“Choose Hope... optimism is the belief that things will turn out all right; hope makes no such assumption but is a conviction that one can act to make things better in some way.”
Arthur C Brooks
It always made for an awkward dinner party moment. Picture this—multiple couples around a table, a few cocktails in, and my wife would casually drop, “My husband invests in vagina-tech—tell them, honey.”
Without fail, the room would fall quiet. The husbands would glance at me suspiciously. The wives would squirm. But my wife? Unrelenting.
And so, I’d explain. How we’d recently backed a brilliant PhD entrepreneur in the UK. Her first product? A kegel trainer, designed for post-partum and menopausal women—unspoken needs, quietly endured, now finally addressed.
I’d describe—carefully—the role of the pelvic floor, the challenge of building kegel routines, and how, surprisingly, the best way to tense those muscles is to imagine zipping up from the space between your legs.
Our first meeting with Tania Boler, Elvie’s founder, was over the phone. Within ten minutes, we knew: she was someone we wanted to back. Her conviction, clarity, and courage stood out immediately.
Tania’s pedigree in the health space, her confidence in pursuing a calling to build a female-focussed consumer technology company well before such trends were established and the ability to have brought together a small but talented group of builders and supporters to complement her skillset were strong markers for us.
We understood the challenge. The topic—women involuntarily peeing—wasn’t easy dinner party fodder, let alone an easy pitch to VCs. Especially in the US, where pelvic floor issues are whispered about, not subsidized like in France.
Our senses were also heightened by Elvie building physical products - we’d already learned the hard way about hardware.
Investing in hardware is hard. Investing in women’s health? Even harder. Combine the two and you have a rare breed of venture bet—complex to build, harder to fund, and often misunderstood.
Back then, femtech wasn’t even a recognised term. There was no playbook, no buzzword category to ride. Just unmet need, product complexity, and massive cultural discomfort. That’s precisely why it felt important.
These lessons and insights helped us evaluate Elvie’s risks—and more importantly, their plans to mitigate them.
Crucially, Tania had secured a partnership and investment-in-kind from Foxconn—Apple’s manufacturing partner. They would be embedding a senior operations executive on the ground in China. And in Alex Asseilly, Tania had a co-founder with real manufacturing pedigree.
The vision that Tania painted was compelling to us.
A female focussed consumer technology company - building products specifically for women, designed and tested by women and marketed specifically for women.
In 2015 this was a refreshing and unique approach.
The kegel trainer was a beachhead, with a bigger roadmap in stealth mode.
The design of the trainer was captivating. The look and feel of the packaging and the product carried strong echoes of the Apple hallmarks - affirming the influence of the Foxconn partnership.
Tania smartly leveraged early angel investors and government grants to bring her first product to life, with a small scrappy team based in the UK.
With my partners and I being based in NYC and with two of us newly minted fathers in NYC, we offered something rare—hands-on investors in a key growth market and two wives fitting the ideal customer profile of the company. Tania saw the value immediately and appreciated our authenticity.
In the months that followed our first investment, we hosted Elvie events at my apartment - or perhaps more accurately phrased - my partner and I set-up the casual get-togethers with food and drinks, while our wives curated the invitees and actually hosted the informal chats and product-intros.
We sat in the local bar making ourselves scarce!
As momentum grew in Europe and the US, we looked for new ways to support Elvie. My partner, an early Crossfit South Brooklyn member, saw an opportunity to tap into a broad and engaged fitness community.
We discovered that weak pelvic floors plagued female Crossfit athletes, particularly during high-impact moves like box jumps and double-unders.
With David Osario, the founder of Crossfit South Brooklyn, we hosted a pelvic floor training session for female athletes—introducing them to Elvie’s game-changing trainer.
Buoyed by that micro-success, we partnered with mid-level female Crossfit pros to film a series of grassroots videos highlighting pelvic floor issues—and Elvie’s solution.
These small, scrappy acts of support built a strong, trusting relationship with Tania—and with the Elvie team. We became relentless champions, pitching Elvie’s story to every investor who would listen - even if the raised eyebrows and awkward smiles were the most common response!
Being early isn’t just about investing before others—it’s about showing up. It’s helping founders tell a story that most people aren’t ready to hear. It’s making calls, setting up meetings, hosting gatherings in your living room, and persuading skeptics to listen.
In the earliest days, belief is the currency that matters most.
Then the PR rocket-fuel hit. Gwyneth Paltrow featured Elvie in her Goop newsletter and started selling it on her website. Gwyneth then went on Chelsea Handler’s talk show and championed the benefits of using an Elvie trainer. Then a Kardashian posted about it.
Elvie’s kegel trainer had its moment.
Our small efforts were dwarfed by the tidal wave of publicity—but the sentiment stuck. Tania never forgot those early days.
Elvie scaled fast—landing shelf space at major UK and US retailers. This provided the beach head to launch their category disrupting breast pump - silent, tubeless and discreet. This blew away other new entrants to the market as well as upending the multi-billion dollar dinosaur in Medela.
Who among us—mums and dads alike—was sad to see the demise of the car-battery breast pump, which sounded more like a canal dredger than a lifeline for new parents?
Riding high, Elvie shifted focus from innovation to execution—navigating the complex world of manufacturing, distribution, and multi-market expansion. Then the pandemic hit.
COVID delivered a brutal one-two punch: snarled supply chains and a venture capital world already mildly allergic to hardware, finding their resistance intensifying in favour of software and up and coming A.I.
Against the odds, Elvie raised a major funding round—led by the world’s largest asset manager. But the price was steep. By dragging out negotiations and amidst a brutal fund-raising environment, the new investor, in partnership with an existing investor, cornered the company.
Investment was secured, but the investor protections in the form of liquidation preferences were brutal.
As headwinds for the company increased, along with some avoidable mistakes, Elvie was forced to raise again 18 months later. This time the investor group sensed blood and after another punitive term sheet, any hope of a meaningful return for founders, early employees, or early investors was eliminated.
Tania, worn down by battles on every front, stepped back from daily operations—and eventually, from the board.
When I got the email from Elvie’s in-house counsel a few months ago asking to “catch up,” I knew it wasn’t good. By now, we were minnows—no longer even on the investor call list.
Yet what amazed me was this: despite legal constraints, two team members made time to call a small handful of early friends and investors—just to flag what was coming.
The bad news wasn’t a surprise. Tough funding rounds, Tania’s departure, radio silence from the board—these were hallmarks of a dying investment we’d seen before.
But the call itself? It meant something. It meant we were remembered.
It spoke volumes to the energy and effort we had given to this amazing company and team.
I have so many feelings about what happened to Elvie and Tania.
Our journey with Elvie wasn't just about an investment or a company. It was about daring to back something rare, to advocate when few were listening. To believe in something that seemed obvious but impossible at the same time.
Through this journey we got to witness first-hand the brutal realities of building something real in a world that often rewards the easy and the loud.
I feel regret that Elvie started in the UK, not the US—where capital flows faster, risks are rewarded and ambition is celebrated and Tania’s vision would have been a guiding light for other female founders.
I definitely feel immense pride to have played even a tiny part in Elvie’s amazing story.
But more than anything I feel so much gratitude to be able to call Tania and her husband great friends.
