Issue #9: It's Becoming a Woman's World, One Female Founder at a Time
3 Topics, 3 Brands, in 3-Minutes
To kick off Women’s History Month, I thought it was only fitting to highlight the ways in which female founders are girl-bossing their way to making this a woman’s world after all. It’s time we reevaluate the female-specific systems and practices that were originally created by men. Although they may have helped us in the moment, hundreds of years ago, we can do it for ourselves now 💅🏼
⌛️ It’s Time to Retire Out-Dated Women’s Health Practices
Within the past decade, we have seen the emergence of female-founded health practices, such as Allara and Tia, that take a holistic approach by understanding that hormones and health conditions don’t have a one-size-fits-all treatment plan. Now that hormone health is being taken more seriously, female founders are looking beyond the diagnosis stage, investigating the inconvenient and often painful — but critical — procedures used to monitor women’s health. Female founder Kara Eagan has joined the movement to rethink age-old practices by targeting cervical cancer screenings (pap smears) — aka the annual appointment every woman dreads.
Teal Health — A research-backed at-home cervical cancer screening device.
Founded: 2020
Co-Founder & CEO: Kara Egan
Co-Founder: Ave Thakor, MD, PhD
Latest Funding: 10M, seed (January 2025)
🔗 Teal Health Raises $10M as they Prepare to Launch the Teal Wand™…
🩹 A New Approach to The Hormonal “Band-Aid”
One of the most controversial topics regarding women’s health is birth control — specifically “the pill.” The birth control pill is another one of the many female-specific medications created by a man — well, three men actually: Gregory Pincus, Min Chueh Chang, and John Rock. As many of us have experienced, birth control is often prescribed to women with a trial-and-error approach. With so many different ratios of progesterone to estrogen, patients often experience negative side effects like weight gain, mood swings, depression, acne, loss of period…the list goes on. Once these negative symptoms present themselves, a new ratio is prescribed, and the cycle repeats until little to no symptoms remain.
It is safe to say that this approach is not favorable among women. However, it is all we’ve been offered and so it is all we have to choose from. That is, until female-founder Dr. Elizabeth Ruzzo created a new approach to eliminate the trial-and-error game associated with “the pill.”
adyn — At-home test that analyzes your personal risk for specific side effects to help you choose your birth control with confidence.
Founded: 2019
Founder: Dr Elizabeth Ruzzo
Latest Funding: $2.5M Seed (2021)
🔗…$2.5M Seed Funding for Personalized Birth Control
🏢 Corporate America’s Motherhood Revamp
As more companies transition back to in-person work, the average person will need to adjust their commute, school drop-offs, and maybe pack a lunch. However, for mothers with newborns, they now need to pack a pump, cooler, bottles, and sanitary supplies to continue to feed their babies.
A typical corporate office will have a room somewhere in the building where mothers can go to pump. The inconvenience of packing the supplies and machinery required to pump multiple times a day consumes a significant amount of time for working mothers — not to mention that mothers will no longer have the privacy and convenience that working from home offers.
This is where female founder Patrice Meagher is making a difference. Patrice founded MilkMate, an all-in-one, multi-user pumping system purpose-built for workplace environments. MilkMate is adapting workspaces so that mothers don’t have to choose between their careers and their children. So, if you’re a new mother or expecting, MilkMate may need to pay your office a visit.
Founded: 2020
Founder & CEO: Patrice Meagher
Latest Funding: $5M, seed
🔗 MilkMate, a Revolutionary Breast Pumping Solution for the Workplace
That’s all for this week, see you next Sunday!
P.S. I am new to this writing thing, so if you have any tips or come across brands/topics I should cover - let’s chat!
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