In this episode of Blindspot Capital, Maryann Selfe speaks with Professor Carolin Lerchenmüller, cardiologist, clinician-scientist, and Switzerland’s first Chair of Gender Medicine, about why heart disease presents differently in women and how hormones across pregnancy, perimenopause, and menopause fundamentally reshape cardiovascular risk.

Drawing on decades of research spanning molecular cardiology and clinical care, Carolin explains why modern cardiology guidelines failed to account for female biology and what gender-informed, hormone-literate cardiology must look like next.

We Cover:

How pregnancy, perimenopause, and menopause alter cardiovascular symptoms and risk in women

Why preeclampsia and gestational hypertension are early predictors of lifetime cardiovascular disease

How declining estrogen levels affect blood vessels, cholesterol metabolism, and plaque formation

Why cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in women worldwide and why awareness remains dangerously low

What a hormone-literate, gender-informed cardiology system would require in research, diagnostics, and care delivery

Carolin’s predictions for the future of gender medicine and why she sees a turning point in science and clinical practice

Links

 Learn more about the Women’s Heart Health Program at University Hospital ZurichFollow Professor Lerchenmüller on LinkedIn

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

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📌 Watch full episode on YouTube

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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.

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📌 Watch full episode on YouTube

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

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 health content online.

Over 95% of women's health brands report experiencing some form of suppression. Posts about menopause, fertility, libido, and endometriosis are being flagged as "sensitive" or "inappropriate" across major platforms even when the content is medically reviewed.

This isn’t just a glitch. It’s a structural blind spot that affects funding, awareness, and access.

We Cover:

🟣 How content moderation is stalling the femtech sector

🟣 Case studies from founders facing censorship across Meta, Amazon, and LinkedIn

🟣 How Anna’s team filed six complaints under the EU Digital Services Act

🟣 The human toll of being silenced while trying to innovate

🟣 A new initiative: a vetted directory of service providers for women's health founders

Links:

Download the white paper

Sign the open letter

Follow Anna @FutureFemHealth

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

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

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📌 Watch full episode on YouTube

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

What if naming something was the first step to making it investable?

In this episode of Blindspot Capital, I sit down with Ida Tin, entrepreneur, systems thinker, and the woman who coined the term FemTech. She’s also the co-founder and former CEO of Clue, one of the most widely used women’s health apps in the world, with over 10 million active users in 190+ countries.

But this conversation isn’t just about legacy. It’s about language, legitimacy, and the long game of funding women’s health.

We cover:

🟣 How FemTech started as a bridge to help male investors care

🟣 What naming a category unlocked and unintentionally limited

🟣 The persistent bias that keeps women’s health boxed in as “niche”

🟣 The mindset shift from founder to systems-change leader

🟣 Why we believe women’s health is infrastructure

🟣 What she’s building next with Femtech Assembly and why she’s doing it differently

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

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FEMTECH Assembly

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Why You Should Listen:

If you’re a founder, investor, or operator navigating digital health, this is the truth-telling conversation you won’t hear on stage. No fluff. Just data, capital dynamics, and the patterns no one’s naming.

📌 Watch full episode on YouTube

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

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, investor, and co-host of the podcast Digital Health Inside Out, to talk about what’s broken in digital health from copycat AI startups to gender bias in funding and where we should be paying attention instead.

In This Episode We Cover:

🟣 Why most digital health startups are chasing performance signals that don’t matter🟣 The VC paradox: how underperforming funds still raise while women founders get ignored🟣 The rise of “AI tourists” in healthcare and why most won’t survive🟣 What investors are missing in autoimmune, menopause, and cardiovascular health🟣 How women-led companies often outperform and still get passed over🟣 What needs to change in how capital flows are structured🟣 Why Sergei and Alex launched Digital Health Inside Out and what he's learning from clinicians, not conferences.

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

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🎙️ Sergei and Alex’s podcast: Digital Health Inside Out📬

Sergei’s Substack: AI Health Uncut

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Why You Should Listen:

If you’re a founder, investor, or operator navigating digital health, this is the truth-telling conversation you won’t hear on stage. No fluff. Just data, capital dynamics, and the patterns no one’s naming.

📌 Watch full episode on YouTube

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

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 Blindspot Capital, I sit down with Sabrina Johnson, President & CEO of Daré Bioscience, to unpack the misconceptions holding back investment in women’s health from contraception to menopause to vaginal health and explore how disciplined science can change the game.

In This Episode We Cover:

🟣 Why women’s health markets are larger and more recurrent than most investors realize

🟣 The false perception that women’s health conditions are “lifestyle” or “optional”

🟣 The reality of recruiting participants for women’s health trials (and why stigma isn’t a barrier)

🟣 What scientific credibility really looks like in biotech and how to protect it

🟣 The difference between medicine and marketing and why the distinction matters for investors

🟣 Why angel investors have a leadership opportunity in women’s health

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

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Why You Should Listen If you care about women’s health, biotech, or the intersection of science and capital, this is a clear-eyed look at the market opportunities hiding in plain sight and the leadership it will take to unlock them.

About Sabrina Johnson Sabrina Johnson is the President & CEO of Daré Bioscience, a biopharmaceutical company driven by a mission to challenge the status quo, making women's health a priority. Daré believes that innovation does not have to start from scratch.

The company’s goal is to bring to market as soon as practicable innovative evidence-based solutions that address decades of unmet needs in women’s health and enhance outcomes and convenience, primarily in the areas of contraception, sexual health, pelvic pain, fertility, infectious disease, vaginal health and menopause. Learn more Here

🎧 Listen now and share with someone who still thinks women’s health is “niche.”

📌 Watch on YouTube

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In this episode, healthcare investor and strategist Maryann Umoren Selfe is joined by Matthias Wipf, CEO of Swiss medtech company MOMM Diagnostics, to examine the systemic gaps in how we identify and fund life-saving healthcare infrastructure for women.

🟣 Why preeclampsia remains one of the most dangerous, misunderstood pregnancy complications

🟣 What point-of-care diagnostics like Pre-Exclude are doing differently

🟣 Why diagnostics in women’s health are underfunded and what that reveals about investor psychology

🟣 How preeclampsia connects to long-term cardiovascular risk 🟣 What’s holding back innovation in maternal health and how to change it

🟣 Why investing in maternal health benefits not just women, but entire health systems

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

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About MOMM Diagnostics:Founded in 2018, MOMM Diagnostics is reimagining maternal care with préXclude, a breakthrough test for early detection of preeclampsia. With just a drop of blood and a few minutes, their technology gives clinicians the power to act before pregnancy complications become emergencies. Born out of research collaborations in Switzerland and California, MOMM is part of a new wave of founders who are turning overlooked health problems into high-impact innovation. Learn more here.

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

Blind Spot Capital Podcast Trailer

Welcome to Blind Spot Capital, the podcast where health innovation meets investment insight. Every year, investors bet billions on the future of health but most still miss one of the biggest opportunities in the market: women’s health.

You tell a woman to “wait and see” while her organ shuts down? That’s not medicine. That’s neglect.

We talk to the founders building what should have existed, the investors backing what's next, and the strategists reshaping the capital stack before it’s too late.Subscribe now. New episodes every other Thursday.🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple, Substack, and YouTube.

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

A few weeks ago, Ronald Vos and Nutte van Belzen, the founders of CC Diagnostics were at a major European medical congress when they were approached by a woman who didn’t work in science or medicine. She had bought an expensive delegate ticket, not to participate in the conference, but to seek help.

She had advanced cervical cancer. And she came in the hope that someone…anyone, at this gathering of gynaecologists and scientists might listen to her story and offer a lifeline.

“We hope all those cases can be prevented,” co-founder Nutte van Belzen reflects.

That moment captures exactly why this episode matters.

Only 15% of women participate in cervical screenings, despite the fact that cervical cancer is entirely preventable through early detection and vaccination. The problem? Existing methods are invasive, uncomfortable, and all too easy to avoid until it’s too late.

In this conversation, the founders of CC Diagnostics share their journey: the personal experience and passion that fuels their mission, the technology they are building to make self-sampling accessible, and their vision for a world where diagnostics are not a privilege, but a right.

We also dive into:

* The overlooked challenges of building a diagnostics company.

* Why many investors hesitate and why that needs to change.

* Their roadmap for global access, including a pricing model for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

This isn’t just a conversation about tech or start-ups.

It’s about the human stories that push innovation forward, and the urgent need to act before another woman buys a ticket to beg for care.

🎧 Watch the full episode for a powerful and personal look at how we can, and must, do better in women’s health.

CC Diagnostics

CC Diagnostics (Netherlands) offers a clinically validated screening test, significantly improving cervical cancer detection rates to 97% (vs current market benchmark of 76%). Our product offers a 6x reduction in time per test for the diagnostic labs, dramatically reducing costs and improving efficiency. Our Methica test technology enables screening from home (with self-sampled material), unlocking a broader €5.5Bn screening market worldwide. We achieved commercial progress, with the first 2 international orders from leading CLIA labs in the US and UK.

CC Diagnostics (Netherlands)

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

In this short video, I unpack the deeper signal behind today’s article and why smart founders and investors are rethinking where to build next.

Would love to hear what you are seeing. Drop me a comment.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.femmehealthventures.com