Riding the Waves of Change: Insights from Upstream Festival and the Future of FemTech
Yesterday, I had the joy of hosting the fireside chat stage at the fifth edition of Upstream Festival — the fastest growing startup event in South Holland. It’s a two-day event that boasted over 1,000 attendees this year. Any time I get to ask inspiring people questions and spar on interesting ideas is a treat, and the team behind the festival did an absolutely stellar job stacking the speaker list.
Two things are sticking with me from my conversations yesterday. First, you really cannot underestimate the importance of understanding what you’re good at, what you are passionate (perhaps obsessive?) about, and the sweet spot where those two worlds intersect. This was something evident in every impressive founder I talked to on stage. Now just hitting the end of my second month after resigning from my COO role, this is very much the work I’m personally doing…and I plan to write a post on this later.
The second item, and what I focus on here, is the serendipity (or perhaps skill) of building an impactful business that is bolstered by a macro trend and riding a wave of market forces supporting changing the world for the better.
The Power of Macro Trends
What do I mean by this? Let me give you an example. I spoke with Liza Rubenstein Malamud, co-founder of the Amsterdam-based climate tech fund of funds, Carbon Equity. Yes, the political discourse is divided in almost every geography on climate change, but the wave really feels to be cresting in terms of interesting economic return, technological acceleration, and know-how in the industry. Liza shared that VC investment in climate tech has been more resilient than other sectors (SVB recently reported that in the US, it dropped only 37%, compared to general tech’s drop of 57%). Simultaneously, we feel the noose tightening as a society as we’re waking up daily to apocalyptic headlines about killer heat domes and orange rivers. On top of that, climate tech becomes more and more cost-effective to produce, with more and more demand.
While horrific, my conversation with Liza actually left me optimistic about our future — when good ol’ capitalism aligns with impact, real sh*t finally gets done.
FemTech: A Wave Worth Riding
Some numbers I’ve come across recently have me hopeful that a similar wave might be coming for FemTech, at least in the US. Similar to climate change, women’s health is a (perplexingly) divisive political issue, but the numbers and markers speak to only positive momentum in the sector. (A quick reminder: When I’m using “FemTech” I’m referring to technology related to female well-being and health conditions that are female-specific, or affect women differently or disproportionately).
Here are some stats:
- There’s more money and a big enough market. The global FemTech sector is growing fast, with the US leading the way. UK-based Sie Ventures recently issued a report that FemTech surpassed $2B in VC investment for the first time in 2021, and is expected to be valued at over $60B by 2027. This 2021 Crunchbase article puts the size of the future global FemTech market at $1T (yes, trillion!).
- There will (hopefully) be more data on which to build businesses and understand the potential market size of good solutions. President Biden recently issued an Executive Order to put $12B specifically for women’s health research. Why is this needed? One anecdote says it all — five times more research has been funded on erectile dysfunction (which affects 19% of men) than PMS (which affects 90% of women).
- Women will have more money to spend and more power to make decisions. In the US, the share of women making just as much or more than their husbands has tripled in the past 50 years, with now 29% of women in opposite-sex marriages out-earning their husbands. Percentages of female breadwinners are also growing in many EU countries. Higher education shows a similarly positive trend — women are now representing the majority of college grads in many countries, like this 23-year trend in the Netherlands.
I should note there’s no shortage of dark counterpoints to the above like the barbaric overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US, for example, or the fact that female breadwinners still also have to do the majority of unpaid work. Or the fact that we’ve stalled on progress on the gender pay gap in the past 20 years. But I have optimism and hope that the market winds are behind FemTech in a way they haven’t been previously.
In a little over a week, I’ll be heading to London for FemTechLab’s flagship women’s health conference — Decoding the Future of Women. I’m very excited to meet entrepreneurs working on these opportunities and also check out this leading FemTech accelerator.
And to keep exploring my own way to plug in and ride (and keep growing) the wave…
