Issue 24: $32m new FemHealth VC fund | viral TikToks for period cup Sunny | Is menopause a disability?
+ more in your weekly round-up of women's health innovation and FemTech news
Hi! Welcome to issue #24 of FutureFemHealth, here to bring you your weekly news about women’s health innovation and FemTech (w/c 2 October 2023).
🌟 Coming up today we’ve got:
🔥 The viral TikTok videos and 20,000 pre-orders for period cup Sunny
💰 All the latest funding news from Midi Health, Evvy, Partum Health… and a brand new $32m VC Fund from FemHealth Ventures
📌 Is menopause a disability?
❤️ Lululemon launches mastectomy bra
🛑 And lots more!
Got news to share from the world of FemTech and women’s health innovation? Let me know at anna@futurefemhealth.com
🌟 Something about Sunny: Viral Tik Toks, 20,000 pre-orders and Gen-Z wants to talk about periods
When co-founders Cindy Belardo and Drew Jarvis posted a few TikTok videos with their idea for a period cup that could be inserted just like a tampon, they could never have predicted what would happen next.
Millions and millions of TikTok views later, and a whopping 20,000 pre-orders(!) for their cup, two things were clear: people really want well-designed period care solutions. …And Cindy and Drew needed to get making some menstrual cups!
“After going viral in 2022, we blew up in a way we never anticipated,” said Drew.
“We knew we had a really revolutionary product, but people's excitement over our period cup applicator exceeded our expectations, now making us the second-largest period care brand on TikTok.”
Since opening pre-orders in April 2022 and being completely inundated with interest, it’s taken the team around 18 months until October 2023 to be in a position to fulfil their first set of pre-orders. They’ve begun dispatching across the US this week.
Their idea really is quite innovative: they’ve taken the sustainability of a period cup and combined it with the ease of use of a tampon applicator to create a period cup that seems easy enough for anyone to try.
And despite a few grumbles in social media comments about the delays, Sunny seems set for tremendous success.
“As first-time founders, it's been an interesting journey navigating supply chain, medical devices, and pitching the taboo subject of period care in a space dominated by men/non-menstruators,” said Drew.
The ongoing destigmatisation of menstrual health and period care
But there’s something about Sunny that’s symbolic of a broader shift.
Sunny’s social media is like the lesson in menstruation that you wished you’d had at school.
Informative but not stuffy, unfiltered but full of facts, it’s a totally open conversation about periods.
The Sunny product is also demonstrated time and again (4.4m views and counting for a TikTok about how you insert the Sunny cup!)
It really is another nail in the coffin for the advertising of old - where periods were secret, shameful and hidden away.
In a separate New York Times piece this week entitled ‘Gen Z wants feminine care brands to just say vagina’, a number of newer brands were highlighted that are part of this change in how we talk about periods too.
They are also helping to drop the euphemisms around periods and break the taboo.
Brands such as August, Here We Flo and Tabu, are arriving in mass retailers but are also building communities with their marketing by having a very direct and open conversation about intimate health.
There’s no more shame or stigma - it’s all about learning and sharing. Women exchanging embarrassing moments, and slogans such as ‘Life Gets Messy’, we’ve got your back (and your front too).
There’s still a long way to go. Here in the UK for example, most supermarkets and pharmacies that I go in are still dominated by the usual suspects, such as Always and Tampax, with perhaps one ‘challenger brand’ option.
But, if the 20,000 pre-orders for Sunny are anything to go by, the change will continue to come.
A quick plug before we continue: Next week I’m co-hosting four amazing talks about women’s health and wellbeing at The Midlife Festival - an online five-day event featuring 30 world-class medical specialists, wellbeing experts and celebrities too. My talks include a chat with Dr Kate Bunyan from virtual menopause clinic Stella. Tickets are all FREE too, grab yours here: themidlifefestival.com
💰 Funding, deals and investment news
📌 What does Venture Capital have against FemTech? An article in Proto Life this week outlines the many reasons why VCs do not invest in FemTech. This includes female-founder teams (who still typically get just 2% of funding), male VCs who don’t understand women’s health (lazy excuse that one), and female VCs who don’t want to be pigeonholed for backing FemTech (sigh). (Source: Proto Life)
But there are glimmers of hope, and it’s actually been a great week or so for funding in FemTech (cont. below!).
📌 FemHealth Ventures closes a $32 million debut fund. Around 20 start-ups in women’s health are likely to benefit from the launch of this new fund, says Managing Partner Maneesha Ghiya. (Source: WSJ)
📌 $25m for Midi Health’s virtual care clinic for women over 40. Midlife healthcare is the focus for Midi Health - with nurse practitioners on hand as well as prescriptions and lifestyle coaching for perimenopause and menopause and more. The California-based virtual clinic aims to expand to all US states by 2024 and launch partnerships with hospitals and employers. This Series A funding round was led by GV (Google Ventures), bringing the company's total raise to $40 million. (Source: MobiHealth News)
📌 $14m to develop Evvy’s ’groundbreaking’ women’s health platform. Launched in 2021, Evvy is an at-home vaginal microbiome test that uses AI-powered insights to help women understand and support their vaginal health. The team has already collected the world’s largest dataset on the vaginal microbiome. New funding will allow Evvy to scale and validate improved outcomes in fertility, pregnancy and beyond. They’ve also just announced the addition of STI and antibiotic resistance testing to their offer. This Series A funding round was led by Left Lane Capital. (Source: Slice of Healthcare)
📌 $3.1m for Partum Health’s pregnancy and postpartum support. Dire US maternal health outcomes are well known. Partum Health set out in 2021 to change that with preventative and remedial services and solutions for the complications of pregnancy (such as mood and anxiety disorders, pelvic floor dysfunction etc). It will now build on its launch in Illinois to expand into new markets and with more insurance provider partners. This round of seed funding was led by True Wealth Ventures. (Source: FemTech Insider)
📌 Childcare support for founders from Ada Ventures. VC fund Ada Ventures has partnered with childcare provider Bubble to gift founders in its portfolio up to 40 hours of childcare each year to cover the gaps of childcare arrangements falling through (just when you need them the most!). It will also roll out firm-wide guidance for its portfolio companies around parental policies to help set positive cultures. (Source: Frances (Check) Warner on LinkedIn)
📌 Investing in women could boost UK economy by £250bn, MP says. Harriet Baldwin MP, chair of the parliamentary Treasury Select Committee, will tell VCs this week that one million new small or medium-sized businesses could be created if women were invested in at the same rate as men. (Source: CityAM)
🌟 More news from this week
📌 Lululemon launches post-mastectomy bra. Available in US stores this week, the bra was developed by Lululemon’s Chief Product Officer Sun Choe after her own experiences with breast cancer. (Source: Women’s health)
📌 Perelel launches ‘Cycle Support’ vitamin. Perelel’s new supplement arrives at a time of growing awareness about the importance of understanding menstrual cycles. The vitamins you take differ depending on where you are in your cycle to help ease symptoms and optimise health. The team is also launching its own ‘Hormonal Hotline.’ (Source: Her Campus)
📌 Axa Health extends menopause support to individuals and SME clients. It was only a few years ago that menopause was the word you should never mention to private health insurers (as there was no chance of coverage). That appears to be changing. Axa Health is now providing specialist menopause consultant access to all its members. This was previously available from January 2022 as an optional add-on to corporate clients only. (Source: Cover Magazine)
📌 Tech solutions for chronic pain. 70% of people living with chronic pain are women. FemTech Focus podcast host Brittany Barreto shares her pick of four start-ups creating tools to help people manage their pain. Featuring Lin, Moonai, Stanza and Sword Health. (Source: Healthy Women)
📌 Scan.com to offer private mammogram service from age 40. This is 10 years earlier than the NHS screening programme, which is offered every three years starting from age 50-53. Scan.com raised $12 million in Series A funding earlier in 2023. (Source: Business Cloud and TechCrunch)
🩸 Research, policy and women’s health news
📌 UK: Is menopause a disability? In a legal-first, a groundbreaking tribunal is considering whether social worker Maria Rooney was discriminated against by her employer on the grounds of disability due to her debilitating menopausal symptoms. This one is dividing opinion - will terming menopause a disability create even more stigma in the workplace? It seems to me we need a conversation about the right terminology for menopause discrimination rather than retro-fit into existing language. (Source: The Guardian)
📌 UK: And more in menopause workplace discrimination: £37,000 payout for menopause employment tribunal. A woman accused by her boss of using menopause ‘as an excuse for everything’ has had her claims of discrimination upheld. (Source: BBC)
📌 UK and US: 80% of women cite menopause as a workplace challenge. And more than 50% considered making an employment change due to menopause. These findings are in Carrot Fertility’s second annual Menopause in the Workplace report, which surveyed 2,000 people in the UK and US. (Source: Carrot Fertility
📌 GLOBAL: Gender inequalities and discrimination impacting women’s health. New research reveals 800,000 women globally are dying needlessly every year because they are denied optimal care when it comes to cancer. Health experts are now calling for a ‘feminist approach’ to cancer to eliminate inequalities which are stopping women getting timely diagnosis and quality care. (Source: The Guardian)
📌 INDIA: A national policy for menstrual hygiene is open for review in India. The aim is to provide access to safe products, improved sanitisation, comprehensive education and to challenge social taboos. (Source: Navneet Kaur, Founder of FemTech India, on LinkedIn)
📌 US: women are out of pocket by $15.4 billion when it comes to health. Working women are getting less benefits from their employee-sponsored healthcare plans in the US and end up spending 18% more than men. That’s according to a new study by Deloitte Consulting. Oh, and this figure excludes maternity care costs as well. (Source: CNBC and some interesting Axios analysis here)
That’s all for this week!
See you next time,
Anna