Despite 2022’s headwinds, women’s health startups did better than ever before • TechCrunch

It seems to be about to break the glass ceiling with most digital finance so far.

it’s been seven months since Roe v. Wade was shut down, and the dust has only just begun to settle.

Politically, voters have expressed their overwhelming support for a person’s right to access abortion. Grassroots campaigns continue, and when it comes to technology, innovation in the women’s health sector in general is just getting ready.

But have things improved for the sector? Or has sour sentiment across the political spectrum just spooked investors? TechCrunch ran a vibration check to see where this sector stands and found a prevailing sense of cautious optimism.

For Oriana Papin-Zoghbi, CEO and co-founder of ovarian cancer early detection company AOA, the sector has a lot of potential to grow, but raising capital remains a challenge as some investors are still Think about it as a “niche market”.

However, things are slowly but surely changing: “Women still make up the majority of investors who understand our product more deeply, but fortunately we are seeing an increase in the general population who are interested in investing,” said Papin- Zoghbi told TechCrunch.

It closed a $7 million seed round last year and is now raising a Series A. “We still have a long way to go to change views about the importance of investing in women’s health. We are not a niche market like 50% of the population”.

Janna Meyrowitz Turner, the founder of Synastry Capital, echoed similar sentiments. She noted that women’s health startups are looking beyond traditional venture capital for financing, using avenues such as family offices, corporate venture capital and crowdfunding. He has also heard talk of strategic mergers and joint ventures.

“I expect capital for healthcare companies to increase in 2023,” he told TechCrunch. “But I’m not as optimistic when it comes to misogyny in the fields of investment and medicine changing as fast as public sentiment has about things like abortion or even the health benefits of the female orgasm.”

However, funding for women’s healthcare companies doesn’t seem so bad. According to PitchBook, these startups raised about $1.16 billion in 2022, less than the $1.41 billion they raised in 2021. The good news is that $1.16 billion is much closer to $1.41 billion than it is to $496 million. , which was the amount that women’s health companies raised in 2020, and $476.8 million, the amount raised in 2019. This indicates that investors have not returned to pre-pandemic levels and that the sector continues on a trend bullish.

In fact, women’s healthcare technology companies, also known as “femtech”, did much better in 2022 when it came to digital healthcare funding. Although funding in the digital health sector fell to about $8.6 billion in 2022 from $16 billion a year earlier, femtech’s share increased substantially over previous years: the industry’s share of funding for digital health was 13.26% in 2022, compared to 8.75% in 2021, 7.6% in 2020, and 11.8% in 2019.

Data visualization by Miranda Halperncreated with To flourish

If anything, there seems to be increased investor interest in continuing to finance innovation in this sector, despite the economic and political obstacles that stand in the way.