Digital Health Investing in FemTech and PediaTech
I started training for a half marathon recently and am starting slowly with long walks with my lovely dog Violet (pictured with me above). I’ve spent less time in my car and have missed out on my time to listen to podcasts so my walks have turned out to be the perfect opportunity to catch up on some of my favorites and find some new ones (don’t forget to check out my new podcast, PilotingYourLife).
I’ve also spent the last year doing research and deciding to launch a venture fund. I decided on the structure and the investment thesis and hard started to work with the attorneys to make it all happen. I’d also been dragging my feet on signing agreements and getting my pitch deck together and could not figure out why.
It all became clear over the last week as I was listening to Jason Calacanis’ new podcast Angel when he interviewed syndicate lead and angel investor Zach Coelius and over the weekend when I attended the Hera Venture Summit in San Diego.
At the summit I talked to women who have created alternative and collaborative investments structures that are not venture funds and are doing so quite successfully. I also saw how they are bringing more women into startup investing and how those women are investing in startups that have positive social impact. These are not philanthropies. This is making investments by focusing on doing well and doing good.
Zach said something about being a cash poor angel investor. He has lots of money tied up in other investments and may put $1K or $5K into his syndicate deals but the value is bringing together his syndicate investors to back companies he finds for them.
So this got me thinking about what I was trying to accomplish in creating the fund. I want to be able to continue to invest in digital health deals in the FemTech and PediaTech (pediatric) healthcare spaces. I want to invest alongside other like-minded investors. And I don’t want to spend the next year trying to convince traditional LPs that I have the track record, experience, and network to get them to invest in a $10M fund to invest in 30 companies over a 2 year period to then spend another year raising a $50M fund etc.
It’s not back to the drawing board for Class Bravo Ventures; it’s more of a re-alignment. I will continue to flesh out what this is going to look like but it will most likely be a combination of some sort of an investor group/membership along with leveraging AngelList syndicates for the investing vehicle.
In the meantime, if you have or know of early stage (pre-Series A) Digital Health companies focused on FemTech or PediaTech, please drop my a line at ClassBravoVentures@gmail.com.
FemTech focuses on women’s digital health related products and services like Maven Clinic (they just raised a $10.8M Series A), MilkStork, Seed, Pandia Health to name a few. They can be B2B or B2C or B2B2C. What is interesting in this space is that companies are seeing the value in retaining female employees thereby investing in benefits that make their companies more female and family friendly. Maven Clinic and MilkStork are both B2B companies for that reason.
PediaTech focuses on innovation in the pediatric digital health space like Tueo Health (one of my portfolio companies) and Owlet. If we thought women were under served, children are even more so, which means the space is ripe for disruption and innovation and we are starting to see trends in the right direction. And moms and dads are willing to spend a lot on their babies and toddlers.
Why the two? Women control 80–85% of household healthcare spend which means both them and their children.
Healthcare is a $3T market in the US every year. It’s time that we focused our investing on digital health products and services that support women and children to not only take advantage of blue ocean opportunities but continue down the path of leveraging technology to flip healthcare on its head.
@PilotingLife podcast http://bit.ly/PilotingYourLife-PLY001
