Interview: Christina Farr

Startup Storytelling: A Conversation with Christina Farr from Omers Ventures

In this edition of M*A*S*H* (Marketing Advice for Startups in Healthcare), we sat down with Christina Farr, a CNBC reporter turned Health Tech investor at Omers Ventures, to discuss how storytelling can impact a startup’s success. She is currently writing a book on the topic, which will be published after extensive research and interviews with founders.You have a unique career path starting as a health tech reporter at CNBC and then moving into health tech VC at Omers Ventures. Can you tell me about your time as a health tech reporter and how those skills have helped you as a VC? I had been involved in the media industry for a long time, working for various types of outlets, and I began to feel like I needed a change. These thoughts emerged during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic when I was pregnant with my first child. So I spent some time just talking to people in my network, learning what their careers are like and what skills are important to succeed. I found that VC and reporting have a lot in common. You have to connect with people and understand their motivations, often when they come into that first interaction with you with an underlying feeling of distrust. I found that many of the skills I had from my business reporting days translated well in terms of being able to connect with people, nurture relationships, ask important questions, and understand whether they have key indicators of success.This journey led me to Omers Ventures to invest in health tech startups. You often encourage founders to be more authentic and genuine without fear of who’s paying attention. Are you paying attention to these things when evaluating for potential investment – and do you invest more in founders or companies?It depends so much on the stage of the company. For example, if it's a Series C company, I’d need to see the metrics of the company and the track record of success. For a Seed stage company since there are fewer impactful metrics to rely on,you really have to dive into the team and feel confident they have what it takes to run a business through the ups and inevitable downs. For any company, you have to trust in the founders and make sure they have tenacity and grit. How do you get to know the founders of startups before investing? Is it hard to do that via Zoom?I actually prefer to take all my first meetings with founders on the phone rather than a video call. Video calls can be impersonal. So I ask founders to get on a phone call with me and take a walk together – no formal pitch or presentation – just a walk to get to know one another. Then, if I feel like we’re on the same page, we’ll schedule time for a broader company pitch. You’re writing a book on how storytelling impacts business outcomes, diving into the ways this is both good and evil. Can you share more on this and any examples of a company that is getting it right? Yes, I’m writing a book based on my experiences both in reporting and now as a VC. I’m focusing now on reading case studies, interviewing founders and VCs, and finding real-world examples of this. But I can say the way founders tell their story definitely impacts the trajectory of the business. For example, an Omers Ventures portfolio company, Caraway Health, gets it right. They offer healthcare services to Gen Z women, typically at universities where healthcare services are limited. The founders aren't Gen Z, so they spend a significant amount of time hiring and just talking to Gen Z students to understand what they need, how they talk, what they care about, and how they think about healthcare. This directly translates to the company’s services and messaging. It’s not the impersonal third-party research or focus groups that some startups do; it's really understanding what the end user needs and providing those things in a way that's approachable and empathetic. I think this is why the company has been so successful at meeting their users’ needs, and would encourage all startups to have ongoing and frequent conversations with diverse people in your target audience to make sure the way you talk about your company aligns with what they actually need.One of the recurring themes I see in your social media is the need to eliminate vague and meaningless jargon from business storytelling, especially in health tech. Can you share an example of a time when you helped a portfolio company refine its messaging and what the impact was? I can’t share just one example. I do this with everyone I know, and I’m very direct about it. Like, what does it actually mean to be a platform or a tool? I hate seeing this type of language in tech. Call it what it is. Is it an app? A website? The more clarity and authenticity you can provide about your company, the more likely people will want to be a part of it. It’s sad that 99% of marketing language is this way, and it's such a missed opportunity. Can you share red flags you see in pitch decks and storytelling? I have a bunch, but some of the biggest red flags all fall into the common theme of being too vague. I need to believe in the product, and in order to do that, I need to understand specifically what its unique value proposition is. For example: Pitch decks that are too general: Founders think about the biggest possible impact the company could have in order to inflate the total addressable market (TAM) numbers that VCs want to see. But setting the deck up by saying you’re going to change the entire drug discovery industry, for example, is setting the conversation up based on something no VC will believe. Start with what you are actually doing today and the TAM you can address with the product right now. Then build up your story about the future vision of the company. The product is left out: I see so many press releases saying company X is partnering with company Y to do something vague. But it's entirely leaving out the product and what is actually going to be accomplished with the product. Anything jargony, like “platform” companies: A platform is where a train goes. A solution is what you get when you finish an algebra problem. These words that we’ve co-opted mean nothing. I want to see the specifics of what the company does rather than calling it a platform. Can you share any tips for founders when speaking with reporters? We often make the mistake of thinking everything has to be positive all the time. Reporters aren’t out there to tell the world how amazing you are; they are trying to cover the news. So be transparent and open. I also used to have founders or their PR agencies getting upset because they did an interview with me and weren’t included in the story. But reporters don’t owe you anything, so if you want to be included in an article, you have to have strong quotes that add thoughtful commentary to the story.