About this Podcast

The Feminvest podcast, hosted by Michaela Berglund and Sara Sorbet, shares insights about money, investing, career, and business from a growing international community with the goal of ensuring women own more.
In this episode, Michaela Berglund speaks with Theresa Neil, founder of the UX Design agency Guidea and the innovative sponsorship program Femovate. In this conversation Theresa explores global femtech trends and shares her thoughts on the intersection of AI and digital companies, and talks about the transformative potential of investing in women and gain a deeper understanding of the future landscape of femtech.

To begin, we will first delve into Theresa's expertise in UX design consultancy for Digital Health and Cognitive Sciences, where she collaborates with renowned organizations such as Cigna, Humana, and Johnson & Johnson, as well as the groundbreaking Femovate UX design and research sponsorship program she launched in 2022, investing over $1 million in femtech innovation.

If you’re a femtech founder or someone passionate about innovation in women’s health, this episode offers valuable insights and practical advice to guide your journey, but there's also a lot here for anyone interested in gender disparities in healthcare and finance, and VC funding and other resources for startups. There are some exciting advances happening on these fronts, and we will discuss that, too.

You can listen to the podcast or read the full transcript below.

Want more? You can learn more about the FemInvest Podcast, Guidea, and Femovate.  If you have any questions or comments, email Theresa Neil at theresa@guidea.com

FemInvest: Food for Thought and Global Femtech Trends Podcast Transcript

Michaela:
So excited about having a conversation with you this week that I think will inspire you in so many different ways. We are gathering women entrepreneurs. We are gathering women investors under our Nordic community at the moment. And just in a couple of weeks we're having our largest event in Oslo to date, which is really exciting, where you'll have a founders lounge together with a bunch of really cool entrepreneurs from the whole Nordic region, and will have some inspiring talks. And one of the talks at the upcoming events is on women's health. And obviously it's interesting, it's an area that's been neglected for thousands of years really. But what has happened in the last 10 years is really intriguing because a whole new industry has been established and there are quite a few different people across the globe just leading and paving the way for this to happen. And today's guest is an innovator in the field. Her name is Theresa Neil and she's the founder of Guidea and Femovate. She's also a femtech angel investor based in the U.S.
And it is early morning for you when we’re having this conversation. Are you an early bird? Are you in the 5:00 AM club, Theresa? 

Theresa:
I am in the 5:00 AM club. I'm not really an early bird, but I have managed to adopt that persona now…

Michaela:
At least today for this interview. 

Theresa:
Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk with you today. 

Pivoting to Focus on Femtech

Michaela:
Yeah, I'm so excited about all the work that you've done for many years. So for example, in 2022, you launched something called Femovate that has invested up to $1 million in femtech innovation. Furthermore, you've been elevating promising Femovate startups by giving them some services as a top fortune hundred company and it goes from a range of different areas. I want to hear where did you start and how did you move in this direction? 

Theresa:
Well, I do have a design agency called Guidea, and we grew out of Texas in the US. So about almost 20 years ago, I started this design agency and we're a women-owned, women-led company. We're pretty small, about 20 people, and we've worked with lots of really large companies and organizations in the US and abroad. And about two years ago we had an idea of, well, why don't we give back to women? So very little, as you know, very little VC investment goes to female founded companies and very little investment goes specifically women's health problems over in the health side of things. And we thought, well, we can help. So I have this team of fantastic researchers and designers. We have a pretty extensive background of designing products and pharma and life sciences and digital health. And we thought, well, we can try to fix women's health. 

Theresa:
It's a big topic. There's lots of things that need to be solved. And we're not clinicians. We don't have an R&D department, but we do know how to design tools for patients, providers, payers, caregivers, and we could donate those services to early stage Femovate startups and give them a boost. So early stage startups, they can't necessarily hire the biggest design agencies in the US or the UK, but we have those skills. So we came up with this program called Femovate where we would basically provide those services pro bono to two or three early stage femtech startups. And once we actually got our first round of applicants and we had a hundred applicants from around the globe in 2022, and we met all these founders and we realized the need was much greater than two or three teams. And so we invited 30 teams into our program. And then we ran Femovate again last year and we added an additional 20 teams. So we're supporting or have supported 50 early stage femtech startups with their UX research and design. 

Michaela:
And from what I've understood and what I've read, it's a wide span. It's like breast health, fertility, hormone health, women's wellness. There's so much to do and so much potential. And according to femtech Landscape report, the global femtech market was valued at 51 billion in 2021, and the forecast is for it to reach 1 trillion US dollars by 2027. So it's quite a great market to actually tap into. What have you discovered from working with those companies? 

Theresa:
Well, I think it's really interesting looking at that kind of explosive growth and trajectory. And it's probably worth noting that some people think of it with a really narrow definition of consumer digital products around maybe period tracking or fertility. But femtech is actually very, very broad. It includes, like you said, uterine health, breast health, anything that's specific to women's physiology as well as health solutions for conditions that disproportionately affect women. So autoimmune conditions disproportionately affect women. I think 70 or 80% of people with autoimmune conditions are female. What's another one? Dementia disproportionately affects women. And then there's also diseases and conditions that affect women in ways different than they affect men like cardiology and other conditions. And so femtech actually includes all of that, and it's not just direct-to-consumer products that we can download from the app store, but it's also the tools that surgeons are going to be using, tools that maybe your GP or gynecologist may use for clinical or diagnostic support. 

So it's actually really, really broad, and that was actually the first thing we learned when we started this program, femtech is much broader than we anticipated. There's really, I think the way that we have it categorized now is there's really like 18 different sub-verticals under femtech. And then there's a wide variety of product types. So there's digital health, there's diagnostic tools, there's surgical tools, there's software as a medical device. And a lot of these solutions in femtech can be highly regulated, right? Obviously if we're creating a tool for a gynecological surgeon, this is something that should have gone through quite a bit of testing to make sure that it's safe before it's used in the operating room. So that's one of the things that we've learned, just the sheer breadth of solutions that can fall under femtech. 

Michaela:
I think this is really intriguing. And by working with those companies now for a couple of years, you must have come to encounter quite a few different trends. Do you have any reflections on trends in women's health? In 2024, I read for example that even though overall it was more difficult for companies to raise funds in 2023, what we see is that the median deal size for women's health companies actually went up. This is an article in Forbes from last year. So it is actually, we are seeing some progress and there is a potential there and that we see traction even from the investor side. But what do you see from building the companies?

"People think of [femtech] with a really narrow definition of consumer digital products around maybe period tracking or fertility. But femtech is actually very, very broad."

Theresa:
I'm so excited to see any forward momentum in investment for women's health. I'm glad to have read those numbers as well. I think we're going to continue to see more investment as people become more comfortable talking about women's health. It's just such a taboo topic that people feel awkward discussing some of these conditions. And once we get more comfortable talking about menopause, or fertility, or aging, or anything specific to breast or uterine health, then all of a sudden it just becomes a healthcare issue – and it's a healthcare issue that needs to be solved. And then people can put on their solution hat and start thinking about, oh, this is a problem that impacts 3 billion women across the world. There's a market opportunity here. Let's figure out how to solve some of these solutions. So I am excited that people are getting more comfortable talking about women's health because I think we'll see investment follow. 

Some of the trends that we are expecting to see this year and in the next couple of years are around earlier and easier detection of traditionally late or underdiagnosed conditions. So basically there's a whole range of conditions that when women come to their providers, or maybe they don't even speak to their providers, but they're suffering in silence or they go to their provider and they're like, Hey, I'm experiencing this symptom and they're dismissed or told, it's in your head, it's not real pain. You need to relax or just have a glass of wine, or maybe it's just stress or anxiety. But these are real actual physical medical symptoms. And so there's a lot of products that are going to be coming into the market that will do early detection of conditions. So for example, endometriosis takes on average 8 to 10 years to be diagnosed. 

We're working with a number of different teams that have a simple at-home blood test that could screen for endometriosis and give results within two weeks. So imagine experiencing pain, not really knowing what's going on, going to the doctor, multiple doctors and being dismissed and ignored for a decade. And instead you can actually just get a test, or in the future you'll be able to just get a test shipped to your house and you can go into the doctor and be like, Hey, I did this screening. It says it's a high likelihood that I have endometriosis. And that's going to really shorten that cycle for getting diagnosed. 

"We're hoping to see more interest from VCs and private equity firms in the medical device space because that's where, I think that's where a lot of value can be brought to the global population"

Michaela:
Yeah, obviously I didn't know about this myself, but I've learned in recent years how many women are affected. So this is really a great tool. Exciting to hear about that because I'm also intrigued because if we look at women's health in the segment of digital health and health in general, what we need to understand is that research has to be focused more on women's health and actually as we do clinical trials, it has to be focusing on women. And it hasn't been, if you look into the history books, which is because it's so important when validating different tools or products or even medicine. But what I also think is interesting to look at is, for example, historically, where has the funding been going to what areas? Because we've obviously seen where commercial products has been launched successfully that has drawn investors to that segment. So what do we see from a health perspective more generally? Do you have any thoughts on that? 

Theresa:
Well, it looks like a lot of funding has gone into the fertility space because it's a lucrative area. So anything around IVF clinics, early hormone testing, cycle tracking, anything in the fertility space has been – or not anything – but lots of things in the fertility space have been getting investment over the past couple of years. I know that some VCs are reluctant or hesitant to invest in the MedTech side of things because it takes so many years to create these medical devices that have to go through clinical trials and all of the regulatory and quality requirements before they're available to the market. But we're hoping to see more interest from VCs and private equity firms in the medical device space because that's where, I think that's where a lot of value can be brought to the global population is that we could start changing the standard of care for women when they're in a hospital. 

One of the teams that we're working with today is called Armor Medical, and they have come up with a proactive detection tool. It's a wearable to detect a postpartum hemorrhage in advance. And so this could become a standard of care for women in labor and postpartum so that the nurses and care teams would be aware if they're starting to hemorrhage, and that could be addressed beforehand. And so postpartum hemorrhage impacts 14 million women annually, and leads to the death of 800,000 women every year, and their team is working really hard to create a low cost solution that can become a standard of care within hospitals and birthing centers around the world.

Helping Founders Take the Next Step

Michaela:
As European MedTech products and also all sorts of solutions, they often think about going to the US as being the holy grail of both having a massive market as the US is such a big market, but also the approval would communicate that you are a legitimate business. So that's something that we see a lot of life science and tech, health tech companies focus on. And if we look at your perspective on creating an impact, you've been going from running a business and doing it and focusing on doing it really well to actually seeing an opportunity to change something and bring your skillset to that, contribute to that change with your skillset. What's your advice and thoughts on creating impact? 

Theresa:
That's a really good question. I was thinking about that yesterday as well. I was speaking to a grad student who is very interested in the femtech space and she's like, what can I do? What can I do that's really meaningful? That'll really help? And so there are quite a few accelerator and incubator programs around the globe for femtech. So there's Tech4Eva, there's femtech labs, there's Station F, there's Health 51, and of course there's our program Femovate, and people can donate their time and skills to mentor through any of these programs. What we chose to do instead of building out an accelerator that provides a wide variety of support for these early stage teams. We're really hyper-focused on the research and design work so that when they've completed our program, there's a deliverable. We have actually designed their product and tested it with end users and it's ready to go into development. 

So if you're thinking about, well, what could I do to help a company? You could either go as an individual, you could either go broad and mentor at one of these programs around the world and support a bunch of teams with advice that you have as a practitioner in your trade, or you could consider adopting a team. So there are quite a few startups that could use dedicated, let's say marketing help for three weeks, or they could use dedicated copywriting help or dedicated graphic design help or introductions to an IP legal team or a regulatory team and maybe put a couple weeks into a specific company to give them a real boost. And that's what we're trying to do. We believe with our sponsorship program that we can actually really accelerate these companies time to market by giving them dedicated high-end services for a short period of time to kind of get them over a hump. It just basically saves them from having to go out and do an RFP, and find a vendor, and then assess what company they want to hire, and then put together a project plan, and then manage that relationship – so they're not only getting our services pro bono, but we should be saving them quite a bit of time in that whole process of finding and selecting a good partner with that healthcare background that's going to support them. 

Michaela:
And what about, because now all of a sudden you get access to all those great ideas, but you also see how you can problem solve from a design perspective, what have you learned from this collaboration? 

Theresa:
Oh my gosh, we've learned so much. I've learned quite a bit about the human body. I am 47, I have three kids. I thought I knew about women's health. It turns out I know nothing. I'm much more educated now after working with these amazing founders, but we've also learned that there's opportunities in this space for a lot of these different innovators to potentially pair up. So let's take fertility for an example. In our first year of running fate in 2022, we had a team that was able to assess embryos for viability. We had another team that had created a tool to help women as they were undergoing the IVF process. We had another team that was doing early hormone monitoring and tracking very early on when people are starting to plan a family, there was another team that had created a tool for checking sperm viability. 

All of these are individual tools towards the same end goal. And so when we start working with these companies, we realized there's a platform opportunity of taking these individual innovative ideas. In that case of all, hopefully somebody bringing a baby home, there's a lot of value in pairing those companies up to work together or looking at it from a platform angle and thinking about how can we bring solutions to fertility clinics, how can we bring solutions to a holistic solution to maybe say a couple that's looking to grow their family? So that's been an interesting perspective that we've gained in working with so many teams that there's really just a lot of opportunity for collaboration, partnership and looking at things from a platform angle as opposed to an individual point of care solution. 

"Women are 75% more likely than men to adapt to digital health. So for everybody creating any type of healthcare solution... keep in mind that your primary users and certainly early adopters are going to be women."

Michaela:
Makes sense. I see that from a Nordic perspective too, that actually there would be a stronger opportunity for one or two to provide multiple services as they're all intertwined depending on where in life you are. So there's always this hot topic when it comes to especially digital platforms, that's the topic of AI and how it affects the stars of tomorrow, and it is something that is constantly on the move and changing and affecting. What do you see tomorrow's digital platforms need to consider?

Theresa:
One of the things that I recently read that I found to be really fascinating is that women are 75% more likely than men to adapt to digital health. So for everybody out there creating any type of healthcare solution that's going to be patient or caregiver or consumer focused, it's really important to keep in mind that your primary users and certainly early adopters are going to be women. And so once you put that lens on, it really makes sense to do research, design and validation and make sure that's being done with a female audience to make sure that that's going to be really, really well received by those early adopters. As far as tools being either created with AI or powered with AI, or actually having even conversational AI built into the tool, I think the opportunities are almost endless of how this can work. So I think probably the vast majority of the early stage femtech startups we're working with do have AI in some form in their solution. 

So whether they've created an AI model for scanning and assessing dense breast tissue to look for anomalies or lesions, or they're putting conversational AI as a feature in the patient or consumer tool so that people can talk to it and be like, Hey, I'm experiencing these symptoms. What do you think it is? Oh, it could be that, okay, well I need pain relief, right? So they're basically having that conversational AI element within let's say a patient app for maybe pelvic health pain.

The opportunity for generative AI is just absolutely tremendous. I think it will absolutely explode over the next couple of years and really transform not just digital health, but healthcare in general, right? People who are going to want to be able to get information early on at their computer or from their phone before they even go into a physician's office. And I think it's going to be our responsibility as collectively as technology on the digital health side to make sure that we're getting good information to people before they're making that appointment with their physician. 

The Planned Parenthood in the US has done a fantastic job with us with AI tool they created called Roo, ROO, like a baby kangaroo, and it's an AI chat platform for teens to be able to learn about sexual and reproductive health because teens and maybe all of us may feel more comfortable asking those type of questions of a cute chatbot interface than necessarily asking those questions face-to-face with a physician. And so their innovation team came up with this fantastic tool that allows teens to access the information that they need. And they said it's really changed how they're interacting with teens when they show up in the clinics, they're actually really well versed. They've already gone and found out the vast majority of the information before they show up for an appointment. I think a really good example of how AI through digital health will kind of change the whole patient profile of people aren't walking into a physician anymore going, “gosh, doctor, I just don't know. Can you help me?” They're fairly empowered and informed before they even book an appointment with a physician. 

Investing in Women Yields High Returns

Michaela:
Yeah, a lot has happened. I was just thinking about all those physical rashes or something similar that you could actually avoid going into a doctor but actually take a meeting digitally, like how that has transformed our behavior around not always having to go to the doctor for the smaller things. And so it will definitely be a lot of new events happening in the upcoming years where AI will make it faster and improve. So we just have to be very considerate how we store health information of course online so it can be used in the wrong way.

My final question to you would be from your perspective, and it kind of comes back to why you started investing in women in the first place and in women's health, what do you think happens when women get more money in their hands? 

Theresa:
That's a really interesting question as well, because I'm coming from the tech world. So for the past 20 years we've been designing and validating software for technology companies. So a lot of the teams that we work with may receive $30 million in a seed round, which is unheard of in femtech. It would be a huge celebration for a team to receive $30 million in a series a round. So the numbers are very, very different coming from tech and then moving into femtech and seeing the much smaller investments that female founders are getting.

I believe that the femtech founders – not all femtech founders are female; we have non-binary and male and female founders in femtech – I think they're all very conscientious of the cost and value. So they're looking for partners that are going to provide very, very high value for the investment because they don't have tens of millions of dollars at the seed stage to let's say hire the most expensive or the biggest agency for development or for design or for manufacturing. So I think these femtech founders know how to stretch a dollar and really I think they're very, very disciplined about prioritizing what they're going to invest in first and making sure that that's going to have the impact that they need to move to that next level. So I guess basically I'm saying if it's a female founder in Femovate, they're going to make every single penny stretch to meet their needs and not waste any of those precious dollars that they're able to actually secure. 

Michaela:
That is an interesting reflection. And in Sweden, there was conducted research quite recently in a university in the north where they looked at different numbers across the businesses managed by women and men, and they saw that there are absolutely no level because one of the common arguments for why men continue to get the funding is that women don't take the same risk and that you don't get the same, it's not the same potential, so to say, translated. And that data actually showing that there is a difference in the potential of investing in women and men. But if you look at, for example, bankruptcies in Sweden, two thirds of the bankruptcies would be made by men. So actually there's less risk as you kind of described as well, because you really want to use that funding and you kind of grow into that. You don't have that same opportunities from a financial perspective, but you also take more responsibility for each penny. And I think this is so interesting because it shows that there's an upside to it, but it's like a cap downside. Does it make sense? 

Theresa:
Yeah, it sounds like that's just another stereotype around or rationalization of why women aren't getting investment, right? They're not going to take the risks or there's not going to be an upside, or they don't have support or how are they going to raise a company while they're raising a family? It just sounds like another rationalization of why they're not getting money. I think we all need to look at it from a different lens of we absolutely should be investing equally in male and female founders. There's so many stats around female-led companies being very, very successful.

I did hear something last year at the South by Southwest conference in Texas. It was from the Femovate Salon, and this was kind of a cautionary tale. I thought it was super interesting though, is that female founders tend to give away, and this is that female founders in technology tend to give away more of their company through equity than male founders do. Because of that, when they do have a successful exit, they're actually bringing in less money proportionally because they've given more away in equity, which puts less money back in the hands of women who would then be investing in the future round of women.

So the reason that's kind of a cautionary tale is if you are a female founder out there and growing your company, it's wonderful to be generous, but don't be too generous. Don't give away a lot of equity. Maybe use your trusted advisors or look at the standards that your male counterparts are granting an equity as they're growing the company and make sure that you're not being overly generous with that because not only should you reap the benefit of your exit and still have a lot of equity in your company, that's actually going to help the next generation of female founders as well because you're going to have more money to put back into the ecosystem. 

Michaela:
That's definitely right, and that's why we do what we do from Invest. We focus on ownership and we want to educate women on the importance of owning at different stages because also I've come across different setups, but I've come across some companies where a couple of guys who started a company and Visa has been wanting them to have a woman on board. So they've been given away an options program for a third woman to be the co-founder, but very small ownership. But then I've also been meeting women founders that've been doing an excellent job scaling a company for a couple of years’ time, but they then get men on board. And this particular woman, she had given away 70% of a company, but she worked up the value of it for two years and then the guys came in and she gave away almost 70%. So she only owned 30% because she took in some money as well. 

So the two guys that entered two years after she actually had built the company, they got 30% each. So I've seen we need to keep on raising this topic and educating women and men on the importance of ownership.

Thank you so much for being in the F podcast, and we always have an interview with a woman founder as well. So I'm going to leave the conversation over to my colleague Saba, who will interview a founder this week. Thank you so much, Theresa, for a really interesting conversation and best of luck with your work. Look forward to following your design work, but also this initiative onwards. 

Theresa:
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to talk with you.