(bright upbeat music) - [Announcer] Major support for Carolina Business Review provided by Colonial Life, providing benefits to employees to help them protect their family, their finances and their futures.

High Point University, the premier life skills university, focused on preparing students for the world as it is going to be.

And Sonoco, a global manufacturer of consumer and industrial packaging products and provider of packaging services with more than 300 operations in 35 countries.

- Like just about everything else in our lives.

Almost every part of our lives have been effected by COVID-19.

The question is how much and what exactly.

Starting a new business is one of those things.

I'm Chris William, and welcome again to the most widely watched and longest running source of Carolina business policy and public affairs.

Seen each and every week for the last 30 years here on PBS, across the Carolinas.

In a moment, we'll start to unpack, what it is to be a small business?

How to start up?

And what those challenges may be now.

Is it easier, is it harder or is it just different?

So what is being a startup in business?

We begin right now.

(bright upbeat music) - [Announcer] Gratefully acknowledging support by Martin Marietta, a leading provider of natural resource based building materials, providing the foundation upon which our communities improve and grow.

BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

Visit us at SouthCarolinaBlues.com.

The Duke Endowment, a private foundation enriching communities in the Carolinas through higher education, healthcare, rural churches and children's services.

(bright upbeat music) On this edition of Carolina Business Review, Steve Fletcher from Lowcountry Local First, Keith Daniel of Resilient Ventures, Dr. Leila Strickland Co-Founder of Biomilq and Michelle Lobel Co-Founder of Bryn Pharma.

(bright upbeat music) - And welcome again to our program.

I think it's okay to say happy 4th of July happy Independence Day, Michelle, Leila, Keith, Steve.

Welcome all.

Michelle, I'm gonna start with you, whether it's fair or not.

And let's start with this whole idea of being a startup whether you're looking for early stage financing or not but backing up and zooming out a little bit has the last 18 months during this public health crisis, compounded, being the startup made it easier, been non impactful.

How do you look at it?

- Thank you, Chris, for having me on the show today.

And you know, it's an interesting question because when the pandemic first started for our company for Bryn, we were a virtual company.

And so we were already working.

Everybody was remote.

We were very used to that.

And so in the early kinda days, we were sort of laughing a little bit, 'cause everybody else was adjusting to something that we had been very used to already as a startup.

And then of course as this dragged on and time went on and I think everybody got into a lull where we got tired of the Zoom kind of style meetings and wished we could have more together time.

And I think for us, it really highlighted the importance of face time and being together.

While we were virtual, we used to gather, every other month or so together in person as a management team.

And so about six months in is when we started to really miss that.

But, look, I think we're all resilient and we've had to learn how to do things and we've had moments.

I think one of the highlights for us has really been that there's a lot of efficiency, we don't have to travel anymore.

We've gotten quite used to that.

And it's amazing how much you can do in Zoom meetings with, you know, we have lots of partners throughout The Research Triangle that we engage with.

And now we can get them all onto one Zoom and be incredibly effective in those meetings without what used to would have been business travel and lots of time going all over the country.

So I think we've tried to see the positive in it but with all of that, I would really say we're looking forward to starting to travel again and the face time of being with our partners and making sure that we can keep things on track as best we can.

- Dr. Strickland, same question.

Has it been tougher or a non-starter?

- It's almost impossible for me to say because almost all of Biomilq's history has taken place during the pandemic.

You know, my co-founder and I were a two person team at the beginning of 2020 and had just begun our journey toward fundraising.

And we had huge plans to build out our team and get our research program underway.

And were engaging with venture capitalists community at that time and had actually just received terms for our first deal in March of 2020 and closed the deal and proceeded in under the conditions we've all been experiencing since then.

And so for us we went from a two person team to now a team of 17 total.

Very quick growth, through a period of time where we've had a lot of challenge with building community, building culture on the team.

Getting people who are complete strangers to work effectively and functionally together and building cohesiveness towards our mission.

And so I would say it certainly hasn't been easy but I don't know any other way to do it.

I have not.

So it's been, I think we've had a lot of success.

It's one of the things I'm most proud of that we've been able to become the cohesive team that we are today, even under those circumstances.

- Keith, Steve just weighed in on this.

And let's go on in just slightly different.

So over the last 18 months, Keith, have you seen is it more collegial now among startups?

Is that a closer knit community or has it become more competitive?

- My thought process initially going into the question was thinking about our eight companies that we've invested in.

We've been investing for the last two and a half year.

We're actually in the year three.

And we certainly saw one of our companies take a very difficult, experience great difficulty with the COVID impact.

Had to do with manufacturing and getting production going and still getting the product online and so forth.

The other companies were more ready tech enabled and so forth.

So were able to manage that.

So we've seen how hard it can hit some and others, as you say, that you used to thriving in kind of technological environments and that just ramp things up per se.

We tried to create a level of collegiality within our network and we certainly experienced that in terms of angel groups and other investors kinda understanding that we are kind of a new dynamics and working with entrepreneurs and our founders to help them stay encouraged in many respects, I mean this is about relationships for us.

I cited that the word resilient was our.

When we chose that name back in 2018, before these varieties of pandemics and struggles that we're all facing.

We kinda understood that our founders who happened to be founders of color African-American in particular have always had to make a dollar out of 15 cents as my grand mama used to say.

And so we've seen that book, we have a community of folks that have rallied.

We've seen a lot of rallying in the ecosystem, so it's been good in that way - Steve, how do you characterize it?

- Yeah, first off, thanks for having me on Chris.

I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this discussion.

Yeah, I mean, I'd echo versions of what everyone has said here at Lowcountry Local First, we are in the business so to speak of local economic development, we are a nonprofit that manages 450 plus members.

All of whom are local independent businesses.

And a large swath of that is characterized as probably a startup businesses, early stage businesses, nascent stage businesses.

And I think like folks have said that type of enterprise has always been up against a particular slate of pressures and has had to find unique, innovative ways to pivot on a dime.

We've seen here in the greater Charleston area some really cool things happen.

So I have seen some of that kind of collegial collaboration in the form of programs like Pay it Forward, where you had restaurants making up bagged lunches and giving them out to other food and bev industry workers.

A lot of the time in a town like Charleston, in those restaurants are really usually new restaurants, a huge percentage of restaurants do not make it.

So just by nature of the fact that a lot of these restaurants were new I'd call them startups.

And I'd say they did a really good job at finding ways to pivot and to make the most out of a bad situation.

And yeah, I think it was the ultimate pressure test for startups but I think that startups in particular are no strangers to that sort of uncertainty.

- Michelle, wanna come back to you on something the idea that we've heard, I would say ad nauseam over the years, and this was before COVID.

That finding talent and getting the folks in the seats that were important to get in has been difficult at best prior to COVID.

Have you found that to be exacerbated during COVID or has it gotten easier in some way?

Again, how would you characterize it?

- You know, it's a good question.

And we were very worried about it going in, that was something that really concerned us in the early days.

We have actually found that it has been no harder for us.

I think again, going back to why we chose the RTP as our headquarters, there's just so many, there's such a network of life sciences partners there and talent.

And so we've had, I would say it's been quite easy for us to attract people.

I think part of it is in a startup culture, look, we're doing something really interesting and disruptive and we catch people's attention.

I mean, I think when we talk to people in the life sciences industry.

I started Bryn as an outsider.

I don't have a pharma background.

I started this company out of a very personal need to develop a better epinephrin delivery system for my children and the millions of people out there that suffer from food allergies and are at risk of anaphylaxis.

And that story resonates.

That story resonated before the pandemic.

And I find it continues to resonate.

And so we've really been fortunate that it has not been a problem for us.

And that people are attracted to the company and what we're doing.

- And Leila, as you just self described, that you said, that Biomilq is almost a product of the environment, not because of COVID, but during COVID.

So how do you set whatever your standard is to find talent within what's going on, right now?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, we're in a sector that, most of the other companies in our sector are working out of California or Boston or New York.

And we consider being located in The Triangle really one of our sort of secret weapons.

It's been really, actually very helpful to point to all of the advantages that this area has to offer as we've been in the process of recruiting kind of continuously since we started.

And we've actually attracted people from some of the more dense areas for our sector to come here instead as a result of a number of the advantages of being here.

And so, we've been very fortunate in, we've got specific skillsets that we're looking for.

And have been just delighted with the talent pool that we found both locally and the ability of this area to attract others, from some of the more densely utilized areas in our fields.

- This is a question for any of you and to use your term recruiting or talent.

You can't, I mean we can't talk about recruiting.

We can't talk about adding team.

We can't talk about finding workers and talent without talking about in reference to whatever this new standard is around.

Are we working virtually or are we working physically in a space, Keith, Steve, anyone?

Are we forever changed now in whatever that metric looks like between where our workforce is going to be?

- Well, in our case we're doing, we have a research and development program that really has to take place in a laboratory.

So that's something we've had to navigate throughout the entire experience.

And we're very very fortunate to have a facility.

We work at Alexandria LaunchLabs, which is a facility in The Triangle that's specifically created to address the needs of early stage startups like ours.

And they've been just fantastic partners as far as creating a safe environment, promoting safe practices and have really taken a lot of the challenge off of the shoulders of leadership, myself and my co-founder to set the standard for sort of how to keep each other safe, as we're all having to work in the same environment.

- Anyone else, who wanna go on record here?

- Sure, I've been fortunate to.

My professional formation life has been in academia and behind these institutional walls in the business school and the health system at Duke.

I've seen a lot of innovative spaces.

I feel like I've been fortunate because there's seems to be a level of need for our founders to anticipate.

We talk about preparing three, five-year goals.

And so when your head space is constantly being prepared to adapt and accept change.

This has been seismic.

What we've experienced, the more I sit each day and I reckon with the pandemic, the social unrest, all of these things that are going on.

The mental health affects has been a conversation.

I just came back from vacation by the way.

I got back like one o'clock last night only to discover that my internet was out at my home.

And I have a beautiful studio at home that I love be in.

So I'm already adapting this point to be on your show in a space I was not planning to be in.

But all that to say is I was traveled up to meet with a mentor of mine who was at Yale now.

And he's incredible educator and been thinking about Western education and all the ways we've been formed and some of that struggle and challenge.

The pandemic has up ended everything.

We have to rethink everything.

And that in itself is a challenge.

And that we enjoy that as investors, working with our founders and having really hard conversations, everything down to how we're managing our family lives, I mean, everything now is sort of forced into this space of a level of concentration.

So in some regards, I'll take it as a good thing, but it has been difficult.

We've had a lot of loss of life.

I mean, just sitting and reckoning with that to think about our business interests and our aspirations to be successful and seeing our companies successfully grow.

I should also punctuate that our company is our high growth early stage companies already making revenue, already teams pretty much in place.

We've only had one or two that had to, find a new CTO or something like that.

That hasn't been front and center for us.

But yeah, this is everything has changed.

And it's put up a very high level of demand of how we think about our lives and our business trajectories and new questions that have to be reckoned with.

I don't necessarily think we should think so much about we wanted to go back to a certain way.

I think it's just accelerating the 21st century, even 21st century careers that we've been talking about in higher ed going as early up into the high school population.

- Well and I wanna say you had a spirit of this is a bit of a new adventure, Keith.

The way you described it.

But I wanna go back that you said education, referred to education twice.

Michelle, I know it's not lost on you because you grew up in The Triangle even though you may be on the West Coast right now.

And Steve, same thing for Charleston.

There's a pretty big influence of higher ed.

So how would Steve, let me start with you.

How would you rank an academic center as an influence for a startup?

- Yeah, I mean, I think there's no denying that it is only positive to be in close proximity, physically, culturally, socially to an academic center.

I mean, there's a lot that bears that in the research to suggest that being within a metro center where there are academic institutions there's gonna be natural positive impacts and outcomes.

Just through osmosis.

There are events, there are cultural exhibitions, there are opportunities to research.

And so I think that's probably, elevate the playing field when you're thinking about startups in general.

I don't wanna halt the conversation, but Chris if I may, I just wanted to tag one thing on to the bit about recruitment earlier.

One of the top challenges, actually the top challenge as indicated in our annual member survey this year which was administered kind of right in the midst of the pandemic was hiring and retention.

So we send that out to all of our 100s of members here in the greater Charleston area.

And there's a lot you can surmise by that.

It's the first time that it's been indicated that the number one top challenges for business owners.

And again, these are business owners across different strata and in terms of size, stage, age but a large number of them were startups in more nascent stage businesses.

And I think there's a lot of ways to evaluate that response, Chris.

And I agree with what everyone was mentioning in that, the tectonic nature of our business community particularly when you're looking at these fledgling businesses is changing by the day, the unique circumstances around COVID-19 and its ripple effects.

I think had a lot of individuals doubled down on forms of technology, which have been in existence for a while now, but out of necessity have had to use Zoom have had to use GoToMeeting.

Have had to be more flexible and have had to lean on some of these computer technologies.

Unfortunately, there are many industries and there are many startup companies within those industries that just aren't able to pivot on a dime and overnight make use of these emerging technologies.

And so we have a program here at Lowcountry Local First called good enterprises.

It is aimed to serve folks who are in the entrepreneurial community, but have been disadvantaged for one reason or another.

And those folks are often times in businesses that are bakeries or are carpenters or in the trades.

And so the unique set of circumstances that surrounded this unprecedented global pandemic unfortunately made things even more difficult for those companies.

So not only were things more difficult but when you're looking at hiring and retention and recruitment.

How do you set up interviews?

How do you find these individuals?

How do you continue to cultivate a company culture in a construction company that's a startup.

We think about startup.

We think about technology.

Sure, a lot of those startups were benefited by this brave new world of Zoom centric interaction.

But it just wasn't the case, unfortunately for a lot of these startups, these nascent new fledgling businesses that we're not in the information space.

- Okay, sorry, Steve.

But we do wanna pivot, thank you.

That is an important point, but the idea that goes hand in hand with recruitment and talent is of course the O2 for business, the oxygen for business and that's capital and financing.

Bryn was pretty exceptional in its not just first round, but it's money raised early on 26 million is an eye-popping, I might say Michelle.

Leila, same thing, maybe not as large as 26 million, but some of the names that you raised money from were pretty exceptional.

Was that, and apologies for asking you this way, was that because you were a women owned business, was that because of the corpus of what the business was, was that because it was a unique time during COVID-19?

How do you attribute the success of the money raised for you both?

- Michelle, would you like to go?

- Sure, I'd be happy to.

- I'll answer as well but.

- No, no it's a good question.

And I think in our case, in the case of Bryn.

In fact what I think is, it's such a relatable product and it's a problem that touches every American.

And so I think, when we would go into these fundraising meetings and we would sit around the table, there would be 10 people around the table.

And more than half of them knew somebody personally if not in their family, a close friend who was affected by the risk of anaphylaxis, whose children had food allergies or their friends had food allergies.

So I think in our case, we're a life sciences company, we're taking a product through the FDA, which is highly regulated.

But in many ways we're a consumer product, it's very relatable.

And so yes, I would love to say that because I'm a woman that's been helpful to us.

And I do think, especially in North Carolina I think there's been tremendous success, you've seen over the last year, like there was the article in the news in The Observer this past, I think it was April about women led startups.

I think there's, we're getting a lot of attention and I think we're making huge progress as co-founders that are women and in head ways.

But I think in our case the success we've had with raising capital has really been that we have a really unique product and a very relatable story.

And I hope that I can use that opportunity to help kind of highlight women owned businesses, absolutely and bring more credit to what we can do.

- Leila, how did you attract some iconic names to invest in the business?

How did you do that?

- Yeah, I mean, I think our story is quite similar even though our product areas are very different.

I was, my business Biomilq was started out of my own struggles with the breastfeeding process and a real desire to improve the options for infant nutrition for women who were struggling with that process.

And that was a very personal experience that intersected well with my background as a biologist and understanding how we might be able to apply that skill set to address this problem.

And I think when we began fundraising and talking to frankly, a very male dominated community of venture capitalists many of those people had not, hadn't experienced the challenges that I personally had, but knew someone who had either their own wife or sister or someone in their lives could recognize in the story that I had to tell.

Struggles that they had seen and the absence of solutions really to address that challenge.

And I think that was instrumental.

- I wish we could unpack the financing and the women's startup more but we literally have two minutes left.

Keith, I wanna turn to you on this and this is not nearly enough time.

But Keith is coming off of the horrible tragedy of George Floyd and all that represented at the time.

Do you think now the raw emotion that was surrounding that has given way to some progressive with a small P strategic initiatives around diversity and equity inclusion that are really good and have found legs and are not gonna move forward?

And we have about a minute, minute and a half.

- Wow, yeah.

- And I know wow, I'm sorry.

- Yeah, well, no, I understand.

Yeah, again, it's been an incredible time of reckoning and indeed there has been our consciousness has been raised that I hope we will sustain over a stretch of time that will really begin to address the equity concerns.

While we got into this business was principally around saying the inequities in venture and in financing and the disparities that are tremendously significant the gaps are wide in terms of wealth accumulation in the people of color communities.

And so, yeah, there's been a strong push in DNI work.

Those positions have become substantial for companies and we think it's been a good thing overall.

- Okay, all right, Keith, thank you.

And again, that's there's not nearly enough time to scratch the surface on that and where it's headed from there.

Steve, down at Charleston, glad to have you on the program.

Keith, up in Durham, thank you.

Michelle, out there on the West Coast.

I'm sure they miss you from The Triangle, but I know you're doing good things.

And Leila Strickland, thank you for joining us as well.

All of you best wishes, please come back.

We just didn't get to all the most important stuff as well, but see you next time and I hope you'll come back.

- Thank you.

- Happy 4th of July to all of you.

If you have any questions or comments, carolinabusinessreview.org, have a good weekend.

- [Announcer] Major funding for Carolina Business Review provided by High Point University, Martin Marietta, Colonial Life, The Duke Endowment, Sonoco, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina.

And by viewers like you, thank you.

(bright upbeat music)