Why Are Males Main Girls’s Well being? 

It reads like one thing out of Brass Eye. In July, interval monitoring app Flo Well being grew to become the primary ladies’s well being app to realize unicorn standing. The information was a significant milestone for the rising ‘femtech’ business — and one other day on the workplace for male-owned startups.

“Reaching unicorn standing is a big milestone for Flo and the whole femtech business,” mentioned co-founder Dmitry Gurski, who launched the app together with his brother, Yuri Gurski in 2016.

The irony that the primary femtech unicorn has been, as one feminine entrepreneur wrote, “based by males, led by males and funded by males” was not misplaced on LinkedIn members. Many took to the positioning to lament the lack of funding for ladies founders; a pattern that has continued for many years.

Since then, the social media debate has blossomed into a bigger on-line motion, as ladies query why males are main feminine product innovation. Right here’s how the well being business’s “subsequent massive phenomenon” has turn into its largest controversy right this moment.

What’s femtech?

The time period femtech was first coined in 2016 by Danish entrepreneur, Ida Tin. It generally refers to software program that companies ladies’s well being points comparable to menstruation, being pregnant, and menopause.

Nonetheless, Tin, who’s the CEO of interval monitoring app Clue, has since mentioned that the time period ought to cowl “all issues the place ladies are impacted very in a different way from males or non-proportionally are affected, like mind well being or bone well being”.

Because it’s a comparatively new space, many burgeoning startups are nonetheless working in stealth mode or in pre-seed. However massive femtech names are on the cusp of turning into mainstream. Firms like Daye, which has developed a diagnostic tampon, or Jude, a bladder well being startup.

Due largely to the tireless work of those ladies founders, healthcare consultants have begun to take discover of what has been a beforehand ignored area.

Concentrating on an viewers of 49.72% of the inhabitants, there may be definitely a market alternative. Consultants forecast that femtech could possibly be value $50bn by 2030. However, whereas a girl might need christened the femtech sector, traders are positioning male founders to steer it.

Taking the ‘fem’ out of femtech

Maybe one purpose why Flo Well being’s $200m Sequence C funding spherical sparked discover was because of it being an unusually excessive fundraise for the business. In July, UK Tech Information reported there have been solely 15 enterprise capital-backed femtech startups.

Alongside Flo, a number of the greatest recognized are Elvie, which develops ladies’s well being merchandise, and Thyia, an at-home cervical screening firm. Are you able to guess the hyperlink? Like Flo Well being, each of those startups have a male founder on the board.

Traders, it appears, are more and more turning to male-led companies for female-focused options. And the issue has been brewing for a while.

Sifted information exhibits that in 2023, 57 femtech firms with all-male founding groups raised $731m, whereas 105 with all feminine founding groups shared simply $408m.

Having a girl founder can truly be detrimental to elevating cash, as analysis exhibits {that a} femtech is much less more likely to get funding if it has a girl in its management crew.

The findings mirror the massive enterprise capital deficit that ladies entrepreneurs expertise extra broadly throughout enterprise. Simply 2% of all VC funding goes to all-female startups and 26% to mixed-gender startups, leaving the remaining 72% to all-male startup groups.

Even women-focused grants are underdelivering. In September, Innovate UK was pressured to apologise after it awarded simply half of the 50 promised Girls in Innovation awards, every value £75,000 to feminine founders, in what it dismissed as a budgeting mistake.

“Every thing that’s fallacious with the ecosystem”

Flo Well being’s founders agree there is a matter. In response to the feedback, a spokesperson for Flo Well being mentioned: “We firmly consider that ladies’s well being has been critically missed, undervalued, and underfunded for a lot too lengthy.

“Our honest hope is that Flo’s most up-to-date funding will encourage extra traders to recognise the immense potential on this area”.

Such well-meaning feedback will do little to placate ladies entrepreneurs, nevertheless. It was hoped — maybe anticipated — that the femtech area would offer a degree enjoying area for ladies entrepreneurs. For some, Flo’s funding has dashed these hopes.

Sharing the information on LinkedIn, Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen, co-founder of Feminine Make investments, wrote: “If this doesn’t present you all the things that’s fallacious with the ecosystem, I don’t know what is going to.”

Pinky promise?

The upset stems not simply from gender funding inequalities, but additionally concern in regards to the path of motion that the femtech sector goes in.

One LinkedIn person expressed doubts that “a ladies’s well being app based and primarily led by males” could be “in sync with the pursuits, preferences and rights of those that menstruate”.

Flo Well being beforehand confronted criticism for its messaging when it rolled out a new product for male customers, referred to as Flo for Companions. ‘What if he knew when your interval was due?’ learn the caption, which the identical LinkedIn commenter described as “sickening”.

Understanding your viewers is vital to beginning a enterprise. Simply have a look at Pinky Gloves. The German startup made single-use pink plastic gloves for ladies to eliminate interval merchandise.

Maybe no ladies had been close by to inform the founders how zero in demand their product was. Nonetheless, Pinky Gloves managed to lift €30,000 on Shark Tank, the German model of Dragon’s Den, from the (predictably) male investor, Ralf Dümmel.

As long as VCs proceed to rain money on male founders, there’s a hazard that feminine founders who’re addressing necessary well being points shall be missed in favour of the following Pinky Gloves.