Adam Torres and Madalina Preda discuss investing in start-ups.
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Show Notes:
What trends are taking place in funding women’s health initiatives? In this episode, Adam Torres and Madalina Preda, Head of Strategic Venture Capital Partnerships & Investor at NN Group, explore Madalina’s journey and the current state of startups focusing on women’s health initiatives.
About Madalina Preda
An accomplished business executive with a solid track record in leading strategic initiatives that drive company performance and growth. Her expertise lies in building strong partnerships with venture capitalists startups, scaleups and academic institutions, backed by a strong grasp of market research and data analysis to inform smart business decisions.
She have a proven history of improving customer experience and profitability by streamlining processes and implementing quality management systems. Her hands-on experience with global operations, including managing partnerships, customer support, and pricing across different regions, has been integral to the success of the companies she worked with. With a straightforward approach to management, She focuses on aligning resources, values and talent to efficiently meet business objectives and customer needs. Known for clear and effective communication, She is adept at facilitating teamwork and collaborations across diverse groups.
About NN Group
NN Group is an international financial services company, active in 11 countries, with a strong presence in a number of European countries and Japan. Their roots lie in the Netherlands, with a rich history of more than 175 years. With their 15,000 employees, NN Group provides retirement services, pensions, insurance, banking and investments to approximately 18 million customers. NN Group includes Nationale-Nederlanden, NN, ABN AMRO Insurance, Movir, AZL, BeFrank, OHRA and Woonnu. NN Group opened for trading on 2 July 2014 on Euronext Amsterdam under the symbol ‘NN’ after its initial public offering (IPO). For more than 175 years, our company has merged, grown and changed, but the core of who we are has remained the same. At NN Group, they put their resources, expertise, and networks to use for the well-being of their customers, the advancement of their communities, the preservation of their planet, and for the promotion of a stable, inclusive, and sustainable economy.
Their purpose is to help people care for what matters most to them. Because what matters to them matters to us.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today’s guest is Maralina Preda, and she’s head of Strategic Venture Capital Partnerships and an investor at NN Group.
Maralina, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Adam. And it’s a pleasure and an honor to be here. will start by saying yes. All right. So I gotta tell you Marina I love the topic today. So funding initiatives and startups focusing on women’s health. Big deal to me is , getting the message out to my audience, to other investors and otherwise about the importance of this.
And I guess just to get us started here Marlena, I’ll start with what we call our mission matters minute. So at mission matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, for executives, and for experts, that’s our mission. Marlena, what mission matters to you? I’ve always been interested in innovation and technology and I’m passionate about improving healthcare and people’s lives.
My mission is particularly to improve women’s health which has been thoroughly neglected and women’s health is everyone’s health. I’ve worked in life sciences and then moved into financial services. And investing in women’s health and innovation is my attempt to bring those two worlds together for the greater good.
So women’s health, I understand that that’s is, and technology are big themes here. What do you like about working with entrepreneurs? Because I feel like working with entrepreneurs is pretty cool too. Like the people that are out there dreaming up these dreams and trying to make them happen and working towards them.
Like, what do you like about working with entrepreneurs?
There are many things I love about working with entrepreneurs. They happen to be what we often call the unreasonable. Bernard Shaw once said that most people who change the world are the unreasonable. I believe the entrepreneurs are these people that are trying to adapt nature and society and everything else to our needs.
I love to support them. I love how dedicated they are to the cause they work for and to solving intricate problems for world and also for our planet many times. Yeah. Like, , when did you first decide? And I know you mentioned the finance background, obviously health, of course, but like, when did you decide to kind of make that shift?
Or I should say to combine them just to combine those skill sets. Like, how did that happen? How did that take place? It started in in 2020. At the time I was working in financial services, but in a different industry. And it was clear to me that I missed the impact I used to have on people’s lives when I worked in life sciences.
While working there our team used to say, we’re in the business of saving lives. And I wanted to find a place where I could still help people to save lives and make lives better. But also do it from a financial perspective. That’s interesting. and so now you kind of shift over from, and , It’s a little bit of a shift of focus and you get further into financing and into the entrepreneurial space, the VC space, like what was that like when you started there?
Like, was it an easy transition? Was it kind of like an easy move or was it a little bit of a adjustment there on your end? Like, how did that work? It was such an eye opener to realize how much of an impact actually venture capitals have and this it’s interesting when you first get into that world and you’re like, and then it’s almost like you have a new vision, right?
Like you see the world differently. Absolutely. When it comes to healthcare for women or any other problems that we have, we need to do more. We need radical change. That change normally doesn’t come from incumbents, whether they’re in healthcare or insurance or policy makers. It’s most likely going to be driven by the unreasonable, by the visionaries, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
And what’s really impressive is that. If you look at the latest Harvard study that studies the period between 2000 and 2020 it shows that 49 percent of the non financial, financial IPOs in the US were VC backed up. And this is only going to grow more as there is a shift in the economy. We’re moving from tangible to intangible goods, which means that we’re going from physical such as machines, buildings, tools.
So R and D design, market research, business processes, and software. This is really the sweet spot of DCs. And it’s not surprised that it’s spread everywhere in the world. And we see that in the U S we see that in Europe. And for example, in Europe, we saw venture capital double in the five years before 2019.
And what I love about them is that they have a completely different mindset. They’re focused on long term, they’re willing to take risks, and they’re relentless about winning. Hmm. , and you bring up a good point. Obviously there are, , people trying to solve many problems, but , you chose to focus and narrow in , on women’s health.
And you mentioned kind of at the beginning of this interview that women’s health is everybody’s health. Why did you feel like such an attraction to that mission? Like, why did that matter to you so much?
Firstly women’s health has been thoroughly neglected and women make up half of the population, the workforce, and community. They also make 80 percent of the family’s decisions on any Investments on health care, for example, and their well being is key to overall health of families and community enabling women to be healthier impacts the public, the private, the social sector, and it leads to an overall healthier lifestyle and population.
In addition to that last year, I lost one of my best friends in Amsterdam following period of depression, she committed suicide, and her death was a shock it was a, a wake up call, and it made me realize the urgency. Of acting and of acting right now. Yeah. And that, and that also kind of in my mind , and sorry to hear that, of course, but that also in my mind just lets us know, just kind of maybe short sighted or how, like how we missed that for so long, you know what I mean?
I think the pandemic woke up certain things in, in a lot of us, whether it was work life balance or like what we’re doing, how we’re like, we were asleep in a many ways, I think as a society in many different areas to not just this one and many, and now we’ve kind of been given that like wake up call, right?
It was a wake up call that we felt as a society and some of us had more impact to deal with. It certainly brought up a lot of questions as to how we want to continue. To manage healthcare overall in the world and and there is a lot of opportunity. There’s, there’s opportunity to address these challenges that are positive trends and each challenge will bring more People together to to solve the problem and will also enable us to employ emerging technology, but also better ways of collaborating globally to to solve these problems that are there in every region of the world.
Yeah, absolutely. , and , you live this and I mean, this is what you’re doing day in and day out. So I’d be interested from your vantage point to see like , what’s going on, whether it’s trends or otherwise, when it comes to funding women’s health, like, what are you seeing? First of all, there are positive trends.
Artificial intelligence is fueling early detection and preventive strategies. That can improve wellbeing. Recently the National Bureau of Economic Research has published a report what, which shows that a wider adoption of AI could lead to potential cost savings of 200 billion to 300 billion in the U.
S. only. And that’s billion with a B. That’s with a B. Within the next five years. So that’s very promising. Catalyst will, technology will be a catalyst for change. And these improvements will bring new challenges. Of course, I will have to address them, learn from them. Digital health is the future of our health systems and connectivity, as well as efficiency can be addressed with technology.
We’ll have to work more on data. And foremost, we’re going to have to work more on collaboration among stakeholders working as an ecosystem and not forget that technology technology is an enabler is a tool. At the end of the day, it has to be assisted by by humans. It has to be ethical. It has to be serving us and the greater good.
Mm hmm. When it comes to a like to a trend, and I, and I, I’m not asking you to answer, I’m asking you, by the way, to speak for the whole firm or anything like that for an end group or anything. I’ll preface that. I’ll preface that as I’m asking for your opinion, not, not the company’s. When it comes to a, like a founder, a founder that you’re considering backing or otherwise, what, what kind of things that that’s in this space, what kind of things stick out to you as like traits that you want to see in a founder that that’s going to potentially get funded?
I’m going to say that I love to see someone that knows the problem rather than the technology. The technology is something that’s enabling us to solve the problem. Somebody that’s aware of what needs to be solved, is passionate about the problem rather than the solution which might change in time.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the space tend to be women. And why do we admire them for their resilience and, and also for their performative activism and, and also for everything they do, they also need to be careful and make sure that they also focus on their own wellbeing. What we need to remember is that often Founders face undue pressure to prove their worth.
And their dedication , and resilience is admired, but they often don’t get to prioritize the work life balance. They don’t dare to ask for fair compensation or business valuation. And I would love to remind All of them that what I would, what I love to see is that they still look at the health and well being as being paramount and that I am more than happy to to support this.
And this is a message I’ve heard also from the CEO , and founder of fem health and fem tech Catherine Stockard and I support this message. I think. It’s not easy to do given the system we all operate in. But this is something I like to see in a founder that they start with their own. Well being and and taking care of their health.
And I think we should encourage that. And I think some of the so that that’s great to hear number one coming from yourself and from someone that, you know, does what you do day in and day out. And I hope many others are thinking about that, the decision making positions of different companies that have access to capital.
But that being said, I think that old stigma, was that kind of like I don’t know if I’d say layover, if that’s the right word or just inheritance of like the original tech, founders that traded everything, right. Or supposedly, right. And traded their lives and everything else for the company or the business and otherwise.
And now it’s saying that maybe it doesn’t have to be quite that way, like to that extreme. Like, am I understanding that right? Do you kind of see that? Yes definitely. , we see that with founders in general. We see that even more prominently with female founders. And also let’s not forget that while venture capital investment in women’s health has increased by 314 percent over the last five years, it’s, it’s still only Makes up 2 percent of the overall health sector.
So, there’s a lot of I was waiting for you to bring out a stat like that, because I know that hadn’t changed. I mean, it sounds, I mean, and this is also how you can make numbers sound good, right? Increase of multiple hundreds of percents, but it’s only still 2 percent overall, right? That’s the finance in us, right?
It just depends how you want to say it, right? It does. And this is something that we like to remind people as well, that numbers tell a story as well. And it really depends how you bring our story up. And, to your point we’ve come a long way, but we’re far from where we should be.
On top of that, we mean only make up 30 percent of startup founders overall. Which means that quite a bit too, because like, even the fact that I, I wasn’t aware of this until you just mentioned it a moment ago, that the, that in this particular space, that there’s a, there’s many, and it’s maybe, I don’t know if you use the word predominantly, but there’s a significant amount of women founders in this particular space, which to me, that’s, that’s hopeful.
Like that’s awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so some tech founders, 24 percent are women to put a number to it. And we, we have seen a slight decline since 2022. But, but still it’s, it’s a very positive trend. And we see also that while The venture ecosystem is predominantly male dominated, yet FEMA found it to present a growing fraction of the total VC activity as well, which is very encouraging.
And normally when people are talking about that and , not necessarily, I’m not putting these words into your mouth, but it’s in many of the discussions I’ve heard it,, it’s about representation. It’s about a lot of other things, but in my mind, it’s also just good business.
Like you want the other perspective, you want others perspectives and diversity of people and, you know, ultimately buyers for end products, like in the decision making roles to, to weigh in. Right. Like if everybody looks the same, it’s kind of hard for them to, to weigh in and what the masses want or every niche want, so to speak.
So I I’m a fan of the diversity of it in general. I think it’s just good business. Absolutely. I love those two words. I’m going to speak to them good business. So first of all what we see in the numbers is, is impressive. Women or female founders. Secured about 10 billion in 2023. And they have shown also very strong performance.
They grew sales more rapidly than some of the male led companies. And Some of the mixed leadership counterparts that are from really good and encouraging numbers showing in the gender index, which was published in the UK on the beginning of this year. So, there is definitely good business to have women founders to have women at the table, not to mention that we have to include, women in any discussions about some health. Well, it’s only half the population, right?
I say that I’m laughing because I don’t want to cry. Like, what else do you say, right? Like, like, I mean, we’re, we’re finally starting to move the needle and I’m just happy and I’m optimistic. But I agree with the theme of this overall conversation that there’s just so much more for us to do. Yes, and we can only do it together.
It’s been a privilege to work with both female and male founders in FemHealth. We do have to look at the problems , with both perspectives. And we need to encourage them and work together. , as I mentioned, women’s health is, is everyone’s health and both men and women deserve to have the right health treatment and also to, to benefit from A health system that understands their problems treats them according to their needs.
Amazing. Well, Madalina, this has been great having you on the show today. Final question the day. What’s next? I mean, what’s next for you? What’s next for for your plans? Like what’s next?
Determination to continue on the path of working together with all the stakeholders guys. Particularly the unreasonable visionaries, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to improve women’s health and to see positive social impact driven by our collaboration, but also by the results of improving healthcare for all of us.
Wonderful. And I said that would be the last question. I got one more. If people want to follow up, they want to connect and they want to follow your journey or learn more, how do they do that? I’d be more than happy to get in touch with anyone. I do use LinkedIn quite a lot. My name is Marilina Lavinia Preda.
And they can easily find me on LinkedIn and I will welcome the dialogue and happy to support and help whatever I can. Perfect. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll put the link to Maralina’s LinkedIn in the show notes. You can just click on the link, head right on over and connect.
And speaking of the audience. If this is your first time with Mission Matters first off, welcome. Second, this is a daily show. That means each and every day we’re bringing you new content new leaders, new thought leaders, and hopefully new ideas and new things that are going to inspiration that are going to help you along a way on your journey as well.
If that sounds interesting to you, we welcome you hit that subscribe button or that follow button so that you get the notification because guess what’s coming up tomorrow. We got another episode coming up for you. So we don’t want you to miss that. Hit that subscribe button and Marlena again, thank you so much for coming on.
This has been a really enjoyable conversation. Thank you so much, Adam. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to be here. I look forward to subscribing and, and following some of the new episodes, and it’s been great to be here. Thank you so very much.
