Problem: Menopause is a large and untapped market. Female Founders Fund summarizes the problem phenomenally:
Women make 85% of all consumer purchases and control 80% of all healthcare decisions in a $3.5T healthcare industry. Every woman will experience menopause which lasts on average 4–10 years, and costs an average of $20k in trial-and-error spending on prescriptions, doctor visits, treatments, devices and products. Many women don’t understand menopause, when it happens, and even if they are in menopause at all. According to PitchBook data, femtech startups have raised more than $498 million in 2019 alone; however, only 5% of femtech startups address menopause, a market which is estimated to reach $5.3B by 2023. Globally, menopause startups have raised $254 million to date since the start of 2009. For comparison Hims, just one company that targets erectile dysfunction among other male concerns, has raised nearly $160M and was most recently valued at $1.6B.
Women want and deserve better informed and communicative doctors, more information around what products and lifestyle interventions work, and a community to support them along this important life transition.
This post is heavily inspired by the report published today (October 26) by Female Founders Fund.
Solution: Perhaps the best way to start this post is by describing what menopause is, though it is often shrouded in cultural taboo. Menopause is the end of a woman’s menstrual cycles. The term can describe any of the changes women go through just before or after they stop having their period, marking the end of their reproductive years. According to the Mayo Clinic, the average age of onset is 51 in the US, with most women entering menopause in their 40s or 50s.
This business would develop a digital community for older women that offers information, doctors, and support for this transition in life. As Female Founders Fund describes, “78% of respondents indicated that menopause interferes with their lives, and 23% of respondents indicated that menopause impacted their lives either ‘a great deal’ or was ‘completely debilitating’.” Any company that can effectively solve this problem would not only be valuable, but it would be providing a service to improve quality of life for women.
One of the value-props for this business would be to help women identify menopause and deal with its many symptoms. The symptoms of menopause are both physical, such as hot flashes, weight gain and loss of libido and psychological, such as mood swings, difficulty concentrations, depression and anxiety. The top ten symptoms that respondents indicated experiencing are as follows: hot flashes (80%), night sweats (77%), sleep disorders (71%), loss of libido (70%), mood swings (69%), fatigue (67%), weight gain (67%), irregular periods (64%), bloating (63%) and difficulty concentrating (63%).
Currently the main ways to treat menopause are hormones (through hormone therapy and products / pills) or lifestyle (changing eating habits, meditation, exercise, etc).
Ultimately, the market is huge. According to Forbes, “menopause is a $600B+ opportunity that is still largely untapped.”
Monetization: Selling subscriptions to join this menopause community.
Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)