Earlier this week women鈥檚 health app Flo Health raised more than 拢156m ($200m) in a Series C investment from General Atlantic which valued the business beyond $1bn.
It meant that Flo became the first purely digital consumer women鈥檚 health app聽to achieve unicorn status.
At the same time Female Invest, which is on a mission to close the financial gender gap, announced it had raised a record-breaking 拢8.7m ($11.2m) in Series A funding.
Emma Due Bitz, Camilla Falkenberg and Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen set up the EdTech platform in 2019 after noticing the lack of women attending personal finance educational events and the wider unaddressed gender disparity in investments and savings.
Now both stories have come together and sparked a social media storm after Hartvigsen pointed out that the first women鈥檚 health app to achieve unicorn status was 鈥渇ounded by men, led by men and funded by men鈥�.
: 鈥淚f this doesn’t show you everything that’s wrong with the ecosystem, I don’t know what will.
鈥淟et me explain. Raising money as a female founder is close to impossible, with just 2 per cent of funding going to women (even though they on average deliver a higher return per invested dollar).
鈥淲hy? Because women are discriminated at every step of the process.
鈥淧lease remember. This is not an opinion, it鈥檚 a fact. An overwhelming amount of research on the topic has been done – all showing the same trends.
鈥淚 get it, the topic of bias is uncomfortable. Because by acknowledging its existence, we also acknowledge that the people in power, the founders who raise etc are often not the most qualified. They are just the most privileged.
鈥淥f course, this is not just a gender issue. And it goes for myself too. Would I have raised the same money, had I not been white? Probably not.
鈥淲e all have a role to play in changing these structures. It starts with educating ourselves, speaking up and supporting those who challenge the status quo because it鈥檚 scary as hell.
鈥淎nd finally, a message to the VCs: 50 per cent of the population is not qualified to make decisions about 100 per cent of the population.
鈥淭oday, 83 per cent of investment committees have no female members.
鈥淲hen reading these facts, it鈥檚 tempting to look for explanations such as 鈥榤aybe men are better at building companies鈥�, 鈥榤aybe women don鈥檛 try to raise鈥� etc. Please educate yourself on the topic before making those comments.
鈥淎 final point: 聽women-led companies often deliver higher revenue 鈥� often twice as much per pound invested 鈥� than those founded by men.鈥�
Her comments have polarised opinions 鈥� with strong views in both camps.
Sarah Fraikue, CEO of German-based SaaS business FlexBenAI, replied: 鈥淏oom! Thanks for sharing and raising awareness! If we don’t talk about it, nothing will ever change. Just last month, I walked into a room full of investors鈥攎ostly men, with just one woman. I didn’t even get hard questions during my pitch; I got none. There could be many reasons why, but one of them was definitely that nobody looked like me. It is proven that investors tend to invest in people they can relate to.鈥�
However Deepali Nangia, a partner with Speeinvest, disagreed with Hartvigsen鈥檚 comments: 鈥淭his achievement (Flo Health鈥檚) should actually be celebrated. As a women’s health investor that has invested in 7+ women’s health companies, we are yet to see any of them scale.
鈥淔lo’s achievement is a very strong signal to the market that d2c women’s health is monetizable in Europe and that there is money to be made here; this is what investors need to see so more money flows into women’s health companies.
鈥�(That鈥檚) not to say that the challenges faced by women in pitching are any less, but we must celebrate all wins that lead to more capital deployed into this sector. One can’t also forget that male allyship plays a key role in getting more women’s health startups funded and getting more women into VC, in general. More diversity is always better than not.鈥�
Flo Heath was founded be Belarusian brothers Dmitry and Yuri Gurski. Dmitry is the CEO and Yuri is the President.
According to Flo Health鈥檚 website, four of the five people on the company鈥檚 medical and leadership team are women, including chief medical officer Anna Klepchukova.
Meanwhile of the 17 names listed on the firm鈥檚 scientific advisory board, 10 are women and seven are men.