The People Building the Future of Women’s Health
The Billion Dollar Blindspot is opening its pages to founders, investors, clinicians, researchers and industry leaders with valuable perspectives to share.
Last year, I sat down with Dr Nina Kumari, co-founder of Upli, to understand why she was trying to redesign infant formula using bioidentical human milk proteins. “There is one question that’s been keeping me awake at night” she told me.
“Why do we wait until adulthood to fix what could have been prevented by the first 1,000 days of nutrition?
Yes, it was a question about infant nutrition that sent her down the rabbit hole but it was also a question about maternal health, biotechnology, and an industry that had prematurely settled for “good enough”. Your messages to me in response to that story told me that you loved that story.
Then I asked Bonnie Marcus to talk about ambition, age and what it means to continue navigating the workplace as a woman over 50….and you responded again
And then, two weeks ago, Professor Sandra Kooij shared her work on ADHD in women and how hard it is to get funding and attention to something that affects so many lives, you wanted more of that too.
On the face of it, these three articles don’t have much in common: infant nutrition, workplace ambition after 50, an under-funded slice of women’s health. But look closer and there is a pattern.
Each one takes you behind the headline and introduces you to the person and the work: what they’ve seen, what they’re trying to change, and the challenges and obstacles in their way. None of them treats the subject like a market opportunity first.
That tells me something about what you actually want from this newsletter. Not just to know what’s happening in women’s health, but to hear from the people building it, researching it, funding it, changing it. I’ve heard you.
There’s over 20,000 of you here - investors, founders, healthcare operators, and people who just want to understand what is changing in the world of women’s health from a capital perspective.
You’ve read, shared, questioned and paid for this newsletter. Somewhere along that journey, this stopped being about one person writing about an overlooked corner of healthcare and became an actual community. And I think that community deserves the best stories and ideas across women’s health that’s out there.
There is an incredible amount of knowledge and stories across the women’s-health ecosystem.
… from founders who are learning what it really takes to build companies in categories that markets and healthcare systems do not yet fully understand.
… from investors who are seeing patterns in what gets funded, what struggles to attract funding and how todays’ investment frameworks are being adapted to fit an emerging category.
…from researchers are uncovering sex-specific evidence gaps and emerging risks that the wider market may not yet know to look for.
…from operators and industry leaders are navigating the less or (in)visible barriers that determine whether a promising innovation ever reaches patients.
and from people around the world (who rarely get press coverage) building and developing women’s-health markets under very different clinical, cultural and economic conditions.
These stories need to be heard, not just because they can show us what's actually changing, but also because they can potentially help us understand the women’s-health market better than any glossy report or funding report could.
It takes hours each week to research, write, and produce at this level. Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to support my work. Thank you.
I'm opening the newsletter up to other voices
Starting today I an opening up this newsletter to the people building, funding, researching, and pushing forward the women's-health economy directly and not just filtered through my interviews.
Maybe you're a founder or operator who learned something important that never made it into the pitch deck.
Maybe you're an investor who's noticed where capital keeps flowing, or where it keeps getting stuck.
Maybe you're a clinician or researcher who can explain what a piece of new evidence actually means for patients or product development.
Or maybe you work somewhere that barely registers in international women's-health coverage,
Or you've watched a regulatory or reimbursement mess up close, or something in your own life exposed a failure (or an opportunity) that the people deciding what gets funded need to understand.
You don't have to be a polished writer. You just need something worth saying.
Weekly capital intelligence on women’s health. Summer Special 20%
What I'm actually looking for
You can write about what you’re building, but the piece has to hold up on its own. The pieces that work are built on something you actually earned, an argument you can back up, or a part of the market that only comes into focus because of where you’re standing.
It shouldnt be a press release dressed up as thought leadership. If in doubt, here’s a test: “would this still teach the reader something if we cut the company name and the ask to buy, invest, or participate?”
Every contributor gets a byline and bio. Plus I’ll work with you to edit and fact-check before anything goes out, and contributed pieces stay clearly marked apart from my own reporting.
How to pitch us
Just reply to this email with your name, role, and organisation; your idea in one sentence; a few sentences on the argument; why you’re the right person to write it; any research or data behind it; and any commercial interest I should know about. That’s genuinely it, no full draft, no formal proposal.
I can’t run every pitch. But if there’s something you know that this community needs to hear, reply and tell me.
These ideas are at the heart of my new book, The Billion Dollar Blindspot. You can find The Billion Dollar Blindspot on Amazon.
Disclaimer & Disclosure
This content is for informational and educational purposes only.
Thank you for sharing my article again! I'm an avid reader of your important work and look forward to collaborating in the future. Your research and perspective help me better understand the systemic challenges involved in women's health.