Claire Tomkins, founder and CEO of Future Family, discusses raising over $500 million across various funding rounds, including a $100M facility at the seed.
Claire Tomkins, founder and CEO of Future Family, discusses raising over $500 million across various funding rounds, including a $100M facility at the seed stage and subsequent debt and equity rounds from top-tier investors.
But I also saw that that's a way to scale and I think the ultimate impact we have is at scale. And so that is ultimately what led me to believe that while nonprofits play a huge role in our society in terms of thought leadership and ideas, if you want to have the biggest impact, you want to have that impact at scale. [Music] All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the Dealmaker Show. So today we have a really amazing founder joining us. We're going to be talking about the building, the scaling, the financing, whether you're doing it in equity, whether you're doing it in debt. We're going to be talking about both. And then we're going to be talking about two founder transformation, learning how to focus. We're going to be talking about also insurance products in fertility. Uh and also how to think about market shifting, how to adapt to them as a founder too, and and and and all of the
above. So, brace yourself for a very inspiring conversation today. And without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Claire Tomkins. Welcome to the show, Alejandra. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here today. So, originally born in Oxford, England, but you moved to the US quite early at six years old. So, give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you? I know. And and no accent, although every once in a while someone thinks maybe I'm Canadian, which you know, who doesn't want to be Canadian? So, it's fine, right? Um, but that's right. I moved here when I was young, six or seven, um, years old, and grew up in the US, and I grew up in the Midwest. I grew up between, uh, two states, Wisconsin and Illinois, um, for all of my childhood. And actually, something that still amazes my children. I kind of grew up uh, in small communities and on a small
farm. Uh, my parents were um, kind of eclectic collectors of animals. So we had angora goats, we had llamas, I raised horses, raised and trained horses, we had an assortment of different house pets including bunnies. So it was really quite the menagerie. Um I do think those early years though growing up in a kind of in a farm setting and getting up in those freezing Midwest winters at 5 or 6 in the morning to go and do chores and look after the animals. It did instill kind of a healthy work ethic from a young age. What about problem solving? You know, where does the whole problem solving, you know, come? You know, obviously you went and studied engineer engineering which kind of like shocked everyone in the family. So problem solving, how does problem solving come knocking to you? Yeah. I mean, I suppose there was like problem solving just in the day-to-day when you have that many
animals, one one or more of them has always escaped. And so um there was some of that but I'd say the problem solving that's right everyone in my family was a bit surprised when I chose engineering as a major um because I had a lot of passion around literature and science and other other areas growing up. I think for me though that was an identity piece you know at 18 was that I really wanted to solve problems in the world and I think I knew I was a builder. I didn't know I was a quote unquote entrepreneur until much later in life. And I think that really that's because this generation growing up now is so much more familiar with the entrepreneurial pathway and the entrepreneurial journey and the idea of being an entrepreneur. And I don't even think I thought of that as a career. So I just knew I wanted to build things and that led me to uh want to be and study engineering and I did. I
went to undergrad at University of Arizona. So Wildcats and then um was l later lucky enough to to move to the Bay Area to attend Stanford University. Well, you did your PhD there, you know, which was quite pivotal. But now, one of the things that um is very interesting here is that obviously Stanford, everyone, you know, building their own things, uh entrepreneurship, you know, big time for you. You you went at it with nonprofits. Um obviously very different than the world that you're in now. So, uh, tell us about like what how did the whole nonprofit thing, you know, come about because you also worked with very, you know, big people there, you know, whether it was Richard Branson or or others. No, that's right. So I mean a a couple of things around that and um so first I think I sort of sometimes a little bit tongue-in-cheek or jokingly say that I'm very much the daughter of you know
my father and the the daughter of my mother in the sense that my dad was kind of I mean not exactly but kind of I say a hardcore capitalist you know uh ran a big firm private equity backed and my mom is was a social activist and so I feel like I'm the mix between the two. So, I enjoy building and being an entrepreneur, but I care a lot about impact. Um, and so I think the impact piece is what came out in that early chapter um of working on nonprofits is I, you know, definitely saw that as a way to have impact in the world and it was an exciting time because it was just the kind of the forefront of scaling up renewable energy. I mean, this is 15 plus years ago. So it was really the beginning of saying okay we're going to start to scale and I had that amazing opportunity as you said to work with um you know as part of Virginite carbon war room with Richard Branson and then to do AWE with
Matt James Tomire a bunch of great folks an Anna Liry Kate Gordon in San Francisco but I will say that I ultimately switched over to working in the private sector and being an entrepreneur and building companies because I also saw that that's a way to scale and I think the ultimate impact we have is at scale and so that is ultimately what led me to believe that while nonprofits play a huge role in our society in terms of thought, leadership and ideas, if you want to have the biggest impact, you want to have that impact at scale. And and why joining a another company, you know, like you did with Solar City versus starting your own? Obviously, now you're doing your own, but um why not just like plunge in? I I was very lucky to have some really great mentors when I, you know, living here in Silicon Valley. And I think the advice I got which I'm so glad I took was you know and at that time I
didn't have also the the idea fully formed in my head. So probably the most important thing about being an entrepreneur is you better love that idea because you are going to live and breathe that idea for many years. So at that precise moment I didn't yet know what my company would be and the mentorship I got was you know go very specific go into a hyperrowth company because it's one of the unique things about living in Silicon Valley maybe also New York or Tel Aviv is you can go into hyperrowth and I just happened to have that opportunity right I had a big network in renewable energy was very passionate about the space and joining solar city at the time made a made a world of sense so it was it was a very formative four years um watching you Lyndon and Pete, Toby and others scale that company. Um getting to work alongside them, going through the IPO and then um I you know had an idea
for a company. It was I thought it was a great idea. Uh so I was going to start a a DG company and then um you know ended up tearing up that business plan and starting future family and that's kind of the beginning of this chapter. Well, obviously that was that was over dinner. You know, you were at that time pregnant with your with your with your daughter Natalie. uh and it was over a dinner with your husband where you know the business plan that you had originally thought about you know completely got scrapped and and a new one you know and a new idea and obviously your company that you're pushing now was born. So what happened on that dinner? Yeah, it was a very fateful dinner. I remember it well. We were um in a small restaurant and it, you know, having dinner and a glass of wine and I obviously had said, "Oh my gosh, this is isn't this so crazy that we just went through this
fertility journey that's changing our whole lives?" And for me, it was really a difficult journey. And by the way, you know, Natalie's now 10. And so at the beginning of this, people didn't talk about this so much. It wasn't necessarily all the celebrities in the media. that has changed super positively in the last several years. So for me, it was like a little hush hush and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I've been on this roller coaster for several years of trying to get pregnant with IVF. I finally was pregnant." It was amazing. And I said, "My gosh, I mean, how crazy is it that we went through this journey and that there's no good financial solutions, very little innovation. Someone should really do something about this." I think that's what I said. someone should do something about this and um you know one thing led to another and by the end of the dinner it was like I should do something
about this. So what…