(Photo credit @nci)
This has been a strange September for me. It’s the first time in over a decade that I am not participating in some type of back-to-school programming as part of my full-time job. I forgot how much fun it is to meet new students and help them get their careers into high gear. I have signed multiple new clients recently (and a few are current students) so it’s similar but not quite the same. The bittersweet aspects of change. It’s also the 20th anniversary of 9/11/01 tomorrow, which takes me back to the beginning of my career in NYC. It was a devastating day to be a New Yorker. I lost friends that day. I walked home from my midtown office, along with hordes of other NYC residents, and spent the night huddled around the TV with friends. I am surprisingly still thankful for AOL IM, which was the main method of communication that worked that day, when phone lines were overwhelmed. I still take time every year to remember the brave men & women who died that day and in the aftermath. #neverforget
#techsoundbite
One of my current clients is looking for roles in female-founded/female-focused companies, which got me thinking about femtech as a topic for this week’s newsletter. Femtech (aka ‘female technology’) is used to describe a category of digital health companies that focus specifically on women’s health.
The term is not without controversy as some are worried that by labeling these apps/technologies with a gendered term, it will have an adverse effect on growth, funding, and product pricing. I mean, has anyone ever used the term ‘ManTech’? It’s also not lost on many in the industry that one of the first male-focused health tech companies Hims immediately got plenty of VC funding in year one to help cure ED, whereas other female-focused companies founded years earlier got very little to help with supporting the everyday challenges of menstruation and pregnancy. (Hims also changed its name at some point to Hims & Hers to expand services to the other half of the population.) And another male-focused health company Ro acquired Modern Fertility earlier this year to do the same.
“2021 is a landmark year for the femtech industry, with global VC investment crossing the $1 billion mark for the first time, according to PitchBook data.” Maven Clinic became the first unicorn to be focused on femtech by closing a $110million series D round last month. In the same month, my friend Paris Wallace’s company Ovia was acquired by LabCorp for an undisclosed sum. (Yes, I know that one was founded by a man.) Then earlier this week, Flo (a period tracking app) raised a $50million series B round.
Right now, the majority of femtech funding has gone to companies that focus on fertility, pregnancy, and motherhood, despite the fact that less than 45% of the US female population is able to take advantage of these services. There are calls to step back and evaluate where the next femtech companies should focus their efforts, namely on menopausal and senior-aged women who have their own specific sets of health needs. They also tend to have even more disposable income available to them to pay for these services.
If you’d like to explore further, as always, CB Insights has done a great job with a femtech market map to help demonstrate the variety of companies that are operating in this space. And their 2nd annual 2020 Digital 150 list includes 10 femtech companies. Also, this Forbes article has identified 52 female-led startups focused on building femtech and healthtech companies. It is inevitable that there will be an increased focus on women’s health companies in the next few years, as women spend $500billion annually on medical expenses.
