Insight
How to remain successful in the tough world of FemTech
By Gloria Kolb, Co-Founder & CEO – Elitone
It is well documented that FemTech companies, often founded and run by females, face a tougher uphill battle to get investment. Sadly, there is a continuing, historical negative bias towards female-founded and female-led companies, as highlighted by female founders in Forbes last year.
Accessing investment and capital is the first hurdle, which often faces blatant sexism by male-dominant investors and VCs, market misconceptions and a stigma attached to female-led enterprises.
But, the challenge doesn’t stop when funding is secured.
Notwithstanding the fact that we are finally starting to have open, honest and supportive discussions around topics that affect women, including birth, menstruation, gynaecological issues, menopause and pelvic health, amongst others, female founders are still not experiencing the same support when starting or running businesses that their male counterparts benefit from.
Like every business, the challenge becomes about growing a company that is financially and operationally viable for the long term, whilst staying relevant to consumers.
But that can be even harder if you’re not given the same level of support needed.
Despite the FemTech sector’s huge growth in recent years, the appetite for funding is still missing.
In my experience many investors assume the market is saturated due to the number of products and struggle to understand and distinguish between the various FemTech solutions.
It’s clear that female-founded and FemTech companies do well to actually get off the ground, and thereafter it’s the way these companies navigate producing relevant, effective and desired products, whilst successfully balancing the financial accounts, that is the difference between success and failure in the long-term.
The journey Elvie has experienced is an example of the challenges faced in FemTech.
It started as one of the most well-known, trailblazing sector businesses in the UK in 2013, with its ‘taboo-busting’ pelvic floor trainer.
It later launched the Elvie Pump, a fully in-bra breast pump, in 2018, and most recently pivoted its product offering to launch a bassinet.
Elvie was initially a start-up success story; since its launch raising in excess of $186 million in investment, however, recent sales figures were declining whilst debts were rising.
The good news for the sector is that Willow, the San Francisco start-up that made its name with wearable breast pumps, is acquiring Elvie.
But the question remains, how did a first-of-its-kind FemTech company go so wrong? The investment was there, so was it a lack of financial and operating diligence that caused it to fall?
In the female pelvic floor space alone, Viveve, which raised $113M was delisted from Nasdaq in 2023 when it failed to meet its incontinence endpoints, Incontrol Medical, which was the first to bring pelvic floor health to the home, folded shortly after the pandemic, and Liberty filed for bankruptcy.
So what lessons can be learnt? Why is it so difficult for FemTech hardware companies to succeed?
Firstly, more education is needed around the issues females face that result in the development of FemTech hardware. Education is tricky in today’s society.
Things are slowly changing on the back of the conversation opening up in recent years on menstruation and menopause, but there is still a long way to go and female conditions such as incontinence and bladder leaking are still somewhat taboo, embarrassing and not spoken about often enough in mainstream or on social media.
What’s more, what I have found while developing Elitone is that the issue of incontinence, pelvic health and bladder leaks is often a secret for those that experience it.
The desire to keep it hidden, without discussing with friends, family or the medical profession, exacerbates the lack of awareness and understanding around the condition.
People are ashamed, but don’t need to be.
Elitone is on a mission to ensure women feel empowered to speak about what can become a huge affliction.
I started the company precisely because I was suffering post-partum and couldn’t find effective solutions on the market.
We work hard to evolve and grow Elitone, to ensure there will always be a reliable, effective and accessible solution for the millions of women who suffer.
The way we do this is to ensure our financial and operational management is solid and provides the basis for continued success.
At one point, start-ups were told “grow fast or die”, or scale at any cost and worry about profitability later.
That may well work for software and internet-based products, but by definition FemTech is hardware and we believe that approach doesn’t work.
Our success is based on old-fashioned common sense; we are careful about our costs, we are quick to shut down marketing efforts that don’t show returns, and everything is a test first.
We already know Femtech is harder to get funded, so every dollar counts.
So, although our growth has been slower than some others, the real secret to success is creating a product that is truly loved and works!
— Gloria Kolb is the CEO and co-founder of Elitone, the first non-invasive, FDA-cleared, wearable treatment for women with urinary incontinence.
Elitone’s accolades include winning Best New Product by My Face My Body, Sling Shot, finalist in Women Startup Challenge, and CES’ Innovation Award. As an inventor with 30+ patents and advocate for women’s health, Gloria has been featured in Forbes as a Top Scientist Driving Innovation in Women’s Health, TechRound’s Top Women in Tech, Boston’s “40 Under 40” and MIT Review’s “World’s Top Innovators under 35.”
She has engineering degrees from MIT and Stanford, and an Entrepreneurship MBA from Babson College.
A study is examining where delays occur in diagnosing endometriosis – a condition that can take seven to twelve years to diagnose.
Endometriosis affects an estimated 1.5 million women and people in the UK, but there is currently no consistent way of measuring where and why diagnostic delays happen.
The research aims to develop the first standardised framework for understanding the diagnostic journey and identifying points where interventions could improve care.
The international project involves researchers from the University of Sheffield, University of Liverpool, University of Oxford, Aarhus University in Denmark and the University of Edinburgh, alongside Endometriosis UK.
Dr Rebecca Mawson, NIHR clinical lecturer in primary care at the University of Sheffield, is part of the research team.
She said: “Our project asks: where exactly are people getting lost or let down on their journey to diagnosis, and how can we map those points in a systematic way to identify where interventions could make a real difference.”
The project is led by Dr Babu Karavadra, NIHR academic clinical fellow in general practice at the University of Liverpool, who has been awarded a World Endometriosis Society Early Career Investigator Award as lead principal investigator at the University of Liverpool.
Researchers will review existing evidence, gather experiences from people living with endometriosis and bring together an international panel to map the diagnostic pathway and agree common definitions for key points along the journey.
The work will focus particularly on people whose experiences are often missing from research, including Black women, people living in rural or deprived areas, LGBTQ+ communities and disabled people.
Primary care will also be central to the research because it is often where people first seek help with symptoms.
Mawson said: “Primary care needs to be at the heart of this work. Primary care is often where people first seek help with their symptoms, so it has a crucial role in understanding diagnostic delay.
“If we only look at what happens once someone reaches specialist gynaecology, we risk missing some of the barriers that shape the journey long before that point.”
Unlike cancer research, where internationally recognised standards exist for studying diagnostic delays, endometriosis research has been more fragmented, with studies measuring different parts of the diagnostic journey in different ways.
The researchers hope to create an ‘Endometriosis Diagnostic Pathway Framework’ to help identify where people are falling through the gaps and where healthcare could be improved.
They will also develop a ‘Snakes and Ladders’ style visual representation showing how systemic barriers, chance and individual experiences can influence whether someone reaches a diagnosis.
The project forms part of the PEARL network, Primary care Endometriosis and Adenomyosis Research and Learning, an international collaboration of primary care and community researchers and clinicians.
Mawson said: “Endometriosis diagnostic delay isn’t inevitable. If we can understand where and why people are experiencing barriers, we have a much better chance of designing interventions that actually make a difference.
“The scale of the problem demands that we look at the whole journey, listen to the people experiencing it and build an evidence base that can lead to real change.”
The framework could provide the foundations for future research, clinical guideline development, healthcare professional training and NHS service improvements, with potential applications to related conditions such as adenomyosis and chronic pelvic pain.
A drug targeting a key regulator in triple-negative breast cancer reduced tumour growth and cancer stem cell viability in laboratory models.
Triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive subtype that disproportionately affects women under 40 and accounts for about 15 to 20 per cent of breast cancers.
The disease lacks receptors for oestrogen, progesterone and the HER2 protein, which are targeted by several cancer drugs, making it particularly difficult to treat.
Researchers from the National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine investigated mechanisms that allow triple-negative breast cancer cells to spread and resist treatment.
They examined regulators of Wnt signalling, a pathway involved in processes including cell growth and movement, and identified a master regulator called DP103.
DP103 is a gene that controls a major biological process. The researchers found it creates a cycle in which cancer cells continue to grow and spread while resisting treatment and maintaining cancer stem cells linked to disease recurrence.
The team then investigated whether a targeted drug known as Supinoxin, or RX-5902, could block DP103 and its effects in triple-negative breast cancer.
Analysis of 21 samples, including patient tumour tissue, laboratory-grown breast cancer cells and organoids derived from local cancer patients, found that the drug reduced cancer stem cell viability by 40 to 60 per cent.
Tumour growth in laboratory-grown tumour models fell by about 50 per cent.
In laboratory models, treatment also reduced tumour size by around 90 per cent while largely sparing healthy cells.
It also extended survival, with half of the treated laboratory models reaching 70 days and beyond, compared with none in the untreated group.
DP103 had previously been identified as a biomarker for triple-negative breast cancer by a team led by Alan Prem Kumar, an assistant professor with the NUS Centre for Cancer Research and principal investigator for the new study.
RX-5902 is already being studied as a treatment for breast cancer, and Kumar said the findings could help identify patients who may be more likely to benefit.
“Our findings suggest that DP103 could potentially serve as a diagnostic biomarker to identify the patients most likely to benefit from RX-5902 treatment, paving the way for a more precise, personalised approach to treating triple-negative breast cancer,” he said.
“Instead of treating all patients the same, future clinical trials could focus on those whose tumours have high levels of DP103, where the therapy is expected to have the greatest impact,” said Kumar.
First author Cai Wanpei said RX-5902 could prevent beta-catenin, a protein whose mutation is associated with various cancers, from entering the nucleus of human cells and switching off genes that drive cancer growth and spread.
“This slows tumour progression and triggers apoptosis – the natural death of cancer cells,” said Cai, who was a PhD student at the NUS Centre for Cancer Research and NUS Medicine’s pharmacology department during the research.
Study co-author Celestial T. Yap said triple-negative breast cancer remains particularly difficult to treat because conventional treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy and immunotherapy may not work for all patients.
She said DP103 could represent a “biological vulnerability” in the disease.
“This discovery offers new insights that could support more precise patient selection and open the door to better targeted strategies for durable disease control and improved clinical outcomes,” said Yap, an associate professor with the NUS Centre for Cancer Research and NUS Medicine’s physiology department.
The researchers said abnormal Wnt signalling also drives several other cancers, meaning the findings could offer avenues for treating other aggressive cancers.
Their next steps include validating DP103 as a predictive biomarker in larger patient groups and further developing therapies targeting the regulator for clinical testing.
The team will also investigate combining RX-5902 with existing therapies to further improve treatment outcomes.
By Women’s HealthX
As healthcare organisations navigate tightening compliance mandates, evolving reimbursement frameworks, and shifting health economics, the single most critical asset for leadership is operational visibility into what their industry counterparts are executing right now.
Ahead of the Women’s HealthX marketplace in Boston this December, a cross-functional steering committee of health plans, hospital networks, biopharma innovators, and enterprise employers has launched the definitive 2026 U.S. Health Infrastructure Survey.
The objective of this brief, multi-state index is to bypass abstract market fluff and map out exactly how the country’s elite healthcare stakeholders are practically structuring their 2027 budgets, clinical protocols, and technology procurement guidelines.
Some of the questions we are asking:
- Health Plans & Payers “What is the biggest operational barrier to expanding women’s health coverage?”
- Health Systems & Providers “What is the biggest women’s health priority for health systems over the next 24 months?”
- Pharma & Life Sciences “What is the biggest commercial hurdle facing women’s health innovation?”
- Employers & Benefits Leaders “Which women’s health challenge creates the greatest workforce impact?”
By contributing just 60 seconds of your operational insight to the index, you will ensure your specific sector’s parameters are accurately represented.
In return for your participation, you will secure a priority, pre-ordered copy of the completed 30-page intelligence report when the final data drops this September!
See where your direct peer groups are drawing their line in the sand for the upcoming fiscal year.
Contribute 60 seconds and pre-order your national benchmark report
Women’s HealthX 2026 | From Rhetoric to Results
Encore Boston Harbor | December 3-4 2026
Bypass abstract market rhetoric to evaluate real-world health economics, regulatory compliance mandates, and care delivery systems.
Join the region’s foremost health plan medical directors, hospital COOs, biopharma innovators, and enterprise benefits buyers anchoring our 2026 tracks.
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