The Womens Wellness Show

Today's episode is with an amazing guest, Albert is the founding partner and CEO of Tramlines a venture infrastructure company, accelerator, and consultancy

He’s a multi exited founder, an angel investor and on the HMRC advisory board for AI

TRAMLINES is a fund and accelerator focused exclusively on B2B Deep Tech, AI, Fintech, and Enterprise Tech. It targets domain experts with at least 10 years of industry experience and takes them through a 24 month Pre-Seed and Seed programme.

I really love Albert's philosophy and approach to building companies and VC, there's some gems in this episode!

If you'd like to potentially partner with Tramlines then fill in this short expression of interest form

https://share-eu1.hsforms.com/1JujmYKoPQreOdSO405AdtQ2e2s93

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Marta Ciechonska has a PhD in Microbiology and used that to co-founder her company Salient Bioscience

Together with her team they are combining synthetic biology and robotics to build digital-first laboratories that make diagnostic testing available to all including the oral and vaginal microbiome 

We go back to the early days of starting the company, fundraising, research and the early barriers.

We discuss women’s health as a sector and how did Salient Bioscience position themselves as a company in terms of sector, fundraising narrative

The importance of a healthy and supportive startup network - balancing time between network and support with building the company 

Distribution channels - via clinics and clinicians 

Content, trust, has the word microbiome been butchered ?

Our podcast sponsor is Progyny Global. A company that provides best-in-class fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and menopause benefits for the modern global workforce. Progyny Global offers an inclusive platform that connects employees with top experts, clinics, and treatments around the world. To learn more visit: https://progynyglobal.com/#contact or to get in touch with our team directly via email ([email protected])

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“Did I miss my moment because I was so obsessed with building a company? Who knows, I’ll grapple with that”

Poppy Mason-Watts is a multi round VC backed founder in the impact space. I’m so grateful for her doing this episode because we need to have more of a conversation about how the founder journey overlaps with the fertility journey and egg freezing.

I hope this episode is insightful and brings some valuable perspectives for you. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or Poppy if you have any questions about your own journey.

Poppy works with clients to provide time-bound growth leadership (fractional CMO/CGO) for mission-driven ventures, building and institutionalising the marketing and commercial function at early scale sized startups.

Our podcast is sponsored by:

Progyny Global. A company that provides best-in-class fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and menopause benefits for the modern global workforce. Progyny Global offers an inclusive platform that connects employees with top experts, clinics, and treatments around the world. To learn more visit: https://progynyglobal.com/#contact or to get in touch with our team directly via email ([email protected])

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Jo Dalton is the founder of JD&Co is the go to Global Exec Search & Advisory firm supporting the founders, funders, and leaders of high growth disruptive tech fuelled brands

She’s also a founding member of Alma Angels, an angel syndicate focused on supporting women’s led companies 

Jo’s experience and visibility over the landscape make her incredibly well placed to discuss how to start your company as a founder and finding your first angel investors!

Just a small handful of the lessons and tips we cover:

Don’t quit your job until you have your first 1000 true fans 

Validate your idea first by getting 150 people on a waitlist for your solution 

Understand how equity works and don’t be to eager to give it away 

Don’t give a board set to an early investor 

Your first angel investors might not identify as traditional angels!

Any questions or feedback please don't hesitate to reach out - [email protected]

Our podcast is sponsored by:

Progyny Global. A company that provides best-in-class fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and menopause benefits for the modern global workforce. Progyny Global offers an inclusive platform that connects employees with top experts, clinics, and treatments around the world. To learn more visit: https://progynyglobal.com/#contact or to get in touch with our team directly via email ([email protected])

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Valerie Evans is a principal at Five Seasons Ventures 

Five Seasons Ventures is the leading pan-European Venture Capital fund investing in iconic and sustainable consumer brands.

Whilst not a women’s health specific fund Valerie is very passionate about seeing more consumer women’s health innovation reaching series A and she walks us through the main 2 problems she sees when moving from seed- series A

What We Cover:

The Niche Problem Most early-stage startup advice tells founders to go narrow — solve one problem, find your 1,000 true fans. But VC math demands a big TAM. We unpack how to navigate that tension and how the right answer actually shifts as you move through funding rounds.

The Healthtech Identity Trap Are companies hurting themselves by leading with "healthtech" when trying to reach everyday consumers? We explore why leaning too hard into a clinical or tech-forward identity can create distance with the very audience you're trying to reach.

GTM as a Consumer Company First How do you build a go-to-market strategy that puts the consumer experience front and centre, without losing sight of longer-term opportunities in medical devices or regulated health? We discuss whether the healthtech path is a form of defensibility, a marketing play, or both.

Key Themes:

• Niche vs. scale in early-stage startups
• Consumer brand identity in health and wellness
• The role of medical device / healthtech positioning as a strategic asset
• How GTM strategy evolves across funding stages
• 
  

Our podcast is sponsored by:

Progyny Global. A company that provides best-in-class fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and menopause benefits for the modern global workforce. Progyny Global offers an inclusive platform that connects employees with top experts, clinics, and treatments around the world. To learn more visit: https://progynyglobal.com/#contact or to get in touch with our team directly via email ([email protected])

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Léa is the CEO and co-founder of Cycalana Bio, she has a PhD from Cambridge in clinical neurosciences

Léa started Cyclana Bio nearly a year ago and announced a £5 million seed round in October co led by NfX and Eka Ventures 

We talk her personal journey of getting diagnosed with endometriosis, experience with using HBC for endometriosis management as well as how she manages her triathlon training and recovery 

We then move into the work and research herself and her team are doing in Cambridge to build whole tissue disease models from menstrual fluid and lab work to study tissue mechanisms which will identify early biomarkers and druggable targets

As well as why and how you should donate your menstrual blood to science! 

You can donate your period to CyclanaBio here

As always any questions or feedback, drop me an email - [email protected]

Show notes: Our podcast sponsor is Progyny Global. A company that provides best-in-class fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and menopause benefits for the modern global workforce. Progyny Global offers an inclusive platform that connects employees with top experts, clinics, and treatments around the world. To learn more visit: https://progynyglobal.com/#contact or to get in touch with our team directly via email ([email protected])

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Luana David is a previous founder now VC at Supernode Global, 

A venture capital firm investing in early-stage startups that are empowering humans to reach their full potential in the most important aspects of everyday lives

Most notable Supernode have backed Hormona in the women’s health space which gives Luana amazing insights to the women’s health landscape

She’s also someone who’s followed the Nexus journey closely as I’ve been fortunate enough to know Luana for a couple of years so we use this episode to also work through my own start up journey as a case study - hopefully this gives you some very practical insights and takeaways

We talk about the current landscape regarding consumer women's healthtech, especially finding a balance between deeply solving a problem for your consumers whilst having a narrative in place for future expansion so you have a VC backable TAM

Luana talks about the importance of knowing your why as a founder and how you should use the 5 whys framework to have that clarity for your investor conversations

Luana also talks about the importance of being your domain expert. "As a VC I want the founder to educate me, I like learning from founders"

As always any questions or feedback don't hesitate to drop me an email - [email protected]

Our podcast sponsor is Progyny Global. A company that provides best-in-class fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and menopause benefits for the modern global workforce. Progyny Global offers an inclusive platform that connects employees with top experts, clinics, and treatments around the world. To learn more visit: https://progynyglobal.com/#contact or to get in touch with our team directly via email ([email protected])

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vandana is an exited founder with over 20 years healthtech experience. 

She has a patent in cervical cancer screening.

Launched the world's first handheld ultrasound.

Launched the world's first at home baby monitoring wearable

Sits on the board of breast cancer charity. 

Raised £10 million across 2 rounds backed by Accel Partners who are one of the top VCs 

Her first startup was in in oncology therapeutics and the second one was in AI predictive and cancer.

Vandana now works alongside founders and funds to support on growth, financing, and exits with her company Rainmatter

We discussed:

‘Femtech’ and ‘women’s health’ as a sector. More harm than good? How does this terminology evolve 

The 3 biggest mistakes founders make when fundraising between pre-seed and series A

How to build a team that will get you from 0-1 when capital is limited 

Are we seeing a shift from VC being a pure financial sector to more exited founders and operators? 

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Estia Ryan is a VC and head of research at Eka Ventures. 

The intersection of this role as well as Eka’s investment into Cyclana Bio, Ditto Daily and Hesta Health make her incredibly well placed to cover the common challenges women’s health founders faced when moving from ideation to raising pre-seed 

Last year Estia partnered with Yougov to survey over 1000 women,  which they used to create an incredible women’s health landscape report which I highly recommend you check out here - The Future Of Women's Health

Estia has kindly spoken on 2 of our panels and I always love her perspectives so I’m really excited to bring you this conversation today without needing to join us for a panel.

As always please feel free to let me know your questions and feedback

We discuss:

How Estia see's the current women's health, tech and fundraising landscape, what's changed in the 4 months since her report was published?

Why do women's health founders struggle to raise venture capital?

Consumer wellness vs regulated medical device - speed of implementation and GTM vs regulation in the age of fundraising being tough

When a problem is truly meaningful to solve but doesn’t have a huge TAM - What should founders do? Have a narrative on future expansion and / or alternative funding sources?

What role does community play in women's health and / or supporting female founders? How do we get more money into ‘grass roots’ community, advocacy, support networks, and events? Also see this report from Estia on community and consumer

 Who Owns Women’s Health Data? As women’s health becomes a high-value data frontier, who should own, govern and benefit from that data, and what must remain a public good rather than a private moat?

Our podcast sponsor is Progyny Global. A company that provides best-in-class fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and menopause benefits for the modern global workforce. Progyny Global offers an inclusive platform that connects employees with top experts, clinics, and treatments around the world. To learn more visit: https://progynyglobal.com/#contact or to get in touch with our team directly via email - [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode I’m joined by Ahana Banerjee the founder and CEO of Clear

I’m fortunate enough to have learnt from Ahana over the past couple of years, she’s shared so many amazing lessons with me from building Clear that I’m really excited to bring you this conversation today 

Ahana is the youngest solo female founder to get into YC, The biggest accelerator program in the world!

• App of the Day features: 5 times
• Special 2025 South Asian Heritage Month Apple feature
• Downloads: 65,000+
• Funding raised: ~$1M

Clear in the Apple app store

Clear in the Google Play app store

We discussed:

Fundraising for a D2C subscription tech app, any tips for founders vs being told build in a different sector or business model

How are you using data from a partnership perspective ( and commercial perspective?) ethics and regulation around this. Fundraising narrative: I know we spoke about having a different narrative to different investors going forward. Did you do that previously and are you still doing it for this round 

Not being a medical device but still having a data stratergy

Future fundraising and growth targets 

What role has personal brand played in your companies success

Balancing spending money you’ve raised for growth vs sufficient runway and how does your own salary fit into that

Being a solo founder, tips for time management, work life balance, community

I hope you learned as much from this episode with Ahana as I did! Any feedback or questions please feel free to drop me an email - [email protected]

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