The CEO with nothing to sell – but hope
Last week we looked at how, when justice-oriented companies build marketing around their purpose, it’s an advantage for a few – and a trap for most.
Today I’m introducing you to a CEO with nothing to offer but her company’s purpose.
By unpacking what works for her, you may see something that would work for you too.
SOMEDAY, WE’LL BE EVERYWHERE
To clarify: Nathalya Mamane could make her audience a lot of money.
She’s the founder of Anywhere DX, a biotech startup here in Boston developing at-home diagnostics. First goal: A single-use strep test you can take from your medicine cabinet, saving parents and kids a trip to urgent care.
That’s not a small idea.
It’s massive, actually. It’s the next Band-Aid or Children’s Tylenol, a product every parent on the planet might buy like clockwork for a decade-plus. It’s a world-changing concept with a world-sized customer base.
But that’s the long-term opportunity.
Investors you’d expect to want a piece of that long-term return have been reluctant to jump on. And the investors who’ve been eager to get in aren’t focused on the long-term gain.
They’re writing checks with something other than profit in mind.
In the next few minutes, I want to show you what Nathalya’s learned about the people who most readily give her cash, how that has altered her approach – and what you might take from that if you also run a business that thinks of investor returns in a way that transcends money.
“EVERY INVESTOR IS A CONSUMER”
Nathalya hatched the Anywhere idea during the pandemic – which turned out to be precisely the wrong time.
At-home diagnostics boomed during COVID, leading to a glut of at-home testing companies. Inevitably, many failed to execute. As the pandemic receded, so did investor trust.
Institutional investors became risk averse just as Nathalya’s team was reaching out. They were skeptical of anything with “at-home diagnostic” in the pitch. And they didn’t see the urgency of something like an at-home strep test.
Ordinary parents got the pitch immediately, though. They weren’t seeing as investors, but as buyers. Anywhere DX was building tech they wanted.
They were willing to invest to get it.
IT’S NOT ABOUT WHAT I GET
The shift to a consumer-as-investor angle meant a presence on crowd platform WeFunder, where Nathalya’s company is nearing the end of a $300k investment round made up of ordinary people.
Naturally, she looked at Kickstarter – where pre-sales of non-existing products are the norm. She made a similar promise: Invest now and be the first to get our strep tests when they hit the market.
But as conversations multiplied and Nathalya grew to understand investors, she began to think she’d misattributed their motives.
She’s got nearly 100 of these angel investors – some in for thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, some for mere hundreds.
None of them, she’ll tell you now, is doing it for the money.
They’re on board for something else.
THEIR OWN SELVES-INTEREST
You can watch the condensed version of my chat with Nathalya above – it’s about 15 minutes, and honestly kind of an adventure.
I asked if offering the product early was what got ordinary people to invest.
She said, essentially, I doubt it.
So we explored what people’s motives might be. Who puts down money when a company has no product, when the payback is uncertain – and at small enough amounts that even if the payoff does come it won’t be life-changing?
I think Nathalya’s right – it’s not about me getting the product for myself; that benefit’s too small, too far away and too uncertain to open up my pocketbook.
But this isn’t simple charity either.
What I think motivates Anywhere DX’s angels is something between self-interest and pure altruism. It’s solidarity. It’s a sense that what I need is part of what we need.
The right person becomes motivated by collective need in a way that they aren’t by personal individual need.
And knowing how to recognize that person can help any of us aspiring to just business.
3 SIGNS OF A SUPPORTER
The small-but-passionate investors Nathalya told me about had a few things in common:
They’ve seen the effects of the problem she’s trying to solve at a community level.
They belong to – or feel responsible for – one of the communities affected by that problem.
They can put an individual face on the problem.
We spent a while talking about one school teacher who invested $200 in Nathalya’s business. Most educators aren’t flush with cash, and the eventual payday from investing $200 probably won’t change that. This person doesn’t even need an at-home strep test for herself.
So why invest?
Because she’s part of a community of kids and parents who feel the pain of urgent-care trips and missed work. She sees how inefficiencies in the medical system compound back to impact education and attendance. And she can see faces and name names who are affected by the problem.
She’s part of an “us” that needs Nathalya’s product – even if she isn’t the “me” who needs it.
A PROBLEM WITH A FACE
Nathalya’s own drive is similar: I asked why she personally cared about this and she talked about the social problem of missed work and overinflated diagnostic costs and how that problem has unfair, inequitable impact on those with low incomes.
But then she named a person, with a face, in a community she feels connected to.
That’s how it happens, I think: “Me” becomes “us,” and we find we’ll go to lengths to help our people that we’d never go to merely help ourselves.
The first step toward justice is connection.
To support Nathalya and Anywhere DX, visit anywhere.health or invest on WeFunder.
Running a purpose-driven business of your own? Get on my calendar – I’d love to know you.
