Investing in Women’s Health: Changing The Business of Our Bodies + Solving Inefficiencies
There is a gap in America’s knowledge of women’s health.
This is no surprise because it wasn’t until 1993 that Congress wrote an NIH inclusion policy into Federal law that encouraged women and minorities as subjects in clinical research. Much of what is considered ‘health standards’ are largely skewed towards men because of the years when women went unstudied.
Even today, there remains gender inequality in healthcare as we face wide gaps in research and treatment ability for areas unique to women. By elevating the importance of women’s health, we can deliver better, more inclusive data and insights; more targeted, accessible solutions; and enable better care for women worldwide. Not only that, but we shine a light on the importance of funding and uplifting companies that center around changing the business of our bodies.
In celebration of Women's Health Month, I joined Female Founder Collective for a panel discussion on solving women's health inefficiencies. I'm joined by Aagya Mathur (Aavia), Dr. Sophia Yen, MD, MPH (Pandia Health), and Alison Wyatt (Female Founder Collective).
Topics covered:
How sexism has held back the healthcare system
The most important discoveries and advances in health care since including women in more studies
White spaces within women’s health that haven’t been fully explored or addressed
Navigating the healthcare space as someone who is new to healthcare
Fundraising tips and successfully pitching your women’s health company
Listen
Transcript
Halle: Hello, heart of healthcare listeners. I'm your host, Halle Tecco. There is a gap in America's knowledge about women's health. This is no surprise because it wasn't until 1993 that Congress wrote an NIH inclusion policy into federal law that encouraged women and minorities as subjects in clinical research.
Much of what is considered health standards are largely skewed towards men because the years when women went understudied. Even today, there remains gender inequality in healthcare as we face why gaps in research and treatment ability for areas unique to women. By elevating the importance of women's health, we can deliver better, more inclusive data and insights, more targeted, accessible solutions, and enable better care for women worldwide.
Not only that, but we can shine a light on the importance of funding and uplifting companies that center around changing the business of our bodies. In celebration of Women's Health Month, I joined female Founder Collective for panel discussion on solving women's health efficiencies. I'm joined by Aya Mather of Avia, Dr.
Sophia Yen of Pandia Health, and Allison Wyatt of Female Founder Collective. I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation.
Allie: Hi everyone. Super excited about this panel today. We have some extraordinary women. Solving some massive problems, um, within the women's healthcare space. Again, I'm Allie Wyatt. I am the co-founder and c e o of Female Founder Collective. We have the 10th House, which is our private membership community. We invite in cohorts four times a year in order to find resources, connections.
And. Founders that are in similar stages to vent with them as well as use them, um, in your journey to help you sort of be the ways of the, the founder journey and see around corners and over hurdles. I am very excited though about this conversation today and was just fangirling over these ladies because there remains obviously a huge gender inequality gap in healthcare as we face gaps in research and treatment ability for areas that are unique to women.
And by elevating the importance of this, we can deliver better, more inclusive data insights. Targeted accessible solutions and enable better care for women worldwide. So in celebration of ffc is Women's Healthcare Month. Um, we are joined by Halle Tecco, who I'm gonna go through her bio, um, because she's an extraordinary entrepreneur, angel investor podcast host, and she's passionate about fixing our healthcare system.
Stem. She is the founder of Natalist, which was acquired by Everly Health in October, 2021. And previously Halle founded in Ran Rock Health and also is an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School teaching the first MBA a level course on digital health investing. She has served as a board member to the international African American or African American museum since 2018, and as an advisor to the Harvard Medical.
School department of biomedical informatics since 2014. I don't even know what that is, but it sounds incredibly impressive. Um, and I've actually coined her on this call as a fairy godmother of the women's healthcare system. So that is what she is. I like a little,
Halle: I'm gonna start using that.
Allie: And AIA Math has an extraordinary career as well, but she started a volunteer service to fill a community need in high school.
School and founding a small business to provide affordable transportation to her undergraduate classmates. To now leading Avia Avia Avia Avia Avia to improve the health and wellness of people with Uteruses, AIA Mather is consistently bridging gaps in solving inefficiencies. Through personal and professional experiences, she found her passion at the intersection of healthcare innovation and analytics-driven insights.
During her consulting career, she worked with various clients to improve patient experience. However, she found she needed to be closer to the end user or to have the kind of impact she knew she could have. And certainly last but not least, we have Dr. Yen sh in. 2016, she founded Pandia Health. The only doctor led women founded, women-led birth control delivery company that is building the online health brand.
Women trust the brand improves women's lives by providing a one-stop solution for prescription birth control and acne treatment by providing online doctor's visits for prescriptions and automating medication delivery. Pandia Health empowers women with convenient, confidential, and reliable access. To Expert Women's Healthcare.
The company was named to Ink's Best in Business Health Services and is co-founder and C E O Dr. Sophia Yen md MPH H was named as one of ink's most dynamic women entrepreneurs. So in other words, we have quite the lineup today of people who are very much experts in their fields. I'm gonna go ahead and kick it off with a question for Dr.
Yen because I wanted to address the elephant in the room, and that's. Set women's bodies, and this was a little known stat that I actually learned from the founder of Tia Health had been virtually ignored for centuries, and it wasn't until 1993 that Congress wrote an National Institute of Health Inclusion policy into federal law an encouraged women in minorities as subjects in clinical research.
It's completely insane. So why do you think it took so long to put this into policy, and how do you think it held back the healthcare system? Previous to that,
Dr. Sophia Yen: So, um, first of all, I wanna explain from the researcher scientist point of view probably why this was done. That it was that women and minorities weren't included.
Um, one is cost. In order to get minorities included, you have to have enough of them so that if you find a result that it's significant. And so if you wanna include minorities, then you have to add extra money. To include minorities and the women part is just from a scientific point of view and liability point of view.
If you're trying a new drug and the patient gets pregnant, then you don't know the fetal effects. And then if the woman is on her birth control, you don't know the hormonal effects. Is she menopausal? That's another effect, um, is she's cycling up and down, but I think it was mainly liability. If anybody gets pregnant while you're trying a new drug, you're gonna get.
Sued and you're trying to do a new drug, you don't have time or the money to get sued. So I think that was probably it. And the reason why finally in 1993 this happened was I think one, we had enough women in Congress to push for this, so we need to elect more women officials. But two, we had more women in science saying, hello.
We are 50% of the population we give birth to all of the existence on this planet. We deserve to be. We are not just little men. And that has been similar with pediatrics. There is a lot of drugs that have never been tested technically in pediatrics, we just take the adult dose and like do it milligram per kilogram and throw it at children.
So, um, it's absolutely, I think a time of awareness that not everyone is a variant of what we were all taught in medical school. And I went to medical school in 93. Uh, 70 kilo white male is the basis of 95% of medicine and. Thank you. 1993. Um, hopefully more women have been in more research, but we still, I think, deserve equal funding and I don't think we see at least equal funding for the same diseases that affect women.
Endometriosis, fibroids, menopause is the wild, wild west. And um, realizing again that women are not men. We have estrogen. We lose estrogen. And how does that affect our bones, our brains, our hearts. Et cetera. Very different from someone who doesn't lose estrogen at around 50 years old.
Allie: And going sort of deeper into this topic about education too, around women's health, Halle, I wanna turn this to you.
You talk about how women's health is actually an elective in many med schools, and oftentimes we believe our doctors are gaslighting us and don't fully understand us. But is this partially due to. How they are educated in the, in the medical education system.
Halle: Yeah. Well I think just to preface the problem, one in five women report having felt a healthcare provider has ignored or dismissed their symptoms and 45% of women, um, so they've been labeled as chronic complainers.
And so you can imagine a lot of women aren't even, uh, Sharing their full medical history or the symptoms that they're facing due to fear of being judged by a physician. And I don't think that all providers gaslight certainly, um, you know, they're amazing providers out there, but I don't think that our system is set up to really help providers meet their full potential in working with female patients.
Appointment times are extremely short. I just had my annual, you know, maybe I had eight minutes. With my doctor. I had, um, maybe 10 minutes with the nurse before that, and I probably got more value out of that time with the nurse or the PA than with my physician. Providers are burnt out, um, especially female providers.
They're absolutely burnt out and most folks in the system just don't have the capacity to change things. We have built our system on a fee for service model, and that has led to, for someone who's. Young and otherwise looks healthy, kind of in and out, like check the box and move on. And so I think because of that, you know, women feel like they're not being heard.
And I think the response is these amazing companies that we're starting to see, like Pandia Health, like Avia, like Tia, that are women who've been through this, who wanna solve the problem and actually give women the sort of respect, time and attention that we so desire.
Allie: And I'm gonna now flip it over to you, AGIA.
What have been the most major discoveries or advances in healthcare since including women in these studies that, that you've seen?
Agia: Yeah, I mean many. Um, and I hope that this is just the first inning, uh, not to use a sports analogy when talking about women's health, but I hope that this. Just, we're just at the starting line, if you will.
Um, where, you know, one of the things that I actually say often also, and I heard, uh, Dr. Young say is like, women are not just little men. That is just something that I can't stress enough to anybody where we're excluded from these, from these. Studies because of our pesky hormones that was literally written in a paper once.
And what does that mean for us now going forward now that we have, have some of, have been included now in some studies and there's still so much to go seeing that difference has. Really unraveled a whole slew of things. So starting with this health, women's health specific concern. So that's something that I like to make really clear, is that women's health is not just making babies, preventing babies.
Like that is not all it is. While our ovaries, our uteruses and our hormones are a big part of it. And there's breast cancer screening, different things like that. Uh, reproductive health, menopause, as we talked about, maternal health, those are very. Specific pieces that have come out. But since I, we will talk a bit more about that.
I'm going to skip through that. Another part that's actually really near and dear to my heart is cardiovascular disease. Um, this was something again, really predominantly focused on men. There's one of my dear friends is building a company in actually women's cardiovascular disease to see, to show how the symptoms are different, to show how the risk factors are different to hopefully then lead to diagnostic tools that are.
Really going to help women in how to treat their, their symptoms and how they're actually showing that they might be coming, having a heart attack in the near future, whatever it may be. Definitely also on the drug side, uh, I believe that this was brought up, uh, earlier as well, but there are different drugs that, again, you can't just change.
We're not, because we're not little men, you can't just take it from a kilogram perspective. Um, there are specific drugs that's. Literally impact a woman in a different way, regardless of if you're the same size as that 70 kilogram male or not.
Allie: I
say,
The visual of that is, is quite amazing too. But my, my question about that, and you know, not to be ignorant, but I think for the sort of layperson that is not actually in the women's healthcare field, why is it important that women are tested differently and looked at differently, like from the composition of our bodies?
Is it because of the hormonal factors? Is it. You know, why aren't we little men? It's, I guess what I'm trying to Well, that's the
Halle: doctor in the room. Yes.
Dr. Sophia Yen: Well, you know, basic biology x X versus x Y, the y ho uh, y chromosome is actually missing a leg equivalent of genetics. So we have an extra, um, genetics there, but definitely the estrogen, progesterone that puts us up.
For blood clots. Um, the monthly cycling up and down, up and down moods, it exacerbates diabetes, um, seizure, anything. And so that's why one of the things we promote is hashtag periods optional. And so you, if you're bleeding every single month, that is So 2020, get with the times, get with 2023, you don't have to bleed every month.
And using the i u D, the implant, the shot, the pill to patch the ring, if you can maintain a stable hormone, one better for research, but two better for life so that there isn't this up and down, up and down, like messing with you all the time. So women are not men. And the example that IA didn't give that might help people is they've shown with.
Certain, um, sleeping drugs that when women took it, they had like hallucinations and like, I do think it was a dose thing that women are not 70 kilos. All of medicine is based on 70 kilos. I come from pediatrics. We dose everything in milligrams per kilograms. And so it blows my mind. That you have 130 pound woman, you're giving her the same dose that you would give 160, a hundred, 200 pound dude, and it's not the same.
And if you took the dose one third, I bet you'd get a different result. So I do think part of it is just pure, you know, mass, pounds, kilos, whatever you're doing. But the other part is absolutely hormonal. Um, and, um, I don't think we're that different, you know,
Allie: levels of fat in their. Their, your percentage of not in your body is Yeah.
Supposed to be higher than men and so Yes. How does that interact
Dr. Sophia Yen: with that? Absolutely affects drugs that either are stored in the fat or, you know, metabolized held differently in the fat, and particularly adolescents. It's upsetting for them because the young women or XX start putting on boobs and hips and then the x y start building muscle, and then there's anex.
Eating disorders, et cetera. Yeah. So, um, that just biologically, as you can see, as you said, the fat
Halle: difference. Yeah, I think you, when digital health, the biggest, one of the biggest areas of promise is personalized medicine. Um, and so it's so absurd that for most medicine we're still categorizing everybody as the standard white male.
And I think a big example of this is the trash. Measure of B M I B M I is so flawed. It was, it has very recent mysteries. It wasn't even developed by someone within the medical system. It was developed by a mathematician on a male European body as like the perfect body, and now we're applying it to everyone and labeling people.
Wow. With high B M I, obesity. You know, like without taking into the, taking into account kind of their full health. And so what's happened is, you know, b m I, if you're tall, if your body masses or your body fat is distributed differently, but you're perfectly healthy, you can appear to a physician as someone who is, and you are labeled as obese.
Allie: Let's get into your individual businesses, cuz you all are doing different things in the, in different spaces. So I wanna, I wanna dive in. I want to start with Halle. So what specific problem does your business address and, and in this case, maybe it's na list or some of the businesses you're investing in and what case studies or stats really turned you onto this and made you feel like this is something that cannot be ignored.
Yeah,
Halle: well, I'd actually love to talk about my current company Co Fertility, where I'm co-founder and share. And we realize that the best time to freeze your eggs is usually when you can least afford it. Um, and so we're out to make egg freezing more accessible. For me personally, it's one of my biggest regrets in life that I didn't freeze my eggs sooner.
Um, I went through many years of I V F to have my miracle child, and I'm so grateful for that. But that experience has led me to now start two companies. It was the reason I started an alist, and now is the reason I helped start co fertility. So our, our key program gives egg freezers access to exclusive discounts at clinics and with storage providers, which helps bring down the cost and also bringing in kind of the community aspect of it.
We found a study that showed that women who undergo egg freezing are like unhappy that they're having to do it. They feel like their life isn't working out as. Planned and we think that it should be a celebratory moment, an exciting, empowering step in your life. And so just bringing that community element and having women freeze their eggs and cohorts makes it a little less lonely.
We also have a program, um, we call Split, and it allows qualified egg freezers, um, to freeze their eggs for free and have them stored for 10 years for free when they donate half to a family that couldn't otherwise conceive. In terms of stats, I would say the one that we just heard from, uh, I think it's it, I think it was a S R M or sart.
One of the large groups within the reproductive health space is that egg freezing cycles surged during covid. Uh, and they were up 46% year over year in 2021. Um, so, you know, enormous growth, a lot of interest in egg freezing, yet cost is an enormous barrier. And at Cotivity we're trying to tackle the cost piece.
Allie: Can you speak to how much it is for those who aren't aware? Because I wasn't aware of how expensive it is and I was talking to a friend of mine who was contemplating it. She's in her mid thirties and she is single and she just wanted it as an option. She's like, I would definitely do it, but it's just too expensive.
I know
Halle: it can be about $15,000. When you take into account medications, it's different for everyone because everyone needs a different, um, level and a different. Combination of medications for ovarian stimulation based on your ovarian reserve. And then it also, it's funny, it, it depends on where you live.
And actually, if you live somewhere that has more clinics like New York City mm-hmm. You actually find that the prices are more reasonable cuz the clinics are competing with each other. But if you're someone, unfortunately, who lives somewhere with only one clinic, in a lot of ways, those clinics can set their price.
So it does vary across the country and. Uh, while some employers do offer egg freezing benefits, they tend to be really large, um, tech companies, and it's really just a small percentage of the population that gets egg freezing covered
Allie: by their employer. Huge problem. Love that. You're, you're solving this and, um, I'm gonna go to you, AGIA, and, and I wanna ask you the same question for Avia in terms of Avia.
I keep, I just wanna call it Avia. Um, But for Omnia, funny, I never noticed
Halle: how your name and company are so similar until, I know. I totally
Allie: keep saying that.
Agia: It's one of those things where neither did me until we went to go tell people after we named it.
Allie: That's amazing. Good for ears.
Agia: We actually wanted Avia, but it's a shoe brand that has pretty good seo, so we're like, we're not gonna compete with that.
But it's supposed to be like avian theme. Sky's the limit for you to soar. Um, Aw. Yeah, so Avia, we, if I wanted to tell you my entire life story, I could, and it really does feel like everything I've done both personally and professionally has led me to starting this company, even though I didn't know well, uh, at the time.
AVIA itself, we are a daily ovarian hormone health app. Uh, we help people understand based off of where they are in their cycle, how it impacts them personally, and then give them recommendations of what they can do accordingly. And also just like plan. Plan ahead of time. So we actually plan our board meetings based off of when I wound the best situation to prep.
Um, I do my workouts accordingly. Now, I wish I would've known earlier in life and this is actually what hap from a personal experience, I, I'm a science nerd. I took the mcat, thought I was gonna be an MD PhD, and when I went through some personal, um, health stuff, I started doing. My own research. Cause I was like, I don't understand what's going on, why this is happening, what this means, and came across this whole ovarian hormone health cycle.
And I was like, Frustrated and now I almost laugh about it, but I would've planned when I took the SATs accordingly. Yeah. As captain of my basketball team, captain of my basketball cap, captain of my basketball team, captain of my soccer team would've had my teams train accordingly, because your quality of muscle toning changes.
Your risk of injury changes depending on where you are in that month. Actually, US Women's National Soccer Team trains based off of their cycles and so what that was, wow. Yeah, and so that was like, it was a personal experience that had me very frustrated, but it's when I met two, my now co-founders who had the same experiences where they were like, I didn't know this.
One of my co-founders was losing her vision where she was having. What she didn't know was hormonal migraines, but she would lose her vision every two to three months and only once working with a very specific doctor did she realize that's what it was. Otherwise, they were looking for brain damage, eye damage, different disorders, and nobody asked her.
When in your cycle does this come? Yeah. And so that was like very much anecdotal of what we went through and the things that we said. We don't want other people to ever go through these situations again and forget going through situations. We want people to be able to plan accordingly and really optimize how they're, whether it's working out, planning, their board meetings, whatever it may be.
So what we did, um, in terms of when you talk about numbers, we've learned. From a 7,000 person study that most people, actually 98 to 99% of them only think that their period in fertility or their, um, hormones impact their period in fertility. When in reality it's your quality of sleep, quality of muscle, Tony, energy levels, sex drive, skin mental health mood.
The list goes on and through. Uh, yeah, people have actually helped diagnose at their doctors as well.
Allie: Dr. Yen wanted to get, you know, those case studies that inspired you to, to start pandia and specifically what problems or, or solutions you're addressing.
Dr. Sophia Yen: So several motivators to start Pandia Health. Um, pan is every dia is day, so we wanna be with you every day, if that helps people remember how to spell it, how to pronounce it, that's useful.
And then it's also the Greek goddess of healing light Full moon. So we're all about women's empowerment. Was giving a talk to a bunch of doctors. Why don't women take their birth control? And one of the top reasons was didn't have time to go to the pharmacy, didn't have it in their hand. And my friend and I were like, we can solve this.
We will just ship you birth control until you tell us to stop. And then we ran ads, free birth control delivery. 60% of the people that responded didn't have prescription. And it's like, don't you know you need a prescription in the United States to get. Birth control pills, patches, and rings, and I'm a doctor, so I write prescriptions and thus Pandia Health was born.
If you have a prescription and you have insurance, you pay us nothing and you get free delivery, set it and forget it. One of our mantras, no one runs out of birth control on our watch to the best of our ability. If your insurance is evil, that's a totally different thing. And then also started this company for me so that I would never run out of birth control.
Started this company for my daughters. So that they don't have to worry about this, and if anyone else was providing care at the level we are providing, I'd step aside, but they're not. We are the only academic doctor led company in this space. I realized what I was taught at U C S F and Stanford works great.
If you're a Caucasian female that wants to bleed every month, but if you're Asian or black, I spoke to my fellow Asian and black doctors like, oh yeah, that doesn't work. And I look back and I had to go through three different drugs until I found one that didn't give me side effects. So using my M I T U C S F, Stanford brain took all the birth control pills, rank them from most likely make you bleed.
These likely make you bleed, most likely give you munchies, least likely. It'd give you munchies most, like give you zits. Least likely to give you zits, and our doctors are trained on this algorithm to minimize side effects. And then we do a 10 week follow up. You all good? You having zits, you haven't breakthrough bleeding?
Then our doctors know what birth control to move you to. And with that, we have 82% retention in a year for newbies on birth control versus the standard 55% retention. And we also have amazing customer service at 4.9 out of five stars on Google reviews. Love
Allie: that. Could have used that when I was younger for sure.
And
Dr. Sophia Yen: we're gonna menopause, so
Allie: that's wonder. Wonderful. I'm not quite there yet, but I, I guess I'm in within the age range where I could be. The other question I do have for you is, so it sounds like you have a 10 week follow up and like you said, you, you had tested all these different birth controls and then had given it a sort of assessment, um, based off a variety of factors in terms of.
The individual that you're prescribing, do they come to you with a desire for a specific brand, or do they take, is there some sort of assessment or quiz that they take initially to help understand which one's gonna be right for them and sort of what their birth control journey is gonna look like?
Dr. Sophia Yen: Yes.
So from the safety side, we've taken the protocol that California approved for pharmacist to prescribe birth control and added a layer of doctor. And then given our knowledge, um, I'm an adolescent medicine specialist, so we make sure women aren't on. Are on enough estrogen to protect their bones so that when they're 50, 60 years old and they fall down some stairs, they don't break their hip.
They don't break their wrists. Yeah. So one, you know, Pandia public service announcement for today. Anybody on the birth control pill, check how many micrograms of estrogen, and if you're under 30, it should be at least 30 micrograms. If it is less than that, your doctor doesn't know adolescent medicine, your doctor doesn't understand bone health.
Allie: Interesting. Yeah. I would've been that person that said I want minimum hormones possible. Cuz my experience was I went crazy on it, so. Oh. Um, you're definitely doing a service to all women out there. Um, I'm gonna go to, um, to Halle and Dr. Yen. You've, you've invested in such incredible women's health organizations, both of you.
Are there any white spaces within Women's health, and I know Hall you started to touch on this earlier, that you feel haven't been fully explored or addressed from an investor's perspective?
Halle: Gosh, um, I get this question a lot. I think the last year Rock Health published data on this was 2021. I don't think we've had it since.
But then at that time we found that companies. Specifically addressing women's health made up 7% of all digital health funding, given that women make up 50% of the population. I would say the entire space is underfunded and is a white space. I think that there's not a place within women's health that is a hundred percent fully serving women.
I think there's a lot of really great companies that are really promising. Um, but I wouldn't say that like there shouldn't be more cuz there absolutely
Allie: shouldn't be. Yeah. Yeah, just cuz there's a very large total addressable market. What about you, Dr. Ya? What do you, what do you think, are there also like, are there specific areas where you feel like, okay, there's been a lot of companies entering this space.
There still needs to be more obviously, but I haven't seen businesses entering x y
Halle: space.
Dr. Sophia Yen: Yes. So I see a a ton of companies entering menopause and I'm concerned cuz it's the wild, wild west. And supplements are not f d A regulated, they aren't tested. Are there randomized clinical trials for whatever this person is trying to sell you?
I believe in evidence-based, cutting edge medicine and science and know that 30% of the time if I give you placebo, which is water and sugar, It will work 30% of the time, but people are charging a hundred, $200 and menopause. I'm seeing pellets if anyone is putting pellets under your skin. No, that is some crazy stuff.
I don't even know how that's e, how that's pellets illegal. So people are doing testosterone pellets and women putting it under their skin and it's giving them vigor and libido and we don't know the distribution of the testosterone. It varies per person. Once it's in your body, we can't take it out. Like that.
If anybody's doing pellets, ladies just say no and walk away. Um, but what could be useful that blows my mind is there's a menopause patch, but it's twice a week. And as an anal retentive scientist, O c D person, I. How do I break this into three and a half days? Exactly like how ridiculous is that? We need a one week patch, please, people.
And then there's a vaginal ring for birth control that has both estrogen and progesterone, but there isn't the same for menopause. So you have to put a vaginal ring for estrogen and then you have to take a daily pill for progesterone. And the reason I think for this is cuz back in the day, like 80% of women would have a hysterectomy.
They would be like, oh, you're done with babies, let's take it all out. And the US still have 80%. It was huge. It was like the number one surgery, second to circumcision, and they've now since stopped doing that because there are consequences to taking out your uterus and having a gap and everything else falls in and there's prolapse and there's side effects.
But I was just on another talk that if you have V R C A, then you have increase of cancer and the hormones on the uterus increases uterine cancer, so maybe better to take out the uterus so you don't have risk of uterine cancer. So there's just many things you need to weigh on that. But the reason why, They have it separate as they assumed you didn't have a uterus.
So then you didn't need the progesterone. The progesterone and any hormone therapy for menopause, et cetera, is to make sure the uterus doesn't get endometrial cancer. But if you don't have uterus, then you don't need it. But like, why do I have to have a ring in my vagina and pills? Why can't the ring deliver both and there's no implant?
Um, it'd be nice to have an implant. It'd be nice to have an i u D. That did, you know, both of the situation, but, so there's huge drugs that could happen in menopause, um, that need to be out there. And then again, racial slash genetic differences. The cool thing is as more people get 23 in me, d n a ancestry.com, they can provide their genetics and we can be like, ah, You have this snp, this is the best birth control for you.
You have this snp, this is the best obesity treatment for you. This is the best menopause treatment for you. And that's what we're gonna do at Pania Health. If people have their d n a, you wanna share it with us for the sake of science, we'll start running it with, you know, race and side effects and just seeing what.
What pill is best for you based on your genetics? Because my daughters are half Korean and half Taiwanese, and if they marry a black person or a Latino or a Caucasian, what will their kids need? You know? So genetics is absolutely the way to go. In the future. And then dementia. I think there is a lot of research yet on menopause hormone, estrogen, dementia, and we don't have all the data there, but it's leaning towards it estrogen before the age of 60 and perhaps continued after that will help decrease dementia cuz dementia is huge and really scary.
And we as those with uterine, often get stuck with the caretaking.
Allie: I'm gonna go to Aga and Holly again because I wanted to ask you all about generally people coming in as entrepreneurs, as well as investors coming into the healthcare space. I think it's incredibly intimidating, right? There's a lot of regulations that you have to consider.
There's so many factors. My question for you is, what has been your experience, and maybe I'll start with you, AYA, navigating the healthcare space and how has that been? Different from your previous experiences for, for those people that are maybe thinking about starting a women's healthcare business or, um, feel like they have a great solution but are very overwhelmed at the task of entering the space.
Agia: I feel like this could be a panel itself. Just start there. So I spent a number of years when I was in consulting working across payer provider, pharma, pharmacy, you name it. Um, when I went to m i t for business school, that's where I. I knew that what I wanted to do was, rather than looking at what these players wanted, I wanted to look at what the end user wanted.
Yeah. Because that's where I felt like a lot of these players were not paying attention to actually one of them, uh, a very well known pharma. They had a plan to do something. I can't share, um, major details here, but they were going to make a billion dollars off of it in five years. And I was like, if we just look at it from this angle with what this use, how these users actually interact with this, they were able to then change it to 5 billion in five years.
That's huge. And so that's something that I know we're talking. The question is on how to navigate the healthcare system. I think that that part itself is just really important to recognize is what is your end goal with what you're trying to do. Um, are you trying to do something that's going to help the payers?
Is are you doing something that's going to help the providers? Are you doing something that's going to help a pharmacist? Or are you doing something that. Ultimately you want to help the end user because I think that there is still a disparity there. Um, I know Halle, you can probably speak to how your companies have been very much D two C companies themselves also.
How, what does that look like if you wanted to try to sell that through, through the healthcare system? So a big part of it starts to become how to get the lay of the land. I actually did a whole mapping of the system a few years ago, which I'm happy to share. Uh, another time. Where understanding who plays with who, who plays nice with who and who doesn't play nice with who is important.
But if you're looking to start a direct to consumer company, I definitely wouldn't let that be a barrier to you getting it up and out, because that's something that I will help you with. That's something that. Uh, your advisors, investors will help you with, but that's not something that you should be letting be a barrier to you getting out there to build something that's going to have a true impact on the end user themselves.
Business model is a completely different story there though, so if you are, if you think that this is something that yes, it's going to impact the end user, but. I don't know that the end user is going to pay for this. That's where then you have to think about, all right, is this something that they expect the payers to pay for this?
Is this something that they expect to come with when they go to the doctor? Um, and I know Dr. Yen can speak about that more from the, um, insurance and from the doctor perspective. But those are things that you can figure out. And there are so many resources. Um, you don't have to have worked in healthcare before.
In fact, many of my. Founder friends who are in women's health or in healthcare specifically have not worked in healthcare before. Mm-hmm. And if anything, hopefully that keeps you from getting bogged down by a lot of the details and feeling like, oh, I can't do this because this person doesn't do this.
You will try to break barriers, really break the ceiling there to make things happen that you know should happen.
Allie: That's encouraging though, that you feel like, and that you know, people that have gone into the space who don't necessarily come from the space and are able to navigate it, cuz it does seem mildly impossible from the outside.
Agia: I and I get that, but a hundred percent you can and you will. And I think that the biggest thing as an entrepreneur is to have grit. To know that what you're solving is worth solving and that you are having an impact. And if you have that, nothing will stand in your way. Not the 99 investors that are gonna say, no, not the healthcare system.
Nothing.
Allie: Yeah. And Halle, I wanna go to you too because I wanted to ask from the investor side. As well, you know, as investors wanna get into this space, right? Yeah. Clearly there needs to be more funding in this space as, as we've all discussed, there's just not nearly enough going into women's health. So let's get more people in, let's get a lot of women in, how do they think about doing diligence, right?
Mm-hmm. With, uh, a healthcare company if they have no experience, and then once they are on the cap table, so they do invest, how can they add value? Yeah. To or, or say to that company, Hey, I can add value through this, even if they have no prior experience.
Halle: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I, I do think as an investor it's important to not invest out of your wheelhouse.
I turn yeah. Down deals all the time because I just don't have the, I don't understand enough about. The industry and I don't think I can be helpful and I don't think I can make a, a good bet. I actually looked, I've been diving into my data now that I've been investing for 10, 15 years. I've looked at the companies I've invested over time and the companies that have done the best are the ones in healthcare and in women's health.
Um, when I try to dabble in other things, like, it just hasn't worked out for me. So I do think that there's something to be said about investing in what, you know, that being said, like. Everyone's a healthcare person. We have all interacted with the system in one way or the other. We all have bodies. So I do think that healthcare is a space where like, you know, you might not think you're a healthcare person, but you know what?
You probably are, you've probably had an intense experience. Certainly if you're a mother, you've had an intense experience with the healthcare system, and if you wanna deepen your understanding, there are a lot of ways to do that. I think there are a lot of resources out there. I would go about it the way you go about.
Any curiosity you have, I would talk to people. I would listen to podcasts, like my podcast, the Heart of Healthcare, to plug it. I would read books, I would subscribe to state news, I would subscribe to Healthcare Brew. There are a ton of great resources out there to kind of get you comfortable with how the healthcare system works, and you don't have to understand the entire system.
There are certainly areas within healthcare that I still have working in this industry for a long time, really don't understand how they work. Like, I really don't know much about clinical trials and how that works and um, but I know a lot about women's health, um, and how that works. So I think when you say healthcare, like pick a, a lane within healthcare that you're really passionate about.
Yeah. And invest in companies in this space. So maybe it's mental health, maybe it's women's health, whatever it is. And I think that's the way that you can become an expert, which is don't try to be a, an. Expert in every area in healthcare, try to like be focused on something. And in terms of the last part of your question is like, how can you really, uh, help companies that you do invest in, uh, be patient.
That's like the biggest thing. Building in healthcare is really hard. You will never meet a healthcare founder that is not tired and beaten down and exhausted. It takes longer to scale. There's more regulatory hurdles. There's a longer time horizon to build customer trust, but it's also the number one area.
An opportunity to make a difference and improve the human experience. So I think it's worth it. I think it's worth it to be patient. So just be patient with the founders because these businesses don't look like other tech businesses, but they're even more rewarding and I think you'd have even bigger impact on your investment.
Agia: The other thing I wanna add, as a founder looking at investors too. Yeah. Is that in our first institutional round, we actually brought together, Two co-leads. One, depending on what your business is, it may or may not make sense, but one who was a digital health, um, focused fund and one that was a consumer fund that didn't really dabble in digital health, but we wanted the two so that, because we sit at the intersection of them and even with our angel investors, we have our fairy godmother like Halle, we've got the toy Naja, we've got doctors, we have different, um, healthcare specific.
Angel investors, but then I also very specifically went out and found angel investors who are really good at brand, really good at engineering. Mm-hmm. Really good at specific things that we were going to be up against in the next 18 months, but maybe they're not someone who's had the experience in healthcare, but that's not as necessary at
Allie: that point.
Got it. And how did you go about looking for those agia? Because I think that's such a, and Holly and Sophia, feel free to weigh in on this as well. I think all of our founders are always asking where do we find valuable advisors or investors that are gonna be on our cap table? Like how did you go about that initial search?
Agia: That's also a whole other panel we can do. I just did. Um, but the biggest thing there is being very intentional and being very personalized also. At least that's how I approach it, is I thought through, okay, these are the, I think I had a list of 12 things that I, I was like, I want an expert in each of these areas before I close my round.
And I wanna make sure more than 50% of these people are, have ovaries themselves. And I wanna make sure over 50% of these people have started a company themselves. Mm-hmm. And so I was very intentional about what I was looking for. And in each of those 12, I started reaching out. Look, some people I had relationships.
The founder of what, for example, at the time, or in CTO of w. We had already been, you know, uh, speaking about a few other things. I was like, all right, I'm raising around. Would you come in? And he was very excited to come in. Like, that's a personal connection already. Versus there were some people where my e either someone I knew I had to reach out, very much warm intros.
There were no cold outreaches. Um, Halle, for example, I was introduced. Through what, who, the person who is leading the round. So different, um, ways to connect with people like that. Definitely some of them longer term versus some of them is a little bit more immediate turnarounds.
Halle: Yeah, so don't be afraid to reach out to men too. I, we hear horror stories, and I've heard so many horror stories about male investors not getting it, but there
Allie: are, oh, yeah. Who really, really,
Halle: really, really wanna get into the
Agia: space. Our two, our two co-lead, our seed round were both male investors. Yes, and you,
Halle: and it's risky to reach out cuz you could have a terrible experience but maybe find, um, male investors who've actually been vocal about wanting to invest in women's health.
They need their help. Need all the help. We can get
Allie: to your point, Hallie earlier, cuz you talked about the fact, you know, invest in something. You know, and I've found the same thing as an investor too, where the places that I know or the people that I know, right? I might not know their industry, but I know that these people are incredible founders.
Those have been the ones that have worked, but. The, the question there then is it's gonna lead you to a lot of of men because the healthcare system is also dominated by, by men already. So you're not gonna find quite as, as few women with that domain expertise. But that being said, what I would love to understand is how, uh, a founder of a women's healthcare company might think about pitching to men in positioning it.
Yeah. Maybe aia, you look like you might wanna have something to say about this.
Agia: I mean, I have so many things to say about fundraising, um, but I'll keep this very short, but I'll, I'll keep it to three things. One is regardless of if they're male or female, I think that the best attitude to go into it with is you truly have to date 99 duds before you find your stud.
Like the better than male, male or female. Just expect to talk to so many people, especially if you're a first time founder. If you're, maybe if you're, you've started multiple companies, it's very different if it's, um, you are not very well connected, all of these things, I think that mindset just helps because then you don't feel as defeated when you hear your first 10 nos and when you hear your first 15 noses.
So I think that that's one. Um, number two, there also is. I used an analogy just now earlier where I was like, oh, we're in the first inning. I speak to sports so much. I lean into it hard where I'm like, oh, I, I saw that you played tennis in high school or in college. What if your tennis career could have been improved by knowing where you are in your cycle?
Yeah. And like leaning into that. And then the third is that there's been so much, so much, um, study on, on, on bias when it comes to female founders versus male founders. So for, um, female founders, they'll ask you more questions of like what you've done versus for male founders, they'll ask you what you're going to do.
I take the what have you done questions and turn them into this is what we're going to do. Yeah. They won't even know that you did that. Yeah. But there are just different things like that that you should go Anyways, I can keep going,
Allie: but I'm gonna stop there.
Halle: Yeah, I think those are great pieces of advice.
Someone told me early in my career that you should, uh, ask for money when you want advice, and ask for advice when you want money. Uh, and the, I think the sentiment is that you can and should build these relationships early. Yeah. But don't ask for money too early. Cuz if you're fundraising before you're really ready and someone passes, they could have that like preconceived notion down the line when you are actually ready and in a better position.
Um, so I think being careful about when to fundraise and you're gonna, you'll waste a lot of time if you try to fundraise prematurely. So getting. Your ducks in a row, whatever that means, like prototype, some sort of mvp or maybe that's some sort of traction, a team, whatever that is, you have to kind of find the right time to go out where you're gonna increase your chances of success and maybe talk to, you know, a hundred and maybe three of them will be interested.
Whatever that ratio is, you want it to be as high as possible.
Allie: 99 duds before you're stud. Love it. Dr.
Agia: Stages too, just to build on what Holly's saying is Yeah, that I will, I'm very candid about this. When we were raising our like angel round, I got distracted by the shiny object of seed stage companies or SIE stage firms reaching out to us and I was like, oh, they're interesting.
In us, maybe they want to invest, but at that time, nobody had told me that they do a lot of information gathering. And so I got hopeful I wasted time. Mm-hmm. And so when we raised our next round, I basically cut out anyone who doesn't write certain number, certain amount of checks, don't invest at a certain stage.
And if they reached out to me, I'd say, Hey, you know, I'm happy to circle back with you in six months or something
Halle: like that. Yeah. I, this is a very controversial piece of advice that I'm gonna give it. Try to talk to partners when you can. Like I, you know, I associates, especially women of color who are associates and principals and, and working so hard, like I don't wanna write them off.
But at the same time, the partners are making the decisions and you really want, if you can, you're gonna have a better chance of getting the deal if you have that meeting directly with the partner. And so decision making, those relationships with the person who's writing the check, is gonna save you the most time.
And so when you're getting, like if you have angel investors or, or. Industry leaders who are making those introductions. Like ask who, who are the people you're gonna introduce me to? And you know, see where they are in in the firm and really like spend most of the time with the people who can actually write the checks.
And I'll also just what I guess said earlier, like there are, there are a lot of VCs, especially associates, who are really just information gathering. They're out there trying to understand the market to compare you to your competitors and it'll totally waste your time. So try to avoid that if you can.
Allie: So we have just a couple minutes left. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump in, um, with two final questions. One question, I'm gonna direct you Dren because you talked about again, Money towards specific women's health issues. So can you enlighten us on that process and then share with any of the folks that are watching how they can be helpful in putting more money towards women's
Dr. Sophia Yen: health issues?
Yes, so portfolio is a great option. Astia, I forgot to mention, is another great option if you wanna donate. Springboard Enterprise is a nonprofit that has an accelerator. For women founded, women-led companies. And then, uh, I mentioned coreless, which is another nonprofit tax deduction. And then impact assets.
So I've created Sophia Yen's Women Fund at Impact Assets, and I've invested in five different companies that do social good in this world. And four out of five are run by women. Um, one of them is eco underwear, the other is Lubricant for Menopausal Women. Another one is a cap, um, that you wear during chemo to prevent hair loss.
And then I did a wind company as well, and I've also done some other investments as well.
Allie: And then my final question for all of you, what's. One of the best pieces of advice. I'm sure you've gotten many great pieces of advice. One of the best pieces of advice you've received as a founder that you wanna share with all the founders listening in today.
Halle: Get a therapist.
Allie: Take care.
Halle: Take care of herself. I actually just did a podcast on this topic on mental health for founders. Founders are, listen to it, to self-report, a mental health condition. I've lost a founder to die by suicide. Um, wow. Few years ago. And. All I can say is like you, your life and your mental wellbeing is so much more important than this company, and you have to actively, no matter how hard things are at work, you have to actively set aside time, money, energy, to take care of yourself.
Allie: Beautiful.
Dr. Sophia Yen: Mine is general. Um, hashtags stopped sucking it up with respect to women's health. Um, the number one cause of missed school and work is bad evil periods and women are like, oh, it's just life uhuh. If you weren't missing school and work, please seek a doctor. And then menopause. A lot of physicians, well just menopause suck it up, is what it is to be a woman.
Uhuh. If you are having any symptoms of menopause, if you are having any symptoms of endometriosis, fibroids, whatever, do not suck it up. Find a doctor that cares,
Agia: minus on surrounding. It kind of builds on hallie's, but surround yourself with founders. It is easily the, even if you have co-founders, it is easily one of the most trying loneliest so many different adjectives I won't list right now, experiences and.
Being the, like yesterday, for example, I got together with two founders and we were able to just, we did a hackathon on all the problems we're going through both personnel company, things like that, where those are the support systems that you need in order to be like, okay, I'm not alone. I'm not the only one.
Because a lot of times you think, oh, I'm the only one going through this. Just like you do in women's health. Yeah. Um, so I think having that support system of people at your stage and maybe one stage ahead is very, very, very powerful.
Allie: I feel like we ended on that because we seated you to say that Aya, cause that is the entire reason for what we do is everything that you all mentioned.
It is so important to prioritize yourself as a founder and it's really hard to do. You have to be super intentional. Um, you have to protect your health. And you have to serve yourself people who understand what you're going through. And the reality is that even if you have a wonderful group of investors and cap table, um, no one replace having a founder at your side because they're gonna be going through it at the same time.
So, Joined 10 house. Anyways, thank you all so much. Um, your wisdom is just ever flowing and I feel like I have a million more questions for you, but I think this was extraordinarily helpful in giving us a window into how everyone can, can help to provide solutions to these problems and invest in it and get behind what you're doing.
Thank you so much
Agia: for having us. All right. Thank
Halle: you. Thank you. Hi. Thanks everyone.