Less than 1% of healthcare venture capital goes to women's health. This isn't just a funding gap—it's a health crisis that affects 51% of the population. In this powerful kickoff to the "Invest Like a Girl" series, hosts Rebecca Love, Joy Rios, and Grace Vinton pull back the curtain on a system where men (who make up 85% of VC general partners) are making the vast majority of decisions about which health solutions get funded and brought to market.
The hosts dive deep into the startling statistics: women make 80% of healthcare decisions, yet conditions like menopause, endometriosis (which takes seven years to diagnose), and cardiovascular disease—the number one killer of women—remain chronically underfunded. They unpack the systemic biases, from male-based symptom models that delay cardiac care for women by an average of 35 minutes, to the social dynamics of "golf course" deal-making that exclude women investors.
But this episode isn't just about the problem. It's a rallying cry for action. With the largest wealth transfer in history moving to women over the next decade, the hosts explore how women can harness their financial power to reshape the future of healthcare, build generational wealth, and finally demand the innovations they deserve.
Key Takeaways
The Funding Gap is a Health Gap: Less than 1% of healthcare VC goes to women's health. This directly correlates with delayed diagnoses, inferior treatments, and poorer health outcomes for women across the board.
The 80% Rule: Women make 80% of healthcare decisions for their families but are almost entirely absent from the rooms where health solutions are funded. This disconnect is a massive market failure.
The "35-Minute" Disparity: Because cardiac symptoms are modeled on male patients, women experiencing heart attacks face an average 35-minute delay in diagnosis—a delay that can mean the difference between life and death.
The Trust and Bias Problem: Women investors face unique hurdles, from being told to "pitch like a man" to being excluded from informal networking and "male bonding" that often seals deals. This is compounded by a trust gap where founders and colleagues often default to male counterparts.
The Wealth Transfer is a Tipping Point: The largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history is heading to women. How women choose to invest—and whether they prioritize mission-aligned, women's health solutions—will reshape the economy and healthcare for generations.
Convergent Care is Key: The hosts highlight the need for a "convergence" approach, breaking down historical silos (like the 100-year separation of dentistry and medicine) to treat the whole person.
Chapters & Key Moments
00:00 | Series Kickoff The hosts introduce a multi-part series on investing, fundraising, and the women's health funding gap, explaining why this conversation is critical right now.
00:30 | Why Investing Now Rebecca sets the stage by highlighting the shocking statistic that women represent only 10-17% of the investor market.
00:43 | Women Missing in VC The hosts expand on the lack of women in General Partner roles (less than 15%), pointing out that the same people are making decisions about products for a population they don't fully understand.
01:46 | Health Funding Gap Grace reveals that less than 1% of healthcare VC goes to women's health. This section breaks down the "90% problem"—where the tiny women's health pie is itself dominated by reproductive health, fertility, and women's cancers, leaving everything else behind.
04:15 | Underfunded Conditions The conversation turns to the "least attention" areas: menopause, endometriosis (and its seven-year diagnosis delay), PCOS, and cardiovascular disease—the number one killer of women that remains vastly underfunded.
05:37 | Data to Action Joy recounts a powerful conversation with investor Marissa Fayer, who highlights the "35-minute delay" in diagnosing women's cardiac events and issues a call to action: "We don't need to talk about the statistics anymore. It's time to take some action."
07:56 | Diversity in Dealflow & Bias in Fundraising The hosts discuss how the lack of diversity leads to blind spots. Rebecca shares a personal story of being told to "pitch like a man," illustrating the double-bind women founders face.
10:38 | The "Golf Course" Problem The conversation explores how informal male networking spaces can exclude women investors, forcing them to work twice as hard to build trust and perform due diligence, often lengthening the investment timeline.
12:04 | Women as Investors Joy shares her awakening about the existence of women's health-focused funds and real estate investing for passive income. She challenges the narrative that investing is "complicated" and only for men.
13:58 | Wealth Transfer Moment Rebecca highlights the JPMorgan study on the largest transfer of wealth in history moving to women. She poses the critical question: "What will women do when they control the assets of that large amount of dollars?"
14:53 | Financial Independence Joy shares her personal pride in being the first woman in her family to buy a house on her own, illustrating the liberating power of financial independence and the need to empower other women to do the same.
18:20 | Convergence Health Lens The hosts connect the conversation back to themes of "convergent care" showing how breaking down health silos is a critical part of solving the women's health funding puzzle.
20:46 | Impact Beyond Returns & Allies Wrap Up The hosts close by emphasizing that investment returns are important, but so are health outcomes and community impact. They end with a shout-out to male allies who are pulling women up through the ranks.
[00:00:08] Welcome back to the HIT Like a Girl Podcast with your hosts Joy Rios and Demi Radeva. And we are opening this conversation, well, this series to talk about investing. And we want to basically share maybe a four or five part series around the different conversations about not just investing, but fundraising and the gap in women's health and how women are drivers of a lot of the flow of money.
[00:00:34] And let's kick it off by just thinking about like, why do we need to dedicate a whole series to this right now? And what is our thinking about it? Let's share with the audience. Rebecca, why don't you start? I was just blown away by when we started to dive into the topic around this, which was showing that women as investors in and of themselves represent anywhere only between 10 and 17% of the market. That means every single product that is coming to market. There is less than one in 10 women, maybe one in two,
[00:01:02] who made any decision regarding an investment into starting those companies, bringing those products to market. And it just shows that this is still largely dominated by men making the decisions on what companies get investment, what products get to see the light of the day, and where basically what is the future of our entire economy and development happening, and the absence of women being in that space. And I was just blown away having the conversation I had with Maria Filippova, one of the women out there starting their own investment fund,
[00:01:30] and really the struggles of what that world has looked like on being a woman in that space to make sure that people feel confident in her to give her dollars to invest in companies she finds valuable. So I just, I couldn't believe it until we dove in, but some of these statistics blew me away. And Grace, you know, Joy, what were you guys finding? It's just such a shock that less than 1% of healthcare VC goes to women's health, even though we are making 80% of the healthcare decisions, not to mention the percentage of the population that we are.
[00:01:58] So it's just really shocking and it's exciting to the market potential for these different technologies, and what they could do and innovations in this space and what they could do in terms of actually like improving longevity and the general health of us and our sisters and our mothers. That's the part that stands out to me that it's not just like a wealth gap or a funding gap, it's also a health gap.
[00:02:23] And that is the part that really sticks with me where I just think how far we need to get in understanding women's bodies. And basically, if we are the caregivers of our families and networks in society, then like we actually should be in the best health so that we continue, can continue giving great care to those around us. They are always saying that women in their families are serving as the chief health officer, right?
[00:02:48] We're the ones who all the responsibility falls on us for our families, for our children, for our parents, for ourselves, for our spouses, for everyone around us. We're managing the care that goes around them. And I think just as women, I don't think that we are well versed in understanding why there is this discrepancy, why there isn't the choices that basically empower women differently to do that. But also, as you guys just said, you know, there is a fraction of dollars going into women health in general when we make up over 50 percent of the population.
[00:03:16] I remember, and you guys remember, the entire debate around breast cancer and what that actually occurred and actually women dying in huge numbers before Congress took action to actually fund breast cancer as the first disease that separated women science and investment on health differently than all other forms of health that were out there. And I mean, you're looking at this through the lens of everything from access to medications. For example, we know that men, Viagra is funded through many different kinds of studies.
[00:03:46] All of erectile dysfunction medicines are well funded, but we don't even have birth control funded for women. And in fact, we actually see a reversal of some of these actions. But just even the discrepancy of how many dollars go into studying disease but never studying women's disease is not only an issue that's dealing with products going to market, but everything from the science and the research behind the scenes is really being impacted by when women's voices are not heard.
[00:04:12] Well, I think with women's health investors, it's really interesting to see the areas that are well funded and then those that are really underfunded because the more well funded areas are reproductive health, maternal health, women's cancers. And that's literally 90 percent of the already small women's health investment pie. All important things. Right. And it seems that fertility and IVF and pregnancy tech is more of the VC friendly areas. Right. They where they can see the ROI quickly and can more easily make that decision.
[00:04:42] But then some of the areas of like least attention, which do seem to be really kind of critical or menopause. No brainer there. Endometriosis, which all of us know it takes seven years to get a diagnosis. And there's no reason for that. And there are definite areas where we could work on better diagnosis and better treatment. PCOS and then cardiovascular disease, which we know is the number one killer of women and yet has some of the least attention and underfunding in this area.
[00:05:11] And other kind of neurological disorders and areas like Alzheimer's risk. You know, they do a lot of research on men, but have yet to do a lot of research. And then obviously have so little funding for women. So it's very interesting to see what has the most attention, what has the least attention and where the market potential is. And investors are definitely taking notice. So I got to have a conversation with Marissa Fair and she talks about data as infrastructure and data on women's health as infrastructure.
[00:05:40] And one of the topics she brought up was cardiovascular health. And the way that she explained it was there's 35 extra minutes taken when a woman has a cardiovascular event to find out what is actually going on. Because the symptoms are tied to how men experience those types of events.
[00:05:58] And so if 35 minutes of lost time of getting somebody the help that they need actually has results in negative health impacts and like how they can recover, how quickly they're treated. And ultimately it's just like what a huge disservice we're doing and we have done to these women. And it's like it's just time to stop. Like it's like enough already. We have enough data.
[00:06:22] Like and that was part of Marissa's conversation too was like we don't need to talk about the statistics anymore. We've all heard the statistics. Like we don't like let's gather more data and think about it. Like we have enough data. We've thought about it. It's time to take some action.
[00:06:52] And we're seeing women attack these issues and we're seeing these grassroots efforts to attack women's health issues and start companies along that. But they're still facing significant barriers to access, as you pointed out, Grace. Menopause, which affects every single woman on this planet in their lifetime, is really just coming to the fruition of where VCs are even looking at that.
[00:07:12] But even the delays of we even with our common practice of medicine on that topic is lagging light years behind what you would see similar male diseases on. And if nothing comes to light of all of this, it looks at if we're looking at our investments, looking at how we're shaping these conversations. We need more women in the room. We need more women leading investments.
[00:07:34] We need more women making the decisions on how to spend the dollars that are coming into the next round of health care technology, informatics and products that are coming to the market to basically support this kind of direction. I think it's the case for diversity. That's like it's ultimately the case. If you have the same people in the room who look and behave and have similar health experiences that are there, the ones making decisions, asking for funding, deciding what gets researched. Like there's a whole bunch that they're not seeing.
[00:08:03] And it's so tired of complaining about this, about like saying like, hey, it is our voice matters. And if we're talking about like this is another thing Marissa brought up about data as infrastructure. If we're going to invest in the roads and buildings and structures of our society, why are we not investing in the health of 51 percent of the population of people who are using that infrastructure?
[00:08:26] If we're not even healthy to be using the roads and bridges and structures, then like what's the point of that investment if half of us can't even use it? Absolutely. And then the diversity of issue of the fact that only 15 percent or less of VC general partners are women. Right. And so that kind of correlates, too, with investment committees struggling to intuitively evaluate menstrual health, fertility or menopause products.
[00:08:50] Right. And I've also heard from these women's health investors that are women, that it can take them a bit longer to get the founder to trust them, that they have the instincts, that they have the know how that their counterparts have. Not to mention that men just generally sometimes they'll be on the golf course and they'll get to know their founders and then they'll go out to drinking and go out and do different things with their male founders.
[00:09:15] And women, women investors may not feel as comfortable in those settings to be able to do that type of additional review of the company and the founder. And so sometimes the investments themselves take longer because they're trying to thoroughly get to know the founder and trust them. And so those conversations can often take longer to get to the point of actually then investing. And that's a challenge as well that women investors understand. They're like, we're seeing these issues that we're facing. Right.
[00:09:44] And we're seeing the challenge. But we also have to do our due diligence on these founders. And how can we get even more creative about building that personal relationship with the founders without doing typical male bonding activities? Yeah, I live on a golf course and I don't want to take up golfing. It's just not interest me. It does not interest me. Sorry to interrupt you, Rebecca. There are plenty of female golfers, but it is not necessarily, you know...
[00:10:14] It shouldn't be a requirement of doing business. That's all. Like I have plenty of other hobbies. Anyway, sorry. There are plenty of other hobbies. No, Joy, you're absolutely right. And honestly, I think I remember when I had my first company and I met with an investor and the gentleman looked at me and he said, you know what, come back and pitch me like a man. And I didn't understand what that meant as a woman. And he said, you know what, the thing with women is they come in and they tell you all of the practical reasons that they are going to succeed, but all of the reasons they may not also succeed.
[00:10:41] And they said, you know, the reality is, is when you're asking for money, you have to go at it hard and you are not practical. You need to be a dreamer. You need to be assertive. And I think the truth is, is women have always been when they start innovating, when they start building companies, when they start actually doing things, they're solving problems for really practical solutions in many of these situations. And they're really wanting to be honest about what's happening. And I remember standing there in that moment thinking the world is made up of two very different things in the world. And we have watched it throughout time.
[00:11:11] We've seen women who have raised money and we've seen men who have raised money. And we see what happens when men companies fail and fold and how they go on to still be considered great in their careers. But when women's companies fail and raising money, we see them prosecuted and persecuted in ways that are just almost different to the narrative. So I think what this conversation and this series that we're doing right now is not only shining a light on what the world is going through with women in these spaces,
[00:11:37] but it's showing that why we need to have these conversations differently and the importance of what it's going to mean to the future for all women, our girls and everything that's coming forward to us in the course of the next centuries. And I'd add to that, I got to have two conversations in this particular series. So one was talking about an investment in like women's health, etc. But the other was women becoming investors and what to be looking for,
[00:12:03] ways in which you can start thinking about growing your own wealth generationally and whatnot. And so that was a really like when you think about women controlling where our funds are going. I didn't realize I mean, in part of my 401k or IRA or like long term retirement planning, I've often looked at like, oh, what are sustainability funds or things that it can be socially responsible investing? And that's something that's been on my radar for a while.
[00:12:31] I did not know that there is now funds that are specific to women's health. And those are being created where women are coming together to say, hey, we want to invest in these specific companies and come be an investor with us. And so and so that we can join forces and invest in things that we decide that we care about. And that is something I was like, oh, I didn't know that that existed. And then it was actually a real estate conversation.
[00:12:57] This woman's start is helping health care professionals basically have more passive in through real estate investing. But specifically, just like how do you go from being a caregiver in a health care setting to being a caregiver also in your in your home and financial setting and actually working and combining and joining forces with others to make a bigger impact.
[00:13:18] And I was like, oh, that is a fun conversation to hopefully to empower some of our listeners to not just like, well, to take risks and but ones that are, you know, have have great benefits and rewards. You know, J.P. Morgan just did a study not too long ago. And I think it speaks so importantly to what you were just talking about, Joy, which is the largest transfer of wealth is coming to women in history, right? We're coming into this baby boomer generation where men are not going to outlive the women in their lives.
[00:13:45] And so this transfer of wealth is coming to the largest amount of women in history, controlling the largest amount of money the United States economy has ever seen. And there is a lot of speculation on what that will mean for the future of the company. What will women do when they control the assets of that large amount of dollars? Will they be investing differently? Will they be looking at communities differently? Will they be engaging differently with money in ways that we haven't? Because I have to tell you, Joy, I'm so excited about this conversation you had because I myself have largely been absent about thinking about investment, right?
[00:14:15] Like, I think that we've been taught as women that it is complicated. It's hard. You need to get an investor to do this. You need to trust the man in the room to manage those dollars for you. You know, what were you hearing, Joy? Well, I think that's by design. I think that we forget that women have only been able to have our own bank accounts that is not tied to another man, whether it's our father or our husband, for 50 years. We have only been able to be in control of our finances for 50 years.
[00:14:43] And I think that, like, I'm like, okay, so now we are grown adults. We've gotten better at, like, being able to manage our funds. I think that I actually, in a position of selling my house, and I'm just like, one of the things I'm the most proud of, I think that I am the first woman in the history of my family to have purchased a house by herself without anybody tied to it. And now I'm, like, on to my next one.
[00:15:09] And I'm just like, I don't think that that was possible for any of the generations before me. And I would like to see more women to be empowered to do the same. And, you know, it's a feeling that nobody can give to you or tell you how good it feels. It's something that I want for others. I'll share that. We're so proud of you, Joy.
[00:15:29] And honestly, it does seem that in this women's health topic of investing, you can't not talk about bias and where we've been historically as women. And not also understand that the lack of interest in women's health was a public health issue. It was a public relations issue, basically around it even being important.
[00:15:55] And so I'm so proud of these women who have raised funds up against that. Right. How did they get these funds underwritten when they had so little of such an evidence gap, you know? And so it just really you realize how much they really are fighting up against biases to be able to get to where they are. And it's exciting to see their passion about it and also to see all of the stats about around the promise of it.
[00:16:22] One of the things that Marissa brought up, which I was really grateful for. Shoot. I just lost my train of thought. And the challenge of getting underwriting for generalist investors. Oh, it was just the infrastructure part. She said, you know what? It's not about telling the story. It's about looking at the data. It's like, here's the data. Here we have all. Again, it's just like circling back.
[00:16:48] We have all of the evidence of why we are worthy and deserving of the research and the funding and the investment. It is not that we are not owed it, you know, or that we're not worthy of it. It's about who's pulling the strings. And it's essentially just coming from like, yeah, well, you guys had a huge blind spot for half of the population. And we're kind of at risk of continuing down that path.
[00:17:15] And if half of our population's health needs are not being served, like, how do you expect us to, I don't know, be good partners, be good individuals, like, live healthy long lives and continue contributing to society? Like, it's all interconnected, which I loved listening to your conversation, Rebecca, about the connectedness of our body systems, too, and how did that get separated? Go ahead.
[00:17:42] It was just like when I was talking to Maria Filipova, who, to your point, she had to find a male investment partner who believed in this message of convergence of health, of how oral health connects to overall health and this new movement of convergence health, which is like, how did we disconnect the dental from the medicine and all the biases that went into that and all of the lack and blind spots that we have with regards to oral health and all the opportunities that are there.
[00:18:07] But from her own personal story of being a patient to recognize how medicine moved and how they looked at her illness and how fast they were promoting certain kinds of access and her looking at different kinds of tools and solutions and realizing, you know, after being a patient, wanting to bring a different kind of view into health care from a patient lens and a woman's health lens to say, look, there is missing gaps on how we look at these things and went out to really solve some of that.
[00:18:33] And letter 10 years after this really horrific diagnosis to actually launch a fund so that more convergence of health can take place. And I really think that is what these conversations are showing me. It's illuminating dark spots in our vision, in our line of sight, in our entire space that women, when they get involved, see things differently. And it brings together a better, whole, connected community where all things rise as opposed to just segments because you're blind to what you do not know.
[00:19:03] And when we're blind to 50% of things that women see and experience, health care doesn't get better when you miss that size of population. And Joy, to your point, those CPR minutes, that compounds into minutes for an adverse event on a cardiac event, but it compounds to years of lives of women that are being delayed access to care on cancer and other diseases because there's no focus or investment on those solutions. And so this is not just a matter of time.
[00:19:32] It is a matter of our entire future and public health, as you said, Grace, on why we need to bring women into these conversations and support them. So this, to me, was what I never thought, you know, investing with Hit Like a Girl podcast was going to be the topic that I got so fired up about. But listening to what's been discussing is one of those that you realize this is an empowerment moment that more women need to be thinking about and listening to.
[00:19:56] And also all of the men that are listening to Hit Like a Girl recognizing, hey, how can I bring more women into these conversations? How can I invite them into the next investor meeting that we're having and helping us shape these conversations? And I think we're talking about more than just financial returns that we're measuring. I mean, it's things like health outcomes, community impact, generational wealth. Like, are there other things that we should be really considering when we're talking about, like, what's the purpose of our investment?
[00:20:25] It cannot be the end all that is a dollar, you know, because at the end of the day, we can't eat money. Very true. Although the dollar promises are there as well. Well, I mean, it's not only good for humanity, but also will absolutely produce financial impact. And so I do I do think it's like, well, it is we do have to think about the humanity. The dollars are there.
[00:20:52] It's very clear as 70 plus billion dollar potential and investors are taking note. And I just want to say to a lot of women investors that I've spoken with through the years, whether with Hit Like a Girl, fund like a girl, have said that their male allies, like you both spoke to, were the ones that pulled them up through the ranks and, you know, empowered them.
[00:21:11] And so shout out to the male allies who are listening to this and who are seeing this and are pulling up their female counterparts to make sure that they are not just along for the ride, but leading, leading the fight here. Supporting through their, you know, the legacies of their mothers, their loved ones, their grandmothers, and hopefully their future generations of daughters to empower them to lead the lives of a better community.
[00:21:36] Because we know in almost every society around the world, when women have equal access, equal support, we have the greatest thriving communities on the world. When we see that women are not, they're repressed and they are kept down. We see that those societies fall apart and lead from behind. And we really need to be at the top of our game. We need the best voices, the best minds, the best conversations happening to advanced healthcare and basically the future of our world and our nation. I think that's a great way to end it.
[00:22:04] And I think that this is going to be so much fun to bring all these conversations to our listeners. So thank you, ladies. Thank you, Joanne. Thanks, Grace. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Hit Like a Girl Pod. If this episode resonated with you, please follow us on social media at HitLikeagirlpod. That's H-I-T-L-E-R-L-P-O-D across all platforms.
[00:22:30] And to learn more about the show, our guests, or to join our wait list for what's coming next, please visit our website. The link is in the show notes. The Hit Like a Girl podcast is built on joy, fueled by love, and led with grace. We're so glad that you're here. We'll see you next time.