Boundless Optimism

Sure. I came to the UK on my own when I was 15 years old. I did school and university here, and have studied and worked here since. I'm from Hong Kong. My first job was in oil and gas investment banking — very different from healthcare, and very different from what I'm doing now. But I've always wanted to start a mission-driven company that's community-led: gathering people's voices and really addressing their needs is what I'm passionate about.

So leaving banking, I joined Founders Factory, an accelerator and incubator where we invest in businesses as well as starting our own, alongside a few forward-thinking corporates like L'Oréal, EasyJet and Aviva. In that role I was a startup investor. I invested in more than 60 companies and supported their growth, and I fell in love with consumer healthcare and consumer companies, because they're the ones that really lead the charge to make a direct impact on people's lives and health. Seeing how their customers and community members respond to a quality product or service is what really inspired me.

I loved it so much that I left Founders Factory to join a very early-stage company called Daye. They'd invented a pain-relieving tampon that also addresses a very underserved issue: endometriosis, a severe form of period pain. A lot of women don't get validated that it's a problem — they're not heard, not seen, not valued. And when we offered that product to women, they came back to us. What was most rewarding and eye-opening was hearing their feedback — not just on the brand or the product, but on the outcomes we managed to give them: every month, for that week, "I don't have to skip school, I don't have to skip work, and I feel good, and I feel heard." That's really important to me as a value.

During the pandemic, I also saw an unaddressed national gap, where frontline workers — people like yourself — had to walk to the front of the battlefield without any protection. There wasn't enough PPE in the country, and the government wasn't quick enough to address it. I'm well connected to a few quality manufacturers that produce protective equipment and personal care products, so I established a direct supply chain from China to the UK and distributed six million pieces of PPE to frontline workers, carers and COVID hubs. That immediate feeling of knowing I was there to support them is something I can't find elsewhere.

When I was chatting to business owners who run care homes and distribution centres, I got to talk to lots of people over 50. They're full of life. They have their own businesses. Contrary to a lot of what the media says — that they're old and frail and fragile — they're actually very successful. They know what they're talking about, and I learned so much from them. We'd get talking about their health and what they thought about COVID, and usually about 20 minutes into the conversation they'd tell me, "My bladder is giving up on me," wrapped up in a lot of shame and embarrassment.

So I did a lot more research into the topic. 14 million people in the UK have bladder issues. Globally, 400 million people have incontinence or bladder leaks — that would be the third largest country after China and India. A problem of that scale, and no one is talking about it, just because it's a taboo.

And that is just not good enough for me. So I started Jude, and we're now a bladder care company. We've turned bladder weakness into something preventative, and turned the word "incontinence" into something we can work on — it's not embarrassing anymore.

Very good question. There are two things I learned from investing and being on the other side. The first is resilience, persistence and founder temperament — something not a lot of people really talk about. When you're starting a company at a very early stage, people see the fun, the challenge, the thrill, the rosy picture. But it's very difficult. When people don't believe in your idea, when they don't see enough traction — because companies are built step by step, nothing is built in a day — those early stages are what we call the dark days.

I was the kind of investor who saw pre-seed and seed companies when the idea was only roughly formed, when they might have one customer or five customers and were still seeking product-market fit. So if any entrepreneurs are listening: the first year or two are going to be really difficult. You have to be so passionate about the subject you're working on. You really have to believe in it, and that belief will shine through — it translates into the research you've done, the embarrassing phone calls you have to make, the cold calling. That's all the grit and persistence you need if you want to start a company. That experience at Founders Factory prepared me mentally for what it takes to be a founder and the challenges you face at every step. That's the softer side of things — things people don't tell you, things you can't Google.

The second area is whether the business is sound: how you fundraise, how you turn that passion into reality and into something you can galvanise people around. Having passion and sheer resilience is the first ingredient. But the second is: is your business sound? Is it generating revenue? Can it be sustainable commercially, so you can hire a big team who all work not just on a mission but on a business that can serve that mission in the long term? What makes investors tick when they hear your proposition? It has to come hand in hand.

The first step was to understand the issue fully and make this mission deserving of itself — to convince myself that this is an issue I want to pour all my heart and soul into for however many years of my life. So aside from desktop research, I picked up the phone and called probably hundreds of customers and hundreds of people who might have this issue, just to talk about how they felt about it and when they started experiencing it. I learned that, on average, people experience this issue for more than 20 years. Every single day, they're leaking. Every single day, they feel embarrassed. That alone was enough for me to summon the energy to go to the second step: persuading investors, vendors and suppliers to work with me.

For investors, it's about communicating the size and magnitude of the problem, why it's so attractive to invest in, and my experience — allowing them to understand that precisely because it's not a sexy issue, there's so much of a need for someone to come and solve it. A few facts about this market: 90% of it is dominated by two players, Tena and Always. They have amazing brands — amazing in the sense that everyone knows them; they've existed for more than 50 years. But bladder care and incontinence aren't just age-related issues. Younger women and younger men experience them too, and they don't want to be associated with those brands, which are already set in people's minds to solve one particular, stigmatised issue. On top of that, a lot of these brands tell women these issues aren't treatable — that it's just a normal thing with age. That's where we come from to say no to those statements.

So there's so much of this market that isn't right, and a lot we can galvanise around to do better — with our suppliers, and by sharing people's stories and our community's story, to let people know that Jude is the one to solve this problem. It's a lot of fronts and a lot of hard work. I remember working with copywriters and designers to elevate this topic, and all of them failed, because they were still framing our names in the old way.

So the first thing we did was ask: what's the name of the company? I came up with about 100 names and threw all of them in the bin — one was "Pro-Age", one was "Pro-Life", and a lot of them were still living 50 years ago. Jude is the fresh, new brand we wanted. In short, it was a lot of trial and error, a lot of mistakes, a lot of experiments and pivoting to frame the topic. We spoke to a lot of medical professionals about the right language to use, and to a lot of patients and people who experience this about how they want to be communicated with. It's all a learning process.

100%. Yes, men experience bladder issues a lot, but women are the majority of bladder leaks, because of childbirth. And from my experience at Daye, women are usually considered unreliable narrators of their own bodies and minds. You can see it in clinical trials — a lot of trials denied women participation 50 years ago, and even today endometriosis isn't fully recognised as an issue. Same with bladder leaks. So what we do is really listen to them, and make them feel heard, valued and validated. Just by doing that carefully and mindfully, I believe customers will come, revenue will come, and investors will understand why it's so worth investing in.

The first thing is that I was laughed at many, many times just for going into this topic — not just from investors, but when people ask what you do. It's not as easy as saying "I'm an investor" or "I'm an investment banker." It's "I started this company in an embarrassing health topic," so you really have to stage it. And even when I stage the conversation carefully and get to the end — "we work with people with bladder issues" — I usually get responses like, "Wow. Okay." People don't know how to respond, and sometimes they laugh at me.

With investors it's also difficult. I met with more than 100 investors and got more than 80 rejections. They'd tell me it's just not sexy enough — investors who didn't understand the magnitude of the problem or why it was so worth working on. At the back of my mind, I understood it's not about sexiness; it's about this need I have to serve.

And because it's a taboo subject, word of mouth doesn't work the way it does elsewhere. Word of mouth is a very attractive marketing tactic for fashion brands, travel brands, a lot of consumer products — you want to tell a friend you bought something because it looks pretty and it elevates your status. Our issue isn't about that at all. It's about fitting into people's lives, lifting their quality of life, and addressing an embarrassing issue they don't want to talk to their friends about. So in terms of marketing, we have to think very carefully and thoughtfully. I think that organic, viral mechanism not existing deters a lot of investors.

It's a really good question. I took a lot of time to understand our customer group. On average, our community members believe they're 21 years younger than their actual age. So when you're talking to a 50-year-old, you're actually talking to a 30-year-old. We live in a world where we're labelled by our age, our gender, our backgrounds — but people have a lot more in common than those labels. A good brand should see beyond them and start talking to people through a pain point they commonly experience.

We come up with marketing language and brand messages that say this happens to everyone — fun people, young people, middle-aged people, normal people, famous people. We have celebrities talking about it. And instantly our brand appeals to people from 20 to 60 years old — not because of the imagery we use, but because of the way we speak to them. Everyone values someone finally addressing this issue.

That's reflected in our early traction. We only launched three or four weeks ago, and we already have around 5,000 customers giving us their emails, wanting to know more, and 2,000 customers actually purchasing — in just three or four weeks. That's incredible traction, and we didn't even spend a lot on marketing. They organically found us on Google. They know there's now another brand — one of three in the UK — that really addresses this issue, offers treatment and education, and stands with them rather than telling them it's not treatable. That comes from our authentic messaging and how we approach the issue.

Optimism. I have a strong belief that if I want something to happen, I can make it happen — it's just a matter of how many years it takes. If it takes a minute, great. If it takes three years, awesome. Working towards a broad direction where I want to go, always filling myself with optimism, enjoying the process, enjoying the peaks and the troughs, celebrating the small wins and sharing those achievements with the people we love and care about — down to our customers and our community — that's how I get through the more difficult, dark times. I do believe optimism is the key ingredient for what a founder, especially a solo founder, needs.

Drive — I've had it since I was a kid. I just love to achieve, and to make sure things are achieved for a purpose. As long as I know it amounts to someone benefiting, to reducing suffering, that fuels me. Optimism, though — contrary to a lot of people's belief, you don't get it naturally. It's something you cultivate as a habit. The cup is always half full; it just depends on how you look at life and at events. One event could be a tragedy, but you can gain a lot of lessons from it. It's about standing on the other side and looking at what you can learn. That is optimism.

The greatest critic of Jude would probably say: why aren't you reaching enough people and customers now? Why are you only doing what you're doing now? So we just need to grow. We need to reach more customers and let more people know about this mission and what we're trying to solve.

I exercise a lot. I do a lot of yoga, hot yoga and Pilates. I eat very well. These are the things I can control, and when I control them I can see the outcome — whereas in a business, probably 80% of things you can't control: people, the market, product-market fit. You can do a lot, but there's an inherent part of risk and uncontrollable factors. So in other parts of my life I try to control as much as I can and see the outcomes.

Yoga also helps me tune my emotions and relieve stress. Another part is spending time with friends who aren't entrepreneurs and aren't anywhere near healthcare — that just helps me with my life. And the last thing I do is a lot of positive self-talk, processing my own struggles and emotions. Being able to regulate my own emotions and stress is, I think, the most powerful tool one can have. And optimism actually comes from that — regulating emotions.

I read a lot of books about emotions and regulating them. One habit I've learned is that when you have a thought — negative or positive, and sometimes they're negative — you stand as a third person between your thoughts and yourself, and just observe how it makes you feel. Once a day, I try to let one of those thoughts go and see how it impacts me. And I find it doesn't impact me in any way. Whether I let it go or let it stay — if I let it go, I actually feel better, and that negative self-talk is gone. Then I can work on how to grow from there and put that into action, rather than letting that emotion or negative thought affect my behaviour. That's how I process some of these feelings.

For sure. I read a lot of business books. One that's really interesting for founders tackling areas similar to bladder issues — where you're building a category rather than a business — is called Play Bigger. It was recommended by one of my advisors, Akon Meyer. Another I love is A Radical Awakening, written by Dr Shefali. It's about how you regulate emotions and reinvent yourself at every stage of your career and life — that you can be someone different if you want it enough.