June 18, 2023 - by Jennifer Ringler, MS

Did you know that only about 2 percent of all venture capital and investor funding globally goes to women-led businesses?

I wasn’t aware of this shocking statistic until last week, and it makes me wonder what innovations and advancements the world is missing out on by excluding 50% of the population from the conversation. This is unacceptable when there are so many more challenges to be overcome, so many problems to be solved – especially in healthcare.

I was recently invited to attend venture capital organization Well4Tech’s Female Founder Pitch & Demo Day, an incredible event that showcased businesses led by woman CEOs and founders in the health and wellness technology space. There, I watched and listened as 13 incredible woman leaders pitched their health tech innovations in hope of gaining investors and partners to help make their dreams a reality.

“At Well4Tech, our passion and mission is to make this a healthier and better world,” said Well4Tech Founder Yisroel Rabinowitz from the small stage under the outdoor tent in the backyard of The Bridge Healing Arts Center in Farmington, CT, at the start of the event. “And that’s what the 13 women presenting here today have in common, as well. These startups have expanded my bounds of belief in what people can do when they put their minds to it.”

The presenting Founders were from all over the globe – Israel, Serbia, Croatia, the United States, and more. And their businesses and technologies covered areas of health and wellness including women’s safety, oncology, menstrual health and hygiene, mental and emotional wellness, disability, and more.

Here are brief snapshots of the 13 incredible companies showcased at the event, each of which are in different stages of fundraising and development:

• Wide Therapy – Co-Founder and CEO Roni Singler – Wide Therapy is a digital therapy solution that enables behavioral change in individuals with special needs. On Wide's platform, children can visualize themselves overcoming their personal challenges, in a relatable and understandable way, and then adopt new behaviors in real life. Once learned, these skills can set children with special needs on the road to independence.
  
  
• IT’S July! – Co-Founder and CEO Tamar Liberman – IT’S July! is a family-focused social platform that enables families to connect, discuss mutual interests, and establish new friendships in a safe environment. It connects like-minded families worldwide and aims to improve wellbeing and combat loneliness.
  
  
• Parallel Profile – Co-Founder and CEO Cathy Cather – Parallel Profile is a home DNA check-swab test that provides consumers with information about which medications are likely to work best for them, suggests alternatives, and provides reports that users can share with their doctor to make appropriate medication and treatment decisions. This has the potential to reduce health inequities and improve patient outcomes.
  
  
• 6Degrees LTD – Co-Founder and CEO Miri Berger – 6Degrees is a personalized AI wearable devise that learns and analyzes the movement patterns of people with motor disabilities and turns that movement into digital commands on any smart device, increasing their ability to use digital technologies, which leads to increased independence, communication, integration into society, and employability. This has implications in rehabilitation therapy and everyday life.
  
  
• Gals Bio LTD – Founder and CEO Hilla Shaviv – Gals Bio’s innovative female hygiene device, Tulipon, offers a range of advantages that prioritize uninterrupted comfort during the entire day (12 hours), including safety, leak-free protection, reduced risk of TSS, ease of use, sustainability, as well as the ability to measure menstrual flow – an biomarker that is an early indication of health issues for women.
  
  
• Libbie Health Inc. – Founder and CEO Collette Ellis – Libbie Health addresses workplace mental health costs through a health equity lens with its mental wellness app, which helps users relieve anxiety, track moods, and build sustainable self-care habits. Employers can save $2-$4 for every $1 invested in stress prevention and early intervention through the app.
  
  
• Empowered Together – Founder and CEO Sarah Spear – Empowered Together has created a digital marketplace and networking app connecting people with disabilities and their families and caregivers with recommended businesses and resources. The service is like Yelp and Open Table, but for businesses that support the disability community.
  
  
• Every Two Minutes – Co-Founder and CEO Erin Rose – Every Two Minutes’ app, MySideKick, makes women and vulnerable persons safer, providing security and protection on college campuses & urban environments: at parties, bars, music festivals, on dates, out walking, exercising and traveling. Their pre-release app was validated on 100+ college campuses.
  
  
• TaraCares Global – Founder and CEO Jyoti Sharma – TaraCares is a personalized Health GPS for evidence-based, individualized, accessible, and affordable menopause health and wellbeing. They use cutting-edge AI technologies, clinical excellence, and academic research partnerships to develop a precision health platform that promotes an evidence-led, individualized, and scientific approach to understanding menopause.
  
  
• Encapsulate – Co-Founder and COO Leila Daneshmandi, PhD – Encapsulate develops automated tumor-on-a-chip systems that envisage the clinical response profile of cancer patients and determines the most effective clinical treatment regimen on a personalized basis.
  
  
• Wellbit – Co-Founder and CEO Milica Spuzic – Wellbit is a B2B self-care app for employers that acts as an AI wellbeing coach and generates personalized challenges for employees by learning deeply about users' drivers for self-growth. By completing challenges, users build visually appealing card-shaped journals made of positive moments in their lives, always ready for savoring.
  
  
• Cubtale – Co-Founder and CEO Selin-Tamer – Cubtale is a first-of-its-kind digital solution that improves the quality of baby care by providing personalized care recommendations and coordination tools to new parents. The app has served 60K parents in its first year and is rated 4.9 stars by 3k reviewers. Cubtale was selected as the “Number 1 Coolest Parenting Tech” by USA Today.
  
  
• RadGreen – Co-Founder and CEO Sigalit Mutzafi – RadGreen is an indoor health management solution that enables property owners to increase revenues and reduce churn through proactive observation and improving energy consumption, air quality, well-being, bad odors, noise, viral risks, etc., to create the perfect, healthy environment in commercial real estate.

This Pitch & Demo Day was a truly unique opportunity to meet and learn about women startup founders and CEOs who are focusing their efforts on finding ways to make the world a better, healthier, safer place. What stood out to me most about being at an innovation event filled with women was the common thread of empathy and the genuine desire to help other people that was woven through each presentation. It’s an energy and a focus on the real human experience that I’d like to see and feel at every healthcare-related industry event.

The world needs more of this.