Venture Capitalist Maria Velissaris on Her Mission to Invest in Women’s Health: ‘I Had a lot Stacked Against Me’

Transcription:

Mark Collier:
Welcome into The Playbook, Maria.

Maria Velissaris:
Thank you, Mark, for having me.

Mark Collier:
All right. You have an extensive list of accomplishments, and I’m sure they will only grow as time progresses.

Maria Velissaris:
That’s the hope.

Mark Collier:
So kind of tell us a little bit about your background and your journey to founding SteelSky.

Maria Velissaris:
Well, I have been one of those individuals who was basically born with an entrepreneurial spirit. I was starting babysitting clubs as a young girl. I started garage cleaning businesses, lemonade stand. I was that kind of kid. Then fast forward to college where I had a real opportunity to try to do something special. Sitting in my dorm room one Sunday evening, wanting to just think of a business to start, I got connected with another entrepreneurial mind over at Duke, and we started a online shipping and storage company for college students. First of its kind. We ended up starting with our two schools and expanding to seven schools. Then by the time I graduated, we were in over 50 schools. It’s now gone on to become the largest shipping and storage company in the nation, and it was subsequently acquired by U-Haul.

Maria Velissaris:
That was my first foray into entrepreneurship. We got very lucky. But I did realize I had a lot to learn as a 19-year-old entrepreneur. There was a lot ahead of me that I needed to learn. So I spent the next 17 years curating my career, figuring out a path so that I could eventually be the CEO that I should have been earlier.

Maria Velissaris:
So I started as a strategy consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, which was great. Lot of opportunities to work across different industries. Then moved over and I got a degree from finance at NYU University, NYU Stern, which was an amazing experience. While I was there, I asked them, I said, “How do I become a great entrepreneur? Where do I go?” They said, “Why don’t you head over to a CPG company like a Kraft or a P &G because that’s where they teach you how to run brands, and the brands are run as kind of mini companies. You can really get an experience of how to run great companies.” So I went over to Kraft and started there and learned so many things, making products, managing P&L, negotiating with giants like Walmart and Target, and so that was a really well-rounded opportunity. But what I realized was the people at the agencies were having all the fun. I thought I was going to be doing all these cool marketing ads, but what happened was they were doing it over at the branding agency so that’s where I landed next.

Mark Collier:
All right. Well, fantastic. Sounds like you did it the right way. You kind of went through a sequential process of acquiring all the skills you need to, as you said, become the CEO that you are today.

Maria Velissaris:
Yep. I really did. Throughout the journey of my career, I was always still tied to entrepreneurs. I was mentoring at Accelerators, I was mentoring at university entrepreneurial classes because I wanted to stay connected to that ecosystem. As I started mentoring more, I started seeing a lot of obstacles in the way for female founders, from raising money, from getting support, and I couldn’t understand why. These were women with amazing backgrounds. They were tackling huge problems with large market sizes that could be big revenue generating opportunities, but they simply weren’t getting the cash they deserved. So what I decided to do was I needed to get to the other side of the table so that I could understand how to help them raise money. So I joined an angel investing group that taught you how to invest, and that’s how I started my investing career.

Mark Collier:
Very good. So SteelSky. Every founder has a mission and a vision for their company. I love to hear about the vision for my guests. So kind of share with me, what was your vision for SteelSky?

Maria Velissaris:
Well, like I said, once I started angel investing, I really uncovered a unique insight. Not only were women only receiving less than 2% of venture capital dollars, what was more was that less than that was going into women’s healthcare. No innovation had been going into women’s healthcare. We don’t have everything figured out, we don’t have all of the best products and services, so why weren’t dollars going in there to help create better products and services for women? That’s where I saw a gap, and that’s where I saw an opportunity to start SteelSky. The mission of our company is to invest in companies that are improving access, care and outcomes in women’s health.

Mark Collier:
Okay. That’s a very simple, succinct mission, and one that’s very much worthwhile. All right.

Maria Velissaris:
Thank you.

Mark Collier:
So bring statistic. There are 0.006 Black women general partners across the venture capital landscape. What gave you the confidence to raise the fund in the face of such adversity?

Maria Velissaris:
Well, I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge. Somebody tells me I can’t do something, you know what I’m doing next? Tackling that. It’s just something that’s been ingrained in me. I knew it was going to be a really hard journey. I’ve heard all of the war stories of people, but I felt well-equipped to do it. I had the background that I needed, I had the support that I needed, I had the network that I needed and now I just needed to go get that capital. What made me wake up every morning able to kind of fight through the fundraising journey was because I knew at the end of that journey, I would be investing in companies that would be saving lives and making lives of women better around the world.

Mark Collier:
I love it. I love it. I mean, that makes perfect sense to me. It really does. So challenges, obviously with raising that initial capital, but I’m sure there were other challenges along the way. So kind of share with me some of the other challenges that you faced one of the very few Black women who have a venture capital fund.

Maria Velissaris:
It was interesting. I had a lot stacked against me. Not only am I a woman, a woman of color, was from a non-key city. Most venture capitalists are in Silicon Valley. I was in New York, so there was a lot stacked against me. I was also innovating in a new space. There were no real women’s healthcare funds of note and there wasn’t a lot of visibility into women’s healthcare companies. There’s not a lot of visibility or investment dollars going into women’s healthcare at all. So I had a lot to prove. But I felt like with more data, with more women’s companies coming to market, I was kind of able to prove out my thesis in pieces. I think what ended up happening was once people start believing you, other people start believing in you.

Maria Velissaris:
I got better at my story. I started investing in companies that were going to be indicative of the types of companies that you’d see in my portfolio. Those companies started doing well and then it kind of started proving out my thesis. Post-COVID, my thesis really took off. We were investing in what we thought was going to be the future of healthcare four years ago, which was telemedicine, remote monitoring. After COVID, there was a huge shift in the way that everyone interacted and engaged with healthcare. So those types of opportunities really catalyzed our portfolio and showed that we had identified a really interesting opportunity.

Mark Collier:
Now, you were at the cutting edge then, because as you said, telemedicine and other kind of virtual platforms, you started them pre-COVID, but COVID just created that seismic shift. Everything was virtual, everything was contactless post-COVID so it fell right into your lap. So oftentimes success is a matter of just being, they say when luck and preparedness get together.

Maria Velissaris:
That’s exactly right. One of the things we like to tell people is women’s healthcare specifically was a good area to invest in because the pandemic can stop many things, Mark, but you know what it can’t stop? Menstruation, pregnancy, menopause. All of these things still are a part of the lives of women no matter what’s going on in the world.

Mark Collier:
No, that’s a very good point. Very good point. So how did you decide on women’s health thesis when, as you mentioned earlier, there were no previous large scale exits or funds that were specifically focused on women’s health?

Maria Velissaris:
I looked for opportunity. I don’t want to invest in something that everybody else is doing and be another me-too fund. I wanted to invest in something that I felt uniquely prepared and that my team was uniquely prepared to address, and this was one of those. So over 90% of venture capitalists are male. When these founders are coming in tackling these stigmatized products and services for women’s healthcare, they simply sometimes don’t even know the problems and the challenges that they’re trying to solve. You’re walking into a group of male investors and you’re talking about PCOS, endometriosis, pelvic floor prolapse, they don’t even know what those words mean-

Mark Collier:
No, I certainly don’t.

Maria Velissaris:
So it’s going to be a lot harder for you to convince them first that this is a need, second, of the opportunity, and third, that this is something that they should be looking at investing in. But when these founders come to us, we already understand what they’re doing, and we can just get right to talking about how they’re going to make money.

Mark Collier:
Got it. So it was a kind of a two-pronged approach. You had the education piece that you had to educate them and then talk about the business model and how you’re going to prove that out.

Maria Velissaris:
Exactly.

Mark Collier:
Okay. Well, fantastic. So what sectors of women’s healthcare are you most excited about? Because that sector can be broad and kind of cavernous. So did you decide on a specific segment or which ones are you most excited about?

Maria Velissaris:
Well, we look across the spectrum of women’s health because there’s so much work to be done. But some of the categories that we’re most excited about right now are number one, menopause market. That’s an area that’s been really overlooked. But there’s going to be one billion women undergoing menopause in the next four years.

Mark Collier:
That’s part of the Baby Boomer or-

Maria Velissaris:
One billion women.

Mark Collier:
Wow. Across the world or-

Maria Velissaris:
Across the world.

Mark Collier:
Wow. That’s a large market.

Maria Velissaris:
That’s a large market. An extremely large market. There’s not a lot of solutions for them. So we’re looking for solutions and innovations to sell to this market and to help them have better outcomes when they’re going through their menopause journey, which can be up to 30 years, Mark.

Mark Collier:
Oh boy. Okay. 30 years.

Maria Velissaris:
Another segment of the market that we’re really interested in is mental health and behavioral health. This is-

Mark Collier:
Those were exacerbated with COVID, so it brought mental health right to the forefront. But please continue.

Maria Velissaris:
Exactly. That’s exactly the point. For women specifically, it’s even more severe, from postpartum depression to isolation due from COVID, from dealing with being a mother, a caretaker, a worker. There’s so much stress on women these days. We’re really trying to find some mental health and behavioral health companies that can really hone in on how to make lives of women easier and how to kind of alleviate some of that stress that they deal with every day.

Mark Collier:
I get it. Very worthwhile work.

Maria Velissaris:
The third segment of the market I would mention that we’re really interested in is health equity. How do we help the healthcare system engage with communities of color that are distrustful of the system because of our historical engagement with the healthcare system? How do we make products and services better serve the needs of these communities in a way that they feel safe?

Mark Collier:
All right. The three areas that you just enumerated, they’re not only growth areas, but they’re areas that have a significant need too, so I commend you for that.

Maria Velissaris:
Thank you.

Mark Collier:
All right. So differentiation. That’s the Holy Grail of all business models. So what differentiates your team from others investing in women’s healthcare companies?

Maria Velissaris:
Well, for us, we have a very diverse team led by a Black woman. We have people on our team from rural communities, from cities, and we’re spread out across the nation so that we can really understand the challenges across the nation. I think because of our diversity, not only our diversity and ethnicity, but our diversity and backgrounds, we have people from the banking industry, we have former entrepreneurs like myself, former operators and CEOs, clinicians working with us. So we’ve really assembled what we believe to be a very well-rounded team to help us tackle these issues.

Mark Collier:
All right. So you mentioned earlier, you started out in New York and on the East Coast. So why did it make sense for you to move your headquarters to right here in Atlanta?

Maria Velissaris:
Well, like I said, health equity and diversity is a really important part of our portfolio. I know that there’s so many talented people of color in Atlanta, entrepreneurs down here. So we came to Atlanta to really uncover and discover those next great entrepreneurs. Atlanta itself has a very diverse ecosystem, but it also has the elements to make a great venture ecosystem. It has the university, very strong universities, it has a very strong healthcare network, which is really important to us as healthcare investors, and then it just has a passion and a vibrancy that this is an up-and-coming space where people are going to want to come because they can get their ideas funded, because you can work them out with different hospitals or corporations in Atlanta. It just had all of the necessary pieces to create a great venture ecosystem.

Mark Collier:
Now, you made a great point and a great call because Georgia has for many years running now been one of the leading states for entrepreneurial growth. So you landed right in the bread basket for entrepreneurial growth here.

Maria Velissaris:
Not to mention, they’ve been really welcoming. The Atlanta community, from the venture community, the corporate community, they’ve all been so welcoming in Steel Sky. It just really underscores that we made the right decision to come here.

Mark Collier:
All right. I love it. So Black, indigenous people of color and women have historically received far less startup funding, as you enumerated earlier. So how can diverse founders kind of better position themselves for funding in the future, for those who are watching, who are looking to perhaps following your footsteps?

Maria Velissaris:
I would say a lot of these founders come in with passion and enthusiasm, but sometimes what’s lacking is the numbers. So sometimes you’re selling in a company or solution or a service that the person across the table from you may not understand, but you know what they will understand? Charts that go up and to the right. They want to understand how you’re going to make money and how you’re going to make them money. So you need to also harness the passion, which is really important, but also make sure you have a really great grasp on the numbers because that is what is going to get you across the line when they may not otherwise understand the type of business that you may be building.

Mark Collier:
No, you’re absolutely right. I work as a business consultant, and when my clients come to me putting together a business plan, the first thing I flip to is the numbers because the numbers have to tell a compelling story. They’ve got to be able to motivate someone to invest in your company. So you’re spot on by getting those founders to really put that focus on what the numbers are going to prove out.

Mark Collier:
All right, Maria Velissaris, founder and serial entrepreneur with Steel Sky Ventures, I want to thank you for taking of time out of your busy schedule to come in. You’ve imparted some great information on what it takes to become a successful venture capitalist. Also, I’m sure the information that you have shared will also help future entrepreneurs who are going down that same path.

Maria Velissaris:
Well, thank you so much for having me.

Mark Collier:
All right.