Alloy's Laura Spiekerman On Fundraising A Series B While Pregnant
Hi all, Julie here. Quick note: we now have Peloton and Strava FTT groups! If you use either/both platforms, please join us!
We have another guest post this week, and it’s one that hits a bit different. As a female who wants to have kids someday, and now as a co-founder, I have concerns about what happens when that day comes. Am I really going to be able to take time off? Will our investors or potential future investors be concerned? Will this hurt my income and career growth? I needed answers and advice. So, I asked one of the females I respect most in this industry, who just went through the same thing herself, in 2020 no less! Below are thoughts from Laura Spiekerman, Co-Founder and CRO at Alloy.
Full Disclosure: I’m writing this 2 hours before my induction, the night before Thanksgiving. Putting down as many thoughts as I can before I get to the other side of this. But I bet I’ll feel differently in just a day or so!
Julie asked me to write about what it was like to be a pregnant founder while fundraising. Here’s my advice to all the founders out there thinking about getting pregnant: make sure you time it with a global pandemic where all meetings take place on Zoom and no one will see you from the chest down. I'm obviously joking, but the thing is, being pregnant in this fundraising world was far more ideal than the typical environment.
In June 202, once my pregnancy was ‘safe,’ I told my co-founders & leadership team. I am so lucky to work with a team whose first remarks had nothing to do with how long I’d be out, or what the balance of childcare responsibilities might look like with my husband, or how I planned to transition my work to others during my parental leave. Instead, they offered genuine and excited congratulations and concern for how I was feeling (answer: nauseous AF).
But what loomed in the back of my mind was fundraising for Alloy’s Series B. We were hitting an inflection point. We had traction, were building a stellar team, repeatable sales, a killer product, and more inbound investor interest than we ever could have hoped for. Plus, we’d survived (and arguably thrived) at the beginning of the pandemic. So I knew fundraising was on the horizon.
My co-founder/CEO Tommy and I spent time talking about it — what time would be right? Too soon and you miss some of your big up & coming milestones. Too late and you risk not fully delivering on those promises. This is another place where I simply got lucky; our momentum was such that we would be able to fast-track the process and raise/close (fingers crossed) long before I’d be having a baby.
Editor’s note: Alloy closed their round in September, ahead of schedule just like Laura hoped.
There was also the aspect of telling our existing investors. I worried about telling our board that I was pregnant for two reasons: 1) that they might worry about my future at the company (would I work less? Feel less dedicated?), and 2) that they thought other VCs would wonder the same thing during our fundraising process.
I asked the board member I felt would give me the most honest and selfless answer, Nihal Mehta from Eniac Ventures, whether I should disclose my pregnancy during the fundraising process. His answer was pretty straightforward: do whatever you want! Don’t feel like you have to hide it, and don’t feel like you owe it to them to disclose it. It was liberating to feel like I could tell people when it came up, and not feel like I had to give them the goings-on of my growing belly while talking about our committed recurring revenue numbers.
In the end, I told some and not others. In one case, I told an investor who was in due diligence that I was pregnant when it came up in conversation. Victoria Treyger from Felicis Ventures immediately sent me books about pregnancy and how to get babies to sleep, without asking a thing about my Alloy plans come December. In another case, I told Walker Forehand from Canapi Ventures post due diligence when it came up, and similarly, he immediately sent me a Dock-a-tot — not only a great gift because I was too cheap to buy one myself, but also because it showed me that he was on board. Both are parents themselves, which I expect explains a lot of the understanding and support.
All of this is not to say the world has changed and investors are now supportive of pregnant founders. In fact, I think the opposite is more likely to be true. But I was lucky and in a position of power in this round, and I still was kept up at night worried whether or not I should tell investors about my pregnancy and nervous about how our board would react.