Startup Hero – Colette Courtion of Joylux

Colette Courtion founded Joylux (www.joylux.com) in 2016 after she became a mother and experienced both the joys of motherhood and the consequence of incontinence that results from childbearing. She had previously founded a skincare company and decided to apply some of the technologies that help skin look younger to a more intimate health problem—sexual health—that not only is the result of childbirth, but also menopause. Colette brought a meaningful change to the conversation of intimate women’s health—no small accomplishment for a startup.

Taking a page out of the playbook of Clarisonic and Sonicare (both from last-generation Startup Hero David Giuliani), she decided to go to market through a professional channel of doctors who performed vaginal rejuvenation procedures. With the usual problems facing a startup, there were ups and downs, but she persisted, building a great team and wonderful investor base. (Note: I am an investor, so not entirely unbiased!)

Joylux was recognized by the Angel Capital Association as last year’s most innovative company. Despite the many hurdles of starting a women’s health company, Joylux was beginning to get a lot of traction. Then came the pandemic. 

With the help of CFO Peter Weiss, they quickly strategized about what they would need to do. As Courtion shared, “There is an advantage of being an ‘older’ entrepreneur. I was there for the dot-com bust of early 2001 and saw what happened to Lehman Brothers during the 2008 crash. In order to survive, I knew that we needed to move early, fast, and make hard decisions.” Just like there is no immunity from the COVID-19 virus, there is no immunity to the economic result either.

She and Peter put together a plan and sat down with the management team to discuss. “We laid out the stark financial reality and shared the numbers. We asked that everyone first take a salary cut and then we discussed what roles we had to eliminate,” Courtion said. “We asked them to consider what they could do financially to help the business survive, gave them overnight to consider, and then we talked the next day. I’m proud to say the management team was thoughtful and creative. They came back with deep cuts—perhaps deeper than we might have done without their input. The key was that we came together as a team—everyone had ownership—for a plan to help the business remain strong.” 

The salary cuts were substantial. Senior management led the way with 50% cuts. But in one case, they recommended actually raising an employee’s salary. She was a phenomenal employee but would have suffered massively because her comp was commission-based, so they decided to change her comp model. “That brought us loyalty, as well as an even stronger commitment to the business.” 

Before COVID-19, Joylux had 15 employees; they cut to 9, and 2 contractors agreed to lower their number of hours. This was all done prior to PPP (Payroll Protection Act), which did not come through until more than a month later.

“After we cut expenses, I posed the following question to the team: If we could start over, what would you do differently?” Courtion said. “Each team/department went off and discussed what they thought we should do. A week later, they came back and presented what they would do, with the entire team participating.” Turned out to be more than just how the company should pivot in response to COVID-19—they implemented changes that had been put off because they were too busy, changes that made Joylux a stronger business. 

“The silver lining to COVID-19 is that it has given us a perfect opportunity to test things that might affect the near-term, top-line revenue, but will be better for us long term and make Joylux even stronger. We put in place a new way to do business, shifting from a wholesale business model with professional doctors to a more D2C business model,” Courtion said.

Like Sonicare Toothbrush and Clarisonic, the core strategy prior to the pandemic was to engage the professional channel, i.e. Ob-Gyns and urologists, for product validation and endorsements, but COVID-19 caused a pivot to a more direct-to-consumer focus. This was necessary while the pro channel was closed due to the quarantine. Courtion added, “The professional partner is still vital to our business, but how we engage with them changed. We quickly put in place a telehealth-like program to help them refer patients to the Joylux site for sales during the period their offices were closed. Being direct-to-consumer is allowing us to be much more creative. From telehealth opportunities to testing a membership business model, COVID-19 may turn out to be our catalyst for major growth.”

I asked Colette how she communicated the changes to her shareholders. First came shareholder Zoom calls to communicate the changes, followed by weekly email updates. She was particularly proud of her shareholders’ response. Although it was painful to do so, Joylux also decided to reopen the previous priced round from 2017. With the idea of raising $500K, they asked shareholders to each add $5,000 to their investment. In fact, most shareholders did more than their pro rata, and the company raised over $1.2M. That, along with another $200K from the PPP, gave them the cash cushion they needed.

“The business is doing very well. We lost 60% of our revenues overnight, but with the team’s quick shift to D2C, we have more than made up for it. We are seeing strong year-over-year growth, which is unprecedented for most businesses today. I am very proud of our team.” Asked about the future, Courtion added, “Even if the recovery is slow—12 to 18 months or longer—we are really optimistic about the future. We will attract new customers with a wider net.” Joylux has done best case/worst case modeling and believes that they are in a category (female sexual health) that will continue to grow. “COVID-19 will pass, but the need to treat these symptoms won’t,” she said, ending the discussion on an optimistic note.

Leadership for the Pandemic and the New Normal

The COVID-19 Pandemic has caused every startup to assess how to survive and plan to thrive in the “new normal.” No one knows what the new normal will look like, but based on other jolts to our economic system, we do know that life after this pandemic will be different than life before – at least for a while.  Just as there is no natural immunity to the Covid-19 virus, there will be no immunity to the economic disruption that results.

As I previously posted (see http://blog.drosenassoc.com/?p=140 and http://blog.drosenassoc.com/?p=145), startups need to act  while they can to survive, pivot (as appropriate), and figure out what unique things each business can do to solidify their future.

This is a test of leadership. 

Most angels cite the team as number one thing they look for in their investments.  The critical role of dynamic leadership is more important in this time of unprecedented upheaval and startup survival threat. 

Founders and CEOs must maintain team enthusiasm in the face of societal and personal hardships now more than ever.  While maintaining team cohesion, startup leaders also need to motivate their investors to stick with them and subscribe to their changing vision.  Both founders and their investors are in this to create great companies that lead to great exits.  Ultimately future investors and acquirers will judge and value the enterprise based on how well it adapts to this new normal.  But, of course, there is no company to value if it runs out of cash before it gets to an exit.

As I’ve spoken with many startup CEOs, I’m finding that they seem to fit into one or several of four categories.  These are:

  1. Immediate action.  These CEOs (generally guided by either their own experience or that of an experienced CFO who has experienced previous downturns) see that cash must be conserved with a potential path to becoming cash flow positive.  They tend to involve their entire employee team into the conversation and take rapid action to conserve cash.  They often have a company that already has some cash flow, so balance the reduced cash flow with cuts to stay alive and potentially thrive.  Given that cash balance is finite, early cuts have a bigger impact than later ones; this is similar to the response to Covid-19, where earlier actions seem to have more effect in preventing widespread infection.
  2. Benefit from the “New Normal”.  There truly are some business that will benefit from the disruption.  A clear example is Zoom, which is blossoming as we all need to move to videoconferencing.  Or, one of my portfolio companies, DocuSign that has enabled transactions to still be done virtually.  Some clever entrepreneurs have quickly pivoted to provide a piece of critical infrastructure for businesses to reopen safely. 
  3. Wait and see.  Some CEOs decide to wait to understand how bad their situation will be before taking action.  They might have considerable cash in the bank – they believe sufficient to weather the storm.  And, guided by their prior experience, believe that when cash get low, they will have achieved milestones that allow them to raise more cash.
  4. Denial.  These CEOs believe that, while things look bad right now, their business will turn around and go back to the way things were before.  In some cases, they were in the middle of raising institutional money and believe that the money will come (it might).  In some cases, there is a logic that says if every one of my competitors cuts back, but I continue to move forward, then I will be the biggest winner when the market does turn.  There are probably some businesses that will do well in the “new normal” but I doubt that it is as many as think that they will do well.

The purpose of the above discourse is to point out that there are many different paths to leadership in this tumultuous time.  No one path is always correct, and most leaders will use some elements of more than one.

Over the next few weeks, I will talk with leaders who I believe, through their actions, have demonstrated exceptional leadership in the face of what could have been a company destruction.  I believe that their examples will serve to illustrate why we invest in startups and be a guidepost for others to adopt best practices.

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