Tough Love for Women’s Health Founders

Tough Love for Women’s Health Founders

Author: by FemmeHealth Alliance November 6, 2025 Duration: 26:51

In this episode of Blindspot Capital, Maryann sits down with Lisa Suennen - longtime healthcare investor, founder of the Venture Valkyrie blog, and Managing Partner of the Go Red for Women Venture Fund to unpack one of the most misunderstood barriers in women’s health investing: the gap between mission and money.

Lisa has been on every side of the table: as a founder, VC, nonprofit leader, and fund manager. Her viral blog post, Tough Love for Women’s Health Entrepreneurs, struck a nerve by naming the hard truth many avoid.

This episode is a must-listen for founders preparing to pitch, funders looking to cut through the noise, and anyone serious about changing how capital flows into women’s health.

We Cover:

🟣 Why many femtech startups stall at Series A

🟣 The difference between pitching a product vs. pitching your stock

🟣 How market size myths derail women's health business cases

🟣 Why language matters: from “women’s health” to “health of women”

🟣 What Lisa’s seeing across 500+ pitch decks at the AHA Venture Fund

🟣 The missing middle: why we need more later-stage capital

Links:

📝 Read Lisa’s blog💼 Learn about the Go Red for Women Venture Fund📣 Follow Lisa on LinkedIn

And share this episode. With a founder. With an investor. With a policymaker. Because this blind spot doesn’t fix itself.

Join 10,000+ readers of the FemmeHealth newsletter on Substack.

--------------------------

📌 Watch full episode on YouTube



Get full access to The Billion Dollar Blindspot at blog.billiondollarblindspot.com/subscribe

There's a vast, often overlooked frontier in business and innovation, and Blindspot Capital is mapping its terrain. This podcast digs into the ideas, trends, and tangible investment potential shaping the future of women's health, a sector that has historically been underfunded and underserved. Each episode moves beyond surface-level discussions to examine the systemic gaps and the consequential opportunities they create. You'll hear from founders, investors, researchers, and thinkers who are actively building and funding solutions in this space, sharing their on-the-ground experiences and hard-won insights. The conversations are grounded in the reality of entrepreneurship and market dynamics, exploring not just the "why" but the "how"-how new technologies are being applied, how businesses are scaling, and how capital can be deployed to generate both impact and returns. Tune in for a clear-eyed look at an area ripe for transformation, where understanding the blind spot isn't just about awareness, but about seeing a path forward for savvy builders and backers alike. This isn't a niche side conversation; it's a central dialogue about the next wave of growth in healthcare and technology, delivered through a podcast dedicated to substantive, forward-thinking analysis.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 18

Blindspot Capital
Podcast Episodes
The Menopause Information Crisis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 31:16
Some markets follow a familiar script: a need emerges, founders respond, capital flows, and eventually, the sector matures. But women’s health doesn’t work like that.In a recent episode of Blindspot Capital, I sat down w…
Building FemTech Infrastructure in Asia [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:33
Some markets follow this script: A need appears. Entrepreneurs respond. Capital flows in. Eventually, the sector matures and innovation accelerates. But some markets don’t follow that script.In a recent episode of Blinds…
Why It Takes Years to Build in Women’s Health [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:44
Most innovation stories are told as clean upward lines. A founder has an idea. Investors come in. The product launches. Growth follows. Eventually there is an acquisition or an IPO, and the story looks inevitable in hind…
Why Women’s Heart Disease Is Still Misdiagnosed [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:58
In this episode of Blindspot Capital, Maryann sits down with Professor Angela Maas (cardiologist and pioneer of sex- and gender-specific cardiology) to unpack why women’s heart disease is still misunderstood and what med…
The Silent Ban: How Social Media Is Censoring Women’s Health [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 25:58
In this episode of Blindspot Capital, Maryann sits down with Anna O’Sullivan, co-founder of censhership.co.uk and FutureFemHealth, to unpack a deeply underrecognized systemic bias: the routine censorship of women’s healt…
Why Most Digital Health Startups Will Fail [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:18
Half the headlines in healthcare are hype. But what if we stopped chasing the next shiny thing and started fixing the fundamentals?In this episode of Blindspot Capital, I sit down with Sergei Polevikov, mathematician, in…
What Real Science in Women’s Health Looks Like [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 25:15
Half the population experiences these conditions. Many are universal, recurring, and clinically significant. Yet in the eyes of too many investors, women’s health therapeutics remain “optional.”In this episode of Blindsp…