S2EP2: What Would Jack Do? with Denielle Finkelstein & Thyme Sullivan

100 meetings. One summer. Not a single dollar raised.

In this episode of The Capital Flex, I sit down with Denielle Finkelstein and Thyme Sullivan — co-founders of Unicorn, the company putting period product dispensers in the bathrooms of JP Morgan Chase, American Express, PepsiCo, Toyota, Blackstone and more. They knew how to build. They knew how to sell. What they didn't know was that the rooms they were walking into were never going to fund them — not because the business was weak, but because the people across the table didn't understand the customer and didn't care to.

We talk about why staying away from venture gave them the freedom to walk away from 3,000 retail doors and pivot into a blue ocean nobody else had touched. The full capital stack beyond VC — angels, grants, revenue-based funding, SBA loans — and why most founders never look for it. And Jack Collins, a fictional CFO Thyme created to recover a debt ignored for over a year. Jack got a reply in 10 minutes. A payment plan. A handwritten thank-you note. Thyme and Denielle got silence.

That is not a one-off. That is a pattern with a name.

Key Takeaways:

• Why 100 pitch meetings with no capital raised was a signal about the room — not the business
• The full capital stack most founders don't know to look for: angels, grants, revenue-based funding and zero-interest loans
• How staying away from venture gave them the autonomy to execute a pivot that would have been impossible with outside investors
• Why leading with social impact in a pitch is how you get told to become a nonprofit — and what to lead with instead
• The Jack Collins story: what it reveals about the bias still operating inside business relationships
• Why revenue is capital — and how driving it changes the valuation conversation before you ever raise again

My Reflection & Challenge:

Denielle and Thyme did not stumble into staying away from venture. They made a deliberate choice to protect their ability to move. That kind of optionality is not luck. It is a structural decision made early that pays off when everything changes.

The Jack story is the part I keep thinking about. Every woman in this room has a version of it. Naming it out loud is where the playbook starts.

This Week's Challenge:

• Where are you still bending toward what a room wants instead of building what you know is right?
• Who in your network has ignored your follow-up? What would Jack say?

Links and Resources: https://www.everystall.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/unicorn-in-every-stall/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/thyme-sullivan/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/denielle-finkelstein-5637baa/ https://www.instagram.com/everystall/

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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_02 0:02

This is the Capital Flex. I'm Team Saini. 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. Hello and welcome to the Capital Flex. My guests today are Danielle and Time, the co-founders of Unicorn, a period products company led by a simple truth. Wherever there is toilet paper, there should be period products. For Danielle and Time, Unicorn is more than a company. It's a movement creating generational change and reshaping how the world designs spaces for women, one bathroom stall at a time. Their work has transformed period care from an overlooked perk into essential building infrastructure, improving employee experience, productivity, and dignity at scale. Danielle and Time are recognized thought leaders in workplace wellness, facilities innovation, and women's health. Their design forward stainless steel dispensers stocked with organic tampons and pads are now standard across some of the world's most influential organizations, including JPMorgan Chase, American Express, PepsiCo, Toyota, Blackstone, IBM, Mass Mutual, JLL, and more. It's brilliant. We all met just a few months ago at Women's Health Innovation Summit where we did a fantastic panel together and became fast friends in the moment. I love everything about who these women are and what they have built, and I'm thrilled to have them here today. Thank you so much for joining me. Oh my God, we are so beyond excited. I'm so excited. So if you could, for everyone listening, please introduce yourselves a little bit more and tell them just a little bit more about your company.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

So Danielle Finkelstein, and yes, I can't believe that we only met four months ago and feel like we definitely have known you for a very long time. So it's the power of women and when women get to come together and also badass women. So that's always gravitate, you gravitate to yes, you gravitate towards them. But I am co-founder, co-CEO. And the story behind us is Thyme and I are cousins. And the big story is we hadn't seen each other in 30 years. We had both spent very long, very successful um roles in corporate America. And eight years ago, I walked out at the height of my career and I reached out to Thyme.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

Yeah, Thyme Sullivan, co-founder, co-CEO. And it's really been quite an incredible journey that the stars aligned for us because I had actually been laid off from my job at Nestle and was taking some time to try to figure out what I wanted to do. It was period products. After spending 27 years in grocery stores with Coke and Pepsi and Nestle, it was the one product that seemed to have no transparency. And as mothers of daughters, I thought, why not try to make something better? And really what's evolved over this past eight years is it's not just about making better products, it's about making them accessible to everyone. And the journey that we've been on, it just really resonated when we met you because, you know, women's health at the forefront and the challenges that we felt and experienced building a business and fundraising and all the things that have happened along the way. We're really excited to share our story and to talk more about it.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Yeah, it's kind of wild that our experiences that we want to believe shouldn't be surprising and crazy are when we talk about them out loud. It kind of still blows my mind that we can stop a room in its tracks when we when we do say everything out loud. And so that was part of why this podcast for me was so essential is that these stories have to start to break through in bigger ways. And so the mission, as you know, is to is to say everything out loud and to tell all the stories and and really to leave behind the learnings and the insights so that every other founder who listens has a toolkit of sorts and a way to approach and to be prepared and to know that so many of the rooms they walk into are simply not designed for them, ready for them, wanting to accept them, right, in the way that we hope that they could. And so hopefully there's a lot to be learned from all of the conversations that that are coming on the pod. And so it's it's been a lot of fun to have really smart women come on and and just drop the mic over and over again on so much of the crazy.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

We applaud you for doing that because I think we need more of this space, more of the truth, more of the mic drops so that women can learn because you are absolutely right. The rooms are not made for us. So we're what we are now finding is that we're creating our own rooms, we're creating our own networks, we're, you know, finding the the allies and the support where we can, but letting women know that, like, here's use this story, take this advice, and how can they make the change in um in their trajectory?

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Yeah, absolutely. No, thank you. Absolutely. So to start us off, if you could gosh, characterize your fundraising experience in three words. Three words.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Actually, I have it. The summer, the summer of unlove.

SPEAKER_03 5:06

That's exactly what our first how we summarize it.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

That would be how we would summarize it in soul crushing.

SPEAKER_03 5:13

It really was the most rejection we had ever faced in our entire lives.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Yep. So as we sort of shared, like Thime and I came from major executive backgrounds. We had like, we were like the corporate, corporate, corporate executives. So we're talking Coke Pepsi Nestle, I was Ann Taylor, Coach Kate Spade, and last is chief merchant at Talbot. So we're walking in like we've got this great brand, we've got this pedigree, like we're good. And at this time, seven and a half years ago, people were raising, this was in the heyday of consumer package goods. Like, people were raising millions and millions and millions of dollars. And they were getting these enormous checks. And so we're like, okay, there's something here, like, and we know we've got something. So we set out for this summer. We're like, okay, we're gonna raise this money. Here we are, you know, set out. And we started in it was May of 2019, through the entire summer, met with in person 50 meetings.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Oh, right. Because this was pre-COVID, everything was fine pre-2021. I mean, we were everything. Everything was good. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. So total summer, like everything. We're like, okay, we spend the summer, probably a hundred meetings in total, and just we're constantly like sending emails out. We're like everything we can. Every meeting we walked into, it was like the rec, the, the needle across the record. We'd sit across one from 25-year-old, and I'm gonna use the word boys. They'd never run a business, they'd never been, you know, operators, they didn't understand the insides. They were coming from, you know, Harvard Business School, Stanford, Penn, wherever they were. And they all looked the same. Here we were, two old ladies coming in to talk about tampons and pads and talking about our daughters. And it just, it like it just, it just fell so flat. So we joke that there's here's your are the three words. There's no fun in fundraising. But we walked through that entire summer, not raising one dollar.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Oh gosh. 50 meetings later, not a single oh, a hundred meetings later, not a single dollar.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Not a single dollar. And so Thime and I sat back and definitely deflated, definitely like lost confidence, but we were like, something's not right. We've got to reflect on this. Like, what what did we not do right? What were some of the reasons? What was the feedback you were getting? Oh, there's already other period product companies out there. Oh, you know what? My my wife, she thinks you're a hot mess if like if you don't, if you don't carry, you know, there were just comments that were just it just was a like it was a very strange.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

What's your moat? What's your differentiator? There's already like it was is essentially there's there's already period products. We don't need more. We don't need more.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_03 7:43

So and we had product in market at this point. This wasn't an idea. We were watching guys come in with ideas for dog food and raise three million dollars. And I was like, we actually had oh, and there's there's a lot of dog food out there. Yet we had these, like uh, you know, this great pedigree and a lot of differentiators yet, and a product in market.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

And and this at the time you had the product in the bathroom stalls already? Was it no?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

So we started our business as a retail business. So actually to share is we started our business as a retail business. So we were direct-to-consumer Amazon and then went to retail. And so we were just at this point of like we're really exploring the retail side. And so when this started, so we made this decision, Thime and I, like in our like sad moment, what we used to call free work is we would work in in the Wegmans near near us, and we would that's where we we would go in the food court. In the food court, and we go and sit, and we're like, listen, we're gonna give ourselves, we've got this, like we're gonna give ourselves one more kick down the can, kick the kick the can down the road, and we're gonna figure this out. And two things happened. One was Thy'm amazing. She wears a tampon suit and she would wear this. We needed free PR. And so there was one one piece there. We're like, okay, let's find a race. She did a race, she ran the Reebok 10K in this tampon suit. Oh, like it is. Like this was an unbelievable moment. It was one of those moments that was like, oh yeah, like you got to do something different. And what we realized, I think what we took away from from really from, you know, before when we were sitting like sad, like, what are we gonna do? We realized a couple of things. Number one, we weren't with the right people. We were not talking to people that were gonna understand us. We were not in the right rooms, we weren't talking to the right people. And so we really had to shift our minds of who we were gonna put ourselves around. So that was a big part. And the other part was we had to think about not going VC. And we didn't know the difference. And so the big part is, and I think this was the in that heyday, it was all VC. We didn't know about angel. We didn't know the different ways to go raise money. And so this really came to us is that we had to start thinking differently about how do you actually bring capital into your business and how do you fund it? And so that was one of those moments sitting there where like, okay, Thyme's gonna dress up in her tampon suit. We're gonna do a couple things, like because we don't have much money left, but we have some runway. And so she's doing this. And on the side, we started talking with other folks that were in our circle and did more of like this friends and family and started understanding more about Angel and that. And so this was this parallel path that happened. Thime ran the race. What that got us is the Wegmans buyer saw Thyme, saw this, got picked up on the news and on the radio.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

They all earned media. I mean, that gave you a ton of just free PR.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Yeah. The Wegmans buyer called Thyme and said, I need you in the store. Yeah. I love your story, love what you ladies are doing. And so that happened on one side. And on the other side, we got a small loan from a local bank. And then we had some, at that point, we had what brought in, we got in some small angel checks, and that really was the path. We recognized that we had to come in with folks that we, you know, we connect. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

Well, and I would add on to that summer, two other things is every time we went to one of those venture meetings, we would run home and recap and try to like adjust to like meet like Ben to be what they we thought they wanted us to be. So we were like all of a sudden twisting into something we weren't even like we had this one venture, we were going really far down. They're like, well, we'll invest if you switch to incontinence. And we were like, okay. Um, and it was, but it was it was also we're like, wait a minute, like this is not what we wanted to start. It's not what we wanted to do. And it became really clear that the more we tried to bend to be what they wanted, the more we were getting away from our further and further away from what you actually, your ethos. And and even from ourselves as personality, you know, the the whole reason the tampon thing came along too is when we were like crying in our pokey bowls at Wegmans, we were like, this isn't even fun. Like, this is terrible. Like, we might as well go back to our jobs. Like, I'll go get another job. Like, look at like it, we're essentially I was in sales, like, I'll go sell something else. I don't care. But we decided that we had to bring fun back into it. And that's when we decided to buy the tampon costume, which had a lot of legs, by the way. It did end up in Time magazine.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Oh, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 12:02

Yeah, it's great. It had a lot of which it was was not pleasant to run it as a tampon to say no, but it was especially because it's probably really warm really fast, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:10

It's like the it's like the you know the like those really, really cheap blankets that you can buy and it has that like that cheap, the synthetic inside in Oh, it was so bad. Oh, it's awful. Oh, it's flammable, it's terrible. Oh god.

SPEAKER_03 12:23

That and that stirring was no joke. Um no, it was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Oh goodness.

SPEAKER_03 12:29

We'll have to put a picture of the notes so people can enjoy it.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Oh, it's it is it is incredible how much the huge lack of knowledge that exists on the other side of the table in these conversations and how they just assume there's enough tampon companies, there's enough pad companies, we don't need another one. I'll tell you one very quick story. When I was first launching my first fund, and I was at it was like Thanksgiving or something, and I was with family and they were all sitting outside eating, and uh, and I was telling the table I was with about what I was doing, and someone across the table from me leaned in and was like, Oh, yeah, uh female founders and women's health, and oh no, that's so interesting. And then leaned in a little bit more and said, Well, beyond tampons and pads, like what are we talking about?

SPEAKER_01 13:13

And you, I mean, my wonderful, my wonderful husband was sitting next to me and he just started to laugh. And he's like, I just want to see what she does right now because you have just lit a match and she's just you've unleashed.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

You've unleashed. There was an unleash, and yeah, in our first round, what the first round we ended up getting. So we did some of that angel, and then Thyme went to UMass Amherst, and so they have an impact fund. And so that was actually our largest check early on. We're sitting in the due diligence, and um there's one woman and and um and three men, and an older gentleman says to us, you know, he goes, Hey, listen, ladies, or kids, sorry, girls. Girls, as moms, do you think you can you can actually run and do this business? And I mean, Thime had to hold me back.

SPEAKER_03 13:59

I was like, I I thought she was gonna scratch his face off.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

We both ran billion-dollar businesses, like as moms, as girls, like it was yeah, it was so demeaning, and it was one of those moments that you're like, okay, we're gonna prove you wrong.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

Oh, I'm just gonna jump across the table and remind you that your entire house wouldn't run unless the girl you married did every single thing because your clothes are ironed and there's food on your table and your children have clothes. Okay, thank you. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Yes, but so that was a that was a nice fun early one.

SPEAKER_03 14:33

But I do think, you know, that leads to an interesting part is that we thought venture was the only option. And we've had so many different ways that we've able to raise capital. And if there's one thing that we could pass down, like, listen, like we didn't need to burn our hand on the stove 12 times. Like, if we can keep another founder and encourage more people to bet on themselves, you know, that was probably the biggest thing is understanding that to stay away from venture as long as we could, we actually still have stayed away from it. And with angel investors, we've got grants, we've done a revenue-based funding, we've had some loans and like zero interest loans. Like we've had some really interesting loans. There's there's stuff out there with the SBA, with Lisp, with a lot of organizations. And it's a matter of just talking to other founders. And I think, Missim, what's been great about meeting you too is because you come from the investor side, you have so much to share too, because not just the different options for raising capital, but how you see it. And I think that's a big lesson we had to learn is when you're talking to somebody, what are the questions that investors have and what do they care about, as opposed to you just pitching your product or your deck or your self or whatever?

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Right. Yeah. Well, I tell I tell founders, especially early on, that if they haven't taken venture money yet to really, really think about whether they need it and when they need it, because once you get on that train, you're not going to get off that train. And investors, we're really nice people until we aren't.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

And so you really be noted. Thank you. Thank you, Nasim. Be really thoughtful about that, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Like you just, you know, we always smile and be sweet, and and then something goes awry, and all of a sudden, like we get real pushy, and you don't, you just don't want to deal with that if you don't have to. If you can be revenue generating and keep growing and funding the business and you don't have to take outside capital, don't take it, right? It's it's perfectly fine to not be a venture-backed business if you don't have to be. So it's a big decision to jump on that train and be ready for what comes with jumping on that train, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Well, and we we look back and we actually say when we made the decision to pivot the business. So we made a decision four years ago to pivot from retail. We were in almost 3,000 retail doors. So, and everyone from the outside was like, oh, they're successful, they're product on shelf, like they're doing well, like this is this is great. And the real big, the big pivot that we made this decision to do, and there was a big reason behind it, but we know that if we had taken venture, we doubt that they would have let us do it. And it allowed us to have the flexibility and that ownership and autonomy to make some of those decisions to make, I mean, this was it was a major, major shift. We 100% pulled out of retail and went after this, this really that we call it, it's truly it's like blue ocean because nobody was else was in the physical bathroom stall providing period products. So we were moving into a space that we're like, okay, we have an opportunity and we were hearing it from our customers. We love your product. Do you have do you have a dispenser? And so it got us really thinking about how do we do this? And it was a light bulb moment for us. And when that happened, we're like, oh shit, we gotta, that's actually where we gotta go.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

It would have been extremely hard to pivot if you had venture money at the time because you had to it would have been absolutely impossible. How long did that transition take? And did you end up with the window where you didn't have revenue at all, or did it ramp down and ramp up?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

We pulled the year that we pulled out was the year we baited with with unicorn. And so, like we were still smart about how we did it. And so that actually we were able to still generate margins were lower because we were discounting down, but we were still able to generate the revenue and we started to get our first, like really the first feel of of unicorn and where that was going. And as soon as we started to see that, we're like, oh, we're going after something that this is really yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Did the fundraising conversations change when you were after the pivot?

SPEAKER_00 18:31

So we haven't raised money since we pivoted. Okay. We've done a couple of small, like some of our existing angel investors came back in with some smaller checks just to really help kind of boost this. But we've raised in total four and a half million dollars up to this point, three and almost 3.8 was all to the retail business. So it's really been small up to this point. And so that is that's something we have because again, we're yeah, we have not, we've not in this side.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

Well, and I think another thing that we have learned and why we haven't, and listen, it's not easy, but people always looked at, you know, if you raise millions of dollars, it's this big win. Like a lot of responsibility comes with money, a lot of dilution comes with money. And I think like now that we've been in this long enough, we know that revenue is capital. And the more revenue we can drive, the higher valuation we can expect. And it is in our best interests and all the people that have believed us along the way to drive as much revenue as we can until we raise again. And that was a hard lesson because we actually did think in the beginning, like, we raised a million dollars, like we just won the lottery. I'm like, no, you didn't. You took on responsibility. You like right, and you can't blow it and you've got to use it efficiently. And we've seen so many companies over the eight years raise a bunch of money and implode that it's, you know, it's it's watching the same car crash over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. Goodness. What other crazy gendered moments have you have you had?

SPEAKER_03 19:54

I'll tell you one that's, and I'm sure Danielle's got a million too, but one that came to mind immediately is Nassim. One thing that we really appreciated when we met you is not only do you remind us that we need to look at things from an investor perspective, not just from a founder perspective, but also in and knowing who you're speaking to in the room, when we started pitching, we thought for sure we'd just be selling to all women all day, all day long. I would tell you that when we started bringing on men as allies and putting it in their perspective, especially men that have daughters, you know, the the line is, and I, you know, I think Danielle's the one that said it first is like, do you ever walk around with toilet paper? And there's a big story, but you know, behind it. But when you put that perspective out there to men, they go, oh my God, that's would be ridiculous. We're like, well, that's exactly what's been happening with women all along. And it, they're like, sure, I just didn't think of it. Like, I'm not a jerk, I don't hate women. Like, I didn't think, and I I think always continuing to look at things and knowing the room you're in and who you're speaking to and their perspective. Because if you just go in and tell guys that you want to put period products in every stall, they're like, why? Like they're we already have them, like they're fine. And Danielle, maybe you can tell her, like, you're super like well, where'd that phrase originated from?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Well, where that phrase originated from, that phrase changed the trajectory of our business. So as we think about getting male allies and how important that is and really having those folks who can understand and bring it to their level, I think that's the most important thing is like, how do you, and that's and see him, you really did. You you when when we sat on that panel with you, how do you bring things to their level? And this happened four years ago. So Thyme and I got invited to a cocktail party. We banked with JP Morgan Chase. We've been banking with them since our first dollar. And the reason we got invited to this cocktail party is because our banker fell in love with our story. She was that girl who didn't, she couldn't afford her period products when she was young and always carried that shame. And then she also has another story of she had an interview, she had a white suit on, guess what happened? She got her period, she ended up never going into that interview because she was so embarrassed. So, you know, you have a sliding door moment of like, she's not, you know, she missed an opportunity. So she fell in love with our story, got us, got us invited. His cocktail party. Well, this cocktail party was uh bringing Jamie Diamond to the Boston area. So Jamie Diamond, global CEO of JP Morgan Chase, and he does his speech. All men in this room, I mean, they're really like it was maybe 15, 15 women, if that. Everyone in their suits. And Jamie's up giving his speech. And he is extremely personable and very approachable as well. And so he finished. And I was like, Thime, let's go. Like, we're in this room. We're here. Like, we gotta go, like, get a one, get a picture, but like we we gotta go and get up to him. And our banker's on one side, Thime's on the other. And Jamie, thank you so much. Like, we've been banking this is our first dollar. I said, Can I ask you a question? He's like, Absolutely. I said, Do you carry toilet paper around with you? And so it was like, yeah, I mean, the banker, our banker was literally like, I'm sure I'm surprised like the hook didn't come in. Like, but he kind of like his face was like, okay, like looking at me, like, that's a strange question. But what it did is it allowed us to open the room with the open the conversation with him. Everyone else that's talking to him, nothing's memorable. They're all saying the same things. And so what we did know is that we've got to go into this space and we've got to one, like when he as soon as you equate period products to toilet paper, especially with men, they're like, Yeah, that's you know, it changes the whole conversation. It changes everything. And so it really allowed him to, you know, okay, engage in this conversation. And it was a very quick conversation, but then he stopped me and he's like, listen, he goes, like, I get it. He was, I've got a wife, I've got daughters, and now I have granddaughters. He goes, Let's figure out how to make this happen. And it was because of finding that moment. I mean, yes, it was one of those moments that like it truly changed the everything for us and continue to thank him for it because he saw the vision, he saw what we were doing, and he saw that it actually the bigger part is how it could impact his employees. And that was a really important part was that was that was the win for him. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

It makes such a difference, right? There's two, there's two things in there. One is just taking the shot when you have the opportunity to take the shot. Like when would you MM? We got MM behind us playing all the time. One shot. Yeah, exactly. You like when will you be in a room again and have an opportunity to walk up and one, say hello, and two, just ask a question that could completely change the trajectory of your business. You may as well. If he doesn't get it, he doesn't get it, but at least you took it took a shot. And then two, it's like you you are you're able to then execute it and he gets it, and now you have someone who can help you move the business in a way that you couldn't have before. And that those moments are critical, right? And we don't and women don't do that well and often enough. And it's it's such a conditioning problem that we have to uncondition ourselves and deprogram these things out from how we think and how we move. Because we forget, we forget that actually we can we're fairly good at these things. We can do it, we just have to take the shot.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

It is, it's taking the shot and it's realizing that you know what, like you we also where we are in our careers and we stepped away from these major things, like this isn't a hobby, this isn't a nonprofit for us, like this is a mission for us. We are doing this, we've made this decision for our families. So every opportunity we have, we really do our best to step into that opportunity and make the most of what it is, because otherwise, like you're just gonna miss, you're gonna miss some of those chances. And so it's not worth it.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Yeah. And then putting it in the context of the business and the bottom line for the business always completely changes the conversation because that they don't care about the pain, they don't care about all the all the drama, it just doesn't matter. But if if it matters to the bottom line, they'll have that conversation every single time.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

Well, that was another thing. Yeah, and in the beginning, we just went out and talked about period poverty and the social impact, and people did not care. They did not care. But it's interesting. So now, fast forward, now we've been putting these in every stall and we have a lot of data and measurable impact. And, you know, it's so interesting now because investors see the recurring revenue model and zero churn, and and companies see the ROI. And we have surveyed data that women are saying that this is unbelievably uh amazing, and why didn't anybody think of it? And you know, and there's a lot of efficiencies with sustainability and waste reduction, it's a it's a win all the way around, but until we've kind of pulled all that in. And you've said that, like you said, put your numbers out, like people care about the numbers, they really like you could have all your empathy, but it's got your empathy in the appendix. In the appendix, yes, oh my god. It's actually so true. But I wish like we have learned so much. We truly came out. We were like, wait a minute, like we have to solve period poverty. And people were like, that's wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Charlie Brown's teacher. It's Charlie Brown's teacher. Like it really is one more.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And well, then you get asked the questions about well, shouldn't this be a nonprofit? Why, why is it four?

SPEAKER_03 26:50

Oh, don't even get us started. Oh, Dressy Draper, where are you? Whip investing in women is not charity.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

So on that panel we were on, you told one fantastic story that's stopped the room in their tracks. You have to share that one.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

I will. I'm happy to share this. This is listen, we have so many stories. We're here all week, but this is the one that really uh gets us, gets every time we've told us in public. And if it didn't happen to us, we wouldn't have even believed. And it all goes back to you've got to know the room that you're in and you've got to know what you're dealing with. And we knew that it was hard to fundraise as women. We anticipated that. We did not anticipate the deep underlying bias that still exists. And the story was that we had a company that owed us a significant amount of money for over a year, and this was just this past spring. And for the better part of a year, our head of sales had been reaching out to him. Danielle had been reaching out to their CFO, their CEO. I mean, absolutely emails, phone calls, everything went completely unanswered. And our CFO was like, hey, like, we're gonna have to write this off. It's almost coming up on a year. And I was like, no, I'm gonna send them to the collections just out of spite. I will do it as a nighttime hobby and weekend. Like, I do not care. This is not okay. Like, I'm not down with it. And they like, I'm gonna figure this out. And at the same time, Danielle was meeting with another founder over coffee and was like, hey, my co-founder's like going like ready to like go to collection town on this this company. Have you ever dealt with it? And she said, Yeah, weirdly enough, I dealt with the situation. And I set up a fake email from Jack at my company and sent it off after, and we got paid. And I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard. And Danielle came home and told me the story.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

It was like Thyme, we're hiring somebody.

SPEAKER_03 28:37

Yeah, and I was like, This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. But um, it sounds dumb, but easier than figuring out the collections process. So what the hell? I'll give it a shot. So at 4 30 on a Friday, I set up an email and I send it from Jack Collins, who was, I'm like reincarnating a an uncle of mine who was a lot. And I send this email out from Jack Collins. And again, this is a year with no communication whatsoever. And then within 10 minutes, I get an email back to Jack from the CEO saying, Hey, Jack, like thanks for reaching out. Let me get with my team over the weekend and uh we'll get back to you. And I immediately, so it's like 4 30, now it's like 4 45. I run downstairs. I say to my husband, I can't even believe this just happened. Like, what do I email this guy back? Like, I because of course I want to be like, thank you, have a great weekend, like thanks, like what? And and he was like, Don't you dare. He's like, Jack does not email back at five o'clock on a Friday. It is bare o'clock. He is out, he is peace out. And I was like, I was like, okay, so I had to sit on my hands. I did not email back. And of course, first thing Monday, I'm like, do I email back? And he was like, absolutely not. Jack does not chase, Jack attracts. And I was like, so I sit and I wait. I sit and I wait. And that afternoon, we get an email back from the CEO saying, hey, Jack, thank you so much. Worked out a payment plan. They paid Jack, they paid us, which, yay, they paid us. But here's where it gets even more insulting. Within a week, there was a handwritten note in my mailbox addressed to Jack Collins from the CEO, thanking him for being so understanding and like during that their difficult time. And I we keep this because we would never believe it if it didn't happen to us.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

Oh my God. So not paid for a year and won't even communicate properly. And then Jack shows up. Well, first of all, you get a response in 10 minutes, then you get a plan three days later over the weekend, then you get paid, and then you get a handwritten thank you note. Jack gets promoted. This is what Jack.

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Oh, Jack got promoted. Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 30:41

No, but here's what's so crazy is like when you really dig it, women couldn't own a company in the United States of America until 1988. There are still people in powerful positions that don't remember women being able to own run companies and own their own companies. And we knew kind of the surface bias, but this is really deep. And I would tell you, this story continues to have legs. It's probably definitely the most viral post I've ever done on LinkedIn sharing the story. Then an amount of people that reposted it, shared it, that I didn't even know. And we were just at a conference last week with the no women, and a woman came up to me and she said, I want to thank you for the jack story. I had the exact same problem, and I have a male controller, and I asked him to email the customer. He said, That's ridiculous. And he did it. She goes, and we got paid. She's like, and we got paid. I was like, This is for all you listening at home, this is a like a true, true, wild.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

And I would say I have a good handful of female fund manager friends who have a Roger at email, and that's like their legal go set email. Roger versus Jack.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Okay, like okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:47

No, there's a Roger at, and they that's where any like legal, any finance, any of the go goes to Roger because if it goes to her, it doesn't get a response or it does just doesn't get solved. You know, you know what we've heard this. We use Roger for it.

SPEAKER_03 32:02

There were so many women. We told the story at an MA conference, and it was a line of women to speak to us afterwards who said, I had this terrible thing happen, and I was so embarrassed because here I am. I'm an attorney, I'm a like huge, like whatever. They all have these big jobs, and they're like, I can't believe that this bias still exists. And I was so embarrassed, like, but now I feel like I can share my story because it happens to all of us. Everybody. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Oh my god. What would Jack do, right? That's what we want on t-shirts.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

What would Jack do? We yes, we say it like people actually said they're like, You need swag. Like we like it is a constant, we need stickers. Like, what would Jack do?

SPEAKER_03 32:37

Yep, it is no, but I've even like done that now. Like, so now like my chat knows Jack, and I'm like, write this like Jack would.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

Like Yeah, how would Jack write this sentence? Take out any fluff, any extra, no exclamation points, no, no little.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

I'm so bad with that too. Oh, I'm so much with exclamation points.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

Oh, yeah, it's just the awareness. This is not like it, like you know, getting up on a big soapbox. This is just saying, hey, like this is the reality that we're dealing with, and everybody needs to know so that you can be prepared and you can react and and hopefully, you know, our daughters won't need a jack in the future.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

But I think the big part is is that, you know what, there are gonna be moments that we've got to play the game. And so it's learning how to play the game. And I think that's really the most important thing. Like we take that away and like in the moment, we're like, how, how is this happening? And there actually have been other instances. I mean, I'm not gonna give the details, but we just had something recently that also just happened. And so you have to like there are when when you just keep saying the same flags and you're like, something's something's not right, we've got to flag it and we've got to play the game. And it really, it sometimes is like a gut punch because you're like, I don't want to believe this, but you just we're running a business and we've got to find the way through and find the path. And sometimes if that's the way we have to go.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

Yeah. Well, and the way I like to think about it also is that we are, I mean, women haven't been in venture for longer than about 10 or 15 years, right? It's it's really been a boys' room for a long, long time. And so it's it's not designed for us. It's it's actually deliberately not designed for us, right? And so we're walking in and we're pushing and we're trying to like move the the wheels so that it does work for us. And so it it's going to be hard. It is hard. Like it's it's not as if it worked for a while and now it doesn't work. We actually are making it work, and so we are literally pushing rocks uphill. We are quite literally trailblazing, and that's going to be hard. And so it's like it this is the work. And so we we have to play the game we're in, not the game we want. But once we win and we have money and can sit at the top of the hill and drink lots of whiskey, then we can talk, right? Then we can then we we will change the game and then it will be different. But we're we're changing it right now, and so that's going to feel hard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

But that's why these conversations are so important. You know, it is, it's just letting people know that, like, yeah, sometimes these things are really crazy. But but find the path, find the path and like listen to other folks. Everyone go figure out who your Jack is. If you need a jack, like create that email, like it costs you nothing. So just like what are the things that you can, you know, you can do to to be to get it to get it done.

SPEAKER_02 35:23

Yeah, get it done. Yeah, yeah. Get your done. Yeah. Any well, I have two last questions. So closing thoughts for founders that are listening, like one or two big must-nos given your experience in life and as a founder, that you want to leave with everyone listening.

SPEAKER_03 35:39

Sure. I can tell you our like our it goes back to like our original story. Like one of the reasons that we love Sarah Blakely and we live by this is that you can do serious things without taking yourself too seriously. We are still having fun and enjoying the ride and hopefully helping others along the way. But that's been a really important part for us.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

And I would say on our the other side is it's all about relationships. The world we're in, AI, everything we have, like we're still, yes, we're still behind computers, we're still doing those things, but the power that is happening still is like it is instead of going so transactional, like build those relationships, create those networks, like that is where the power still is. And like, don't let that go. Don't let that go away. We're continuing to see that just that is really what's also really helping our business to get us to the to the next level is it's relationships. We're in the business of humans, like every day that's what we're we're doing. So don't lose sight of that. And women are especially good at it.

SPEAKER_02 36:34

So they can lean into it big time. Yeah. Yep. And what can everyone do to help you, to help your business?

SPEAKER_00 36:42

What's what's the ask? Oh, the big ask. I mean, it really is if you're in a company that you don't have something, voice like send the voice up. Send the voice, ask for it, ask your facility teams, ask your HR team, send us a note. Every business, every it's not even just business. Anywhere you are away from home, period products should be. Again, think about toilet paper. Everywhere there's toilet paper, there should be period products. And we know there will be period products. But that's really we ask that we need, we need the groundswell of women behind this because who we talk to every single day is your building owners, it's your facility teams, it's your janitorial teams. But we need the women that are actually in the workforce that are out there to raise their voices and be like, why is this not? You have a golf simulator, we don't have period products, what? Like, right. Like that's really where we're at. And, you know, so you're this isn't this isn't an amenity. And I think that's we've got to remove that. This is not an amenity. This is actually part of the infrastructure. This is one of those basic needs to support our health. And that's really what we have to be thinking about. This this is the future of what work is going to be. Yeah, there is.

SPEAKER_03 37:49

And so find us on LinkedIn, we're Unicorn at Every Stall, Instagram, we're Unicorn at Every Stall. Follow us on LinkedIn. We're also those founders that like, well, like if we can help, we will help in any way and connect. We do answer our messages and we were there. And our website is everystall.com.

SPEAKER_02 38:04

Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me. This has been so fun and so many insights and so many learnings. And I just know everyone's gonna just eat it up and learn so much from both of you. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

So happy to know you.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

Oh, it goes both ways, 100%. 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.