- When we walk into a room of blue and gray suits
across the table, many times they don't invest.
Not because they are overtly biased against us,
but because they don't relate.
So the burden on us is to ask
for people who relate in that room.
Hi, I'm Cindy Eckert.
I'm the founder and CEO of The Pink Ceiling.
And I disrupted women's health.
And now I'm gonna disrupt just how many women
get to the billion dollar club.
I think the characteristics of a disruptor
are they are insatiably curious, they are obsessive.
And then in the end, and this is the most important,
they are relentless in seeing it through.
So The Pink Ceiling is me investing my own money,
my proceeds of selling these businesses,
and putting it into other disruptive first by women.
And what I love about that is, not only are we
solving for women's lack of access to capital,
but I think we're also changing everyone's mind
about who has the next billion dollar idea.
- You discovered something about the biology
of 10% of women that's impeding their sexual experiences.
- 10%, 10% of women are affected by a condition
called hypoactive sexual desire disorder.
That's a big medical word for basically
lack of interest in sex that's bothering them.
And so I did something ever so simple.
I listened to women.
I just started talking to women
who were dealing with this condition.
And therefore, if something is going wrong
you can find a way to treat it.
And that's what Addyi was all about,
was the first ever medication to address this
all too common condition affecting women.
- Getting this approved by the FDA was a Herculean task.
How difficult was it?
- Oh my gosh, Katie.
I don't know where to begin in how difficult it is.
I call it, it was a tale of two sexes
to go through the FDA to get the first ever
drug approved for women versus the first drug for men.
When Viagra came to market
it was literally fast-tracked for approval.
The FDA deemed that it met
such an important unmet medical need,
they rushed it through approval in six months.
By comparison, my drug affected the same number of women,
right, as men had with Viagra.
It took six years in the regulatory queue.
There were absolutely moments when I thought,
I can't do this, I've lost.
I particularly thought that when the FDA said no,
and I actually had a government decision that was no.
And I was gonna wake up and say,
but I'm gonna challenge the government?
But you know what?
By Monday I showed up and said to all of my company,
we're gonna dispute the FDA.
I laugh because my IT guy raised his hand
and he said, can you do that?
And I said, we're about to find out.
And he actually got a pair pink boxing gloves,
and put them on my desk, and they're still there today.
When we broke through in 2015,
there was no such term as femtech.
In 2016, the term femtech was coined.
It is projected to be a $50 billion category by 2025.
We blew the doors off.
The Pink Ceiling for me was about paying it forward.
It was about reaching my hand back and getting other women
to outcomes like mine faster than I got there myself.
So it's a big piece of what I do at The Pink Ceiling
is give my time, not just my money,
but my time to be able to explain,
I faced that challenge, here's how I managed it.
Go this way, I went that way.
That's really a lot of joy for me
in getting that opportunity to mentor other women.
- How do you get other women to do that as well?
Because you're just one person.
- Well I'll tell you,
one of the ways that I'm trying to create
the multiplier effect is for everyone that I invest in
in The Pink Ceiling, they make a commitment to me
that they will mentor someone else.
So I'm trying to build that army,
that pink army, if you will.
It's so rewarding to help someone else get to that position.
- That's part of the deal.
We'll give you money, you have to pledge to be a mentor.
- And that's such an important piece,
I think, of our obligation again to pay it forward.
One at a time, still really adds up.
What I mean by empathy being the DNA of a rule breaker
is that it's really that spark
that forces you to challenge the status quo.
Really feeling it, putting yourself in someone else's shoes.
And I think if I look at all the female founders
I invest in that is their unique characteristic.
Oh, my next disruption is coming through The Pink Ceiling,
when I create an army of women
who get to billion dollar outcomes.
And ultimately create a billion dollars
worth of wealth for other women.
[upbeat music]