Happy Sunday!
Welcome back to Founders Feature, a weekly newsletter all about the journeys of young startup founders.
For this week's edition, I interviewed Angelica Conraths, Co-founder of fembites, a female snack supplement brand based in Germany.
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Here’s what fembites is all about:
🏠 The Basics
The Problem:
There is a major Gender Data Gap in health and nutrition when it comes to the female body. For example, there is hardly any research about menstruation symptoms or pre-menstrual symptoms (PMS). We do know that refined sugar triggers pain hormones, causing great pain, particularly during and before your period. Additionally, existing supplements and other pharmaceuticals out there often come with nasty ingredients in pills and capsules.
The Solution:
fembites is a brand at the intersection of food and female health, creating tasty snack supplements without any unnatural or synthetic additives or added sugars. Their mission is to holistically support the female cycle and nurture it, but still in a tasty way.
The Team:
We are two co-founders, myself and Jana. My background is originally in hotel management and tourism. My first founding experience was a yoga & wellbeing festival in New Zealand. I then did a Masters in Entrepreneurship. Jana has a Bachelor in Biology and a Masters in Nutrition Economics, with a focus on hormonal nutrition. In total, they are a team of 5. Michelle is responsible for operations, Lisa is working on brand design and all things creative, and Fritzi is working on Social Media and Design.
🚀 The Journey
How did you come up with your startup/solution?
During Covid, I had originally started working on another startup idea with a friend, with whom we got invited to join the Grace Accelerator in Berlin, but we quickly decided to stop working on that idea. However, Jana was also at Grace, and this is where we first met.
Two years before I met Jana I came off the birth control pill, which I had been put on at 13 for acne. I had been on the pill for 10+ years and didn’t know what to expect when coming off it. It took my body more than two years to reestablish its natural hormone cycle. I suffered from extreme weight loss, hair loss, acne, but most significantly, coming off the pill without supplementation led to some severe gut issues, because my microbiome was completely out of balance. Due to this, I had to eat a special diet for a while, involving no sugar, refined or natural, and no additives. When I met Jana I was on that diet, and we got talking about everything that was happening to my body and with her Nutrition background she was able to explain a lot of it. It was crazy to me that a lot of people don’t know about this.
At the same time, I was craving sweets, but there were none in supermarkets without all the added sugar that I could eat. So this is how our first idea for femchoc emerged. Chocolate without refined sugar and nasty additives, but with all essential nutrients to support the female body.
Why is this the right time for this problem to be solved?
Women are becoming more and more aware of their cycle, how their bodies work, and how nutrition can affect their bodies. Therefore, there are more informed customers out there looking for great products. There is also a huge need for 100% natural supplements, without the potentially harmful ingredients that are used in a lot of currently available supplements.
What is a recent success you are proud of?
We launched three products last year and we were sold out of two of them quite quickly, which was a huge success, and proved that there was demand for our product.
What is a recent challenge you have faced?
Selling out of our products so quickly also meant that we needed to restock much sooner than expected, which turned out to be quite difficult. Some of our suppliers are having issues with getting certain ingredients, so we are facing major delays. Managing the supply chain and logistics, especially during Covid, where so many unexpected things happened, was not easy. We also spent a large budget on these issues, which should have gone towards marketing.
What do you wish you knew before you started and is there anything you would have done differently in hindsight?
In hindsight, I would have not spent as much of our initial loan on materials, which we waited months for, but instead spend it on activities that would actually bring in more money, such as marketing, to be able to spend that on reproducing our products.
🧠 The Lessons
What is the best advice you have been given recently?
Some things just take longer than expected. Stay with it, believe in it, and keep building that resilience, because it will be worth it once it works out. Learn to trust the process.
What advice would you give to other young founders?
Look to competitors for inspiration not for comparison. Everyone’s journey is completely different, so learn to focus on yourself.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned so far?
It’s very important to make strategic decisions based on data, but there are some times when you also need to trust your gut. For example, when choosing who to partner and work with. A great track record is amazing, but you need to have the right gut feeling with the people.
✨ The Inspiration
Who inspires you?
Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx. She started from 0 by herself, she believed in what she was doing and made it happen. I find that very inspiring.
Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of Bumble. I find it so impressive how she picked herself up after being forced out of Tinder, and managed to come out of it stronger than before. I would recommend listening to her episode on the ‘How I built this’ podcast.
What book do you think everyone should read?
Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
Podcast:
How I Built This - NPR