I did actually talk to interest investors. What I heard was, you know, we don't lead, so come back when you have a lead, or or who's the lead, because that will decide whether or not we come in. And, you know, I love the idea as kind of this of, yeah, I mean, you don't need a lead. If you have a really compelling proposition, uh then then people will get it and they will have, and by the way, obviously Hey Jane has a phenomenally compelling proposition. So all power to them.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Yeah, yeah. I thought it was fascinating. The other part of the infrastructure that we would need to rebuild is the funding offerings that come from the major banks that are meant to support founders in between rounds. So things like venture debt and other things. And this because there is, of course, continues to be embedded bias in these things. And and I found this out quite directly because one of the founders that I've invested called me on a Saturday morning at 7 a.m. just frustrated and blistering mad because she had been going after venture debt for the last like six months. She had just raised the Series A,$8 million. She has like$3 million in revenue already. This was probably six months ago for this year. And so it's a well set up company, revenue positive, just raised around, and kept getting denied venture debt. The reason being the credit teams don't know the investors on her cap table. Oh, for fuck's sake. Right. Right. And more than half of the investors on her cap table are diverse manager funds, women-led or diverse led. So because we don't know the investors on your cap table, we cannot approve your venture debt. And crying out loud. Right, blows your mind. And she told me, she said there, this is a system failure. There is something going on here because if they don't know, they don't care about my business metrics, they're making decisions based on my cap table. Now, if A16 is on my cap table, I'm assuming they would approve me, but because it's a bunch of, it's a handful of amazing women-led funds, they're not going to approve me. So, so I started investigating. I did a survey on LinkedIn. I got a bunch of input in from founders who told me about what their experience was. Did they get approved? What were the reasons? And this same reason came up in a lot of those. And then I talked to two friends who work at banks who do venture debt. And both of them said very clearly 100%, the credit teams make their decisions based on who's on the cap table because they're anchoring your longevity as a startup based on what they perceive to be the longevity of the funds who have invested in you. And I nearly fell out of my chair. So you have got to be kidding. So now, one, you're discounting the decision making of those funds. One, two, you're also, until those funds are on their fund three, four, and five, you will never give venture debt to the companies and founders that we are funding. And everyone we're funding is diverse as well. The entire half of the ecosystem is getting left out of these products completely. I'm flabbergasted. Jesus H. Christ. Yeah. So all of that we have to redo through a female lens as well, and say these products don't work for half of the ecosystem. Let's reimagine all of those products as well.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

Because we just can't access them. Exactly. And by the way, Lasseem, so nearly 17 years ago, when when I was starting to build Make Love Lot Porn, realizing the obstacles I was up against, somebody said to me, Sydney, to do what you want to do, you're going to have to start your own bank. And I was so frustrated that I went, right, I'm going to start my own bank. And so 17 years ago, I investigated starting a bank, which is when I discovered it was impossible. You know, legislation, regulation makes it impossible. But over the years, some people who wanted to help me find investors said to me a while back, Cindy, we bet you could raise funding to acquire a bank. And I went, I love the way of thinking. I've got to focus on, you know, my business. But but I have readily thought, you know, that that is on my wish list for the future. And if I could acquire a bank, um, my mate love and porn team knows this. I've said to them, if I ever acquire a bank, the first thing we're doing is we are opening this bank up to every single sex worker's ever been denied a bank account, and you will see how much money we can make. But secondly, I would absolutely use that bank to completely reframe how you support the founders.

SPEAKER_01 42:22

Oh, 100%. We could completely change how anyone gets funded or how that funding works, what kind of terms are against it, the interest rates, everything could change to be much more collaborative versus what's I'm creating the word, but instead of trying to take money from people, we can actually help them grow. And that would be the right way to do it. Goodness. So we are we are coming up on time, and this has been unbelievably interesting. And we we have to go do all of this.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

So we would have to figure out and by the way, Nassim, just as something that you referenced earlier, this is what Mackenzie Scott should be giving us billions to make it happen, you know. And and honestly, it's one of the tragedies that her focus is on philanthropy and what what she's doing is wonderful, but she thinks she can only change the world through nonprofits and philanthropy. And and she's surrounded obviously by advisors who are reinforcing that. And what we've just laid out, um, if anyone's listening and anyone knows, come and talk to us and finally we'll do it. Send her this episode.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Oh, 100%. I would love to get her and Melinda and the others in a room and like, let's do this. They have the money to to underwrite it, and they can help us do all of this. And it doesn't have to go only to philanthropy, which I love. And I don't want to tell someone not to do that, but there are so many things we can solve is some of that money came to initiatives like this. And we can scale the solutions. Yes. Yes, 100%. Goodness. Well, thank you. Thank you for having the conversation with me. And we're gonna figure out when we whiteboard this and get McKenzie in the room to help us get it done. I would love to do that. Is there any parting words for the listeners for the community that you want to make sure? Everyone here is today.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Well, well, I think, you know, I will say, listeners, if you like everything I've talked about, please do support my business. Yes, I was gonna ask you that too. What can we do to help you and help make love not porn? Go to make love porn.com, sign up and subscribe to support us. It starts, subscriptions start at$10 a month, eminently affordable. Please go to make love porn.academy, check it out, test it. We welcome feedback. And you know, Make Love Porn Academy is the Google of sex ed, it's free to access everyone, but we operate a membership model. It's like museums, you know, there's a patron model where you can join as a member to help us, you know, underwrite um operating the academy. So please do that. And also we have a partnership with the wonderful Inspire Access, Patrice Brickman's nonprofit, that she's set up specifically to channel philanthropic capital from DAFs, family officers, foundations, to underrepresented founders with for-profit social impact ventures who otherwise struggle for funding. So you can actually, um we and we have a non-profit vehicle for Make Laughlin Porn the Academy. You can donate to us from your DAF. You can absolutely give us a foundation grant. And if you'd like to know more about that, please hit up Cindy at makenupnotporn.com.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

Wonderful. I love all of that. Thank you again. So appreciated having you here today. And this episode is gonna take off. I'm so excited for its launch. We will teach everyone what to do, and they're gonna come help us build it. So I'm excited. Thanks for listening to the Capital Flex. If today's episode hit home, share it with the founder you love and follow me on LinkedIn for more.