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This summer, I got the opportunity to sit down with 15 of our Ohio-based Under 30 listers to hear about their entrepreneurial journeys ahead of our 2023 Forbes Under 30 Summit in Cleveland.
One story that stood out to me was that of 2020 Under 30 Lister Claire Coder, who founded her startup Aunt Flow after experiencing the all-too-common problem of getting her period in public without the supplies she needed. Google, Netflix and 500 other companies and schools pay the Columbus, Ohio–based startup to stock more than 30,000 bathrooms with free tampon and pad dispensers.
She’s now raised some $17 million in funding to make period care accessible to everyone–but Coder, who dropped out of college to start Aunt Flow, says she had to fight to get there. “The first round I raised, it was 86 no’s before I got my first yes,” she says. “I just kept knocking because I truly believed we were solving a real problem–accessible period care, just like toilet paper. Thankfully I didn’t stop at the 85th pitch, I kept going.”
And in a world where women’s health has become a hot button topic, Coder is working to make sure periods aren’t just a “women’s issue.”
“Everyone loves someone who menstruates, and that allows us to make sure the conversation around accessible period care is not just for women, not just for girls, it’s for everyone,” Coder says. “Because when people have access to basic necessities, it truly makes the playing field equal.“
Check out our full conversation here.
P.S. We have a new Forbes Under 30 reporter! Please give a warm welcome to Alex York, who joined us this week and will be taking over this newsletter from here on out. And a big thank you to our summer intern, Sarah Eccleston, who rounds out her time with Forbes today.
This Scientist Thinks You Should Pay $215 A Month For ‘Good’ Bacteria To Help Control Your Diabetes
Biotech researcher Colleen Cutcliffe designed probiotics to help diabetics lower their blood sugar. Now she’s got a handful of expensive supplements for sale – and Halle Berry on board to help sell them.
On Our Radar
-Spending over over $100 an hour on a personal life coach may be a thing of the past. Google DeepMind has been developing a life coach, which will give its users 21 different tools including professional and personal advice, planning tools and tutoring advice personalized to specific users’ issues. However, it’s possible that it may never launch, as Google’s A.I. safety experts warned that it may cause adverse effects on mental health and personal agency. (New York Times)
-Pharrell Williams’ 20-year-old menswear brand, Billionaire Boys Club, announced a partnership with Moncler, an outerwear street-wear brand. The collaboration features items that combine Moncler’s distinguishing silhouette and Billionaire Boys Club’s astronaut emblem, and range from $330 for a T-shirt to $3,380 for a wool varsity jacket with leather sleeves. (Vogue Business)
-Pew pew pew! Tech company LineVision is using laser sensor boxes attached to power lines to receive wind and temperature data. These boxes will speed up the process of incorporating clean energy while keeping costs down. How? Find out here. (NPR)
Lister Lowdown
-2021 Under 30 Hollywood & Entertainment lister Jed Baker launched Starglow Media, a new kids and family podcast network, Thursday. It will feature shows on a variety of topics, including education, bedtime stories, adventure, science and news. Baker, the new network’s CEO and founder, formerly worked at United Talent Agency, where he represented clients like Audible, iHeart and Wondery.
-With 2023 Under 30 Social Impact lister Hunter Swisher as its CEO, Phospholutions raised over $10 million in additional investments for its environmentally sustainable RhizoSorb fertilizer, it announced Tuesday. The fertilizer gives plants the same amount of phosphorus as the standard fertilizer on the market while emitting 50% less phosphorus into the atmosphere and surrounding areas, including nearby water sources. Nutrient runoffs, including phosphorus, can cause harmful algal blooms, which inflict harm and create a toxic environment on animals, plants and sometimes humans that may lead to death.
-On Tuesday, 2023 Manufacturing and Industry listers Greta Meyer and Amanda Calabrese announced that their startup’s reinvented spiral tampon was approved by the FDA. Their company, Sequel, produced a tampon with a spiral design that was designed to prevent possible leakages that occur before the tampon is completely full. The two have raised $5 million in seed funding from Pear VC and MaC Venture Capital, opened a new San Francisco office and began a manufacturing partnership with Albaad.
-Heirloom Carbon, a company that extracts CO2 from the atmosphere and stores the gas underground, will be part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s $1.2 billion investment into two commercial-scale direct air capture facilities in Texas and Louisiana. Noah McQueen, cofounder of the company and a 2023 Under 30 Social Impact lister, says they heat up limestone, which then in turn scrubs the atmosphere of CO2.
Read the full article here