⚽ This Week in FemWealth: From Women-led Ventures to Sports
FemWealth Issue #72
Happy Sunday, FemWealth Friends!
Read the latest and greatest in women-led startups, VC, economics, women’s health and sports:
FemWealth Favourites ❤️
Startups: 💸 This Startup Just Raised $50 Million To Bring More Doctors To Rural Areas - On a mission to close the healthcare gap in rural America by expanding primary and specialty care, the startup co-founded and led by Dr. Jennifer Schneider has raised $50 million in Series B funding, just four months after raising its Series A.
“People who live in rural markets have about half as many primary care doctors and one-eighth of specialty care doctors.” - Dr. Jennifer Schneider
💸 Kontempo lands fresh capital amid the boom for B2B BNPL - Co-founded by Antonia Marino (COO), the Mexico-based startup offering buy now, pay later (BNPL) and interest-free installment plans to business-to-business (B2B) customers, has raised a $30 million seed round in a mix of equity ($6.5 million) and debt ($25 million).
💸 Materna Medical Raises $22M As Femtech Becomes A Billion-Dollar Sector - The California-based company led by Tracy MacNeal has raised $22 million to tackle pelvic care for prenatal and postpartum patients.
💸 Kenyan insurtech Lami raises $3.7M seed extension led by Harlem Capital - Founded and led by Jihan Abass, the startup aims to increase insurance penetration in Kenya and the rest of Africa.
💸 Menopause Startup Lisa Health Launches Its AI-Powered App Midday And Closes The $2.5 Million Seed Round - The digital health company, co-founded and led by Ann Garnier, leverages AI, sensor technology, and digital therapeutics to support women on their menopause journey. Its recently launched app, Midday, offers a personalized digital health solution to monitor physical and emotional symptoms during menopause and provide intervention to promote healthy aging.
“As a senior healthcare technology executive who was thriving in the workplace, I experienced firsthand just how debilitating menopause can be and the potential for it to derail my career and personal relationships. From that moment, I became passionate about using advanced technology to transform the menopause experience.” - Ann Garnier
💸 Digital marketplace Clutch closes $1.2M pre-seed round led by Precursor Ventures - The people-first creator economy platform co-founded by Madison Long and Simone May, connects individuals to businesses looking for marketing and content creation.
“We're very passionate about being able to elevate the next generation of people that look like us. We prioritize democratizing access to information, using technology.” - Simone May
“Our vision is to build a world where authentic, engaging work supports a joyful, sustainable and equitable lifestyle. Clutch is the ecosystem of the future of the creator economy that will provide individuals and businesses with all of the tools they need to thrive in all areas of their lives and make their personal interests their source of income.” - Madison Long
“My advice for other entrepreneurs who are hoping to incorporate advocacy work into their business is to start small and be focused on what you already know. Listen to the community that you're hoping to serve—they know what they need most.” - Carinne Chambers-Saini
🚗 Amid reports of sexual assault, this Atlanta Lyft driver founded a rideshare app just for women - Features Jillian Anderson, co-founder of HERide, a female-centric driving app operating in Atlanta, Georgia. The company employs only female drivers.
VC: 💸 Tech's riskiest founders are getting a $650 million bet from Redpoint Ventures - Led by managing director Annie Kadavy and managing partner Erica Brescia (formerly a COO at GitHub), the US firm has closed its ninth early-stage fund with $650M in capital commitments.
“In an environment where it's really easy to raise a seed round, it's really easy to get your first product up as long as you can throw more money at the problem you're trying to solve…that is a different profile of risk versus it’s really hard to raise money, and I have to build those products because I care so deeply about the problem.” - Annie Kadavy
💸 Climate-focused VC stays scorching as Buoyant Ventures targets $100M fund - Founded and led by Amy Francetic and Allison Myers, the Chicago-based Buoyant Ventures has locked down just over $50 million for a new fund and is targeting to raise another $50 million.
💸 Co-Founder Yi He To Lead Binance's Venture Capital Arm - Yi He, the co-founder of Binance will lead the company’s venture capital arm and incubator, Binance Labs, the largest crypto VC in the industry by Asset Under Management (AUM). (Also read this profile: Meet Binance's female cofounder, 36-year-old' crypto O.G.' He Yi - Fortune $)
🦄 She's Looking for the Next Women-Led Unicorn. First Stop: A Very Chic Garage - An excellent profile of Amy Griffin, Founding Partner of G9 Ventures and an investor in women-led companies Bumble, Goop and Hello Sunshine.
👏 Meet 12 female partners in Europe promoted or hired this year - Sifted updates its list of 300+ female VC partners in Europe and profiles 12 female VC partners in new roles, including Annalise Dragic of Sapphire Ventures, Laura Connell of Atomico, Bettine Schmitz and Gesa Miczaika of AUXXO, Carmen Rico of Cocoa and more.
🙌 180+ Early-stage funds founded by at least one female investor [US-focused] - Curated by Ali Rohde, an investor at Outset Capital.
🎧 Forerunner’s Kirsten Green on The Biggest Challenges Scaling Both Teams and AUM, What Truly is High Performance in Fund Management & Why Parenting and Relationships are an Enabler To Your Best Work - Follow Kirsten Green, Founder and Managing Partner of Forerunner Ventures, on Twitter and Linkedin.
Economics & Finance: 👶 The Workforce Of Tomorrow Requires A Child Care System Fit For The Future - Features some of the top women-led startups trying to solve the childcare system in the US.
💸 Los Angeles Advisor Manages $2.9 Billion For Clients At The Firm Where She Was An Intern A Decade Ago - Features Sara Wendt, 31, a director at LA-based wealth management firm Miracle Mile Advisors.
Women's Health: 👩🏽🦳 Getting Drug Makers and Investors Focused on Women's Health
👩🏽 Mira Launches Ovum Wand to Predict Menopause and Monitor Fertility Status for Women over 35 - The FDA-approved over-the-counter tool provides lab-accurate detection of the follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) to predict menopause, evaluate fertility and assist in ovulation prediction. The product will be available to US customers starting in October. Sylvia Kang leads the company.
Sports: ⚽ European champion Lionesses get England fired up about women’s soccer - England won the Women’s Euro Championship in front of over 87,000 fans who attended the match at Wembley Stadium.
🚴🏽♀️ Tour de France Femmes: Dutch rider Annemiek van Vleuten wins inaugural title Dutch cyclist Annemiek van Vleuten won the first women’s Tour de France after a 33-year absence - in 1989, the women’s race was canceled due to lack of support and financial backing.
What I’m Reflecting On 💭
IVF Patients Are Trapped in Limbo and Bracing for the Next Post-Roe Fight
“Fertility treatments are already a grueling path to building a family. With embryos gaining new legal protections under Dobbs, they could become a criminal one.”
Menstrual policies are constrained by the very stigma they seek to tackle
“Menstrual education must shift from propagating bodily control, concealment, and management rooted in gendered oppression to enabling bodily autonomy.”
Elon Musk’s No. 2 at SpaceX Does Damage Control (The Information $)
“Her acolytes have lauded Shotwell’s ability to translate her visionary boss’s wild ideas into a business that has become the most valuable venture-backed startup in America, one that has won key clients such as NASA and has launched an ambitious satellite-based internet service. Respect for Shotwell has run so deep at the company—better known as SpaceX—that some longtimers have a saying: They work for Gwynne, not Elon.
Lately, though, Shotwell’s handling of employee concerns about Musk’s conduct has put that admiration to the test.”
It's Getting Harder to Be a Woman in America
“For years now we've been telling ourselves, if we can just get hired, if we can just get paid fairly, if we just lean in—and then, through the pandemic, if we can just hold on until schools reopen, or vaccines become available, or this week's crisis has passed, things will be better. But it's not getting better. Right now it's getting worse. And so women continue to make more concessions. We surrender our careers, our autonomy, ourselves. We labor in hospital hallways, pump in broom closets. We try to keep going. We have to. Without us, everything falls apart.”
Female CEOs run just 4.8% of the world's largest businesses on the Global 500 (Fortune $) - Women currently lead 24 of the 500 companies on the Fortune list, ranking the largest companies by revenue worldwide, with one more female CEO than at this time last year.
Funding Disparity Widens for UK Female Fintech Founders in 2022 - In the UK, FinTech startups founded by women make up just 4% of total investment, down from 15% in the first half of 2021.
“In boom times investors may be more willing to ‘take a chance’, as they see it, on investing in women entrepreneurs. But when economic uncertainty arrives, they revert to type and turn off the taps to women-led businesses. Of course, they are wrong; there’s a growing body of evidence to suggest that enterprises with at least one woman leader, outperform the pack.” - Anne Boden, founder of UK digital bank Starling
‘Mind-blowing’: Why do men’s paintings cost 10 times more than women’s? - For every £1 a male artist earns for his work, a woman earns a mere 10p, according to Helen Gorrill, the author of Women Can’t Paint, who studied the prices of 5,000 paintings sold all over the world. Even more shockingly, the value of a work by a woman falls if she has signed it.
“Women artists have fared very poorly because there’s been an unconscious collusion between the marketplace, art history and the institutions. Everybody lacks confidence, everybody’s looking for confirmation. So there’s been a sort of confirmational history, which you could call the canon. And, of course, convention and history were framed by patriarchy.” - Frances Morris, director of Tate Modern
Thank you for reading! 🥰 Have a lovely Sunday and an excellent week ahead! ☀️
Anamaria
Founder & Writer of FemWealth