 So it's so awesome to be back after two years with all of you guys here in one room and I'm incredibly excited to be here with two investors or three rock star women to talk about Femtec or do we actually talk about Femtec? That's the whole point of the discussion and we did have a bit of a discussion backstage so I know this will be a funny or really interesting debate and I want to start with you to raise as a founder in the woman's female health space you successfully raised money you have been building the company for some time and went through a lot from a marketing or company building perspective communications point as you I would love to hear your perspective on what do you feel when you hear the term Femtec and why do we actually have it given or coined the term well I think there are many questions in that question but the first one is obviously when there is a norm anything that falls out of the norm gets called something specific to manifest that it falls outside and I think it's to me I don't have anything particular against it I see the value of clear clearly communicating what it is that it's about but it doesn't do anything for me or my company to be coined or termed Femtec company it's nothing that I usually call my own company but it it feels like it's a terminology that I we become given from investor point of view to sort us into a category for portfolio companies rather than something else but I also don't I don't feel like there's a menacing air aspect to it I don't think it's a problem but I just don't see the term itself doing anything particular to the problem of female entrepreneurs or women related topics becoming funded because that's the core that's the core problem is that and concerns that might be prominent with the female audience which is the majority in the world it's not niche and gets termed something that falls outside of the norm when in fact it is the majority and so that that disconnect is what I see as the problem what do you call it Femtec or not I don't have you know a big opinion on it yeah and we were also saying that we're four women here on stage which does probably tell a lot right I mean love the slash team who organized the program but no guys were invited on stage what do you think no but that's that's what I also said to you is that it's disturbing to me that we also are four women on stage seeing us as responsible for discussing something that has to do with health tech in general and we happen to have a female audience which again makes up half of the world's population so it should be equally as interesting a business case as anything else but I would have loved to participate in this panel with a more diverse group and also more perspectives because it's not a female issue it's it's an investment issue and it's a it's a it's a human issue I'd say yeah yeah and and and then you you said I mean for me it's interesting to hear when you talk about fundraising and how you brought the product to market how has it changed the communications if you don't talk about Femtec specifically well how has it just changed your your behavior when speaking to investors educating users or educating just any third party or stakeholders I mean I'd prefer to say we haven't changed anything but that we had to and it's not so much towards the end consumer that's that's very straightforward we're working with women's health and and reproductive health but when fundraising we've been very mindful of the narrative and how we come across especially since we are two female founders working in emerging markets for us and also having then 100 female audience there's already impact written all over us and we often get put in that space but why aren't you are you an NGO and you'd be you'd be surprised how often I get asked if we're an NGO just because we work with those types of markets yeah so we we were conscious I wouldn't say we changed but we were very aware of not using the term impact and very consciously focusing on the commercial potential of what we want to build and the scale at which we want to build because that seems to be the fear for most entrepreneurs I'd say obviously we're not special because we are women but you have more to prove to get half the way yeah yeah so it says being very aware what not to say I mean from an investor I also often get introduced to female founders because of exactly that reason I'm pretty sure both of you have been in situations like that uh where you know it's like they're really struggling with fundraising uh men seem to not really understand especially the male partners at venture capital firms how big the market actually is why there is a need for the product because it's targeted to more of a female audience and we usually like to think you know venture capital is um is all about the big ideas but they do is still like a massive funding gap so so what do you think I mean especially from an investor perspective now having seen and you also having invested in a lot of um female healthcare companies what do you think we need to change or overcome to get more comfortable with the category or yet help it become a bit more mainstream and accepted and then I think there's a whole other topic around like the gender data gap or so that is out there I mean some of the devices we're using or most of them are not even designed you know for the female user in mind including you know some of these nice variables we're always wearing um and um yeah would love to hear to Pali from you how you think about that um thank you for having me really excited to be here really talking about something that I love and I've invested in over the last few years a few femicide companies um you know like you said I think firstly we need more female investors not to say that is a female only problem but we definitely want more women in decision-making roles because women just tend to empathize more and understand the problem having said that 95 percent of the VC industry is male so you need you need that man in the room to try and understand the problem I remember I sat at a breakfast uh with a very prominent UK angel investor and he told me all about his deals and how he's investing in super interesting sectors and I said you invest in women's health and he said no because I don't understand it and I said but did you grow up understanding crypto and blockchain and you know all the the metaverse for example you didn't so you make an effort to understand as an investor you will never know enough as the founder so you need to make an effort to understand what the founder is building and men just need to make the effort beyond that you know I am always advocating in the UK ecosystem for more ground funding because health and women's health is a long-term game and especially in women's health women are not just building product but they're building the data and the science behind it because we're so far behind so it is just a longer game so you need more patient capital you need more ground funding and lastly I also think that the more exits we have I don't want to say this but it's proving our business models the more we have like modern fertility or over health you know exiting or the more we have series C's and series D's and the mavens of the world we are going to you know the VC industry operates on formal they don't want to miss out so you know those are some of the I mean of course the bigger question around gender data gap is huge it's not just investor founder it's policy makers it's government it's education it's a lot that has to come together to make it all work yeah yeah I mean I was pleased to see some kind of like yeah menstrual cycle tracking now and or for example great to have it five years later um yeah but at the iphone yeah and we still don't have like my daughter 15 year old says we don't have dresses with pockets mommy I have nowhere to put my phone yeah um I know you have some thoughts about that as well how do you think about the topic in in general now having seen and invested a lot of companies and then also what has changed maybe since you started investing since I started investing or since we started to look at fendek at at monkey I think it's become obvious over the just past couple of years that it's becoming in my view actually a very hot space everyone wants to whether it's a big fund a small fund a generalistic fund or a specialist fund everyone wants to do a fendek deal so in that sense there's definitely progress but it's true that we need to get more more male I mean you say everyone wants to do fendek deals um I feel like I have the like maybe different perception um how I mean our partnership is a 50 percent female which which makes it a lot easier I think um how has that been internally have your partners really specifically looked into the category with you as well or yeah definitely it's a whole whole team effort I would say um and it obviously takes a team to come to an investment position in the sense so yeah so uh for sure it's it's the whole team and I I don't think like I've heard many of the themes that they have these debates as to like whether it's niche or not etc but I don't think we've ever actually had that discussion internally because it's amazing obviously it's not niche yeah yeah tell me about some of the the companies you've recently um invested in or one one more recently uh the most recent investment was in into a UK company called Chenis so basically what they do they have this mobile app for everyday women to sync their training with their cycle so really kind of trying to help women hack their hormone self-heal more balance throughout their cycle so starting from syncing their training and and obviously there's potential to expand into syncing your nutrition or syncing your sleep etc for just overall their well-being throughout the cycle basically yeah so that's the that's the most recent but then in in in terms of otherwise how we look at Femtec I would say we look at health in general and Femtec just happens to be one category within that that we that we look at um and and so very broadly everything from I don't know menopause to sex tech to reproductive health and and fertility and then some other areas like longevity or well hormonal health etc that we spend a little bit more time longevity everyone's excited about that one how how have you evaluated the the companies or any commonalities you've seen in terms of difficulties to go to market from a regulatory perspective which I think sometimes is a lot harder in Europe for the businesses than in the US or what is your perception there and criteria you you're looking into um so maybe if I don't go to recognition yet but in terms of like overall what we look at so we definitely obviously love entrepreneurs who really deeply kind of understand the needs of their target audience we want to see either real kind of technological innovation and or some early science of that you're able to build this kind of a authentic community and a brand around your your product and we definitely love data and a lot of entrepreneurs who understand the value of data so I think it's pretty obvious that there's kind of related to this health or change your cap or data cap that you mentioned I think it's pretty obvious that there's a massive big data opportunity within femtech and and basically if if companies are able to create these feedback loops from symptoms to how to how the treatments actually work that's super valuable in the eyes of pharma for instance and and that's yeah we want to see that in the companies that we invest so not necessarily only companies that kind of um enable easier or quicker access to existing care but rather companies who help in validating and creating new treatments and actually fundamentally improve the treatment outcomes yeah fantastic so you're hunting more b2b or consumer propositions currently so that also I would say depends on the subcategory that we're talking about I think in general I don't know if you agree but I think in general many femtech companies have struggled to monetize their consumer proposition a little bit and and I'm seeing more and more companies turn into b2b and employee perks I think that's going to be also crowded at some point but I think that can be a smart way to kind of get to that first revenue the first traction but that being said it doesn't change the fact that you have to build a product that fundamentally is great I mean even on the b2b side it's it's not some magic pill that you can you know take and in case your consumer proposition doesn't work and that then will will solve everything for you I mean the b2b contracts will be up for renewal also at some point so the end user the employees needs to still love the love the product and gets real value out of it yeah love to hear actually your your learnings from monetization or going to market there yeah figuring out different business models obviously pricing all these things super interesting topic what how are you kind of like navigating the the kind of like have you navigated the market there yeah nobody one of the most important topics for us as a as a any any founded led company or any startup is to understand how you're going to make this into a scalable business right but our our big challenge is that if you look at for example employee setups or b2b setups we work in emerging markets or the next billion users meaning that companies don't have the same perk systems it doesn't get you can't just apply the way you monetize to big a corpse because they don't work in nearly the same way so for us it's been making you know conscious bets and for us understanding the end consumer is going to be the the most important thing because if we build something that she wants and she needs then we can leverage the pair user relationship and find both pairs within the audience but also other other companies or insurance companies or data um yeah uh handlers that are interested but so we're you know dead dedicated to the end consumer so for us also with regards to the high corruption anti like not antitrust but low trust in some of our markets establishing a really strong brand has been key and instrumental to even start experimenting in monetization so that's something we're doing this upcoming years to look at the b2c side and and then b2b coming up after that but it's it's always a a trade off and you know with with the fundraising we often get that comment I love what you do I love you as a founder I wish you had just started monetizing a bit it becomes the universal sorry for coming all of you together but it's it becomes a universal answer for why you don't want to invest and that that that's fine but it it's hard to sometimes know should we should be actually try and monetize already because I'm not sure and that that would be the right thing and especially not in our markets with the audience we have so we've opted out of optimizing for it for now and going to experiment much more in this upcoming year I mean we're seeing a lot of community first businesses in general in the industry they're building a strong brand almost just have a community that is the product initially and then they're launching more yeah different pricing options I think that model is still a little bit unproven at scale and we've seen very few companies being incredibly successful or being successful in doing so I know I'm Deepali we talked about that whole community topic and you're big on on on the community side as well and with all my angels what do you think about in general like community first companies and helping also to to educate the market a little bit more and building the brand around businesses super interesting because Trez when I first met her she also had a Facebook community I remember and she was migrating to an app but you know just fun you'll have thinking a little bit about how communities work you run a community I run a community she ran a community communities tend to be different than networks right communities tend to have slightly more unstructured communication than a network so like a Facebook or a TikTok and what ends up happening is the engagement tends to be lower than in a network and now you're trying to build a product around this engagement you're trying to get early adopters to adopt you know from the community this product and then you're trying to then scale this product outside the community so the product has to be phenomenal and you're trying to scale it in markets especially in the UK where people are not used to paying for healthcare yeah right the cap is higher the willingness to pay is low and therefore monetization is a long game you can't just see you know over a short period of time can we monetize this community because it is really hard to do which is why you're seeing companies like peppy which started B2C and now going B2B because you know it's somewhat even though sales cycles are long it is an easier way to monetize the community and I've been thinking about this you know other business models that have managed to monetize community have really been product first because how do you build a venture scale business you look in Minecraft you know my son started playing at four he's still playing it at 12s a community of game players but it was product first right and so was GitHub or more recently you can see the DAOs you know that are building communities and monetizing using a subscription but very early days and the question is can you monetize these communities at scale and build a venture scale business and I don't know yet I don't know the answer to that question yeah that's a big question right so I think we've we had one one unicorn this year in the woman's health space maybe clinic but right but otherwise I think especially in Europe it's a lot harder in the US maybe but still the community model has not been proven really yet and it's a great way for early engagement but it's still a tougher playground how I mean it seems like the tone has shifted a lot in the investment community for femtech I know you don't like me just using the word anymore but what are the areas from an investment perspective that you you feel like there's still a lot of gaps that need to be addressed I personally have looked a lot into fertility it's a topic I'm really excited about longevity I just don't see a lot of companies and I would really love to hear your perspective and what you're seeing you might be seeing a very different companies than me as well and whether the areas that feel like you you've seen you haven't seen a lot of like yeah exciting companies yet but there are massive opportunities I mean I've seen a lot more recently super interesting ones in the US and things like abortion care and of course PCOS endo you know these are diseases that they really long to diagnose so the diagnosis side of it is super interesting yeah again they're doing the clinical research that hasn't been done before so it's a few years before the product much jargon by the way endo you know maybe half the people in the room don't even know what it means sorry and then I've seen obviously in maternal you know post maternal yeah and you know there are certain underrepresented communities people of color where you know infant mortality rates are really high so I've seen some in that sector but I think women's health to be honest there's still a lot to be done in menopause or fertility more recently I saw fertility finance which is a pain point so you know somewhere between fintech and fertility which I also thought was super interesting so still seeing a lot of interesting things come out in this sector yeah and of course teenage health and I've seen some vertical age health yeah oh and I've seen some in you know LGBTQ plus community in terms of sexual health I personally have invested in six or seven femtech companies from you know fertility menopause vaginal microbiome sexual maleness female hygiene product incontinence so I've seen a lot but still seeing a lot of innovation come out and that's the thing really because like if you if you think about like even in the like perfectly healthy western woman's life cycle there like you know from the moment that you get your period to you know you starting to educate yourself about sex maybe giving birth recovering from birth menopause etc like even the like healthy journey like there are so many points where you can build better products for women but then like thinking about the all the other conditions that you might experience like PCOS etc like so many solutions are needed and so little has been actually done in the in the past decades that that I also just have to echo what you're saying that there is still like there are just tons of opportunities ahead yeah obviously it's a good question as to like I'm obviously then now seeing like for instance like different products with different hooks like I don't know the PCOS being the hook but then wanting to expand into something bigger going forward so so lots of companies popping up at preside and seed and I think the good question is then that like when will be when will this kind of different hook products kind of converge and and kind of like what will be the when will when will we start to see more of them the aggregators and kind of like what will eventually become big enough kind of which is I guess part of your question as to like what scales yeah and can this become big enough no exactly because one of the things I'm asking myself is there are different companies for different cycles or you know depending on your age group as well so you might not even think about it now you might not even aware about a challenge that you as a woman you're actually going to be facing at some point later in five ten years so you're not even looking for for solutions from a consumer mind right so that's also the phase I'm going through as an investor right I might not think about menopause now but then you know it's super relevant for so many people but then it's also usually a very kind of like a smaller age group that it's actually relevant for which makes marketing you know a little bit harder sometimes or at least a dressable market for the companies because especially fertility for example or really specific products just targeted for helping you once you already have tried to get pregnant actually and you have to go through IVF this is only relevant like literally between the age of like maybe 35 and 40 right the lifetime value isn't long enough but having said that if the price is yeah margin is there you can exactly and it's a really high premium product actually the consumer has a super high willingness to pay because they are so desperate at some point right but it's going to be hard to keep growing with that user as well unless you really actually extend your product range so I think that's the that's the heart of it right versus like with other companies or maybe non-super big health companies it might be easier to then yeah continue with that with that customer but yeah but I think it's it will eventually be a combination of many things so for instance when it comes to this menopause thing so first of all like you're right that like you probably even as a con like you are your younger but even like later on you probably as a woman you don't necessarily realize that some of the symptoms that you're having are in anyway related to menopause at the kind of very beginning of the or at the very menopause phase and so I think it comes down a lot to like in all other categories too it comes down to us having more research and kind of like the average woman being or women being more educated about the topics and that's why we we are also here talking about fentech and I feel that the terms term is still needed that yeah that women overall needs to be more educated so that they actually demand better products and I think that will then kind of like help for instance when it comes to menopause I think that's an example of where just in the past years it's becoming more and more or kind of less stigmatized as an area it's becoming something that you would discuss with your friends it's something that's part of the coffee table chats kind of and it's getting easier than in terms of customer acquisition too for the for these companies because there will be these kind of super users who use your product tell everyone about the amazing menopause journey that they're having with your product and and kind of that will then enable these companies to build a brand in a more efficient way than it has been possible just a couple of years back so kind of like it's there are just different building blocks that you need for these companies to actually get yeah for a word completely agree I think we we do need the term initially to actually educate the audience more than at some point probably it's started more as a movement it's going to be a lot more mainstream but I know you have some different thoughts here um I don't it's not necessarily different I would just want to clarify for me it's it's um it it can feel like we're doing something when we put the name on it and everyone talks about femtech it feels like we're doing something we feel active we feel good about ourselves it feels like yeah we're we're on it we're we're up to speed but for me I I see the the product coming out from male and female entrepreneurs for addressing topics relating to women's health and male health that are great it's not in the product development it's in the funding because you don't see enough of these initiatives getting enough of funding then they can't grow then you also can't build more women entrepreneurs who make exits and earn a lot of money because they don't get the funding and the the businesses don't get the same potential to scale and prove their potential also so you have it's the funding gap that I get stuck on and that's why I don't really care about the term so much it doesn't do anything for the change it just manifests a title that can make investment companies feel like they're onto something when in fact they might if you show me that you actually put more funds towards products and services and companies that solve these globally huge issues great then I don't care about the term but as long as nothing moves I mean I'm not opposed it I just don't see that that's not where the discussion should lie it should lie and why don't more of these companies with clear monetary value like peanut maven flow who like raised a huge amount of money they're proving that they can monetize and even if not now then further down why don't more actually get excited about the bottom line because it's the monetary aspect that if this is want sure right yeah yeah so you're clearly against us using no that's not what I am so I'm also like I'm indifferent with like I don't care about the term femtech especially it has some negative connotations to it like we can come up with a new term but I do think that like women's health is an area that should be worked on should be talked about should be there should be a really huge exactly yeah until at that point when we actually kind of bridge that gap yeah I agree I think it's less about the term as long as it drives capital into yes I will pay that there is a lot of unconscious biases out there you know I am biased I only invest in women and I still I'm sure I have biases because I probably compare a team of all female team that I met today to a fantastic all female team that I met yesterday so that's an unconscious bias that I clearly need to work on because they do separate businesses right so I think the funding has more to do with the biases and how do we overcome them and how you know how do we work on them but having said that we wouldn't be here even on stage bonding if it wasn't just for the term femtech so even if it just brings us together building businesses innovating talking about it and hey if we didn't talk about the vote we won't have the vote so sometimes it's just good to talk about these things to get them out in the open yeah fantastic ending thank you so much Tiris, Dipali and Polina we're out of time and thank you all for tuning in thank you thank you