Elliot Moss
Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is Andrea Berchowitz, Co-Founder of Vira Health, a digital health company focussed on improving long-term health for women. After ten years in a consultancy role focussing on the women’s health market, Andrea met her future Co-Founder, Rebecca Love, who shared her frustration at what they call the gender data gap in healthcare and how little research there is on female-focussed issues, especially menopause. Seeking to tackle this, Andrea and Rebecca set their sights on menopause treatment, knowing the huge impact it can have on women’s long-term health and on gender equity in the workplace. They launched Vira Health in 2020 with core product Stella, an app supporting menopause sufferers with bespoke, expert-led treatment plans and having raised over $15 million in fundraising since launching, they plan to expand into the US, conduct clinical trials and develop a telemedicine service providing virtual consultations and prescribe pharmaceuticals, such as hormone treatments. Hello, it’s lovely to have you here – in your own words tell me what Vira Health is, if you were pitching me and I happened to be wanting to invest another few million dollars, Andrea, because of course that’s what’s going to happen, what would you say?
Andrea Berchowitz
Well, first I’d say well done, you did an excellent intro and it’s so rare I get to talk to people who kind of already know a little bit about menopause or think it matters but if I was pitching you, I’d say you know, we have an opportunity to extend healthy life-expectancy for women, which means they can work longer if they want to, they can be more in control of what they do, how they exercise, how they vacation, how they parent, how they care for their parents, you know, how they live their lives to their fullest and the way that we can do that is actually better menopause care, which I think feels perhaps a bit at odds, menopause is something that happens kind of 45 to 55, maybe the symptoms are little bit earlier or a little bit later so like, why does it play such an outsize role in the rest of their lives? And I think there’s a couple of reasons for that. First, 45 to 55 is a very serious time, it’s probably when you have caring responsibilities up and down, kids and parents, you’re probably senior at work, probably making some of the highest salary you have made, so it really matters that you can kind of concentrate that. Also, ten years of disruptive symptoms like not sleeping very well, heart palpitations, joint pain, really crazy periods, all that kind of stuff, it’s incredibly disruptive and like long-term disruption, that’s awful, you don’t want that for anyone. And then the thing we care about the most is, this connection to later life health so, not sleeping for ten years, that has a huge implication for your risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia. Or gaining weight, which happens to a lot of women at menopause, that totally changes your risk profile for cardiovascular disease and so what we want to say is, women have this need right now, they need help to manage these symptoms, to get back into the life they want but there’s also this great knock-on effect of lifetime health, which we want to deliver.
Elliot Moss
What I find extraordinary is – and I’m 51 so, surrounded by women who are between 45 and 55, whether it’s my other half or whether it’s lots and lots of friends – what I find extraordinary is that this conversation is a new one and like so many conversations around taboos, whether it’s periods, which are now, again, big retailers are changing the name of…
Andrea Berchowitz
I love that.
Elliot Moss
Which is extraordinary, which is absolutely, again about fifty years late but let’s not go there for a moment. Why has it taken this long for this conversation, which our, you know, my mum would have gone through, her mum before her and so on and so forth, it’s everywhere, why was it such a taboo? Do you not find it extraordinary that before you and before the other people in the industry, there weren’t more voices and more action?
Andrea Berchowitz
Yes. I find it completely extraordinary. I mean, I think often times people expect that I have some like really harrowing story about menopause, you know, like my mother had this terrible menopause and therefore I know about it and that’s not the case, I think looking back on it, she probably had a tougher time than we talked about at the time but I think there are a couple of things, first I think there is some structural stuff, so women in the workplace is a relatively new… women have always worked and they’ve always worked in their fifties but kind of women in senior positions, with means, in the workplace, that is different and going through menopause and dealing with these symptoms, you know, in Mishcon de Reya office, is very different than doing it at home and so I think there are some pressures, you just need more assistance and I think that makes a difference. I think the pressures from younger people in talking about periods and then in kind of early motherhood conversations about fertility and, you know, how to come back to work after you’ve had a kid, I think that that pressure that’s come from much younger women has also just led this conversation to grow, like what else are we not talking about, whether it’s endometriosis or PCOS or kind of any other women’s health issue, I think that has made a difference. I also think there’s just been some great efforts by people particularly in the UK, you know a Chanel 4 documentary, there’s some amazing doctors that are you know on Twitter or out there kind of talking about these issues and I think that our business is coming along at a time when there is more conversation, which is great, and now it’s time to move from awareness and conversation to like what can we actually do? Like, how do we make sure that more support goes to these women? That there are better treatment options, that are more access to those treatment options, I think that’s kind of the next step of this voyage.
Elliot Moss
The turning conversations into action point, for you specifically, a McKinsey consultant, both in South Africa and then in London, someone who I read has always been interested in reproductive health and women’s health, where does that come from, apart from being a women, Andrea, which is the obvious point but why this particular topic, why do think it was of such interest to you intrinsically at a young age?
Andrea Berchowitz
That’s such a good question and one I don’t have a great answer to. It was kind of always obvious to me that women’s health was underserved, I mean, even the idea that Planned Parenthood, you know that a charity, an amazing organisation but something that felt kind of next to traditional healthcare was where you went for women’s health, you know, I grew up in a time when obviously Roe versus Wade was law and that’s changing now but I think I always had a sense that women’s health was not kind of safe and that, that it was taboo, that the conversations around sexual health, around contraception, that that wasn’t out in the open and that you had to kind of find safe places to get your questions answered and the places that were answering those questions, I was just really impressed by so, whether that was, you know, a charity or, you know, a group or anything, I just, I thought that was good work and important work and then when I started working with McKinsey, I was fortunate enough to be able to do some work with women’s health so, maternal health and then also family planning so, with pharmaceutical companies and with big philanthropic organisations about how you scale up access to family planning and I just, you know, it’s so obvious to me that women’s health issues are part and parcel of like women’s economic empowerment, that a healthy person who’s not worried about their access to health, that feels good, that knows what’s going on in their body, that person is going to be a better worker or is going to be, you know, able to pursue dreams with, you know, more gusto and so health just feels so intertwined with your ability to work and therefore your ability to kind of, you know, realise advancement and all the things that come with, you know, success at work and access to money and all those sorts of things, it’s part of the gender pay gap, it’s part of you know all these big issues and so I think that’s why women’s health has always been interesting to me. And a turning point I do often talk about is when I quit my job at McKinsey and it was the summer of 2019 and I read Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez and this book is about the data gap or the gender data gap kind of writ large and there’s this chapter, I think it’s chapter ten, called The Drugs Don’t Work and she’d systematically kind of illustrates what’s happened, you know why women haven’t participated in clinical trials or why certain drugs have been based on, you know, disproportionately male data or why drugs that are about male conditions have, you know, kind of received more marketing or whatever it is and I didn’t realise how underserved I was in the healthcare system and I found it so like angering, I was really upset by it and I thought like there is an opportunity to change this, people don’t wake up, some people wake up as misogynist but people don’t wake up in the morning and say like I hate women, I don’t want them to have healthcare, there’s just like an inertia or there’s a, there’s a system and people are moving forward and they want to do, they probably want to fix it but they don’t necessarily know how and I think that tech and kind of women’s health focussed companies that are you know working in these areas, collecting data and you know being responsible, it’s just so important in actually moving from identifying this problem, oh my goodness why isn’t women’s healthcare better, to what can we do? And that’s the role that we hope to play.
Elliot Moss
Wow, that’s a pretty decent answer to the why you moved from thinking about this to doing it? Fantastic and as you said, it’s a structural issue and structural issues are big problems and quite rightly you are addressing that and it’s absolutely the right thing to do. Stay with me for much more from my guest, Andrea Berchowitz, she’s coming back in a couple of minutes. Right now though, we’re going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation series, a new podcast which can be found on all the major podcast platforms. Natasha Knight invites business founders to share their industry insights and practical advice for those of you thinking about getting into an industry and starting your very own thing, just like Andrea. In this clip, focussing on the health and wellness industries, we hear from Ruby Raut, CEO and Co-Founder of WUKA, the UK’s first eco-friendly period underwear brand.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again if you pop Jazz Shapers into your platform of choice. But back to today’s guest, Andrea Berchowitz, Co-Founder of Vira Health, a digital health company focussing on improving long-term health for women and we heard you very articulately explaining what prompted you and it was not an overnight thing. I’ve met many people, in all different cohorts from the world of people that set up a business and one of those cohorts is from the consulting world, and McKinsey falls in there and BCG falls in there and a fair few others that you, many people listening and you will have obviously heard of. What’s it like shifting from the analysis of the problem to dealing with the problem? And I don’t mean that rudely because obviously the industry is extraordinary and indeed I encourage my children to look at the consultancy world because it just gives you such a thorough area to focus on and the importance of data and the importance of really detailed and robust research but moving into then running a business, what did you find you had in the hopper to do it and what were you lacking?
Andrea Berchowitz
That is a great question. What I often say was amazing about working at a place like McKinsey and as you said, there are many places like McKinsey, what is this piece about rigour, research and data and also just it really taught me to work, you know, like that’s something that I certainly had to learn and I see now that I hire young people, like you know, what is a day’s work? You come in, you turn on your computer and then what? And what I certainly learned at McKinsey was like and then what you figure you out what needs doing, you ask as many questions as you can, you formulate a hypothesis, you test it, if it’s wrong you find another one, if it’s right you keep trying to test if it’s right, you look for expertise wherever you can find it, whether that’s interviewing people or you know reading research papers, just that kind of keep pushing, try to figure out if what you think is wrong, like that kind of really introspective hypothesis checking, like I learned that at McKinsey and I think you learn that in, like at the risk of being crass, really expensive professional service, like client service means you are delivering something to someone, it has to have value, like you have to say, you know, I’ve done something faster or better or more something than what they could have done on their own and I think doing that from a young age, you certainly learn, as you said, a rigour and a stamina and it also just opened my eyes to people around the world, to all sorts of different business questions, moral questions, growth questions, you know really like the full gamut of what a business could be dealing with, talent questions and I’m grateful for that. However, starting a business does require different skills and so, you know, I five years ago felt very comfortable walking into, you know, a boardroom of a major, you know, Fortune 500 company and now I kind of look at my little company I think well what is similar, right? Like, you know, my board, we’re five people, we meet for 90 minutes every three months, the day-to-day of what you have to do in a startup is just, it’s so much more granular, like we have to keep the lights on, you know so, you have to be willing to do anything and everything, so like those underpinnings of drive and stamina and try and do a good job, that’s important but like, in a startup you have to do so much more tactical stuff, like if you’re going to do some digital marketing, someone has to learn in the beginning about Instagram and Facebook and ads and what you do, maybe that’s me, I don’t, I didn’t know anything about that two weeks ago but there’s no one else who can learn so I guess that’s me or you need to, you know, build a website so it’s like, okay well we can hire a designer and we should soon but maybe in the beginning, like I’ll give it a bash on, you know Wix or Squarespace and I think there’s so much that you just have to take on as an early stage founder and give it a try. I’m so grateful to have a co-founder because we get to split that. You get to say like, okay, I’m obviously going to be good at this and you’re obviously going to be good at that, now there’s this whole universe of stuff that neither of us has any experience, so we’ll just divvy that up and give it a try so, that’s a big thing. And then also, there is just a seriousness piece that is different and it’s not to say that consulting isn’t serious but when you are responsible for the pay cheques of your staff and those pay cheques are what pay school fees and healthcare costs and all of the other… food, all of that and not just the money, you are responsible for those people’s professional development, you know they could go anywhere and they have chosen to entrust you with their careers, that is incredibly serious and I’m enjoying it and that’s great but I underestimated how, just how serious that would feel.
Elliot Moss
Those people you brought in and you alluded to it, you said you know big responsibility for those individuals that have chosen to work with you. How have you found the right people and what happens when you know that that person you brought in is not the right person? Assuming that’s happened of course and I am assuming. And it’s small and that’s why I asked the question because obviously it really matters, every employee in every business matters but it really matters when it’s a small team and you are on a mission and you’ve been funded and so on and so forth.
Andrea Berchowitz
It sure does and in this distributed world where so much of our interaction is happening on Slack or Zoom or email or text but just not in person, it really matters. Culture always matters but it is, I find it harder to manage in this really distributed kind of very tech-based world. Finding people has obviously changed as we’ve grown as a business so, I remember Rebecca and I with a PowerPoint in early 2020, convincing the first people to join, it was a pitch every time, you know, this is what we’re going to do, isn’t this an important thing, come join us and I think the people that took a lark on us in the beginning, I will be forever grateful to because they saw in us something that more people have seen since then but really did take a leap of faith. As we have raised more money and our profile has increased and people are using the product and so there’s just, you know, some chat out there that this is a real thing, it has become a little bit easier to hire people. I think because we’re such a mission driven business, the people that want to work for us, they do want to do good things and there’s something lovely about that, right, and so I don’t think every, you know, engineer, every marketing professional that works for us wakes up every day and is like desperate to improve menopause care but they are looking for a role where they are doing good and they say, you know, I have my skills, I’m going to give them for 8 to 10 hours a day, I would like to give them to a company that I think is, in general, making a positive impact on the world and we are there for it, which is important because there is a talent crisis right now, it is hard to find people. We all have ups and downs, right, you know like we’re all human and so sometimes you’re happy and sometimes you’re a bit sad and it could have to do with work or it could not have to do with work and that emotional rollercoaster, made worse by a pandemic, it’s really felt within a business in that early stage when you are a few people and I think that’s something we really try to, to take care of, we hired a you know, a person to lead on people and talent really early, to make sure that our staff did have someone to talk to that wasn’t me and Rebecca, the founders of the business, their boss, it was someone additional and I think that that’s helped a lot. I think also sometimes you do just realise we’re not the place for someone anymore, like they want to do something else and we’ve tried to find those early and talk to those people and say like, if you want to do something else that’s great, how can we help you go do this other thing? But talent’s really difficult and it's critical to grow the business and I want people to have a great experience but everyone’s great experience looks different and so managing all those different things, it is a huge challenge.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for my final chat with my guest today, Andrea Berchowitz and we’ve got a great track from Jon Batiste’s multi-award winning album, We Are. That’s in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
Andrea Berchowitz is my Business Shaper just for a few more minutes. We’ve been talking about all sorts of things. Obviously, this is a values driven business but it’s not just values, Andrea, when you talk it’s clear you know your subject and you don’t just know it because you’ve learned it, you’ve, you know it because it’s been part of you for many, many, many years. What does success look like for this business, apart from obviously making money, which I am sure you will, what are the outputs going to be like because this is a very, you know, the total addressable market is women who work, that’s pretty enormous and fantastic though that that is happening but how will you be able to sleep at night, as a self-declared perfectionist? How will you be able to say you know what, I did a good job?
Andrea Berchowitz
Well, it won’t have just been me, first off.
Elliot Moss
No, of course, of course.
Andrea Berchowitz
But I think that’s almost part of it, you know when you’re building a business there’s, well there’s so many facets but two come to mind. There’s the one that is about making a wonderful product that people want to use as part of their daily life, there’s so much competition and noise out there and you know many women manage their menopause in loads of different ways but success is that the Stella app is something that delivers better menopause care to women around the world and that means that they have access to the best information, to make choices about their health, that they can you know get on top of the lifestyle and behaviour changes that are complex at menopause, that they can access the medication they need, they can access the specialist support that they need, that they can have a community of people around them, like right now on the app we have women that join group coaching sessions each week or a Q&A with an expert and the love notes that we receive after that basically say, you know, I was feeling kind of crap and then I joined a Stella session or I was dealing with a particularly rough symptom and I you know looked up some advice on the app and I feel better or I feel less alone, that is so rewarding and so you know seeing that on a large scale that women feel more supported, better and able to make decisions about their health, that’s fabulous. At a clinical level, like I want to see women manage their menopause symptoms better, I want the frequency and severity of symptoms that disrupt their lives to go down. I want to see women in work longer, if they want to. You know, there are so many things that I want to see that I believe you know where we’re starting from this small point can achieve but the other facet is the business, like it will only be a success if people, you know, continue to love coming to work every day, that people who work with us right now, go on to start other mission driven, great companies. I really care that there is an alumni network or a group of people that loved working at Vira that it taught them to work the way McKinsey taught me to work, it made them feel like what they were doing was purposeful, it rewarded them financially, like I really care that we’re building a business that delivers on those great career paths as well and that’s a lot to do, right, like building something that women love, that want to use every day in their life that improves their menopause symptoms and creating this great environment…
Elliot Moss
It’s not much, is it? Yeah, I mean…
Andrea Berchowitz
…that people like to work. It’s a lot but like…
Elliot Moss
By next Thursday?
Andrea Berchowitz
At least. But like Rebecca and are up for it and we do have great investors that are along for the ride and realise how big and how important this is and what a, you know, opportunity it is and so I do feel both overwhelmed and like really excited for how much there is to do.
Elliot Moss
Good luck with how much there is to do. I wish you all the very, very best, it’s been fabulous talking to you.
Andrea Berchowitz
Absolutely.
Elliot Moss
And I think it’s a, I started with you know, it’s how long has it taken for this to happen but I think it’s in safe hands, this is hopefully going to make it all change, eventually, it is a long haul. Just before I let you though, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Andrea Berchowitz
Oh, absolutely, so I chose Take Five by Dave Brubeck, jazz standard of sorts, I’m sure someone else has chosen it before.
Elliot Moss
Noooo. Maybe a few times.
Andrea Berchowitz
Fair enough. So, like many kids I had great parents who encouraged me to play the piano as a child and dutifully took me to lessons every week and this song was at the end of my natural ability and when I needed to start practicing and so this is probably the last song that I played on the piano because I had been quite good up until this point but it was a hard song and improvising is incredibly hard and I just watched the kids who were putting more work and more effort sail past me and I think that is a really important learning moment and I think like a lot of people in their forties, I certainly wish I would have listened to my parents more and I would have stuck with the piano but I have this nice reminder of that every time I hear this song.
Elliot Moss
That was Dave Brubeck of course, with Take Five, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Andrea Berchowitz. This thought, what else are we not talking about that kind of came across this whole conversation, is absolutely critical, we’ve got to address the big issues and menopause is a massive one. “It taught me how to work”, she talked about her previous life as a consultant and what it means, in that environment, to do a proper day’s work and to get the most out of it. She talked about the love notes, the fact that there are people who are enjoying the product of Vira and feeling so moved by it that they have to actually send love notes, which I absolutely loved. And the notion of the people that she employs are there to go on to become mission driven entrepreneurs in their own right. How generous is that? That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds of more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to Mishcon.com/JazzShapers.