Barbara Bickham [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Female VC Lab Podcast. My name is Barbara Bickham, and I would love for you to introduce yourself in one line. Give me your name, your title, and the name of your fund.
Sure. Thanks for having me. My name is Claire Chang, founding partner at IgniteXL Ventures.
Barbara Bickham [00:00:19]:
Wonderful. Thank you, Claire. So what inspired you to become a venture capitalist or, an investor?
I think there are 2 things that I can talk about. 1, is the fact that I am passionate in helping others. And I believe that comes from the fact that I myself have been a beneficiary of being helped by many others. I'm an immigrant, child. I came here with my family when I was 12 years old. None of my family members spoke a word of English. And so you can imagine from settling in to going to school, learning our ways through, we had to rely on helps from many, others. So that's one.
Having been a single mom with 2 children working full time Oh. It all had That's another one. And I absolutely relying on family and friends to fill in, taking care of the kids, Right. Being filling in that father's role, and just being mentored. It takes a village to raise a child and might think working full time as a single mom, there's no way you could do this by yourself.
Barbara Bickham [00:01:28]:
Having experienced that, the beauty of getting help, has made me wanna help others just as in return. So that's one. And, of course, if you've and all of us have have experience helping others, and the feeling that you get, the rewarding feeling that you get when you know that you have made an impact or difference, in others, I think that is what keeps you wanting to, be that helping hand when there's a call for it. Second thing I would say is the fact that I love working with passionate startup founders. The energy and the passion that they exude is really contagious and addictive.
Barbara Bickham [00:02:16]:
You know what? I'm glad you said that because it is very addictive. It can be addictive. That's a good word for it.
It is. Right? Many in the media, we see all these shining lights on these unicorn startup founders, but many of the founders, we struggle. The founders struggle. The the failure rate is very high, north of 95%. 90 90 some percent? 90. Right? It's not a it's a very tough and sometimes lonely journey. Yes. And I think I read most recently that start up founders are 2 times more likely to, suffer from depression.
Wow. Twice more likely to suffer from suicidal thoughts. Three times more having substance abuse. And get this, 10 times more, likely to, be suffering from bipolar disorder. I was like, damn.
Barbara Bickham [00:03:14]:
Wow. That's so interesting.
That's extreme. But at the same time, I think you can also see that because I when you're a founder, you have to constantly put on the space of being confident and and and at the same time, you're going through internal battle of self doubts and all these struggles that you're going through, but you can't show that upfront. I can see that, yeah, that bipolar
Barbara Bickham [00:03:38]:
The pressure. Now there's a constant pressure there as a founder, you know. Right. Right. There's a constant pressure and that can lead to many of those issues you discussed. So thank you for bringing that out, Claire.
And and yet, you have these founders that are just, you know, absolutely passionate in working on the the solutions products because they believe that they're solving a problem And then we'll be better placed with this solution. I know myself having gone through a personal experience of being in a start up where I was one of the the 6 team members, 5 engineers, 1 female. We were literally sleeping, eating, working in, you know, one office. Really just excited at what we were working on. We we really truly believed that this was going to change the world. You know, that whole the HBO Silicon Valley. Right. It's very true.
You you operate with this notion that you are doing something so important. You're so zeroed in what you're working on. It's that passion. And then, also, I think I started a global accelerator back in 2014. I was helping entrepreneurs in Korea to expand to the US markets. I worked with over 200 founders where I got to experience these amazing resilient founders. They had language barrier, cultural barrier. They weren't sleeping just because they needed to get ahead, to compete with the local founders here.
And none of that none of those challenges stopped them from what they wanted to do. And having worked with them over and over again, understanding the the kind of challenges that they face, but they were relentless, in their pursuit of getting the products, and solutions to the market. And it was through that experience, the understanding the need for capital. As an accelerator, we were connecting them to their customers, partners, mentors, investors. But at the core, you needed the capital. The capital. Key resources that these founders needed. So, back in 2019, I decided, okay, I love working with founders, but I can't in order to be relevant, in order to be sustainable, I need to create a fund.
I need to go raise money so that I can continue to do what I love, which is to support founders. And so rather than, oh, I wanna become a VC, it was more of I need to create a fund to be to infuse capital into
Barbara Bickham [00:06:05]:
these enterprises. To move those passions of those startups and those founders forward. That's great. That's great. Thanks so much for that, Claire. So tell me a little bit about your investment thesis and the motivation behind your investment thesis.
Sure. So our investment, we're very excited about this future of beauty and wellness. Our investment business, we're a global seed fund investing in the, igniting the kick ass entrepreneurs. We we we say that unapologetically. Kick ass entrepreneurs at the intersection point of technology, beauty, and wellness. And we are targeting pre seed and seed seed companies. We are global. We are US we are we are based in the US, but our belief is that beauty and wellness is global.
And that the innovation can come from really anywhere. And so we have made investments in Brazil, UK, of course, US, as well as Asia. And we also have strong ties, in Asia, especially Korea, Japan, China, where we have connections to manufacturers, to distribution partners, to customer insights where we add value to the founders that we back.
Barbara Bickham [00:07:21]:
That's our investment, thesis. Why are we so excited about this industry? Yeah. We really start with the premise that the beauty, is not just skin deep, but that it is it's much more holistic, that it's inside out, that it includes mind, body, soul. Mhmm. We're really looking at this through the lens of health and beauty. And when you look at and and when you look at these 3, things, 1, on the consumer base, we have Gen z's that are really redefining the definition of beauty. Again, it's it's not just, again, covering up, but it's really being authentic, self confident. And that's really inside out.
Your health, well-being is really at the core. They're also beauty means conscious. Right? They demand the the the the clean ingredients, cruelty free. ...
