Written by Cécile Tang as part of the Republic Venture Fellow Program (Fall 2022)
Startups in the Femtech space — products and services seeking to improve healthcare for female-identifying individuals — are increasingly addressing female-specific pain points that are underserved by traditional healthcare institutions. As the Femtech space seems to be on the cusp of disruption today, this investment thesis will highlight key trends, major players, and my conviction in Femtech startups’ ability to offer tailored and technology-driven solutions for women for the first time in the history of healthcare.
When she was pregnant with my brother, my mother was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. As a 5-year-old at the time, I watched her go through one of the most difficult periods of her life with little support and guidance from people outside of the family. But my mother is not the only woman I know who suffered from underserved and under-appreciated female-specific health complications: I know women who struggle with debilitating menstrual pain, women who agonize over how and when to start a family, women who battle menopause-induced hot flashes and night sweats.
Witnessing women around me — many of whom are best friends, role models, and loved ones — suffer through these conditions is just as heartbreaking as it is frustrating. It was only a matter of time before my desire to learn more about female-specific health problems, and how to solve them, led me to stumble upon Femtech.
First coined by entrepreneur Ida Tin, the founder of Clue, Femtech refers to solutions that seek to improve healthcare for female-identifying individuals, especially by addressing female-specific conditions such as maternal health, menstrual health, and menopause. Before diving into the goals and breakthroughs in Femtech, however, we have to glimpse into the past to understand the circumstances in which the field was born.
For the most part, medical research, training, diagnoses and therapeutic development have been overwhelmingly tailored to the male body. To illustrate, early research in cardiovascular disease largely excluded female-identifying subjects, creating the male-centric misconception that symptoms of heart attacks only manifest in the left arm and chest. Although women are reported to be more likely to experience other symptoms, these experiences are treated as “atypical,” leading to a 50% higher likelihood of heart attack misdiagnosis for women.
On a broader scale, female-identifying individuals are also less likely to be treated for pain, even though they report more severe levels, frequency, and duration of pain. Taken together, these figures paint the picture of a healthcare system that fails to treat female-specific health issues in a systematic and reliable way.
“We have huge opportunities to improve our collective understanding of female health.” — *Carolyn Witte, Chief Executive & Co-Founder @ Tia*
One of the most important drivers behind the exponential growth of the Femtech market is the huge unaddressed market that Femtech solutions tapped into. The numbers below illustrate the size of the market for the underserved needs that female-identifying individuals around the world face:
female-identifying individuals in the world
is spent annually by women on medical expenses
of consumer purchasing decisions in the healthcare industry are made by women
In addition, women’s life expectancy is higher than men in almost all countries in the world, another opportunity for Femtech solutions to support female-identifying consumers across different stages of their lives for a longer period of time.
Early players in the space were also able to tap into specific sub-segments of the female-identifying demographic. One of the first Femtech startups to attract widespread attention was the period subscription service HelloFlo, which went viral in 2013 for an advertisement depicting a girl who was first to get her period at summer camp.
“The market potential is huge. There’s definitely an increasing appetite for anything in the world which is technology, and a realization that female consumer power has arrived — and that it’s arrived in health care.” — Michelle Tempest, Partner @ Candesic
Over the next decade, Femtech would grow to become an impressive market sized at between $500M and $1B, with some estimates that it has the potential to reach $50B by 2025.
A useful way of understanding the Femtech market is to segment it based on product/service type, application, and end use.