Elise Miller Hoffman is a venture capital investor and startup executive with expertise leading digital health companies as an operator, board member, and investor. She is a General Partner at Cultivation Capital. After investing in ImageMover on behalf of Cultivation Capital in 2018, she joined the company as COO in 2022. Elise holds a BA in Spanish Literature and Latin American Studies, and an MBA from Washington University. She was recognized as a St. Louis Business Journal “30 under 30” awardee in 2018 and an Olin Business School Emerging Leader Award recipient in 2020.
Q: You’ve risen in the very male-dominated world of venture capital to the position of COO. Kudos! To what do you attribute your success, and what advice might you give women who find themselves in a similar career situation?
A: Mentors! The venture capital industry is very apprenticeship-oriented. I broke into the industry after a mentor hired me and was promoted to partner after another mentor vouched for me. I’ve had the privilege of learning from successful entrepreneurs - many of whom are men and decades older than me. It has been invaluable to get “inside the mind” of these individuals, understanding how they approach their work, but also critically examining the ways that I will show up with my own style as a young woman.
Q: What do successful companies do well? What causes a company to either fail or succeed?
A: I work with innovative startup companies that aim to disrupt industries with new technology, capitalize on emerging markets, and change the status quo. These are no small feats. Entrepreneurship is a tough road and promising companies fail all the time. The successful teams I’ve worked with maintained an almost delusional optimism about the future coupled with extreme grit and determination during difficult times.
Q: To Nuvas who may own their own business – whether a small business or a startup – what advice would you give to early-stage founders? Especially those who may be hesitant about starting their own venture.
A: Know your “why”. What drove you to start this business in the first place and how does it connect to your personal mission? Connecting what you do on a daily basis to a clear sense of purpose can help you make values-aligned decisions and stay positive on the tough days.
Q: Are you seeing an increase in women-led businesses? Is it still harder for women to raise capital than men? How do you support women & NB folks in your daily work?
A: VC still has a diversity problem. While female founders make up 40% of all entrepreneurs in the US, all-female founding teams only garnered 1.9% of venture capital funding in 2022 (which is actually down from 2.4% in 2021).
There are multiple factors that contribute to this outcome, but part of the issue is that it’s still mostly men making investment decisions: under 15% of venture capital “check writers” are women. Particularly in early-stage investment, when investors are placing bets on people and compelling ideas more than a track record of strong business fundamentals, entrepreneurs benefit when prospective investors look and think like them.
As a female investor, I work to fund exceptional female founders who need early-stage funding to get their businesses to the “product-market-fit” stage of the startup life cycle.
Q: Much of your focus is on digital health companies. Can you tell us what excites you about that space?
A: Three years ago, seemingly overnight, the pandemic fundamentally changed the way we live, work, and access healthcare. Now, patients don’t have to go to a doctor’s office or hospital for care - they can hop on a telemedicine visit from their phone or take an at-home test to see if they are positive for COVID. Even pharmacies and retail stores are getting into the healthcare game, leveraging their brick and mortar footprint to provide primary care services.
As COO of Workflow Services by ImageMover, I help retail pharmacies transition into healthcare hubs. During the pandemic, pharmacist teams administered over 270 million COVID-19 vaccines. This served as a catalyst for federal and state legislation to evolve to allow pharmacists to legally perform more medical services, like administering diagnostic tests for COVID, Strep, Flu, and RSV, writing prescriptions for birth control, and assisting patients with chronic care management.
Since 90% of Americans live within 5 miles of a pharmacy, I'm excited to help pharmacies operationalize programs that will provide patients more accessible, convenient and affordable care.
