‘I pitched 100 investors in a week where I could barely stand due to Covid’

Peony Li , 28, is the former head of investments at accelerator Founders Factory and founder ofJude, an incontinent healthcare company which sells supplements and pads and runs an online community for pelvic-related issues. Li recently closed a £2 million seed round after pitching to 100 investors in a week she was suffering from Covid. Here she recalls the experience.

“I could barely sleep due to thinking about the potential to tackle this health issue that’s seen as ‘taboo’ — incontinence — yet is a problem experienced by 14 million people in this country. So I decided to set up Jude to champion education and offer a range of solutions and options so that people can find the right one that works for them.

“Research was the first step: I met and spoke to people who had been suffering with bladder issues silently over a long period of time (on average, people put up with these issues for 10-20 years). A common thread that I saw in all of them was their optimism and ability to take something challenging and difficult and approach it with a positive attitude. That’s what helped me to stay optimistic and push through with Jude.

“After months of work, I finally got a pitch together and lined up weeks of investment pitches in early January 2021.

“Then I caught Covid. I hadn’t had the vaccine yet — it was well before the roll out for my age — and whilst I delayed a few less important investor meetings, I didn’t want to cancel my big ones because I just wasn’t sure if I would get a second chance.

“I wasn’t feeling at all well, though: I had extreme fatigue, I couldn’t stand up for more than two minutes, plus I had a fever, heavy cough and flu symptoms. Knowing it was Covid added a layer of fear, too. It was scary because I wasn’t quite sure how bad it could get and I was living on my own. I’d lied to my parents, telling them I was ill but it wasn’t Covid because I was worried they would fly over to see me from Hong Kong otherwise!

“Overall, I was excited about what Jude could offer to the world and the prospect of ‘announcing’ Jude for the first time trumped how my body felt. So I went through about 50 pitch meetings online that week. I pushed myself quite hard, because I felt so fortunate to have that many opportunities to pitch my idea. It’s not every day that a young Asian woman talks about something like bladder care and incontinence so openly. I watched investors’ eyes go wide when I spoke at length about bladders and how they work.

“It was hard work — and so many meetings. On average, it takes five to six meetings per investor to close out an investment. And I was very lucky to have 30 investors believing in the issue we are tackling at Jude, so that alone meant 180 meetings.

“Then I had around 70 investors rejecting me in the first and second meetings. I learnt a lot more from rejection than acceptance: I recorded my pitches and listened back to see what areas I can be more concise and confident in. It was a real journey of putting myself out there, experimenting with different presentation styles and cheering myself on.

“The hard work paid off: that January I’d given myself a goal of securing £500,000 of funding. I didn’t know whether people would really be interested in bladders. But by the end of the month, I’d had £1 million committed, and then it was oversubscribed and Jude ended up bringing in £2 million from backers including Samos, which was also early investors in Ocado, Bloom & Wild, and Charlotte Tilbury, as well as individuals working in healthcare. It was the biggest pre-seed round for a solo female founder in the UK: only 2.3% VC funding currently goes to women founders, but one in three entrepreneurs in the UK is a woman. Something doesn’t quite add up here.

“Funding diverse groups of entrepreneurs and encouraging diversity in healthcare innovation is so important. I believe we are at the start of this revolution and I am so excited to be part of this movement. And of course, I don’t just want to be seen as a female founder, I want to be seen as a good one, a responsible one and an effective one, regardless of my gender.”