Female Founders Fund recently found that business initiatives serving women facing menopause have a $600 billion opportunity. In 2021, there were 3.095 billion women in the world, with an estimated 1.1 billion postmenopausal women by 2025. These women are also currently drastically underserved and facing big challenges (no surprise here...): women 40-50 have the highest rate of depression in the US and women face a 1 in 5 chance of developing cognitive diseases like Alzheimer’s (compared to 1 in 11 for men) post-menopause.

The opportunities are abundant, yet innovation centered on women’s health in middle age and beyond has been a rarity. Recently, the so-called “femtech industry” has increased focus on women’s health including menstrual health, fertility, and pregnancy, but still is just beginning to broach the topic of menopause.

There are remarkable women making great strides in this space and demonstrating that menopause is ripe with opportunity.

Sam Simister the co-founder of GenM, a firm dedicated to partnering with brands across sectors to help them understand the needs of the menopause market, and her co-founder Heather Jackson believe that the need for organizations to address menopause is not only an inclusion issue, but also a business issue. She likens the opportunity to the movement toward more women in the boardroom, saying that progression will only be taken really seriously once decision makers see that boards with more female representation drive more profitability. “We think it’s the same here. There is a huge opportunity to be had here and it’s time that businesses woke up to that.”

For example, Vira Health, co-founded by Andrea Berchowitz and Rebecca Love, raised 1.5 million pounds in seed funding thus far for their app, Stella, which aims to deliver relief from menopause symptoms based on two premises. The first is that no two women experience menopause in exactly the same way, so treatments should be customized. The second is a staunch commitment to scientific, evidence-based treatments and solutions. Berchowitz explains, “Inequities in healthcare have been a long-standing interest of mine. Deciding to build a company was a reaction to reading the book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez in 2019. Chapter 10, “The Drugs Don’t Work” was a complete eye-opener for me.

She systematically explains how the gender data gap in healthcare is resulting in wildly inferior care (misdiagnosis, inferior pain management, increased mortality). When I finished reading it, it was completely clear to me that, without new innovators bringing the power of technology to female-only conditions, this wasn’t going to change.”

Vira Health isn’t the only example of success in the space. Chorus Health, co-founded by CEO Arfa Rehman, is another service aiming to provide personalized care. Rehman echos the findings explored in GenM’s Invisibility report, highlighting that 71% of women in Chorus Health’s research said they had a negative experience seeking menopause care. Chorus has developed partnerships with major payer and pharmaceutical companies including Bayer, UnitedHealthcare, and Novartis. They’ve also partnered with University of Illinois at Chicago to launch a clinical trial.

Joylux and Thermaband, more product-focused companies, have also raised $16 million and $1.3 million respectively. Joylux, co-founded and led by CEO Collette Courtion, focuses specifically on technology-driven solutions to intimate health issues for women, which are especially prevalent with age. Their $16 million in funding comes from angel investors and smaller, female-focused funds. Thermaband, co-founded by Debbie Dickinson, is designed to provide thermal relief through on-demand cooling or heating sensations on the wrist, and is currently backed by Google’s Black Founders Fund, Blue Collective, and institutional investors, angels, and accredited investors such as IDEAZ.

In GenM’s report, 94% of women going through menopause said they felt they would benefit from society being more open to talking about menopause, and an incredible 87% said they felt overlooked by society and brands; with the number of women in this phase of life continually on the rise, the opportunity for impact – and profit – is tremendous. (Obviously.)

Lauren Lyddon has helped people and organizations to tell their stories for more than a decade. Having tested her love of the creative through the pursuit of an MBA and undergraduate business degrees, she is a writer, editor, and lover of fiction in all its forms (especially theatre, well-written television, and novels). A West coast resident often operating on an East coast schedule, Lauren uses her business background and love of story to serve clients in writing, editing, PR, and more. You can visit her online at L2crtv.com.