Femtech Isn’t a Niche. It’s a Blind Spot. Why I’m Betting on Founders Who Refuse to Be Silenced.

There are sectors you enter because they’re hot.
And there are sectors you enter because ignoring them would be irresponsible.

Women’s health is the latter.

If you work in clinical research, you know the numbers: decades of underrepresentation in trials, biomarkers that were never validated across ethnicities, devices “for women” that are designed without women at the table. We don’t need another panel discussion to confirm the gap. We need founders who are closing it.

This is my perspective as a clinical pharmacologist turned operator, now investor and accelerator. I’ve run trial networks, fought regulators when the rules were wrong, and rebuilt after losing almost everything during COVID. I evaluate opportunities the same way I evaluate trial protocols:
What’s the unmet need? Where will this fail? Who’s accountable for solving it?

Recently, I met two leaders who answered those questions with unusual clarity: Roswitha, Founder & CEO of YON E Health, and Muskaan, the company’s Chief Clinical Officer.

Their solution looks simple: continuous, intravaginal measurement of pH and basal body temperature (BBT) across the full menstrual cycle, delivered through a medical device designed to clinical standards. But behind that simplicity is a thesis that could change how we monitor fertility, menstrual health, infection risk, and preventive care, and how we build evidence in women’s health at large.

This isn’t a press release. It’s why I invested.
And it’s why I believe femtech, done rigorously, isn’t “niche tech for women.”
It’s core healthcare overdue, underfunded, and strategically compelling.

The Problem We Pretend Doesn’t Exist

In clinical research, we like to talk about elegant mechanisms and beautiful datasets. Less popular is the blunt reality: we still don’t routinely track fundamental biomarkers of vaginal health in daily life, not in a way that is precise, longitudinal, and clinically usable.

• pH is central to the vaginal microbiome. Small shifts can indicate dysbiosis, predict infection risk, and correlate with adverse reproductive outcomes. Yet most women in the real world get a snapshot, maybe, when symptoms appear.

• Basal body temperature is a low-tech but powerful indicator for ovulation. Fertility apps approximate it; clinics use it selectively. But daily, passive, device-grade measurement that maintains clinical utility? Largely absent.

If this were cardiology, we wouldn’t tolerate it.
Imagine telling patients, “We think you might have an arrhythmia, come back in six months for a spot ECG.”

We use wearables and continuous monitors because physiology is dynamic. The same logic applies here.

Now add an uncomfortable truth: benchmarks weren’t built for everyone. Ethnic differences in baseline pH exist. Menopause timing varies. Symptom profiles shift by population and context. Historically, many standards were derived from a narrow slice of humanity, and for too long, women weren’t even included in substantial parts of research. You can’t personalize care when the foundation isn’t representative.

This isn’t a “women’s issue.”
It’s a health system blind spot that distorts diagnostics, slows research, and keeps preventable problems expensive.

A Device Is Not a Product.

A Product Is Protocol, Evidence, and Trust.

I don’t invest in gadgets. I invest in clinical programs wrapped in hardware and software.

When I spoke with the YON E Health team, I didn’t hear hype.
I heard an operator’s map: technology readiness levels (TRL) clearly defined; laboratory validation of sensors in simulated vaginal fluid and plausible interferents like blood and urine; outer shell biocompatibility and cleaning cycles planned for materials testing; user testing queued post-first prototype; regulatory pathways for CE mark and FDA tracking in parallel with ISO-aligned SOPs and a clinical evaluation plan.

That’s textbook sequencing.

Here’s what impressed me even more:

1. Speed with discipline.
   They respond fast, but they don’t skip steps. When you send dozens of due-diligence questions and receive precise answers within hours, it tells you about habits, not just competence. In clinical development, momentum is a form of risk mitigation.

2. Advisory board that works.
   I’ve seen advisory boards with impressive LinkedIn titles and zero operational value. YON E’s advisors show up, review documents, and co-solve, finance, legal, regulatory, week in, week out. That’s a cultural choice: value first, money after.

3. Radical transparency.
   Consumers don’t need another glossy wellness promise. They need to see what building a medical device actually takes, messy lab data, iteration, setbacks, and decisions. This team is willing to open the black box before launch. Trust compounds.

4. Inclusion by design.
   Not as a slide, but as a sampling plan. From day one, they’re structuring research and voice-of-customer work to reflect different ethnicities and geographies, including markets where cultural taboos restrict intravaginal products. Education is part of the product.

That is what a product in regulated health looks like.
It’s not only the sensor. It’s the protocol, the data model, the regulatory file, the human factors, and a relationship with users based on consent, not surprise.

Consent Is Not a Checkbox. It’s a Strategy.

Let me be explicit: the fastest way to destroy a femtech brand is to treat intimate data like ad inventory.

In Europe, GDPR sets a floor. Your users should set a higher bar.

At CRU Global and across my investments, I take the same stance I take in trials: consent must be real, revocable, granular, and respected. Not just because it’s ethical, but because it’s how you build a durable data asset.

If a user can see, clearly, what their data is used for (personal feedback, anonymized research, clinical algorithm training) and can opt in or out at each layer, you earn the right to keep innovating. If you obfuscate, you earn headlines and churn.

YON E’s roadmap treats consent as a product surface, not a legal appendix.
That matters. Done right, privacy becomes a competitive advantage, and the precondition for research that finally answers questions women have been asking for decades.

The Founder Variable: Why the Team Is the Thesis

The biggest failure mode I see in early-stage medtech is not technical. It’s human.

I’ve invested in enough companies to recognize patterns.
Teams that move fast on email move fast in the lab.
Teams that invite critique withstand regulatory reviews.
Teams that fight for clarity build better protocols.
And founders who can live with “no”, and keep going, usually win.

Roswitha, the Founder & CEO of YON E Health, has a story that is difficult and deeply human.
She grew up in safe houses, witnessing firsthand the neglect and trauma that poor women’s health infrastructure causes. She later turned that experience into purpose, building a company that translates pain into progress. That combination of resilience and precision is rare.

Muskaan, the company’s Chief Clinical Officer, brings deep clinical experience and scientific clarity. She has spent her career in women’s health and reproductive medicine, and she speaks the language of data, ethics, and empathy. Together, they built YON E Health not as a startup story, but as a clinical mission.

People keep asking why female-led teams receive a tiny fraction of venture funding relative to their output.
I don’t have a single answer. I have a rule:
If a founder has to be twice as prepared to receive half the attention, by the time they reach me, they’re already battle-tested.

I don’t invest to correct statistics.
I invest because the odds of disciplined follow-through are higher.

Why pH and BBT Are the Right Place to Start

Big problems tempt big solutions. That’s dangerous early.
The best founders pick levers that are clinically meaningful, technically tractable, and financially viable.
pH and BBT meet those criteria:

• Clinically meaningful: pH changes can precede symptomatic infections; sustained deviations map to microbiome states; BBT gives reproducible fertility markers when measured correctly. Together, they unlock daily decision-making, fertility planning, early infection awareness, pattern-based triage, and better conversations with clinicians.

• Technically tractable: Continuous intravaginal sensing has constraints, comfort, biocompatibility, power, signal stability, but the physics and chemistry are established. The challenge is packaging and calibration, not reinvention.

• Financially viable: This isn’t a moonshot needing a decade of Phase III trials. It’s an incremental path: validate sensors → prove usability and safety → accumulate real-world evidence → expand indications and analytics. Along the way, YON E can serve clinics, payers, and consumers without pretending it’s a social network.

Start with the biomarkers everyone forgot to measure properly.
Then layer intelligence.

Building for Many, Not for “Average”

One of the fastest ways to build the wrong medical product is to build for an average user that doesn’t exist.

In femtech, two realities collide:

1. Biological diversity, ethnicity, age, hormonal states, microbiome composition.

2. Cultural constraints, taboos, religious norms, misconceptions like “tampons break virginity.”

If you ignore either, you slow adoption and reinforce inequity. The answer is not to build twelve devices.
The answer is to design protocols and education that respect both physiology and context:

• Recruit diverse cohorts deliberately.

• Publish differences rather than smoothing them away.

• Build app experiences that educate as much as they visualize.

• Include men in the learning loop, single fathers exist, and partners influence choices.

A device won’t fix a taboo. Information will.
Delivered with sensitivity, in the right language, from credible voices.
When a product team takes that seriously, they graduate from building hardware to building health literacy.
That’s where durable value lives.

What “Good” Looks Like in Femtech (from an Operator-Investor)

Investors love lists. Here’s mine.
If you’re building in women’s health, this is how you’ll get my attention, and my money.

1) Clear TRL plan and parallel regulatory work.
Know your technology readiness level today. Show your next gate. Document your testing matrix. Have a CE/FDA strategy that runs in parallel, not after the fact. If your SOPs are an afterthought, your timelines are fiction.

2) Evidence before adjectives.
Don’t pitch “AI for the microbiome” until you can show sensor drift curves, calibration robustness, and repeatability. Start with physics and biology. Intelligence comes later.

3) Consent as UX.
Treat consent like a feature. Make it clear, layered, and reversible. If your privacy policy reads like adtech, I’m out.

4) Speed as discipline.
Answer emails fast. Close loops. Set deadlines and keep them. In clinical development, responsiveness is a proxy for risk control.

5) Advisors who actually advise.
If your board looks great on a slide but can’t show me meeting minutes or document reviews, it’s decoration. I want people who pick up the phone.

6) Inclusion designed into sampling and content.
Don’t evangelize diversity; operationalize it. Show me sites, cohorts, and content that reflect the world, not a postcode.

7) A roadmap that compounds.
Start with a tractable biomarker set. Prove value. Then expand to algorithms, clinic workflows, payer conversations. Don’t sell a platform before you build a product.

8) Honesty about the “no’s.”
You’ll hear hundreds of them. Good founders treat “no” as data, not identity. They iterate the pitch or the plan, not the truth.

My Biases, Stated in Public

Every investor has them. Few write them down. Here are mine in women’s health:

• Clinical rigor > consumer virality.
  I prefer devices and programs that survive hospital audits to those that trend on Instagram.

• Operational excellence matters.
  If you can’t run a tight Slack, keep a Notified Body happy, and close a risk register, you won’t scale.

• Impact and return are not opposites.
  The market rewards teams that de-risk clinical execution and respect users. That’s where the multiples hide.

• I back people, not press.
  Awards are noise. Time-to-reply and quality of documentation tell me almost everything.

• Data is a privilege, not a right.
  If you treat it that way, patients and consumers will trust you longer than your competitors survive.
  

I also bring my own history: I completed my PhD in human genetics with research grounded in gynecological disorders, and I’ve led programs in digital biomarkers and clinical operations across Europe and Asia. I’ve seen the damage that “almost good enough” causes in regulated settings. That informs how I underwrite risk, and how I help founders remove it.

Why We Led the Round in YON E Health

Because the problem is real, the approach is sane, and the team is the kind that will still be there when it’s hard.

To be specific:

• The biomarkers are meaningful.

• The device path is sequenced.

• The regulatory plan is proportionate.

• The advisory structure is active.

• The culture is transparent, inclusive, and fast.

Most of all, there’s purpose without theatrics.
When founders talk more about SOPs than slogans, and when their inbox hygiene is better than most CROs, that’s usually my signal.

What I Wish More Investors Knew About Femtech

You are not “doing good” by backing women’s health.
You are backing an efficiency upgrade for the entire healthcare system.

• Prevented infections save costs now, not in a distant future.

• Improved fertility insights reduce clinic burden and failed cycles.

• Representative datasets build better algorithms for everyone.

• Transparent consent reduces legal risk and extends customer lifetime.

We have all invested in huge addressable markets that failed because execution was sloppy. Femtech will create boring, compounding wins for investors who underwrite the unglamorous parts: regulatory quality, evidence generation, and real-world usability.

If that excites you less than a flashy consumer multiple, that’s fine.
Someone else will own the durable value.

A Word to Founders (and a Promise)

If you’re building in women’s health and you’re serious about clinical standards, I’ll meet you halfway:

• You bring proof, not hyperbole.

• You design consent like a product.

• You move with urgency and precision.

• You’re comfortable with the word no, and relentless about finding the yes that fits.

I’ll bring what my team and I know how to do: de-risk clinical development, embed experienced operators into your trials, co-invest alongside you and other funds, and open doors to hospitals in Europe and Asia where execution still matters more than marketing.

We don’t need another think piece about why femtech is underfunded.
We need clinical devices, published data, and companies that keep their promises.

That’s how you change an industry, and that’s how you build returns that last longer than a funding cycle.

Femtech isn’t a niche.
It’s a blind spot.
And we’re done looking away.

Peter M. Kovacs