Happy 3rd Birthday, Avestria! We’re answering your FAQs
Curious about what we do & why we do it? Find your answer here
On July 9, 2019, Avestria Ventures completed its first close for its first fund. Three years, two exits, and one closed fund later, we’re continuing to invest in early-stage women’s health and female-led healthcare companies — and we wanted to use our third birthday to answer the five questions we’re most frequently asked.
1. Why does Avestria invest in women’s health and female-led healthcare companies?
There are two reasons why we focus on these specific areas. The first is that Avestria’s co-founders each have 30+ years of healthcare experience, including in senior executive and operating roles. Their experience and their networks allow them to understand healthcare and to bring the most value to companies working in that space. Plus, our team knows firsthand what it’s like to be a woman in typically male-dominated spaces, like both healthcare and venture capital!
The second reason is that we believe female-led healthcare companies and female-focused healthcare companies have often been overlooked as sources of financial gain and innovation potential. Since healthcare has been based on a standard male patient, female specific-focused healthcare hasn’t received adequate funding, research, or attention — and we want to start changing that status quo, one investment at a time.
2. Is women’s health a niche sector?
No — though, as many women’s health-focused entrepreneurs and investors can tell you, this question is all too common!
To start, women’s health affects half the population, and women are the dominant workers in, decision-makers in, and users of healthcare. They’re also the major spenders: in 2004, women spent 32% more on healthcare per capita than men. In 2015, they spent 38% more. Put another way: though women are half the population, they account for more than half of all personal healthcare spending.
As a result, the market for women’s health — both in terms of individuals affected and the dollars that can be harnessed — is significant and is definitely not small, specialized, or niche.
Since women are often their family’s caregivers, investing in women’s health also has a ripple effect. If women are unhealthy, they might not have the emotional, mental, or physical abilities needed to keep those in their care — such as children, parents, or in-laws — healthy as well.
For these reasons, investments in women’s health solutions have benefits that aren’t limited to women; rather, solutions that improve women’s health are solutions that can improve everyone’s health.
3. With the recent focus on ESG and DEI, aren’t female founders reaching parity with male founders?
Unfortunately, not yet.
To show their support for a diverse workforce, diverse investment portfolio, or both, companies may adopt DEI (Diversity, Equality, Inclusion) policies and/or an ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) investment strategy. DEI policies help shape hiring, training, retaining, and promoting of diverse talent across an institution. ESG investment strategies, meanwhile, demonstrate an institution’s commitment to investing in solutions that better society — through addressing environmental, social, and governance issues, among others. Adopting these policies show that a company understands the value in promoting diversity through its internal practices and/or external financial commitments.
One concrete example of acting upon a DEI and/or ESG policy is investing in underrepresented founders, such as female founders or Black founders. And yet, in 2021, female founders received only 2% of all venture capital funding, Black founders received only 1.2%, and Black female founders received under 0.35% — despite the fact that heterogeneous teams have shown better decision-making, better financial returns, faster exits, higher revenues per dollar raised, and more innovation than homogeneous teams.
This gap in funding affects healthcare as well. For one example, about 70% of women’s health companies have at least one female founder. If these founders don’t receive adequate funding, they may not have the capital and support they need to develop solutions to advance women’s health.
4. What is the association between “women’s health” and “FemTech”?
“FemTech” — shorthand for “female technologies” — was coined in 2016 by Ida Tin, a female Danish entrepreneur who founded Clue: a company that developed a period and fertility-tracking app. She created the word “FemTech” to help give (mostly male) investors not only a word that they were more comfortable saying than “period” or “fertility” but also a market that had more buzzword potential than “women’s health”. FemTech has been used since to describe products, services, and technologies that address the needs of women, especially in healthcare.
While the “FemTech and “women’s health” have been used synonymously in recent years, at Avestria, we personally think of “FemTech” as direct-to-consumer, technology-based solutions (like fertility apps or subscription services for menstrual products) that address women’s needs. In comparison, to us, “women’s health” is broad; it can cover not only FemTech solutions but also anything and everything else that addresses women’s health, such as UTI supplements, telehealth services for menopausal women, and a device that control postpartum hemorrhaging (to name a few of the solutions in which Avestria has invested).
5. How can I support Avestria?
If you appreciate the work we’re doing and our focus on women’s health and female-led life science companies, there are several ways to get involved:
- If you’re an accredited investor looking to partner with Avestria, please visit https://www.avestria.vc/investors
- If you’re working in women’s health or a female-led healthcare company, and looking for an investment partner, please visit https://www.avestria.vc/entrepreneurs
- If you want regular updates, you can get the latest by subscribing to this blog, joining our quarterly newsletter mailing list, and/or following us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
