Meet 8 Female Founders Disrupting The $600 Billion Menopause Market

Earlier this yr, Feminine Founders Fund carried out analysis concluding that “responding to the wants of ladies experiencing menopause is a $600 billion alternative for corporations”. As of 2021, the inhabitants of females on this planet is estimated at 3.905 billion, representing 49.58% of the world inhabitants. A few of these ladies have gone by and a few will undergo menopause. By the yr 2025, the variety of postmenopausal ladies is anticipated to rise to 1.1 billion worldwide, in response to the North American Menopause Society. 

In line with the AARP, solely 20% of OB-GYN residency applications within the U.S. provide coaching in menopause. In consequence, many medical professionals don’t have the medical coaching to diagnose and deal with menopausal signs, and ladies are left with inadequate choices and assist, usually being informed to ‘simply take care of it’. It’s clear there’s a big unmet want and a possibility for influence by creating an answer that may assist ladies really feel understood and supported on their journey. 

Girls aged 40 to 59 have the highest rate of depression of any group based mostly on age and gender within the U.S, and ladies have a 1 in 5 chance of growing cognitive illnesses, significantly Alzheimer’s, in comparison with a 1 in 11 probability for males. Regardless of these stats, innovation for girls’s well being in later life has been virtually non-existent. The femtech business has made nice strides in enhancing ladies’s take care of menstrual well being, fertility, and being pregnant, however it has largely ignored the wants of virtually 1 billion globally who’re coming into menopause. 

Featured beneath are eight feminine founders and entrepreneurs who’re shaping the way forward for the menopause business by bringing their progressive services to the market, a market that has too lengthy been neglected, underresearched and underfunded. 

Afsaneh Parvizi-Wayne, founding father of Freda and My Trendy Menopause

“I based Freda, the father or mother firm of My Modern Menopause, to deal with and problem the stigma and inequality in ladies’s well being, points that I used to be additionally accustomed to from being a girl, a mom, and the spouse of a gynecologist. I needed to create an organization that might deal with every thing from interval care to menopause with the identical type of respect and sensitivity we give to different wellbeing requirements,” begins her story Parvizi-Wayne. Freda’s Interval+ pads provide customers a novel hybrid product, designed to offer the protection wanted for mild-to-medium bladder weak spot, durations, or for something in-between.

In line with Parvizi-Wayne, increasing into menopause assist was a “pure development of Freda’s dedication to combating stigmas and ‘blind spots’ in society.” My Trendy Menopause was born out of her personal expertise of how the stigma round menopause is ageist in addition to sexist and must be tackled with empowerment and schooling. Girls are conditioned to worry menopause as a miserable signal of getting old, however satirically, it has way more in widespread with puberty. If we have been in a position to shift public considering so that folks acknowledge the complicated bodily and psychological modifications that the physique undergoes throughout this time, we may additionally start to understand it as a invaluable transition into a brand new stage of life. 

Digital biomarkers can have a huge effect in areas of well being which can be complicated and multi-faceted, resembling menopause, from the monitoring, diagnostic, and administration perspective. Moreover, when signs are variable week-to-week, day-to-day, and even hour-to-hour, solely steady common distant monitoring will have the ability to elucidate the causes. Using digital biomarkers can vary from offering info and perception to the consumer, to having the ability to delineate what interventions or life-style modifications are literally having a constructive influence. “All parts of My Trendy Menopause, from the home-kit blood assessments to the labs we use to course of them, to the data we curate when it comes to recommendation, are all topic to an identical degree of scrutiny,” explains Parvizi-Wayne. 

In line with the School of Occupational Medication, virtually 8 out of 10 menopausal ladies are at work. A latest Chartered Institute of Personnel and Improvement (CIPD) survey reported that three out of 5 (59%) working ladies between the ages of 45 and 55 who’re experiencing menopause signs say it has a unfavorable influence on them at work, and almost a 3rd of ladies within the survey mentioned that they had taken sick go away due to their signs. “Girls’s reproductive well being, whatever the facet you have a look at, has suffered from long-term and extreme underinvestment. Our hope is that the more and more open discourse on matters resembling menopause in recent times will drive funding and spur vital development in healthcare, expertise, and coverage. Such modifications will finally lead to higher, simpler, and indiscriminate merchandise available on the market,” she concludes.

Alessandra Henderson, cofounder and CEO of Elektra Well being

Elektra Health is a next-gen ladies’s well being platform on a mission to smash the menopause taboo by empowering ladies with evidence-based schooling, care and group. Their digital platform affords proprietary symptom-based applications, telemedicine care from board-certified menopause specialists, and text-a-menopause-expert assist. Importantly, Elektra offers a secure on-line house for girls to attach with, assist and study from one another.

At its core, Elektra helps and cares for girls navigating the perimenopause and menopause journey. This not solely consists of ladies of their 40s and 50s, but additionally the 1000’s of ladies who’re put into surgical and/or untimely menopause resulting from surgical procedure, treatment unwanted effects, and extra. Along with providing world-class menopause care through telemedicine, Elektra affords an integrative digital platform known as Meno-morphosis (join the waitlist here!) that’s constructed to assist ladies over their 10+ yr menopause journey. This platform – presently in non-public beta – affords evidence-based pathways for managing signs, non-public group assist together with weekly teams, and 1:1 textual content entry to a devoted menopause professional. Thus far, 94% of taking part ladies respondents reported an improved menopause mindset after the Meno-morphosis program.

“I began Elektra Well being after a private expertise opened my eyes to how actually fragmented and damaged the ladies’s well being panorama is. A number of years in the past, I froze my eggs and the prescribed hormones impacted my eyesight. It was an enormous wake-up name for me round how little I knew about hormonal well being, and the way it’s merely NOT mentioned. The expertise impressed me to talk with a whole bunch of ladies and consultants to study extra about why that’s. As a girl on the precipice of navigating perimenopause myself, I used to be impressed to construct a platform to make sure no lady felt alone or unsupported throughout her menopause journey. After months of conversations and waking up in the midst of the night time enthusiastic about methods to assist the ladies I met who have been determined for higher a greater resolution, I used to be impressed to construct a secure house that educates and helps ladies throughout some of the essential transitions in her (my!) life,” shares Henderson.  

Joined by her co-founder Jannine Versi and founding doctor Dr. Anna Barbieri on this startup journey, these three ladies have raised $4 million in funding so removed from main client tech and healthcare buyers – the corporate’s seed spherical was co-led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six as properly at Flare Capital Companions, with extra investments from Human Ventures, January Ventures, The Fund, Firm Ventures, and strategic angels. 

Andrea Berchowitz, cofounder of Vira Well being

Vira Health is a digital well being firm centered on enhancing long-term well being for girls. Its first product is Stella, an app that delivers reduction from the signs of menopause. Vira Well being approaches menopause with two principal premises – first, everybody’s menopause expertise is completely different so every therapy plan is personalised to particular signs and studying, and life-style preferences, and second – a dedication to scientific and evidence-based options. 

“Inequities in healthcare have been a long-standing curiosity of mine. Deciding to construct an organization was a response to studying the e-book Invisible Girls by Caroline Criado Perez in 2019. Chapter 10, “The Medication Don’t Work” was an entire eye-opener for me. She systematically explains how the gender knowledge hole in healthcare is leading to wildly inferior care (misdiagnosis, inferior ache administration, elevated mortality). Once I completed studying it, it was utterly clear to me that, with out new innovators bringing the facility of expertise to female-only situations, this wasn’t going to vary. I used to be fortunate to fulfill my co-founder Dr. Rebecca Love on the proper time. Her background is in academia; she is a continual illness epidemiologist and an professional in habits change. We shared an curiosity within the alternative to basically remodel later-life well being for girls. And thus, in 2020 Vira Well being was born,” shares Berchowitz. 

So how does Stella app work in follow? Take an individual who’s dealing with sleep disturbances and urinary incontinence. Her Stella plan would mix cognitive behavioral remedy, sleep scheduling, pelvic flooring workout routines, and different steering associated to life-style and habits change. Plans are 12 weeks lengthy, giving customers time to study, follow, and embed new habits. Along with the therapy plans, the Stella platform has articles, recipes, mindfulness meditations, train solutions, and entry to digital occasions resembling yoga lessons or a Q&A with a gynecologist.

The corporate raised £1.5 million in seed funding so removed from LocalGlobe, MMC Ventures, and angel buyers together with Megumi Ikeda, Managing Director at Hearst Ventures, Andrea Zitna of Elvie, former Spotify government Sofia Bendz, founding father of GoCardless Matt Robinson, and Simon Lambert, former CTO at MOO.com and Treatwell. 

Arfa Rehman, cofounder and CEO of Refrain Well being

Refrain Well being is a San Francisco-based digital well being firm, whose flagship product, Caria, is the primary data-driven platform offering personalised care to ladies in menopause. Developed with main consultants in ladies’s well being and menopause, Caria offers evidence-based applications backed by science and personalised to ladies’s distinctive signs and desires. 

What makes Caria completely different from different options is our personalised method powered by knowledge and AI. “Each lady’s expertise of menopause is completely completely different, which is why we developed the primary AI-powered evaluation instrument for menopause. Girls can chat with Caria’s clever assistant to search out steering on the place they’re within the menopause journey, and get personalised suggestions to handle their signs. On common, ladies spend a number of years attempting to get the fitting prognosis and $20,000 in trial-and-error therapies, physician’s visits, and merchandise. Caria goals to scale back this time and price utilizing expertise and AI,” explains Rehman. 

What stood out to Rehman within the analysis she and her crew carried out was the variety of ladies who felt dismissed by the healthcare system. 71% of ladies of their analysis indicated that they had a unfavorable expertise when searching for take care of menopause. “We heard over and over that girls have been being misdiagnosed, informed they have been ‘too younger’ to expertise menopause, or that their signs have been of their heads. Identical to the tech business, the standard healthcare system has additionally uncared for ladies’s wants past fertility and being pregnant.”

To date, Caria has established partnerships with main payer and pharma corporations together with UnitedHealthcare, Bayer, and Novartis, and has partnered with the College of Illinois at Chicago to launch a medical trial to review the efficacy of its proprietary care protocol in relieving signs of menopause. From its consumer surveys, 85% of ladies report enchancment in signs after utilizing Caria. “We’re excited to construct on this basis and gather extra clinically validated knowledge by the UIC partnership – which would be the first randomized management trial finding out a digital behavioral well being intervention for menopause,” provides Rehman. 

Colette Courtion, founder and CEO of Joylux 

Joylux is targeted on enhancing ladies’s lives by making use of progressive technology-driven options to widespread intimate well being points ladies face as they’re getting old and is likely one of the early pioneers in menopausal well being with its home-use intimate wellness units, vSculpt, and vFit Gold – the primary and solely sensible units that harness the facility of red-light to enhance sexual operate, bladder operate, vaginal atrophy, and dryness. Paired with a companion app, Joylux is on a mission to tell, educate and observe ladies as they undergo the modifications that menopause brings. 

The inspiration for Joylux got here to Courtion from the beginning of her little one. Like most girls, she was unaware and ill-prepared for the bodily modifications that occur after childbirth and with age, particularly with our vaginal well being. She was shocked at what number of ladies undergo from these points, but there are so few efficient and inexpensive options which can be non-hormonal. Intimate well being points usually get exponentially worse as ladies method perimenopause and menopause. “Greater than half of all of the menopausal ladies within the U.S. at the moment expertise a number of of those points, from unintentional bladder leakage to vaginal dryness and ache with intercourse—wreaking havoc on their lives. The amount of cash ladies are spending on short-term options for these points is astronomical. We noticed an unlimited want and alternative for a home-use resolution that’s inexpensive, secure, efficient, and hormone-free,” explains Courtion.

As a serial entrepreneur within the discipline of medical aesthetics, she had in-depth expertise working with the most recent in energy-based applied sciences to tighten pores and skin. That is when Courtion had her a-ha! second. “I assumed why can’t we create a home-use system to tighten the vaginal canal and restore the well being of the vaginal tissue utilizing the identical energy-based applied sciences that we do in facial aesthetics. So I partnered with a crew of engineers, gynecologists, and lightweight scientists and collectively we created a collection of home-use medical and wellness units that deal with a myriad of points, from vaginal dryness and sexual operate to emphasize incontinence.”

Thus far, Joylux has raised $16 million from angel buyers and smaller female-focused funds, with lots of them having a detailed and private connection to those prevalent points. A few of their buyers embrace Gingerbread Capital, Portfolia, BELLE Capital, Golden Seeds, and plenty of angel buyers from the femtech house. 

Debbie Dickinson, cofounder of Thermaband

Thermaband’s mission is to modernize menopause with science, sisterhood, and temperature-regulating expertise. Based by a mother-daughter duo (Debbie and Markea Dickinson), searching for a tech resolution for warm flashes, chilly flashes, and night time sweats, the Thermaband Zone is an progressive related system that gives thermal reduction on demand by cooling or heating sensations on the inside wrist, however is efficient, nonetheless, for anybody who is often uncomfortably sizzling or chilly and is designed to be the usual of take care of thermal well being.

Thermaband was born from Dickinson’s personal lived expertise as a perimenopausal lady. “I’m a advantages legal professional, spouse, mom, and entrepreneur, but felt utterly unprepared for menopause at 51,” she admits. “We train younger women about puberty and reproductive well being, however by some means menopause is just not taught and ladies really feel uninformed and ill-equipped. I discovered firsthand how huge and debilitating menopausal signs could be, particularly sizzling flashes and night time sweats.”

However these signs aren’t symptomatic just for menopause. Along with menopausal ladies, many individuals are affected by continual sizzling flashes and night time sweats, together with most cancers sufferers and survivors, resulting from chemotherapy therapies and a wide range of medical situations and coverings, resembling hysterectomies, which is a particularly widespread surgical procedure for girls. “Such therapies and surgical procedures usually induce medical menopause with relentless sizzling flashes,” explains Dickinson.

Being financially backed by Google (Black Founders Fund) and Blue Collective, and with $1.3 million raised from institutional buyers, angels, and accredited buyers, together with IDEAZ, their product builders. Dickinson admits that the pandemic impacted fundraising drastically – each positively and negatively. On one hand, it eliminated limitations for investor conferences and conversations since they have been in a position to join just about. Then again, the uncertainty of the pandemic has made it more durable to rent high expertise and proceed weathering the provision chain storms to make sure that she and her crew can meet the demand for his or her product. “60% of pre-order models have been offered throughout the first hour of launch, so our subsequent objective is to boost funds to scale,” she concludes. 

Mridula Pore, co-CEO and cofounder of Peppy

In her personal phrases, Pore is “captivated with making healthcare extra inexpensive and accessible”. Regardless of spending her profession in healthcare, she is an engineer by coaching, finding out first at Cambridge, earlier than spending a number of years at MIT on a Ph.D./ MBA program. “Peppy is the way forward for personalised well being assist. We assist underserved areas of healthcare – like fertility, child, menopause, and males’s well being – all delivered by a safe app, funded by your employer, and free to you. This fashion, you’ll be able to join with human consultants on the contact of a button, to entry the assist you’ll be able to belief, anytime, wherever,” explains Pore. 

Nearly 1 million individuals now have entry to Peppy by their employer or medical insurance coverage, and this quantity is rising each week. The corporate works with employers as wide-ranging as Wickes, Santander, Clifford Probability, the College of Sheffield, and with insurance coverage companions, like Vitality. With the deal with addressing underserved areas of healthcare – like fertility, menopause, and males’s well being, their customers are common individuals, going by quite common phases of life, which creates ups and downs of their well being. Going by a fertility journey or changing into a father or mother is just not a uncommon factor. Males’s well being points are widespread however usually swept underneath the carpet, too. 

“Menopause is actually not a ‘area of interest’ factor, with 51% of the world’s inhabitants sure to expertise it. Previously, lots of people experiencing menopause have been both not working exterior the house, or close to the tip of their working lives. These days, these persons are within the midst of their careers, juggling relationships, caring obligations, and really a lot desirous to dwell life to the complete for a number of a long time forward. Once we began speaking to those that had skilled points within the office resulting from menopause and heard what our medical consultants have been seeing, we knew we needed to do one thing.”

The corporate lately introduced its $10 million Collection A spherical, which was led by Felix Capital, with different buyers together with Outward VC, Seedcamp, Hambro Perks, and Kind Ventures. “We raised each our seed spherical and our sequence A in the course of the pandemic, which has been fairly a journey. Initially, it was unclear what would occur to worker advantages as workplaces shut down and other people began working from residence. However then the digital well being house has boomed, and the potential of the sector is now way more widely known. There was such an enormous emphasis on well being and wellbeing, no matter your work location, that the worth of our proposition has now turn out to be apparent to our shoppers and to the investor market.”

Sam Simister, cofounder of GenM

The primary group of its form, GenM (which stands for Technology Menopause) is the menopause associate for manufacturers. Partnering with accountable and forward-thinking corporations, GenM helps them perceive the wants of the menopausal market and higher symbolize them in merchandise, providers, signposting, campaigns, and insurance policies. From Boots and Marks & Spencer to Simba and At all times Discreet, GenM has over 30 manufacturers on board as Founding Companions, all who wish to lead from the entrance to normalize the dialog round menopause, thereby breaking the taboo for hundreds of thousands of ladies and people experiencing menopause, whether or not an worker or client. 

“There are 15.5 million perimenopausal and menopausal ladies within the U.Ok. and round 1 billion worldwide. This market is vastly underserved and is in want of focused info and merchandise. Our Invisibility Report has proven that 87% of menopausal ladies really feel neglected by manufacturers, whereas an enormous 97% really feel that manufacturers ought to work more durable to cater to them. This isn’t about exploiting menopause by making a load of merchandise that don’t add worth, however amongst different methods, there’s an enormous alternative in merely signposting prospects in the direction of already current merchandise that assist alleviate menopause signs. These can vary from make-up that may face up to sizzling flush sweats to delicate pores and skin beddings,” explains Simister. 

For Simister and her cofounder Heather Jackson, menopause isn’t a simply variety and inclusion problem – it’s additionally a enterprise problem. The motion for extra ladies within the boardroom will solely be taken severely when the decision-makers understand that corporations with extra feminine illustration are extra worthwhile than these with out. “We predict it’s the identical right here. There’s a big alternative available right here and it’s time that companies woke as much as that.”

Along with bringing on new companions, GenM is now turning its focus to its second part of analysis together with its thought management roundtables. For the long run, an aspiration is to create a recognizable menopause label that may be positioned on merchandise to obviously signpost that they’re useful for menopause signs. “These symbols exist for recyclable merchandise or vegan merchandise, making it simple for shoppers to search out the merchandise they want. We predict there’s a big alternative to make the most of this for menopause too,” concludes Simister.