 Good morning. Thank you for joining us. I imagine at least some of you were at the back-to-after party, so I am extremely impressed to see your faces. I will ask two indulgences of you guys today. One is, pardon my husky voice, I went to bed at 4 a.m. The other one is indulges a little bit. This is somehow for you and for your edification, but it's also for us. I don't know the last time any of you saw two black women on stage at a tech conference, but I haven't seen it ever, so we're also going to enjoy this a little bit. So if we code switch, if we use terminology you don't understand, if we get into our giggles, just humor us and you can ask us later anything that we need to explain. But I'm so excited for this. I am so thrilled actually that it's you featuring in this conversation. And I think in many ways you're obviously very different to your category as a founder. Not only in terms of your sex, your gender, your race, what you're building and who you're building it for, but also in how you're trying to build the company, how you're trying to change the game radically, even as you hopefully win it for yourself. And then in many other ways, you're very typical. You embody the founder traits that as investors we look for and that's what I want to focus on today. So let's start with ambition, which is sort of rather typical one that we look for. Venture is a scarcity game. You need people who will win and beat out the competition and be rare. Where is that from? Where is in you? Where is that eat the world ambition coming from? Sure, that's a very good question. So I grew up in London and I moved to London as a fetus because my parents were living in Ghana and during the military coup things got a bit shaky. So my dad was either being thrown into prison or shot at by soldiers with my pregnant mum and my two older brothers in the back of the car. So he was like, I'm cutting out. He left the car, he moved to London, my pregnant mum followed with me, not long after. And I guess being born into adversity, it kind of does something to you. You have to be quite resilient. I grew up in an area that was quite white and I was always the one who got picked on by the teachers because they knew my name. So if people were being naughty, it was Rachel and I was such a good detushes. But I got all these labels attached to me and quite early on I realised, okay, I can't just hide in the background as I want to do as an introvert. I have to really figure out how to marry up who I actually want to be with how I'm perceived. So that's been a lifelong journey. And then on a bigger scale, the Afro hair care market is a mess, right? Super fragmented. It's worth over 46 billion dollars growing fast. There's over 3 billion people with Afro and curly hair. In fact, backstage, I was talking to the makeup artist. She's a Finn. Her hair was straight, but she was very interested in what it was spraying on my hair, Afro-centric sheen, of course, because she has naturally curly hair and she straightens it because she can't find any products. So this isn't just a black woman or a black man problem. This is a global problem where we can't find safe, effective products that make our hair look professional, attractive, manageable, without risking our health. And that's just not right. So I have a strong drive to change that. Okay. So the ambition is made up of two parts. One is just the sort of stubbornness that comes from yes, being visible. If you're going to have to show up, if you've to work 10 times as hard to be taken half as seriously, then you have to commit. And on the other side, it's a problem worth solving. And that drives you. All right. You touched on resilience briefly, but I think this one comes up a lot. Somebody once described it to me as mountain goat like stubbornness. You just keep going. And I wonder if you can speak to that a little more deeply. What is that? What does resilience mean for you? What does grit mean for you? And what are some of the things that over your story have told you that you have that in spades? You have enough of that for the journey ahead? Sure. Okay. So I had a pretty rough childhood, right? So I've been in therapy for about 10 years dealing with CPTSD, so complex, post traumatic stress disorder. So I get a lot of anxiety. And then I have to do stuff like this and, you know, be on stages and constantly show up. So as the CEO, as the leader, people are looking to me. So I tried to be very honest about the fact that, you know, I have these mental health challenges that were not my fault. My childhood was pretty rough, right? But it teaches you that, okay, if I've overcome that, I can deal with a bad VC call. And I think there's also being underestimated as a founder, you have to constantly overcome people's perceptions of you, people's assumptions and people's prejudices. So I was 19 when I started Afro-Eccentric. So I was young. I don't look like Mark Zuckerberg. And I have a hidden disability. So I have dyspraxia, which is a motor coordination disorder. People don't generally understand it. It means I'm constantly bumping into things, bruising myself. I get lost all the time. I'm late all the time. When I met with Daisy yesterday, I managed to drop a chair on my foot. So there's a large bruise on my foot. And it's stuff like that all the time. It just makes navigating the world tricky. But then I'm like, I'm proud of myself. I got to the VC and eat him without getting lost. So there's nothing they can say that's going to shake me. You have to develop it over the way. That is true. I think something that probably also helps is there's like a cultural resilience that happens too, because even if you personally haven't been through something, you know someone who has. Because as a community, as black people as black women, especially, you share these stories. And they're like, well, as Nigerians would say, didn't kill her, so probably won't kill me. So I think that makes a lot of difference. I think the third thing that certainly we look for when we say that we're trying to find exceptional founders is sort of this problem seeking behavior. It's not just problem solving. It's not just that you deal with things when you when they come at you. It's this tendency almost compulsion to go looking for trouble as it were, meaning that you're more likely than not proactively find it. And you get your own little cake out of solving it. Where is where is that from? Because there are lots of people who go through things. There are lots of people who have resilience. And that just means that comes at them, they'll survive. That's not the same thing as I'm going to fix it. Me. Yeah. So what's funny is my therapist describes me as very dutiful. So I'm not someone who's actually interested in leading. I don't care. I'm not super, super impressed when someone's like, oh, I've led this, I'm probably more impressed by builders, right? And now as I've been a leader for 11 years, I'm more impressed by leaders because there's a lot of stress on our shoulders. But it wasn't something I sought out. Yeah. So Afrocentric started when my friend Joyceman and I met at university. I was studying law, she was studying sociology. I came from a place where there were no black people up in Harrow in Northwest London. She grew up in Hackney, East London, lots of black people. So we got to uni and I was like, there's so many black people, this is great. And she's like, where are all the black people? This is very white. I remember the first time I was in London, I was like, they're everywhere. Like I'm not allowed to say that, but it's so many by plantain in like the high streets. Amazing. So we came from these two different angles, but we had shared problems. We both had bold patches when we were kids, which is wild, right? Shouldn't happen. Because our mums had used relaxers to straighten our hair. For those who are into chemistry, the active ingredient in a relaxer is sodium hydroxide, caustic soda. It's incredibly alkaline. It's the same active ingredient in drain unblocker. And it gets your hair straight. And they sell it in boxes called kiddie perm for kids. You never look like the little girl in the box because her hair is not relaxed. It's just straightened. So anyway, we both had these bold patches caused by chemical alopecia, traction alopecia. And I also have very bad eczema. You can kind of see it on my hands. That's why my hands look older than my grandmother's. And she's 91. And that meant I had a lot of problems I had to solve. So it started because we were just solving our own problems. Yes. And I'm a bit of a chemistry nerd. So we went to the library, we read cosmetic science journals, we bought beakers and pipettes and petruses set up a little lab in my university halls kitchen. And we just started making stuff. And I like remember writing formulations down on graph paper. I had left over from my maths A levels, right? And I was studying law. This was I was in humanities and my head was still my heart was still in science. And in solving that problem, especially remembering that me and Joyce and came from different perspectives, we're like chalk and cheese so so different. So we realized, you know, we don't understand the black experience or the Afro and curly hair experience because we're not a monolith. As I said, over 3 billion people worldwide have Afro and curly hair. And you can't assume you know them all. So we became obsessive over data, right? We went on Mintel. Mintel, their black hair care report, which was well-bleeding, had 31 respondents. Their sample size was 31 people. And they were actually trying to say this could tell you anything. Even in Finland, you can walk around and find 31 black people on this journey. I've seen 31 today. So what we did is we went to the Afro hair and beauty show, which we couldn't afford tickets forced it outside with a clipboard. If you have a clipboard, people will answer your questions. You look serious. Have a high-vis you can get into anywhere. Literally. So had our clipboards, had our own survey with the Mintel questions and more, and we got 100 respondents in a day and we're like, yes, we beat Mintel, right? So we're feeling super psyched. And since then, actually, we've gone on to beat Mintel. So now they're a bit better. They've got about 900 respondents. Okay. My research, which is ongoing just through the website, through our quiz, we've got over 17,000 respondents so far without pushing it, no budget. So I think we're doing well. People are excited to answer these questions. Like, I had the same thing. They're like, understand me here. And solve my problems. If you want to ask me questions so you can help, I'm happy to give that information. It's not difficult. Exactly. So in terms of the on a surface level, what we do, those problems kind of came to me. I had those problems. But underneath, if you look at the base of the iceberg, problems of ethics of sustainability, of, you know, your ESG kind of narratives and approach, those problems I had to seek out. I had to think, okay, so why are there so many toxic chemicals in our products that are being dumped into our waterways, damaging aquatic life? And what can we do to make that difference? So it's a journey. But I'm quite proud of what we've done. I think it checks out. I think if you if you from an extremely young age are used to just being faced with bizarre circumstances, why does this specific teacher seem to pick on me? Why does this person talk to me like this? Why do I have to make my hair do this thing and sit for hours on a Sunday when I could just leave it run wild? I think at some point you develop a certain appetite just for the satisfaction that comes from a problem well solved. But I think it's fantastic because it means that not only can I look for like continue to enjoy healthy hair, I can continue to enjoy being like enjoy a brand that represents all of me the way I want to see the world shape. I don't have to wake up in five years and be like great hair care products terrible about the fish they murdered with chemicals. Exactly. That's a really exciting time. I think in terms of traits the other element then if we say we have ambition squared away resilience and grit and then we've also got this problem seeking behavior. The other ingredient then is, you know, a problem worth solving because that's the magic. What is the thing that so, you know, widely and deeply affects people that you can know that your effort is validated by reducing some suffering in the world? So why like you touched on it variously but why is this a problem? What's worth solving? What are some of those stories that bring it home? Why does hair matter so much as a question someone has asked me once before? I would love for you to answer that. So I don't need to explain this to my customers but I've gotten very used to explaining it to bold white men in pictures and I typically put it this way. So we're not in the beauty industry. We're seen as being in the beauty industry. I see it as we're in the health and well being industry and I've always seen it that way. So I care deeply about health and well being and when people... So when I built our first website I literally learned to code on my space in Neopets given away my age here and I built this really basic website and I just put the research I'd found out there I put the results of our research and I was getting emails on my very basic Tumblr blog from people all around the world right and this woman who worked in a mortuary in America got in touch and she said she was doing a post mortem and an African American woman should passed away I think it was heart failure quite young so in her 50s and there was scarring on her brain and this you know black kind of trainee doctor said well what's going on it was her heart that fell why does her brain look like this and the white doctor the senior doctor who was teaching her he said I was common with African American women it's all those chemicals you put on your hair can you imagine like we are putting things on our hair that are causing scarring on our skulls and brains like how disturbing is that the people are doing that yeah so the question is why are we doing that so I think the fact that people do that shows there's a problem right and it shows the solution isn't very good so how I typically put it to the bold white men I'm often pitching to you is imagine you had to be clean shaving for work so bids and not an option it's not acceptable and every time you shave you get razor bumps you get a rash your beard will hurt it will look redden and flamed it will look awful and everyone's staring at it and on top of that it hurts you're in pain you can't sleep probably you feel insecure you feel like you can't be in that space yeah what would you want you would want someone to solve that problem you would want someone to make good tools to make good products to make sure you don't have to go through that experience and also to like normalize stubble right and that's what we do at Afrocentric so if you want to have this sleek kind of straightened look you can do that with our products if you want to wear your hair like you know naturally how it grows from your scalp you can do that with our products and you can do that knowing that if you've got x-mer if you've got psoriasis you're going to be fine even if you don't have skin conditions you won't develop one because of our products because we don't use the common allergens we don't use anything that would harm people or planet at all and we go out of our way to make sure the products are safe and effective yeah so we're solving this problem our customers are frequently telling us how we've changed their lives and it's one thing that helps me to persevere because at the moment running a product business it's not fun guys global supply chains are a mess I'm constantly under stress the whole team is overly stretched and what keeps us going is we speak to customers every day we get that feedback we get the mum like a white mum of mixed race kids saying my daughter has hated her hair her whole life I've told her it's beautiful then she saw your Christmas ad on television we got some products her hair's softer than it's ever been and she loves her hair and she's she's walking with her head held high we get doctors who tell us they've gone 30 years and this is literally three women in the last year who all happened to be doctors who've been going to work with wigs for the last 20 to 30 years of that I did die for three months and he only ever saw me in a wig literally with it I woke up with it I was like what am I going to do show him this this exactly and they said that switch into Afro sentics learning to you know love their hair to care for their hair it's just it's helped them to bring their authentic self to work it's helped them feel like they are acceptable because if you feel like your hair is unacceptable or your skin is unacceptable by extension you feel like you're unacceptable you're not allowed in that space so this is why I say we are in the business of health and well-being it's about showing people you matter to so we're going to make products for you it might be that the whole industry doesn't care about you you know we just had the first ever British Christmas advert for Afro hair ever in 2021 can we can we accept how mad that is so thank you so I'm proud of the milestone but that shouldn't be a milestone right why when beauty companies are making so much money from us 46 billion why are we not represented on TV you know what message is that sending to people who look like us yeah it's telling us that we don't matter we're relevant in the narrative even though Afro hair care products out perform every category so there's a lot to do exactly and it's so interesting because I think sometimes when we talk about this it seems exceedingly dramatic you know there are few people who would say that the most important problem you could solve is you know black hair care but self-confidence is a hell of a thing but the absence of it is also a hell of a thing the standards you hold yourself to when there is no indication that you are enough as you are yeah whether you don't get a job and it's partly because you didn't present yourself well or you don't get into that school and it's because you strayed too far from the norm it matters whether or not you think you are seen by the world as you want to like I think I look great today I think you look great today thank you asked me 15 years ago how I felt about my skin my hair any of these things I would have said that they were active anchors they were bowlbearers that just meant that I was I wasn't gonna get very far it didn't matter how smart I was and it didn't matter all the ideas I had people would see me and decide that this packaging is an ideal and so to have a company that not only tries to solve for that but tries to change the narrative around that is a thing I'm very grateful to see in my lifetime thank you thanks for being a customer yeah I mean as the saying goes hair isn't everything but it's a great place to start I think the other part that's really interesting and we started you know with this is of course you're very typical of the founder set of course you're trying to build a great company and you are full of all the characteristics we look for but you are trying to do things very differently apart from what you're building how you are this in this unwillingness I guess to just win for yourself or your employees or in your own terms but also to be part of changing what it means to build a business to be part of changing what it means to play the capitalist game which is a little bit ridiculous because you're already you already have your work cut out for you just trying to win the game why take on this additional burden why take on that risk and what are some of the things that that means for your day-to-day so to be honest I didn't choose to take on the burden I'm exhausted when it comes to conversations about race and ethnicity I don't want to talk about it but my my complexion invites these conversations so I had like three of them on the way to Helsinki that I did not start right everyone's talking about Black Lives Matter about race I'm tired of it but I need to engage because the burden is placed on me so either it weighs me down and I'm crushed by it or I lift it up and I'm like we're going to make this smaller we're going to minimize it we're going to share it so when it comes to to the work I do in the startup community I'm constantly learning things I write these medium articles push out there so other people don't have to struggle in the way I have like one person struggle is enough let's make it easier for everyone else and and one thing that I'm proud of be equally horrified by is the fact that uh we were the the ninth black woman owned startup to raise VC capital in the last decade so we're talking 10 years only nine nine nine we're like thank you so that's too that's not even one a year right that that's awful and and since then what what I'm elated by is there've been like five yes right so the change is exponential yeah and back to gone a great way you've you've backed us of course which I'm very happy about and you've backed at least two other black female founders I know of and from zero percent when I started to seven point six percent of the portfolio black women and well done Daisy great work that is true but what's wild is so of these black founders who've raised investment they are just like unnecessarily exceptional right so I feel quite average compared to a lot of them and two of us on your portfolio are both in Mensa right so why do we have to be in the top one to two percent of global IQ schools to raise investment does that make sense because I have a lot of friends who are white male founders and many of them are exceptional and probably more of them would say by their own admission that they're not that they're pretty average but they care about the problem they're solving and they're uniquely placed to solve it yeah I meet so many black women who even just to get to like the pre-seed stage just to get a bit of angel investment they've had to be world-class well you have to play three-dimensional chess with everything everything from that and I think you know the women in this audience will understand anyone who's ever been an outsider will understand this when you engage with someone and you're constantly trying to figure out what is it that they're seeing are they hearing when I'm saying do I have to translate this particular part you always have to prove this you always do and so the sheer amount of computation that is happening in a day-to-day basis in my brain yeah punishing I remember once I'm reading something and it said what would I have accomplished if I if I could devote even a fraction of my capacity to solving problems that matter than trying to figure out how to navigate the world in a way that I'll be seen as I am exactly because race is a distraction from like actual problems we want it's a made-up category that didn't exist before this 16th century you know ethnicity is real you know genetic and phenotypical differences very much real but these weird racial classifications they're just silly like my kids look Korean or something like we're also so mixed up when we actually look at our DNA and it's there's something about that human tapestry of differences that's so beautiful but going back to the differences that between what I faced and what some of my kind of white male counterparts have faced fundraising sucks for everybody and vcs like back to make it suck a little bit less but it still sucks right lots of due diligence lots of hoops to jump through lots of pitches and everyone has to deal with you know doing in one day about 15 VC pitches and being told you're both too early and too late by seed stage investors everyone has to deal with that right it sucks whoever you are you can be an able-bodied straight white man from a middle-class background that went to Oxford and it's still difficult but what they don't have to deal with that I didn't realize was a problem till it was pointed out to me is people telling you that when you ask you know so what's your thesis and what can you bring to the table because it has to be win-win it's a two-way relationship they don't get told stuff like well you guys need some adult supervision that's not something any of my white male friends have ever been told and I didn't realize how bad it was until my husband who's white and a man was horrified and he was really upset that that was said to me they don't reach a final partner pitch after dealing with lots of associates and get and get asked what is it you do again is it some kind of bold in solution and then get told well this doesn't really make sense because like black people don't have that much money why are you focused why are you looking at Africa there's no money in Africa the stupidity and the levels of ignorance that I have to deal with and I think it's coded also so you don't even know that that's what's happening it's not as though you're in a boxing ring somebody throws a punch you know that you're being punched so you can duck and you wonder if it might miss something am I an idiot so I not understand my own company so I'll just tell two brief stories right so I had one VC pitch and I was driving while I was doing it which wasn't the best idea but I've got two young children my schedule and wrap up in this by the way I love chatting with you but apparently we are grossly over time I haven't always that thing I can't tell my two stories but in very very brief I had an investor kind of grill me and asked me questions that didn't make sense yeah I answered one of the questions and he's like well I know that I'm not stupid and I thought so why are you asking me do you think I'm stupid why are you taking pictures from people who you think is stupid yeah you're constantly dealing with that or things where people in the group chat afterwards are horrified and they apologize to you and you're like but that wasn't that bad the VCs are apologizing to me so it's a minefield but I trust it's getting better and I think all of the people here here we are going to be part of that change here we go yeah thank you