Founder & CEO at Blooming Eve I Strategy&Ops I Finance I Startup Advisor I Techstars' 23
Ruhi Ladwa #GirlPowerUnleashed in Conversation with Anastasiia Timon
Ruhi Ladwa:
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Girl Power Unleashed podcast. Today I'm with Anastasiia Timon. Thank you, Anastasiia, for taking the time to be on the podcast. To start off, tell us about yourself and your journey so far!
Anastsiia Timon:
Yes, of course. Thank you so much for having me. I'm Anastasiia Timon, I'm the CEO and founder of a virtual startup called Booming Eve. Before I actually was born in the country of Georgia, and I grew up in Russia, most of my career I spent in finance and most recently, I've been a VP of finance at a $1 billion private equity fund, which was invested in high growth technology companies.
Before I came to New York to get my MBA from Columbia Business School, where I totally transitioned to entrepreneurship, VC startups, all fun stuff. And after that, I joined another health technology startup as a business development and strategy executive, and I spent three years there, I was always passionate about fertility. I also happen to have fertility doctors in my family. And then from personal experience with fertility treatments, I decided to found Blooming Eve. It is a fertility startup that helps to improve access to fertility care all across the US. We help women who are living more than one hour away from fertility centers to find care, find clinics, and start the treatment early.
Ruhi Ladwa:
What are the most interesting things you're working on, and how will that empower women?
Anastsiia Timon:
So startup life is very interesting. First of all, it's very empowering and very rewarding to work on the problem that we are solving, because it helps a lot of women who have no access to fertility care right now. So 40% of women actually are living, without access to any fertility centers or a fertility center in the area where they are. So this is very rewarding to work on that and bring this health care access to different areas across the US. But in addition to that, while I was at school, while I was in finance, even in high school, I was always surrounded by men. So there were not many women leaders in my class, like only a few people started companies from my business class.
So I think that being a female founder is an act of empowerment in many ways, because we are creating a case for other women and other leaders to really think about them as a boss for your own business. And this is, I think, really important to do. But in addition to that, Blue Medium started as a fertility concierge company. So we were basically helping women to understand and prepare for their fertility treatments.
And it happened so that at school, we don't get a lot of education about our own reproductive system and about women's health. So even for a lot of educated women, that was a challenge. They didn't really understand and didn't know a lot about fertility. So we did a lot of webinars and educated materials, and it's a big part of what we do, to bring clinically verified information and education to more women so that they can make educated decisions about their health, about their family planning and things like that. I think this is very important. And I hope that it helps a lot of people.
Ruhi Ladwa:
I love how you're bringing awareness to fertility because that's not spoken about a lot.
Anastsiia Timon:
I hope that more people will speak about it. So in recent years, it's getting a little bit better. But yeah, it is definitely very important.
Ruhi Ladwa:
What were the obstacles you had to overcome? Are there any learnings from them?
Anastsiia Timon:
Yeah. Obstacles. I moved continents, for school, for work. That was a big of a challenge, for me, because you have to start, and you don't have a network. You have to start everything from scratch. And I also change careers from finance to healthcare and startups. So really, framing yourself and education was a big piece of it. That helped really to set the ground, but also just, putting yourself out there and really working hard, that helped me a lot. But that definitely was very challenging.
Another thing that I want to mention is that only 2% of VC funding is going to female founders, and this is a big challenge. It is a challenge because when you go to present and you go to pitch in front of venture investors or private equity investors, they are all men. Sometimes they are not familiar with the problem you're talking about, when you're talking about women's health. They don't know. And this is our role to explain in their language and to show them the opportunity that is there. Because women's health is a huge, huge market that is very profitable and it's very big. And, just explaining that in more economical terms. This is, I think, very important. And that definitely was a challenge.
Ruhi Ladwa:
What is your secret to success? Are there a few key qualities that helped you attain success?
Anastsiia Timon:
Well, my secret to success is just going out of my comfort zone. So I think this is very important. And a lot of the limitation exists only in our brain. So you think about something that you cannot do, but you actually can do that. You have to try. So example would be at some point in my life I wasn't comfortable with public speaking or presentations. But after you do that one time, like a few times, you become very comfortable. You forget what you had ever feared before. So that that is one. And the second one is that, even physically ,like going and breaking the boundaries. So when I first ran my half marathon, I By the end of it, I was dying. I was like, I would never, ever again. It's impossible. It's so hard. Then I started training and this year I ran my first marathon in New York. So this is possible. And I was not as exhausted as I was when I was running. So just saying this like everything is practice like just do once and then it all goes so smoothly. So our fears are all in the head.
Ruhi Ladwa:
What would you tell girls who want to become the next generation of leaders?
Anastsiia Timon:
Well, I think, take risks and don't listen to what other people think. Listen to yourself what you want to do and go after it. I didn't, unfortunately, have a lot of examples of women leaders, but while I was growing up. But you are growing up in a totally different time. And this is super exciting. So I am excited to be a part of this podcast. I'm excited about what you are doing because this is it. We all know we can do it. We all know and we just need to support each other and believe in ourselves and everything is possible. Just try and don't be afraid of failure. Failure is great because you learn from it. I know as a startup founder, failure is something that you have to become comfortable with and then you become so much better than everyone else because you had that experience. So just try things.
Ruhi Ladwa:
Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I'm sure our listeners learned something very valuable!
Anastsiia Timon:
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Bye!
Ruhi Ladwa:
Bye!
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